AN INTENSE EXPERIENCE!

The breaking of the 87th seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is the voice of the man who made Cybertron! Join the Nostrodomatron as I brave the Bigfoot infested forest of the Pacific Northwest to talk to Jim Shooter at Washington State Summer Con 2019! Yes it's the father of the Transformers mythos and me in Puyallup, Washington talking about toy robot line treatments, Star Comics, and other Mysterianian shenanigans. Plus a lightning round of HOW MUCH ROBOTS YA GOT? with action figure collector/author/living 80s encyclopedia Mark Bellomo! Who is the salt in my convention salad? What's it gonna take to get the world to admit Jetfire and Shockwave came out in '84? Why was the Beyonder not a figure in the Secret Wars line by Mattel? WHO WOULD WIN STARRIORS vs. CARE BEARS? All this and a sighting of the paranormal forest entity known as Yoshi in this WE ARE ALL STANISLAS PIOTR'S UNWANTED CHILDREN episode of the podcastalypse!

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I presented to Mark the greatest award I can give to a person for Exceptional Service to the Kingdom Roboplastico, and that is my GoBackatization of the cover to K-Mart's 23 September 1984 Sunday newspaper ad.



Starriors is absent on purpose!

Making comics good since October 1984


SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE
COMING SOON!

Fred's Robot Convention!

I went on an adventure on April 1st drove to Wisconsin to go to Fred's Robot Convention Rolled out to Cow Palace...for DairyCon
There's a robot con in the land of dairy It's called DairyCon but it's not about cheese When the Hasbro cons are all wack, these dairy boys go to Fond Du Lac
Let's all go to DairyCon Cows and GoBots and your mom wish they were at Dairycon Its moo than meets the eye there-MOO MOO POWER
Dairylanders love jumpstarter racing They like those robots that turn into machines And if you pick the mystery box, you just might get a bunch of broken GoBots
Hello my fellow Macrocranians and robots lovers from Dairyland Welcome to episode 86 of the ROBOPLASTIC PODCASTALYPSE

---> DOWNLOAD IT HERE <---



BUT FIRST THE USUAL ROBOTARDATIONS
F.I.S.H.B.O.T of the episode is this Snaptrap box complete with inner bubble and other inserts that sold for only 47 bucks! Fuck I Should Have Bid On That!



OH HOW IT PAINS ME TO READ THIS AD

K-Mart's September 17, 1986 'World's Greatest Toy Sale' circular was a nice showcase of 1986 action figures. Robots from Transformers The Movie were particularly well represented and the ad even included a rare appearance by a 5784 Decepticon Jets case Starscream. Unfortunately the ad used a very dark colored background that did not contrast well against the dark typeface used for the ad text, so prices and descriptions are hard to make out from the microfilm transfer.

AND NOW-DAIRYCON!

You can see my entire photo album of Dairycon 2017 on Flickr


FRANKatello, The FREDDER, STEVEonardo, and MIKEnorthernangelo

The Cow Palace was nice, big and roomy. It was well lit and smelled great.

$2 ANYTHING box after the beat up Kup was bought.

There was just tons of robot stuff and I put more pics of it all on Flickr


IT'S FULL OF STARterS!

 

The Custom Jumpstarter Rally Race! This round was for modified motorized Transformers including Jumpstarters, Battlechargers, Happy Meal Starscreams or whatever homemade robot the racers brought.

The Unmodified Jumpstarter Rally Race! This footage is from the preliminary and semi final rounds of the most legendary Transformer races in all of Transfandom.

I wanted that Snaptrap box so bad! But what were the chances that my raffle ticket number would be called at the right time?
Turned out they were pretty good!	Four Star wings on a Kingdam body

Mike about to open his fantastic Mystery Box prize


The art show included Jetfire encased in Jell-O and a truck monkey


I liked this guy's fashion sense!


SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• Rob Thomas ate my Metallica
• Me and Rob driving 1,000 miles from Georgia to the Fond Du Lac County Fairgrounds
• BREAK-K-Mart Christmas
• The Cow Palace was a fitting location for...
• DairyCon 2017!
• My homemade DairyCon shirt got run over by semi trucks
• BREAK-Wisconsin cheese festival
• My photo album of Dairycon 2017 on Flickr
• Dairyland Transfans on Facebook
• Don't rocket punch your friends!

FAKE IT'S '84 'TILL YOU MAKE IT '84!

