Wednesday, July 30, 2008

WORLD ARE YOU READY FOR MACHINE ROBO REFRIGERATOR RESCUE

I am so retarded at internet searching that it's a miracle I find anything. It's not as easy as just typing in what you're looking for, you have to put yourself in the mind of the person that has posted the information and figure out how they would describe it. Then you have to hope that Google has indexed it and that the webpage still exists because everybody who knows HTML is emo and they always pull their sites down in fits of self-loathing, low site statistic-based webpage suicide. It's getting to the point where I don't even google for pictures of old toy robots because the best search engines for doing that are YouTube and eBay.


Skaggs Alpha Beta 04 December 1985
My inability to mind meld with google search algorithms was driving me crazy because I was trying to look up something I found in an old ad last month. It was some sort of GoBots molding set from 1985. With it you could make little clay figures of GoBots, kind of like Play-Doh but more permanent. The GoBots mold and paint set looked like it made robot figures using a process similar to resin casting, which is something I'm into. As a kid I was familiar with molding techniques people employed like using Plaster of Paris to make artistic stuff like Bigfoot feet or, WELL YOU KNOW.

If I had only known GoBots mold and paint set existed back in 1985! Applying the molding and casting concept to toy robots was something I would not do until 17 years later. When I saw that ad for the first time I felt as if a major turning point in my life was never experienced. How would I be different today if I had been exposed to toy robot oriented molding techniques in 1985 when I was eleven? Would I have become an experienced and famous sculptor by now? Would I have gone on to great things if I realized my love of making plastic things decades earlier? Would I possibly have become the Constantin Brancusi of the toy robots sculpting world instead of the burnt out 34 year old resin casting amateur I am today? (Honestly I think the only difference starting earlier would have made is I would have gotten burnt out when I was 12.)

After blowing lots of googles I finally came upon a site that had some pictures of the GoBots mold and paint set or mold and color set or whatever it's called. What I found doesn't even have the same box as the ad but it's the same concept so whatever. I am not surprised that the site where I found the picture is an archive of eBay auctions. To archive eBay auction pictures is to create the Smithsonian of pop culture consumption history. Ebay auctions are after all the greatest repository of human knowledge.

ALLIGATOR SHIRT GOES WITH ALLIGATOR PANTS!

This thing is cool beyond my wildest dreams. I would love to have had it as a kid. Hell I would love to have it now. It made 14 bas-relief style GoBots figures and not only that, it also came with glow-in-the-dark paint. Then just to twist the knife in my heart a little more, it came with extra stuff so you could also make the figures into refrigerator magnets! Now I'm not sure if the average guy would go crazy for glow-in-the-dark GoBots refrigerator magnets, but I think I just found my next resin casting project. Is the world ready for the return of Leader-1 refrigerator magnet? Well considering it wasn't ready the first time I guess the answer is no.

Sometimes life is like looking for stuff on Google that you can't figure out the correct search terms. But if you keep trying you just might find what you weren't looking for, and in a different box. THIS IS ME BEING PHILOSOPHICAL.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is really cool.

Anonymous said...

Didn't they have something along those lines for Megatron and Optimus in the new Transformers movie? I know I've seen that same concept before but with Marvel characters and maybe Jurassic Park dinos.

Evil King Macrocranios said...

Well I know the new movie had flat magnets and PopBox Collectibles did two different sets of prepainted, preassembled 3D head magnets but I've never heard of a cast and paint style set of the full figures of movie Megatron and/or Optimus Prime. That would be really great if it exists, but it doesn't. The only thing that's at all close to this are the Batman sets from skullduggery.com.

Did you see the Marvel character cast and paint sets before the GoBots ones or is this just stuff that recently came out in the last ten years or so?

And did you ever buy that huge Matchbox Robotech jet you mentioned?

Weasel said...

Okay, Hasbro needs to make something like that. And they need to include a Bumblebee mold. Any Bumblebee will do, thank you. I'm not picky.

Everytime I see the pics of those PopBox magnents I die a little inside. Those are among the few Bumblebee items that I do not have. And it is killing me. (One day, my pretties. One day...)

Anonymous said...

I've seen the Marvel ones in the past ten years or so although I don't know if they were as fancy as the Batman/Go Bots ones. I actually saw that Batman one at a Michaels craft store a while back.
And no, I forgot to bid on the SD Matchbox VF-1S and lost out on it. I've seen the Max and Myria versions of it pop up here and there after that but I really want the Rick/Roy one. Overall though I think I'm done with collecting Macross/Robotech stuff for a while after buying the Yamato 1/60 Super Strike VF-1J for $100 and being super disappointed by it. I could have bought the VF-0S from a vendor at Comic Con for the same amount of money I spent on some of the other "crack purchases" I made there but I didn't and I don't feel too bad about that, oddly enough. I did, however, take some pics of the stuff behind the glass at the Toynami booth and will be posting those photos on my site pretty soon. It's so awesome they're going to have the Hikaru style VF-1S from DYRL in the 1/100 scale. I'm buying that shit when it comes out.

 

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Evil King Macrocranios was voted king by the evil peoples of the Kingdom of Macrocrania. They listen to Iron Maiden all day and try to take pictures of ghosts with their webcams.