25 years ago in TV ratings PART 5: February 1986 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period as reported by network affiliates

I remember clearly which 80s cartoons I watched on independent channels and which were on the networks because the signals from the UHF independents were weaker than the networks. We didn't have cable and consequently if I wanted G.I. Joe, Robotech, Star Blazers, Wheeled Warriors or Voltron to come in good I had to mess with the UHF antenna. So when my memories of a particular cartoon are literally a little fuzzy then that means it was on our local independent station. Thundercats and He-Man I remember coming in crystal clear so those were definitely run on the network affiliates. While I remember 1986 as being the end of the road for toy robots shows like GoBots, Transformers and Voltron, the February '86 ratings show they didn't give up without a fight. In fact, the February '86 network kids' top ten was the most robotty of all the ratings top tens I've found!

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr	Nov '85 Shr
01/38	44/16	She-Ra	7	19	19	15
02/36	48/15	He-Man & the MotU	14	19	17	17
03/35	39/17	Scooby Doo	12	20	19	18
04/34	49/15	Thundercats	7	14	13	12
05/32	57/12	Voltron	3	16	14	14
06/31	45/16	Tom & Jerry	5	18	21	17
07/26	60/10	Challenge of the GoBots	5	14	12	8
08/25	52/13	Transformers	10	16	14	14
08/24	08/23	Diff'rent Strokes	33	21	21	20
10/24	07/24	Gimme a Break	12	20	19	20
Other animated shows outside the kids' top 10
11/22	59/11	G.I. Joe	5	19	19	13

The top five in the November '85 network ratings had He-Man at #1, then Scooby Doo, Tom & Jerry at #3, She-Ra at 4 and Thundercats tied with Transformers for 5th place. The top five shuffled around a little the following February but pretty much held steady with the exception of Transformers, whose drop to 8th made way for Voltron to come in at number 5. Voltron had been declining in popularity ever since they switched from lion to vehicle team in late '84, but the third season where new lion episodes were made airing in late '85 definitely improved their ratings. Voltron wasn't the only robot show to enjoy a resurgence in popularity. The GoBots were also on the rebound, improving from 13th place with a 20 kids' share in November '85 to 7th place with a 26 share here. We're talking both Voltron and GoBots increasing by 6 kids share points each! This is interesting because it highlights a huge decline in network popularity for the Transformers, who tied for fifth place in the November '85 ratings with a 28 kids' share but fell to 8th place here with a 25 share. In the stores toy robots were beginning to fizzle out in popularity so it's hard to make correlations between network ratings and toy sales since kids may have been moving on to Nintendos, but some out there were still very much into watching toy robots on television.

With great Tiltor comes great responsibility

Sometimes I'm at the library looking through old newspapers and I'm not finding any good 25 year old toy robots ads and I'm all hating life in that special way that only a hobby can make you do. And just when it seems like I've blown a good five hours that I could have spent playing Turbografx-16 I come across that one ad that makes not just the wasted day worthwhile, but also reaffirms that being a crazy idiot can be rewarding and enjoyable sometimes. This weekend was like that because near the end of my library visit all I had to show for my time was an accumulated big fat nothing but disappointment and regret I'd found in the pages of some 25 year old California newspaper. And then with minutes running out before the library closed I made one of those types of discoveries that is so pioneering and revolutionary to the field of toy robots archaeology that I forgot to get excited because "pioneering and revolutionary" is also rather terrifying and troublesome. When I realized what I'd found I almost wanted to go back to finding nothing. I wished they would have closed the library and thrown me out before I gazed upon this most inconvenient of truths. I wish I would have realized what a sweet sweet blessing it was to have wasted five hours whether it be at the hands of a microfilm scanner or the controller of a 16 bit gaming console. Discovery and knowledge is great and all but at least being bored and dumb is a lot more comfortable.