The breaking of the 84th seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is the sound of the clock tick, tick, ticking down the seconds until JOELANTA 2017! Listen 'n fun as the Nostrodomatron rushes to get a bunch of broken toys in beat up boxes all dressed up like it's 1985 again! Thrill 'n anxiety as I prepare for my Joelanta panel that's more than meets the price in hopefully enough time to more than beat the clock! Will I peel the stickers off 33 year old Transformers so they'll look new again? Will I open brand new reissued Transformers so they'll look old again? How tough is it to match the photography of toy ads from 1984? Am I committing time crimes against nostalgia when my ad recolorizations show up in google search results for old store circulars? AND IS THIS THE END OF THE PODCASTALYPSE? ONLY SHIA NO-NO-NO-NO-NOs!

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THE SECRET FORMULA REVEALED



IT TAKES A LOT OF PAYING ATTENTION TO SCREW THINGS UP THIS BADLY

This paragraph was supposed to be a deeply insightful, behind-the-scenes exploration of how I take pictures of toys and turn them into pictures of toys with little prices and Hasbro logos on top of them. And also how I learned that it's pretty hard to take pictures of toy robots as halfassedly as most product photographers did back in 1984, but there's no time! I need to go finish my JoeLanta panel so you can see my naked seeker jets and hear how thirty three year old Dinobot ads confuse me! Or actually I think that's what this episode is about. So listen and find out how getting bitten by radioactive Google search results gave me the proportionate strength and speed of a time travelling K-Mart ad.


OW! OW! OW! OW! OW! OW!



SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

Eckerd 12/09/84

• JOELANTA IN 2 WEEKS OR ELSE!
• My panel is MORE THAN MET THE PRICE!
• Microfilm is grainy
• Contaminating the past with fake history
• Frank Nora talks about changing the past
• A Stickery Situation
• The Naked Planes of Campbells Supply
• BREAK-KayBee commercial
• Reconnecting with my junk
• the terrible things I do for (and to) toy robots
• $3500 Grimlock on eBay
• You either rewrite history or sleep good at night
• Being first on the TF track at Joelanta!

LOOK WHAT I DID TO THE LAST UNICORN OF DINOBOTS

WHEN TITANS RETURNS TO JOELANTA!

Your friend and mine Brian Kilby (of the Happy Day in Wilkes County podcast) along with fellow titans of Transformer talking RoboRob Springer and Dusty Griffin held their annual Transformers panel at JoeLanta this past weekend! And to make things worse, they asked me to join in! Yup I was on a panel about Transformers and this time there were actually people in the audience! UNLIKE THAT OTHER TIME BUT I DON'T TALK ABOUT THAT ANYMORE.



Listen in horror as Brian asks me what my favorite new Transformer is and I pick one that doesn't exist because I am dumb about new Transformers (then I pick Wheelie). Marvel in astonishment as Brian asks the audience thought provoking questions like 'What are those Titans Returning from anyway?' and I ask what happens if the big robots ever lose the little robots that turn into their heads. Finally, cringe in flagellation as I use Brian's panel to make unrelated references to Lionel Playworld, GoBots convention licenses, and Pokemon. So TITAN ON and have more fun than being eaten by giant naked people in this ATTACK ON PANEL edition of RFC Extra!

Oz is Awesome but I Never Got Used to the Tornado

I gotta admit, my fellow Macrocranians, the entire past five years of my comic book convention going was a lie. I may have sounded like I was having the time of my life during the podcasts I recorded while I was conventioning and talking to guests but the truth is I absolutely hated the convention part of it. I hated the long drives and bus rides and expensive food and hotels and overpriced tickets just to get in and I hated the frenzied atmosphere. I would've rather met those comic artists and creators in a half empty comic shop or bar or 7 Eleven Slurpee fountain somewhere in some secluded part of town instead of at some giant super mega convention with tens of thousands of other people and dealers and organizers and Deadpool cosplayers sucking the life and money out of me. And to be completely honest, I did find some comfort in the idea of moving to the middle of nowhere in Georgia where I am now because it meant there was no reasonable expectation or possibility that I would ever have go to another convention again. Except for one thing-that damn box of space bunny Christmas cards!



BUCKY OR BUST!

