Blasto from El Pas(t)o

My head only has a memory buffer of ten years. Any memory older than that gets written over and that sucks because nothing all that great has happened since about 1989. I have lost most all of my childhood memories from the eighties unless they are extremely memorable historic events in the course of human history, like when the space shuttle exploded in '86 or when Empire Strikes Back came out. When I was a kid these things made an enormous impression on me. Thanks to my crappy brain storage limits these memories are the only surviving remnants of my childhood so I worship them in my head and nothing else since has impressed me as much. That's probably why the Star Wars prequels didn't seem as spectacular or exciting to me, which oddly enough is also how I feel about the more recent space shuttle explosions.

I DON'T REMEMBER WHAT HAPPENED FROM 1979 TO 1989, I JUST KNOW IT WAS AWESOME

I was born in El Paso, Texas in 1974, which was the time just before the first Star Warses were fought. And I grew up during the toy robots wars of the mid eighties so you would think I have a lot of great memories but I don't. My childhood was a fantastic time but my recollection of it is fuzzy at best. It was like if somebody gave you roofies but instead of raping you they took you to Disneyland, then you woke up the next day feeling like something awesome happened but you couldn't remember what exactly.

A GOOD CHILE RELLENO IS NOT AS RESILIENT AS OMEGA SUPREME

I left El Paso 13 years ago because King Zarkon needed to be defeated and those robot lions weren't going to pilot themselves. Last month I went back to El Paso for a week and I found that a lot of the old places my mom used to buy me toy robots from went out of business after I grew up. COINCIDENCE? I THINK NOT. Thankfully a bunch of the places I used to eat at are going strong. I wish a lot of those old toystores were still around today, but just because they died out didn't mean the end of toy robots. By contrast, a lot of the food I love is very much dependent on the survival of the restaurants that make it. I don't care how super rare the latest toy robot of the week is, a well made gordita is way tougher to find. The bottom line is I can buy an Optimus Prime anywhere but there ain't Whataburger in South Dakota.


Just like my brain, El Paso has been busy writing over itself in the name of economic development but I won't let a little thing like going out of business keep me from showing the internet those old toystores I used to love. Although some have died off or relocated I still have my fuzzy half remembered memories of where they used to be. So in total defiance of the march of time and progress I took a picture of the greatest of those old toystores that aren't there anymore. I don't care if I have to photoshop that picture of me standing in front of the building that used to be Lionel Playworld, I will have a picture of it as it used to look.

BREAKING THE RECORD FOR THE MOST TOY ROBOTS SHIRTS PICTURES IN ONE POST

Does this look familiar?

Unfortunately a lot of my most cherished memories are not so easily photoshopped. Although my mom kept a lot of stuff from when I was a kid, a couple of key pictures from my childhood have been lost. But while I was in El Paso my uncle assured me that he does at least have the negatives of the pictures from the time he took me to Universal Studios to meet the Transformers in '85. I hope he finds them because shaking hands with some guy in a Jazz costume was like the highlight of my life. Little by little through the acquisition of old photographs I will get some more of my past and my memories back. Thankfully my sister said the picture of me peeing myself in front of Darth Vader is still lost. Some things are better left forgotten.

After I saw this I dreamt about Rocket Tubes

Hey all you Bananamen, Microsexuals is the hottest sitcom ever, and I'm naut just being a Hornetroid when I say that! Now get out there and support their creator by buying a GAY EMPIRE HOMOTROOPER!

Your moment of Zoid

It's like having your very own ROBOT TIME MACHINE

I didn't want to go on vacation without putting up more ads from Cincinnati before I left. So over at the Vintage Space Toaster Palace there are at least a dozen new ads in the Transformers 1984 section and four new Kronoform ones. You can do a CTRL+F search for "Cincinnati" and the new ones will pop up. I got some nice new Transformers stuff like an ad for the minicars with a picture of Gears and an ad with some nice Megatron lineart, but I also got better pictures of a number of ads I'd already come across before. Now there's better shots of the Decepticon cassettes ad and the Shockwave ad that Gold Circle ran on December 16th, which is one of my personal favorites. I was happy that the Kronoform ads weren't all about the robot watch, which are so common that I've started skipping them whenever I see them. There's new ads featuring the Protectron, Attakon, Invaceptron, Modulator and of course everybody's favorite-the Multiforce 14. Still all those combined don't outnumber the ads I've found for that darn robot watch. If I put up every Kronoform robot watch ad I saw I'd have to change the name to the Vintage Toaster Watch Palace.

When you care enough to hide the very best (porn) OR: This heartwarming Father's Day moment brought to you by roundandbrown.com

I was going to bed the other night and my wife rolls around half asleep and says to me "I know you masturbate thanks for hiding it from me", then she conks right out. It was another one of those genuine Hallmark moments we have every now and then. I was left not knowing what to say and feeling like it was a little unfair that she can conk out so fast. Sometimes I can't figure out if she's saying she loves me or if I'm busted. Was she doing some sort of weird communication exercise she learned from Cosmo or did she read my blog again and decided she was going to turn me in to the police for grand rape auto? It's hard to tell sometimes.