TILTING TOWARDS YES

The ad in question was from a retail chain called The Broadway. It was published in newspapers from February 20th, 1985 and being a toy ad it had all sorts of the dolls and action figures you'd expect to find in an ad from back then. But what I didn't expect to find among the Barbies, G.I. Joes, He-Mans and GoBots was one single solitary Robo Force robot. Not because it was unusual for stores to advertise Robo Force in early '85, but because this was a Robo Force robot that I didn't think was ever released. What was worse, it was a picture of one of the previously thought unreleased Robo Forcers. It was an ad for Tiltor the Changer! This was an ad that should not exist for a robot that should not have been released. The accepted wisdom was that Robo Force was canceled in '85 before Tiltor and the other proposed figures, vehicles and accessories from that year were released. But evidence has been popping up that may prove otherwise. A little while ago I came across an ad from May of '85 featuring line art of two other '85 series Robo Force figures I thought never came out. I brushed that off because it was just line art (although line art in itself is pretty conclusive since stores just didn't get line art for robots they didn't order from the manufacturers). Still I was willing to dismiss it simply because that ad didn't use an actual picture. Well here Tiltor was staring me in the face in all his black and white 25 year old glory. I had to accept Broadway used an actual picture of one of those pesky "unreleased" Robo Force robots. It wasn't just a stock photo taken from a catalog or anything like that-these Broadway ad creators had to have had this figure on hand to photograph it like this. It was proof that somebody outside of CBS and Ideal Toys got hold of a Tiltor. It was exactly the sort of evidence I needed to change my mind about the release of these figures at retail 25 years ago, short of somebody producing an actual figure.

TILTOR DARE?

So where do I go from here? If I accept that some of the 1985 Robo Force line came out then it only leads to more questions like how much of it was actually released? Did just the robots make it or does some grandma out there have an unopened Nazgar in her attic that she bought from the Broadway in 1985? Were there more comics made beyond the ones that came out in '84? And why the heck haven't I seen any of these unreleased Robo Forcers on eBay? It's enough to drive me crazy. In the absence of released production versions I am left with only theories and speculation and a vague hope that somebody knows or has seen something that would prove the existence of these robots beyond a couple crappy monochrome ads. I can't expect anyone will believe me otherwise. I could see these unreleased robot figures being the tail enders (end-ors?) of the Robo Force line shipped in very small quantities in '85 before the line was canceled. And since Robo Force was so unpopular, whatever robots from the '85 line did make it out there more than likely ended up unsold and dumped at some clearance outlet or thrift store or tossed in the garbage unopened or even worse-got played with by little kids! Oh, the horror! Damnit, why didn't I pay more attention to the toy robots I never cared about in 1985?! Or actually, damnit, why didn't I stay home and play Turbografx-16 more in 2010!

UPDATE!!!
A Tiltor was found on ebay and I got to talk to the guy who bought him!

25 YEARS AGO IN SUMMER VACATIONS: Welcome to Botcon 1985

I grew up in El Paso, Texas during the Great Toy Robots Wars of the 1980s but I had family in Los Angeles. Occasionally I'd get to go spend a few weeks of my summer vacation with them and 1985 was the greatest of those trips. I was eleven years old and at the peak of my Transfornerddom and Los Angeles was just an awesome place to be for me that summer. That's the vacation I spent in L.A. buying buttloads of Transformer Action Cards and begging my aunt to buy me all of the Constructicons and just generally robotarding it up. But most of all, that was the year I went to Universal Studios with my uncle. Universal back then had some awesome attractions for a kid my age, like the live action A-Team stunt show, a chance to talk to K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider, the famed Universal Studios backlot tour and of course the greatest theme park attraction ever-the Transformers Base Camp (or as I like to call it-Botcon 1985).

PRIME TOLD ME THERE'D BE UNIVERSAL STUDIOS LIKE THIS

I was at the library the other day looking through old newspapers (as I am wont to do) and I found out that the Base Camp Universal held during my summer vacation was not the first time they did a Transformers promotion. It turns out that in February 1985 over the course of three weekends they ran newspaper ads promoting their "Transformers Days", which were pretty much the Base Camp idea with a different name. I never went to Transformer Days but from the sound of the ads they were awesome. The first Transformers Days ad I found ran February 3rd and was repeated on February 10th. This ad promoted the then upcoming Transformers Days happening on the weekends of February 9th and 10th, and the 16th through the 18th. The itinerary of events and attractions reads like a Transformer convention-heck, these may as well have been the first Transformers conventions:

IT'S A BIRD! IT'S A PLANE! IT'S FREE!

03 February 1985 (also ran 10 February)

"It's The Transformers! February 9, 10, 16,17 and 18th.

And we're giving away 2,000 Transformers at Universal Studios. Each day, for the next two weekends, the first 400 kids age 5-11 will get a free Transformers and all other kids 3-11 will get a special Transformers gift. And that's not all they'll get. They'll get to meet and talk to two real live Transformers-Jazz and Thundercracker. Get to see the Transformers cartoons. And they'll get to compete for exciting Transformers prizes.

All for the price of their ticket. Which includes, of course, the Train Tour and all the unique shows and attractions.

