The Pre-WizardWorld Post-Lauderbrutal 1985 RoboEnvironmental Disaster Party

The twenty-second seal of the Roboplastic Apocalypse erupts like an underwater oil well spewing tremendous amounts of flaming oily 1985 toy robots into the gulf of Mexico. Yes it's a RoboEnvironmental disaster as I realize that in my carelessness and zeal to exploit the natural resource that is 25 year old pop culture, nobody noticed I used up all the 1985! Weep in joyful terror as the Nostrodomatron predicts a horrifying future where there are no more vintage toy robots newspaper ads left for future generations to bore themselves to death looking for at the library. Plus other deeply profound preponderances of great philosophical importance like why do the terrorists hate us for our toy robots and what's the best Micronaut thing to get Michael Golden to sign at a comic book convention. It's all here and more in this "I'M NOT WASTING MY PRESENT BY LIVING IN THE PAST, I'M RECYCLING PERFECTLY GOOD 1985" edition of the Podcastalypse!


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Service Merchandise 11/03/85 STEP UP TO THE MEG	Sears 11/06/85 SLEEP THROUGH TYRANNY

TRU 08 September 85

Sav-On 01/30/85

SHOW NOTES OF THE PODCASTALYPSE

• The heartwarming sense of self worth gained from ruining something good
• The downtown Fort Lauderbrutal library and the dangers therein
• It's hard to usher in the Roboplastic Apocalypse with reduced library hours
• Discovery channel Christmas lights maniacs and their misguided priorities
• Toy robots newspaper ad maniacs and their justifiably misguided priorities
• Lazy librarians from 25 years ago impacting my hobby
• Way more than anyone wants to know about Playworld circulars
• Michael Golden at WizardWorld Miami
• Crash course in Pallisades Acroyears variants
• Blanking on Blinky
• My Podcastalyptical effect on the secondary market value of ExoSquad comics
• break-Bucky O'Hare
  
• South Florida libraries are the Bermuda Triangle of Playworld newspaper ads
• The negative psychological impact of repeated exposure to 1985
• 1985 GoBot Trapper Keeper ad makes me wonder if I am paying attention in life
• How much 1985 is left out there?
• There is still lots of 1985 to go around now, but will it be there for future generations?
• Is my blog an environmental 80s robots disaster?
• Should we leave some 1985 for our grandkids?
• 1985 didn't end, it got put into little boxes at the library
• 1985 toy robots newspaper ads are a non renewable resource that I collect like baby seal furs
• The coming cheap labor based Roboplastic Armageddon
• Hopefully Vietnamese toy laborers don't shop at TRU
• Finding alternative hobby fuels
• Collecting not robots of toy robots but pictures of toy robots
• Spending most of my 2010 in 1985
• Reliving cool moment historical highlights of 1985 like serial killings and plane crashes
• Recycling 1985 responsibly
• break-Takara Microman Giant Acroyear
  
• Is that a Megatron in your mouth or are you wearing robot pajamas?
• Is this a Convertors toy robot ad or am I working in a robot assembling factory in Vietnam?
• Wizard World Miami pre-game highlights
• Landos and Batmans and DeLoreans oh my!
• The Podcastalypse procures a press pass
• Michael Golden and Bill Sienkewicz panels
• G4 at MiamiWizardWorldCon
• GoBots auction recap
• Learning to use the Robofacial Bookocalypse
• Don't Rocket Punch your friends!

What this blog needs is to preach to the Convertor'd!

Zodys 12/01/85

Convertors was one of those other transforming toy robots lines of the 80s that most people my age don't remember but I can almost guarantee everyone owned a couple of these when they were kids. In Pasadena I came across two ads for Convertors that I thought were pretty cool-the above one for the Avarian and Insector giftsets and the one below for the awesomely named American Minibots. While I previously found ads that mention the Convertors giftsets, I hadn't come across ads with pictures of the boxes before so these ads are kind of cool. It is my hope to one day open up a Convertors section at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. I have enough ads to make it interesting but right now it'll have to wait until after I redo the GoBots and Voltron sections and that'll take a while. If you want to read more about the Avarians and Insectors, go check out the Super Toy Archive and for some good reviews and background on the American Mini Bots I recommend Counter-X's Convertors page.

SavOn 12/04/85

UUMERRICUHH-FUCK YEAH!

HOW ABOUT ROBOTS! OR: Vintage Space Toast Tour Cincinnati-Space toasters up and down the dial

I got a Zrkload of good stuff for the Vintage Space Toaster Palace while I was in Cincinnati. It may seem stupid that I showed up to Botcon three days early since I didn't preregister and wasn't doing any of the special tours or classes, but I did it because Botcon was actually secondary to the real reason I was there-to collect old toy robots newspaper ads for the VSTP at the Cincinnati main library. Instead of the library being where I went when I wasn't at Botcon, it was more like Botcon was where I went when I wasn't at the library. Making ad collecting the main focus of my Botcon vacation was only possible because the Botcon convention center/robot fan containment facility was downtown within walking distance of the library.