I thought I could retire from comic conventioning after hitting the apex of my comic congoing career at East Coast Comic Con 2015. There I talked to great legends of my toy robots comic booking childhood and uncovered fantastic new unknown truths about Transformers comic history. It was a massive high point where I could have called it quits and never gone back. And to a great extent I did believe that was my last one. But there was still the matter of that friggin' box of Bucky O'Hare Christmas cards I had signed by only two of the three creators of Bucky O'Hare. It was my last boss left unbeaten, my unfinished concerto, my second Death Star hanging ominous and unfinished around the Endor moon of my mind. So despite my self proclaimed con retirement I found myself compelled to hit up HeroesCon 2015 in North Carolina last Sunday. After achieving a lifetime's worth of comic celebrity encounters over the past few years, I still had to knock out one more show and get that final autograph. So I bought my ticket to Oz, hopped on the nearest tornado and went to meet the comic illustrating wizard Michael Golden.



FIFTY FIRST CONVENTIONS

You know those stories about the police detective who has one last case to solve before he retires, or the spice smuggler who has one last mission to Alderaan before he pays off Jabba, or the Jaeger pilot who has cancer that will kill him if he fights kaijus again? They all get screwed in the end! They get shot or carbonited or eaten by kaijus and I knew that was exactly what was going to happen to me at HeroesCon (at least metaphorically).

This is because I like to live in a fantasy where every famous person I meet remembers clearly in vivid detail the one time I got them to sign some thirty year old action figure or comic book or paper plate with toy robot cartoons on it. And they smile and think warm thoughts about the time they did an interview with that one guy who asked those terrible questions for the podcast they'd never heard of before or since. But the truth of course is I am just another customer buying autographs or prints or comics or whatever from them and they don't even know my name, much less remember it. And that kills me. It kills me to know our meetings are in no way significant or have any lasting impact on them beyond the five bucks I paid for their scribbles. That's why I have a personal rule that I never ever ever talk to the same famous person at conventions twice in the same lifetime (unless it is Jose Delbo but the exception proves the rule there. The other exception is heavy metal singer Bruce Dickinson, who I did meet once and was never disappointed that he didn't recognize me when I was sitting in the 78th row at Iron Maiden concerts.)



OH THANK GOLDEN I'M FREE AT LAST

Yes, it was that box of Bucky O'Hare Christmas cards that I'd gotten signed by Larry Hama and Neal Adams at conventions prior that had me laying awake at night thinking about how no Bucky O'Hare piece of memorabilia is complete without Michael Golden's autograph on it. I simply could not quit going to cons until I had the one key signature I needed on that friggin' thing. So to complete the trifecta, the holy trinity of Bucky O'Hare creators, I had to go on the pilgrimage to Charlotte, North Carolina to get that damn box signed so help me god by Michael Golden.

And sign it he did. It was probably just another one of billions of signatures he's done, but man, he will never know how much of a momentous occasion it was for me. It's like he was signing my life back to me. Never again would I have to go to a comic convention. Never again would I have to brave the crowds and expensive food and giant lines and Deadpool cosplayers and all the associated nervousness and anxiety I got from meeting people and going to those places. Now truly everything I ever wished to accomplish at comic cons was done. I was free. It was over. Michael Golden signed my ticket and Bucky O'Hare was the pilot on the last flight of the Righteous Indignation out of conventionville.



MY HEROES DON'T DISAPPOINT ME, THEY JUST KINDA NEVER REMEMBER MY NAME

Thankfully Michael Golden didn't remember my awkward interview skills (from episode 25) four years ago or if he did he was still very warm and professional anyways. He made those precious few seconds I was at his table unforgettable by just being enthusiastic about Bucky O'Hare. He even had a single Bucky print left for sale and I grabbed it. I could have gone home then and it would have been super sweet but I just had to go over and revisit a couple of other creators like Mark Texeira, Tom Scioli, and Bill Sienkewicz. It was a mini Roboplastic Podcastalypse reunion of guests and acquaintances from the last few years (in my head at least-I'm sure they didn't know me from Johnny Blaze).

To my amazement they still talked to me again even though I don't do a podcast anymore! Holy hell if I knew they'd talk anyways I never would have come up with the ridiculous pretense of having a podcast in the first place! But at least with my recordings I have something uniquely related to any given convention experience to show for all the time and money I spent. I can handle paying for autographs (and being forgotten for free) as long as I have proof that for a few moments the giants knew my name.

Tom Scioli and Mark Texeira signed Transformers stuff for me.