So bring the whole family in for one of our Transformers Days. Everyone will have a great time, and the kids will go home with a great toy."

I find it absolutely incredible that Universal had 2,000 Transformers to give away in February of 1985. The 1984 holiday season was brutal and Transformers were really hard to find so for them to have stock and to be giving it away so soon after the Christmas season is nothing short of amazing. Of course I have no idea just which Transformers those were but I suspect it was probably buttloads of minicars. It would also be cool to figure out which cartoons were shown and what the competitions were but I doubt anybody remembered to write that stuff down. At least the mystery of the "special Transformers gift" was cleared up a little when Universal ran this slightly reworded ad with the same Thundercracker graphics to promote the following weekend's Transformer Days:

IT'S THAT FREE BIRD PLANE AGAIN!

17 February 1985

"It's The Transformers! February 16,17 and 18th.

And we're giving away 1,200 Transformers at Universal Studios. Each day, during Presidents' Day weekend, the first 400 kids age 5-11 will get a free Transformers and all other kids 3-11 will get a special Transformers poster. And that's not all they'll get. They'll get to meet and talk to two real live Transformers-Jazz and Thundercracker. Get to see the Transformers cartoons. And they'll get to compete for exciting Transformers prizes.

All for the price of their ticket. Which includes, of course, the Train Tour and all the unique shows and attractions.

So bring the whole family in for one of our Transformers Days. Everyone will have a great time, and the kids will go home with a great toy."

This was pretty much the same ad as the one that ran on the 3rd and 10th, but the text changed a bit to omit the Transformers Days dates that had already passed. Also it was revealed that anyone not lucky enough to be among the first 400 kids at least got a poster. I've never looked up what that poster was so I don't know what it looked like. I suspect it was the same "Optimus standing in front of the Decepticon insignia" that can be seen in the dressing room photo at theStudioTour.com. I'm not sure if Universal kept the Transformers themed attraction going after the Presidents' Day weekend but I did find this next ad they ran a month later on March 31st (which repeated the week of April 5th as well):

SOOTHE JAZZ

31 March 1985 (also ran 05 April)

"THE TRANSFORMERS AND THE SMURFS. NOW-APRIL 7.
If your kids crave adventure and excitement, bring them to Universal Studios now thru April 7.

That's when the Transformers (Jazz and Thundercracker) will be clomping, stomping and spreading thrills and chills all over the park. And when the Smurfs (Papa, Vanity, Clumsy and Smurfette) will be putting on the singingest, dancingest, Smurfiest show your kids have ever seen.

What's more, we'll be giving free Transformers posters to all kids 3-11. And radio station KIQQ will be giving listeners free Universal Studios Tour tickets and free Smurfs toys as part of a special call-in on-air promotion.

So whether you've got a savage six year old, a ferocious five year old or even a terrible ten year old, bring them to Universal Studios and let the Transformers and the Smurfs soothe all your little beasts."

The ad looks kind of scary with Papa Smurf and Jazz about to tear the little kid's arms off like bloodthirsty cannibals but that's how theme park mascots rolled when I was 11 years old. I'm not sure if Universal was inviting you to bring your family and have a good time or if they were running some sort of child harvesting operation where they fed bad kids to hungry cartoon characters. Whatever the case, it looks like Universal was all out of Transformer toys to give away by this point and they weren't calling it "Transformers Days" anymore but they did still have a lot of posters for Jazz and Thundercracker to hand out when they weren't ripping the bad kids' arms off. Which brings us to the next ad-the most iconic of all Universal Studios Transformers Base Camp ads!

I DON'T THINK IT'S VERY SAFE TO PUT

30 June 1985


MEET THE TRANSFORMERS
"Imagine the look on your children's faces as they meet real, live Transformers in our new base camp. Or their wide-eyed amazement as they're floating through space in our new, out-of-this-world 2010 special effects spectacular. Picture their laughter and excitement at seeing the A-Team Live Action Show, sitting inside K.I.T.T. the Knight Rider car, and discovering a whole day of fun and surprises. It's all waiting for them right here at Universal Studios. And it's sure to put smiles on their faces you'll never forget."