I decided what she meant to say was hiding your porn is just another way of saying I love you. Heck, put it on a card with Optimus Prime and you've got the perfect Father's Day gift in my house. AMERICAN GREETINGS DO NOT STEAL MY IDEA!

Time for snowmen and tacos and ads from the golden age of robos OR: Vintage Space Toast Tour ALASKAPASO!

Sometimes things just work out in a funny way and this month is one of those times. Starting next week the family and I will be off visiting relatives pretty much all month long, traveling high and low and up and down. Consequently I won't be doing any bloggering until I get back after the fourth of July. Everyone else usually stops posting in their blogs for months on end without explanation but I'm so self absorbed that I feel I owe an explanation for my absence to all the people who come weekly to PSMR looking for commentary on everything from collecto-monofranchise-tosis to having sex with cars. Or as I like to say, "Hiatus? I barely even knew us!"

Visiting relatives is actually a cover story because everybody knows the real reason I travel is to get more old newspaper ads for the Vintage Space Toaster Palace. I'm kinda wondering how successful I'll be on the first of our two trips this month because we're visiting family in Anchorage, Alaska. Anchorage may be a decent sized city now, but I'm doubting it had much toy robots action back in the '80s. I guess I'll find out once I get to the library there and crack open the microfilms. I'm wondering if they even had newspapers back in '84 or if they just wrote the news on the shaved bellies of their sled dogs in baby seal blood and let them run from igloo to igloo.

One place I do know had newspapers is the town where I grew up! For the first time since I started my little web pages with old toy robots ads I am finally going back to the place where I first learned the ways of the force! I can't believe that after all these years I've never actually spent time collecting old microfilm newspaper ads in the library of my hometown, the city I grew up in when the toy robots wars of the 1980s raged and raged. After Anchorage the next stop on Vintage Space Toast Tour 2008 is El Paso, Texas! That is bound to be the most awesome VSTP update ever if I don't die of a robo-nostalgi-mania induced heart attack right there in the bowels of the El Paso library with my hand clutching the feed reel of the microfilm machine while a static image of a Robotroid ad from 1983 flickers on the screen. I can think of worse ways to die.

See you in July!

69 ways a Camaro is better than a girl

Thanks to the latest episode of GuyCast (#227) I got turned on to mechaphilia. Well I wasn't "turned on" but just made aware of it. Mechaphilia is when people are sexually attracted to and/or have sex with their cars. Although it sounds outrageous I don't think it's a joke or a prank, I totally believe that some young guys out there are fucking exhaust pipes and cup holders and gas tanks of their automobiles. There's an article about it called "I have sex with my car!" over at Closer Online featuring a twenty year old guy in an open relationship with his Volkswagen and who's simultaneously in a gay relationship with a Trans-Am named Todd. I also found the blog of a mechaphile featuring what I can only describe as autoerotic art. Maybe I should call it AutoZoneErotic?

Bumble got back

I love this stuff because mechaphilia is the logical conclusion to a certain train of thought I'd been developing about toy robots and puberty and how one influences the other. In the normal course of growing up I was thinking that masturbation fantasies involving other human beings were much more powerful entertainment than any prepubescent obsessions like toys or cartoons. But maybe it was possible that some teenagers whacked off to thoughts of Transformer cartoons or used Hot Wheels as visual aids in their masturbation sessions. It was so obvious and inevitable that mechaphiles existed seeing how American society fetishizes automobiles, starting early with toy cars (and worse-toy cars robots). The mechaphile blog I found contains a slideshow of Flickr pictures the blogger has titled titled "My Porn Show" and wouldn't you know it-there's pictures of Ultimate Bumblebee amongst the real life sports cars and toy cars in suggestive poses! What I love about mechaphilia is how the average Thoroughly Informative Transformers Themed Internet Entertainment Site would take a couple dozen pictures of Bumblebee's car mode, but the mechaphile only has one-of the tailpipes. It is the only angle he needs.

ROBOT CAMARO IS SEX WITH SUPERMODELS
I think a young man's sexual awakening plays a big role in their attraction to robots that turn into sports cars. I think sports cars are designed to outwardly mimic the female form with their curves and roundedness and racing stripes. Racing stripes have always reminded me of labia. I think this sexy car design appeals to young men on a primal level and then you have giant robots which appeal to adolescent power fantasies and on top of all that, cartoons that turn them into celebrity superstars. So transforming toy robot cars are a perfect storm of subconscious sexual attraction, idolatry and male power fantasy. They're irresistible. And that's why some guys stay attracted to toy robots long after most other kids have outgrown them. Because Tracks is sexy, damnit.

HOT ROD IS THE GREATEST MAGAZINE NAME EVER
Just as an aside, imagine being sexually attracted to automobiles-the most mundane aspects of daily existence like driving down the highway or getting gas or reading car magazines become cum in your pants exciting. I would love to live in that world. Even the most boring normal guy lives like Hugh Hefner if you think about how much time we spend washing our cars. Plus renting a car is legal in all 50 states. Lucky bastards!