DOROTHY WOULD'VE COME HOME SOONER IF SHE WASN'T FREELOADING IN OZ

I think now I can get on with my life and put all this convention madness behind me. There's no reason left to pack my bags and stay overnight somewhere hundreds of miles from home just to get maybe 30 seconds of interaction with some comic creator I admire. Nowadays with YouTube and Periscope and everyone and their mother doing a podcast I can pretty much sit at home and watch the action at the big cons from my living room. And of course eBay renders buying things at conventions rather pointless by making it possible to pay over inflated convention prices from the comfort of home. Cons are still good for meeting creators but I have been there and done that to my utmost satisfaction. HeroesCon 2015 was the best double last convention I could've ever chosen. From here on out I ain't going anywhere to see anybody unless anywhere is my backyard and the anybody is my kid who wants to play ball. Good luck to all you Dorothys out there still jumping in those tornadoes. I hope the wizard remembers your name!

ONE LAST BLAST!

The breaking of the 82nd seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse is the the sound of millions of Bon Jovis and Bruce Speingsteens crying out in terror as the Nostrodomatron invades New Jersey! Yes I hit up East Coast Comic Con 2015 at the Meadowlands Exposition Center and boy did I have a blast talking to the most Robotastic lineup of Marvel comic creators I have ever seen at one convention. Listen in horror as I get Mark Texeira to sign a cover he's always wanted people to know he did while the books I asked Herb Trimpe to sign weren't so lucky. Plus I get in some titanic conversations with the TechSpectacular Bob Budiansky and Darin' Dave Hunt that shake the very foundations of our understanding of life, the universe, toy robot comics, and kangaroos wearing robotic body armor. What happens when you sing showtunes to Larry Hama? What unpublished Marvel Transformers comic art did Dave Hunt have Dwelling in the Depths of his drawings? And did Hasbro keep Bob Budiansky locked in the back and feed him raw meat? Find out all that and more in this HUNT 'N BUD & HERB WITH TEX edition of the podcastalypse!

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See more of my East Coast Comic Con pictures at Flickr Macrocrania.


COMICS CON AMIGOS

I could not have picked a better con for the final convention recorded episode of the Roboplastic Podcastalypse. It had a lineup of legendary comic creators, some of whom I was able to trick into doing a little talky talky while they signed comics and drew sketches and met with their fans. ECCC had that absolutely perfect mix of celebrity and fan interaction that I always hope to get when I go to a show. Above left you'll see someone doing a professional interview with Bob Budiansky with a camera and microphone and everything! Meanwhile, Herb Trimpe was sketching incredibly accurate likenesses of people on the backs of their shirts!


THEY'RE SUCH CARDS!

Legendary professional fan Fred Hembeck was destroying the Marvel Universe way before Ultron made it cool. He brought a binder full of sketch cards that was worth the price of admission to just look through. He gave me the lowdown on why his ROM sketches are so tough to get even though he's constantly eBaying them all the time. I finally got Larry Hama to sign my Bucky O'Hare Christmas cards and I got to prove to him that I, too, had time to see plays. Massive thanks to the Real Life Peter Griffin for helping me with the outro to this episode.


CONVENTION LIKE IT'S 1979!

My favorite dealer of the show award went to the RetroArtBlog.com. They had tons of stuff from the late 70s that blew me away like Micronaut Colorforms, Starbirds galore, metal lunchboxes up the wazoo, and even the super rare Godzilla tabletop game, which they demonstrated to a guy wearing a helmet made of plush puppies. They were even selling the control art for the Shogun Warrior Colorforms background and a crazy Japanese Super Robot Projector set that I'd never seen before in my life. If there's a thirty year old Colorforms set or ViewMaster reel you need, put on your bell bottoms, load up some Bee Gees in the 8 track player of your custom van and go hit them up.


ALL THE WAY TO TEX'ES

Mark Texeira was an absolute firecracker as he always is and he finally settled the question of who penciled the cover to Transformers #3. He also settled the question of what he's doing now by telling me about his Law of Resistance book with PKMM Entertainment, his A Hero's Death Kickstarter project, the recent Ghost Rider cover he did, and his upcoming appearances at Big Wow ComicFest April 17-8, Motor City Comic Con in May, and HeroesCon in June!


THE BEST LOUSY SKETCHER EVER!

It is always a pleasure catching up with my favorite lousy sketcher, Papercutz Editor-In-Chief Mr. Jim Salicrup. I bought a couple lousy sketches and although I didn't record it, we talked about Transformers and Visionaries and that time I interviewed him back at Miami Book Fair 2010. (Well maybe not that last one.) He signed my Transformers #4 and Visionaries #1 (which he wrote) and I asked him if he knew anything about The Night the Transformers Saved Christmas but he didn't know they did. I let him know how awesome those Papercutz Lego Ninjago books sold at my kid's first grade book fairs and I told him he really needs to come down to Florida more often so he can tell us some of his ol' Spidey Super Stories .