Boy what I would have given to be torn in half by Jazz and Thundercracker like that kid. This was the ad that ran around the time that I went. I don't know if all the props like the giant Megatron statue and the stage were there since Transformer Days in February. I do remember that stuff and also people in Jazz and Starscream costumes when I went in the summer. You can see more pictures of the costumes at the website of the people who built them, but oddly enough Thundercracker doesn't appear in any of those shots. I wonder if it was Starscream all along and the ads just named the wrong guy. I don't remember a Thundercracker or a Grimlock being there but I may just have forgotten seeing them. I do certainly remember Jazz because I got to get in line and talk to him/it. It was sort of funny being able to see through the blue tinted visor of the Jazz costume and I could tell it was a long haired teenage person in there because their blond hair was getting in their face. It may have been a girl. But I was so willing to suspend my disbelief even in the literal face of the truth that I would let nothing get in the way of pretending for a moment that a little part of Cybertron had landed in Los Angeles.


DO IT LENTICULAR OR DON'T BOTHER WEARING IT

I don't remember much else of my visit there and my uncle either lost or didn't take any pictures of that day. So all I have is some faded 25 year old memories. I do recall there was a Transformers themed section of the gift shop with toys and other merchandise and of course souvenir shirts and all of it was outrageously priced. I guess Universal was trying to recoup the cost of giving away 2,000 Transformers earlier in the year! I remember going through a giant tub of Autobot minicars and gulping really hard when I saw how expensive they were. I think they were like 8 bucks each but I got a Brawn anyways. Everything else was out of the question because of the cost but man I should have gotten a shirt. I don't remember getting a poster and I also don't remember if the 3 inch in diameter lenticular Jazz pin was a giveaway or if it cost money but I had one so it might have been free. The funny thing is I don't think we went there because of the Transformers at all. We might have just gone to go see K.I.T.T. and stumbled upon the Base Camp. However it happened I am glad to have my faded 25 year old memories of my first may-as-well-have-been a Transformers convention.

[UPDATE! And here's another one...]

The 1985 Hasbro Toy Catalog part 12-INSERT SHOCK HERE!

If I were to continue in logical fashion with my ramblings about the 1985 Hasbro catalog then this would be part three featuring the Insecticons, who were the robots on the pages immediately following the Autobot Mini Vehicles which was where I left off last time. Since the '85 toy catalog arranged the Transformers in ascending order by size and price point, larger robots like Shockwave would've been last in my series but at the rate I'm going it'd probably be another 25 years before I got around to writing about him. Recently I made a shocking discovery while wandering the Google newspaper archive and consequently my intuitive and emotional thinking processes came to one conclusion: I have to skip forward a bit so I can talk about everybody's favorite loose cannon-that one eyed, two horned, flying purple people killer-Shockwave. So I jump forward now to part 12 not because my ego demands it, but because logic (and the Google newspaper archive) dictates it.

5799
The Transformers
Decepticon Military Operations Commander

Cold and calculating, Shockwave seeks to overthrow Megatron's position of supremacy over the Decepticons. Pull out the handle, swing open the barrel and flip out his feet...and he transforms from a laser gun to a brutal robot. Pulsating laser-action lights and two ultra-laser sounds add excitement to this dynamic weapon. Shockwave is packaged with a magnetic impulse defuser, bio card, Tech Specs chart and decoder. Rub the secret liquid crystal logo to prove Transformer authenticity. Operates on one 9 volt battery (not included).

16 1/4x3 3/4x10 1/4" CU.:1.8
WT,: 20.4 lbs. PK.:6

Shockwave (like Jetfire) was a late 1984 release and consequently his page in the 1985 Hasbro catalog didn't get a "NEW!" graphic like those accompanying the pages for assortments that were new for '85. Shockwave had been around well before publication of this catalog in early 1985, yet (also like Jetfire) Shockwave didn't appear in the '84 Hasbro product catalog or in the little pack-in catalogs that came with boxed Transformers in 1984. I think it's because of his absence in the '84 pack-in catalogs that the vast majority of toy robots historians today believe he was a 1985 release. I do believe he made an appearance in some sort of Hasbro promotional material predating the '85 toy fair book, I just don't know for sure when or how those theoretical promotional materials were published. Unlike Jetfire, Shockwave didn't make an appearance in the 1986 Hasbro catalog, making him one of the few Transformers to not appear in two consecutive yearly product catalogs. How illogical!

Toys N More 12/02/84	Karl's Toys 11/12/85

The standard Shockwave line art that appeared in newspaper ads in '85 is not based on the photography from the 1985 catalog. This isn't surprising because that's also the case with most every other Transformer that year, too. While Transformer ad line art was derived directly from the toy fair catalog pictures for every other year of G1, 1985 was the sole exception. For every other Transformer from 1985 my best guess is there was probably a 1985 pre-toy fair catalog with photographs that served as the basis for the line art Hasbro sent to retailers that year. But what makes Shockwave super special is his standard line art first appeared in late 1984, meaning there had to be some other source of Hasbro promotional material for him (and possibly Jetfire) that appeared after the 1984 catalog but before a pre-'85 toy fair book would have come out.