The Cincinnati library had some really nice microfilm readers and good quality microfilm. I was able to get better copies of some ads I'd run across before which was great, but what made Cincinnati an ideal place to look for old ads was the variety of stores they had back in the day. Along with robot heavy ads from well known chains like Gold Circle, Zayre, Toys R Us and Children's Palace, they also had some crazy named stores like Shillito Rikes and Swallen's. I'd never heard of these before but that's because I'm from the desert southwest where we considered stores like Revco and Pic 'n Save blessings from the retail gods.

There was this one Shillito-Rikes ad from December 8, 1985 I especially liked where the lead-in text is simply "HOW ABOUT ROBOTS!". IT IS NOT A QUESTION! Jim the ad guy was probably trying to figure out how to fill that square of ad space and he asks the other ad guy, "What should we put here, Bob?" and Bob goes, "I don't know, how about robots?" And Jim goes "Sounds good to me!" The ad goes on to describe their "great selection" that included "Zibots (sic) and Convertors". The problem is that if your selection included Zybotz and Convertors, then by definition it is not great by the standards of the day. But man it sure is awesome that this ad featured the Convertors Maladroid Zardak! Zardak is also known as "weird black recolor of the VF-1S from Macross/Robotech". Good job, Bob!

But the first ad that made me do a double take in Cincinnati was a Maijer ad from 22 November of '84 that featured the Max Steele Erector set! I couldn't believe I found an ad for something so obscure. I started thinking that I may be the world's foremost enthusiast of old robot newspaper ads when I found myself crapping my pants about a Max Steele Erector set ad. Maybe it's not so obscure, though. Max Steele's Robo Force was another one of those marketing onslaughts with all sorts of cross promotional tie-ins from books to board games to telephones. I've already found an ad for the Robo Force Pop-O-Matic game so I don't know why I got all excited about the Erector set ad. Max Steele's Robo Force was just like every other mega popular robot toyline in the mass merchandising aspect, except that nobody bought it.

But the Max Steel erection was nothing compared to when I found this Children's Palace ad from December 11, 1983 for the Zoids Giant Zrk! I was absolutely floored! I was Zrking off! Zoids newspaper ads have been extremely rare in my searching and now I had the big daddy bad ass of the original line. I still remember having the first three and I really really wanted the Giant Zrk when the commercials for it started airing, but I never got it. I remember Giant Zrk being an unstoppable colossus of plastic robot dinosaur parts, its mighty frame barely held together by countless thousands of little blue rubber Zoid pegs trembling under the massive nuclear-level power generated by two C batteries. Now looking back I think my childhood perceptions may have been distorted by commercial camera trickery and too much Froot Loops.

I really don't know jack about GoBots but I do recognize rarity when I see it, and this Toys R Us ad from December 5th of '85 advertises a pretty rare GoBot thing. It's the Guardian Headquarters, a put-it-together yourself GoBot base that's fascinating to me because it's scaled to interact with the Super Go-Bots. Unfortunately it's one of those cardboard cut out playsets that every kid thought was lame back in the day, which means now that they're adult collectors they all think it was awesome and everybody wants one, so consequently nobody can find them because there are probably only three surviving samples in existence. This is actually not that bad because by "everybody" I mean every hardcore GoBots collector, and those guys are rarer than the Guardian Headquarters.

But easily the rarest of the rare ass rare robot ads I have ever found was this Meijer ad for Takara's Kronoform Attakon and Invacepton robot spaceships from December 1st of 1985. I usually see Kronoform ads pop up but it's always for the Multiforce 14. I have never ever seen one for either of these two robots and for it to be so late in the eighties is pretty astounding for me. It only my speculation based on this ad as evidence, but I think Takara didn't stop distributing their own robots in the US despite having the Transformers license granted to Hasbro. Kronoform still being advertised as late as December of '85? I used to think the only post-Transformers product of theirs they kept distributing were the the Kronoform robot watches. This could possibly be dead stock or some sort of warehouse clearance so who knows. All I know is that the Invacepton is hard to find information on and thank almighty Chai Chai Rodrigweez for MicroForever.

That wraps up this sneak peek into the ads I found while in Cincinnati. I've got a lot of updating to do over at the VSTP. I kept wondering why I only had about 80 pictures of Botcon on my camera when the total number I took while I was on vacation was over 600. Around 500 pictures ended up being toy ads from 1983-1985. I guess I really didn't go to Botcon 2008, I went to Cincinnati 1984.