DARIN' TO TALK WITH DAVE!

It was a highlight of my convention interviewing life to finally meet Darin' Dave Hunt, the man who inked the majority of Jose Delbo's pencils during their run on Transformers. Mr. Hunt brought several binders of his work to show to fans, including a couple pages of never-before-published Transformers art! He was able to talk a lot about how much work Transformers was and why there were some books that were created but never published. He also explained who that guy was on the cover to People magazine he drew in Transformers #45! Check out his lengthy ComicBookDB.com profile and hit him up on Facebook!



DWELLIN' IN THE DRAWINGS!

The pages above are part of an unpublished Transformers comic from the original Marvel run, whose existence had up to this point not been widely known. Mr. Hunt didn't really understand the magnitude of importance these three pages of unpublished Transformers comics art carried with them. As the artist he didn't really know the characters or the significance of a Transformer story that never made it to print, but I made sure to explain to him what a big deal it was. He did say he thought the characters he inked over Ian Akin's pencils were a noticeable departure from the designs he was used to drawing. That would make sense since these pages were from a story that was adapted from the Transformers cartoon, featuring characters that were never used in the mainstream Budiansky/Furman books. He told me he wished he knew more about Transformers so that he could have understood these things, but I told him he didn't have to know anything about them-he LIVED them for a good many years! He agreed with me and said he may not know much about the mythos, but boy could he draw the heck out of 'em.

UPDATE: The following sites picked up on the news of these pages' discovery and further commentary can be found at these links: Seibertron.com-Unpublished Marvel Transformers G1 Comic Art by Ian Akin and David Hunt - Dweller in the Depths TFormers.com-Unpublished Marvel Comics Adaptation of Dweller In The Depths Revealed By Dave Hunt The Allspark-Unpublished Marvel G1 comic art for an adaptation of "The Dweller in the Depths" TFArchive-"Lost" Marvel Issue Art Discovered. Transmasters UK-Unpublished Comics based on Marvel US cartoon OzFormers-Unproduced Marvel Gen1 comic story

THERE'S NO OTHER LIKE HIM!

Depending on what time it was, Bob Budiansky was at his table drawing all manner of superheroes, monsters, demons and robots. And some people even came by to get sketches from him, too! Yes I finally got the chance to sit down for a good 20 minutes and talk to the man who killed Optimus Prime about all sorts of stuff from the recent revival of interest in Sleepwalker and Brute Force to that time Hasbro locked him up and fed him raw meat. Unfortunately I did not get to ask him what Leader-1's tech spec motto would be or if the cover to The Interplanetary Wrestling Championship was a metaphor for a man's quest to rid one's self of toy robot addiction, but here's hoping maybe one day down the line he'll accidentally find himself at a 7-11 in Florida where I'm buying lotto tickets, hot dogs, and Tastycake lemon pies and our magical conversation lightning will strike again.



SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

Neal Adams sang me the Bucky O'Hare song!

• Hello from East Coast Comic Con!
• Stan Lee and Mecha Godzilla were at MegaCon
• Quickly talking to Mark Texeira
• The original cover art to Transformers #3 is on display at the Museum of Cartoon Art
• Mark Texeira's recent Ghost Rider cover
• Mark's work at PKMM Entertainment
• PKMM on Facebook
• The once in a lifetime picture I screwed up by not knowing he did the cover to issue #3
• That time I asked Mike Zeck about the cover to Transformers #3.
• Asking Herb Trimpe about his involvement in Dinosaurs Attack and The Night the Transformers Saved Christmas
• Singing The Ballad of Pirate Jenny to Larry Hama
• The time I met Larry Hama dressed as a GoBot.
• Fred Hembeck is doing ROM sketch cards
• Interview with Dave Hunt
• Dave Hunt / Jose Delbo collaborations
• Mr. Hunt explains the practice of inventory stories
• Papercutz losing the Lego license.
• The last time I talked to Jim Salicrup
• Me guesting on The Paunch Stevenson Show episode 262
• Interview with Bob Budiansky
• Sleepwalker #1 recently hitting $15 after his appearance in the last issues of Fantastic Four
• The return of Brute Force in the Deadpool Bi-Annual
• The relaunch of Sleepwalker by Robert Kirkman
• 1984 newspaper article where Hasbro admits feeding Bob raw meat.
• Don't Rocket Punch Your Friends!

A Hot Pocket for 20 cents is a steal any day of the week.