Burns 12/03/84

MAN PROPOSES, GOOG DISPOSES

That's why I was absolutely awed when I found this December 3, 1984 Shockwave ad from a store named Burns of Laureldale in Berks County, Pennsylvania. It contains ad text that is almost exactly the same as the text in the 1985 Hasbro catalog, with one important exception. After the part about Shockwave wanting to overthrow Megatron it also includes the line "...not because his ego demands it, but because his logic circuits dictate it." That tiny little addition to the text proves that there was some sort of unique supplemental Hasbro marketing material released in late 1984 well after the initial launch of the Transformer line that included copy and graphics to support retailer advertising for Shockwave. This would be material predating and different from the 1985 toy catalog. Best of all I ran across the ad while looking through Google's newspaper archive, meaning that anyone can go check it out and see definitive proof of Shockwave being for sale in 1984 from the comfort of their own living room or office or lonely little glass bubble tower on Cybertron.

ONE SMALL STEP FOR ROBOPLASTICOLOGY, ONE GIANT BUNCH OF BLOODY ELVISES

Perhaps the greatest limitation affecting the usefulness of the Vintage Space Toaster Palace is that ultimately the user has to trust that I am telling the truth about the dates the ads appeared. I can search the entire country for old newspaper ads and come up with all sorts of proof that Shockwave came out in '84 but since I don't reproduce entire newspaper pages then all anyone can do is accept on blind faith that I have the dates right. Thanks to Google that's becoming less necessary. I like to think of it like I'm the crazy neighbor who says Elvis is visiting me at night and doing concerts in my bedroom. Of course nobody believes me. Up until this point the only way I could prove it was by producing noisy, crappy cassette tape recordings of Elvis singing to me in my bedroom. Even faced with that evidence it's understandable if there's still skepticism. But being able to find a Shockwave ad from 1984 on Google's newspaper archive where anyone else can pull it up is like ditching the cassette recorder and catching Elvis in a bear trap. All I gotta do is keep setting up those traps and catching more Elvises and I'm sure people will come around and see the truth about the ol' purple titan's birthday. I doubt my efforts will dispel any misconceptions the internet has about this issue overnight but I'm hoping one day, armed with the power of that ultimate highest of geekly authorities-Google-I will be the guy who changed what the internet thought it knew about Shockwave. Not because my ego demands it, but because...well you know.

The 1984 Ideal Toy Fair catalog starring Robo Force PART 4: MAXX'S PAD

One crazy trope of old eighties robot cartoons was that the places these mechanical beings lived in were fit less for robos and more suited to hobos. The combination sequence of Mighty Orbots illustrates this perfectly with only Bort in his airplane hangar starting out in a place remotely appropriate for a robot. The other Orbots are living like homeless vagrants, wandering the Arizona desert, embedded in mountains, buried under ice canyons and Crunch even lives in a junkyard. The Voltron lions were like this too, with red lion being kept in the most uncomfortable place on earth-an active volcano! Heck, the Autobots loved volcanoes so much that they didn't even bother moving out of the one their ship crashed into. It's like space robots are the intergalactic equivalent of cucarachas. I can totally sympathize with Leader-1 who decided, hey screw this-we're living in a flying ATAT and it's gonna have a cafeteria.

ROBO FORCE FORTRESS OF STEELE PLAYSET NO. 48078

NEW

Portable Robot Action Stronghold
Solitary, brooding and unapproachable, the Fortress of Steele master environment playset is the home battle fortress of the Robo Force. Designed with three different levels of robotic action and adventure, it features a giant citadel dome that flips over to reveal the master laser siege cannon. A working robot crane and hoist lifts Robo Force Action Robot Figures. Other features include a revolving secret passage console, hidden arsenal compartment, "Jaws of Steele" sliding bulkhead door, working jawbridge escape, flip-over stockade cell, throne chamber, laser swivel guns, robot shuttle sled, weapon rack and more. For ages 4 years and up.

