Friday, March 08, 2013

Super Dimensional Space Fortress Cardboardimus Maximus!



The destruction of the 53rd seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is the sound of a super dimensional cardboard fortress crashing into southern Florida! Yes it's a Robotecatastrophe as the Nostrodomatron pays several hundred dollars for a cardboard box in the shape of his favorite giant cartoon spaceship from the 80s, the SDF-1! Listen in Zentraediriffic terror as I relate tales of the rarest, most impractical and ridiculously oversized paper airplane ever sold as part of any toy robots line. Plus I talk Robotech for an hour with the guy who owned it before me, who as it turns out wasn't a giant space alien named Zor. Is this the largest Robotech item ever sold at retail? Is the SDF-1 the Fortress Maximus of Robotech or is Fortress Maximus the SDF-1 of Transformers? Where in the world am I going to put a nearly 5 foot long cardboard spaceship? Find out none of these answers and more in this I DON'T THINK IKEA MAKES A SHELF THIS BIG (AND OTHER ROBOTECHNICAL DIFFICULTIES) edition of the podcastalypse!

Or download it directly

Who's that itty bitty spaceship?

CARDBOARD CONSTRUCTION-IT'S A LOST ART

Nowadays we don't get as much wacky cross merchandising of sci-fi cartoon toys as we did back in the 80s and perhaps the greatest victim of this modern day toy company conservatism is the cardboard playset. Vintage Star Wars is chock full of cardboard backdrops from the Palitoy Death Star to the Cloud City playset. GoBots had the Super GoBots Guardian Headquarters and Transformers had both the S.T.A.R.S. mailaway Control Center and the Warren Activity Center. And Robotech had this! The Play Make SDF-1 is the largest cardboard 80s playset I have ever seen. Staggeringly huge, it measures 4 feet 11 inches in length. That's enough to dwarf Fortress Maximus in spaceship mode. You'd think that it would be legendary in 80s kid circles, but I've never heard any stories from people who had one or knew a kid down the block that had one. I never knew they existed until the late 90s and even then there are very few pictures of them on the internet. So when mine arrived I built it right up and documented the building process in a gallery at Flickr and also over at the RoboFacial Bookocalypse. After completing this mighty behemoth I can understand why toy companies stopped with the cardboard playsets-not because there were no more awesome spaceship designs, but because Play Make used up all the world's cardboard making these.

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Compartments
I don't think they ever did that

Haters don't understand that without Robotech we wouldn't have gotten Darth Vader sized Valkyries.

6 comments:

Galaxy Ghoul said...

Man, I got snipped on a Rick Hunter gumball machine a couple months back on eBay. One of the few times missing something made me sorta sick to my stomach. The seller had it listed as a Gatchaman toy. Man....someday I will have one.
Can't wait to listen to the episode. Congrats on the SDF1. I've always thought that cardboard ship would be amazing. Looks killer with the mechs and veritechs on deck!

Evil King Macrocranios said...

Thanks for the lead on the gumball bank info! I was able to do a google image search for "Tatsunoko gumball" and see a picture of it. That thing is super undocumented on the internet. I can see why you'd want one so bad. I think it's a bit scary myself.

I like this episode. It doesn't drag thanks to my guest. I've actually listened to it for fun myself.

Galaxy Ghoul said...

Yeah, the only time I'd seen one is on the Robotech DVD extras with the slideshow of merchandise catalogs. There's also supposed to be a mini gumball holder shaped like Scott Bernard on a cyclone bike.

Speaking of weird finds, I picked up a mini Crystar (the old Remco toys and Marvel Comic) gumball holder by the same company, Superior Toys, which I can't find documented anywhere online. So maybe I'll me a Robotech one too someday.
-Matt

Colin said...

Hey Steve, a few things of interest. This is an expired ad for the three pack of the "Gladiator Voltron" - http://thepoptopshop.com/osc/product_info.php?products_id=306 - that was discussed on the show. Also, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWYa7XC-mgA this is a pretty cool mashup that might be of interest.

Evil King Macrocranios said...

Yeah I have never ever seen that Gladiator set in real life. Or if I did as a kid I don't remember. It's one of those packaging variants that is super rare but nobody cares but I kind of care. Still, $600 was a lot to pay for that considering how unpopular the non-show Voltrons were (and still are to a great degree).

Shlomo Ben Hungstien said...

damn that SDF1 cardboard reproduction actually brings back some great memories from the early 80s.

 

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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.