Pack: 4 pcs. Wgt: 14 lbs. Cube: 5

The Fortress of Steele shown in the Toy Fair catalog was a prototype with a few color and mold differences compared to the final production version. The blue shuttle sled pictured eventually became orange, the orange weapons rack eventually became blue and the citadel dome which was blue in the catalog was black on the production version. The lowest level of the fortress in the catalog also lacks the molded details of the final version and the stickers shown are completely different from what ended up being used. But those are all rather minor and for the most part this design pretty much made it all the way to production. At first the inclusion of a crane atop a battle fortress may seem odd but given that every other Robo Force figure and vehicle had some sort of grabbing action it's not entirely out of place. In fact the crane is about the only thing that the fortress has in common with the rest of the line and that's part of the reason I feel the Fortress of Steele was the biggest disappointment of Robo Force.

REALLY COLD ROBOT HOBOS LIVE HERE

Ideal missed out on a huge opportunity to give the Robo Force an awesome place to live when they came up with the Fortress of Steele. While it was great to see these nearly six inch tall robots get a playset, this was no Castle Greyskull. There wasn't anything explicitly robotty about the Fortress of Steele aside from the computer-themed decals on the walls. It was so generic looking it could have been the long lost Kenner Hoth rebel cafeteria playset. It just didn't scream ROBOTS LIVE HERE in the same way that the GoBot Command Center did. I think every doll house should be the ultimate expression of the character of the dolls living inside it whether they are Barbies or as in the case of Robo Force-sentient vacuum cleaners. The gold standard is what Mattel did with Castle Greyskull and Snake Mountain. Those couldn't fit in any other toyline because they were so specifically products of the universe of the Masters of the Universe. They weren't just houses but something much more-they were the physical incarnations of their occupants' heroic or evil natures (and also their philosophies of home decor). The Fortress of Steele instead looks like some gigantic arctic cockroach volcano. But if not this, then what would the ideal domicile of gas pump shaped warrior robots be? As it turns out Ideal already knew!

IT'S HARD TO FIND A ZETONIAN HOMEOWNERS ASSOCIATION THAT'S TOTALLY COOL WITH ROOFTOP MOUNTED DEATH RAYS

In the climax of the Robo Force cartoon the good guy robots attack Nazgar's fortress, which was a huge building in the approximate shape of a Robo Force robot! This was the design I wanted to see in a Robo Force castle, this was the direction they should have gone. I don't even care if they came up with something vaguely resembling their exalted and overhyped hero Maxx Steele, just as long as it looked like a robot it would have been appropriately awesome. I wouldn't be at all surprised if at some point they planned a Nazgar's Fortress playset that looked like this. The GoBots' Thruster who functioned as the evil Renegade Headquarters was the best example of what Robo Force should've had. Unfortunately Thruster looked a little dorky as a vaguely humanoid robotic dollhouse but that's partially due to the compromises in his design that had to be made so he could transform. In Robo Force there was no expectation of transformation, so an all out robot shaped multi-level robothouse could have been done to awesome effect. Oh what I would give to go back in time with all my brilliant ideas that would have saved the Robo Force franchise. Or seeing how silly the whole line was compared to the Transformers and GoBots it would probably have failed anyways, but at least time traveling me would have given the Robo Forcers an awesome cafeteria.

25 years ago in TV ratings PART 4: February 1986 Nielsens for animated shows in the weekday early fringe time period reported by independent stations

Although the Nielsen ratings for February of 1986 don't technically qualify as "25 years ago" the numbers are still important analytical tools for roboplastic archaeologists looking to study the popularity of cartoon robot Volkswagens and their transforming Tyrannosaurus cohorts. I'm taking a look this time at the February '86 ratings for shows in the 'Early Fringe' time period (Monday through Friday from 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.) as reported by independent stations. Independent UHF stations of the 80s were traditionally the realm of the half hour toy commercial and they were where I did most of my afterschool cartoon watching. Since the independents had a much wider variety of animation in their lineups than the networks, the numbers for the independents give a more complete comparison of the relative popularity of the most cartoons. But first here's the entire top ten based on Kids' share and rank for the early fringe as reported by independent stations in February '86:

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr	Nov '85 Shr
01/39	03/12	Diff'rent Strokes	34	12	11	11
02/32	17/10	Scooby Doo	22	10	10	10
03/31	08/11	Thundercats	72	11	9	11
03/31	09/11	Transformers	59	11	10	11
03/31	24/09	She-Ra	57	9	9	9
06/30	02/13	Three's Company	9	15	13	13
06/30	04/12	Too Close for Comfort	20	13	12	13
06/30	15/10	G.I. Joe	73	11	10	11
09/29	13/10	Little House on the Prairie	11	10	9	10
09/29	16/10	He-Man & the MotU	53	10	10	10

February '86 was the first sweeps period after the legendary November '85 sweeps when Thundercats, Transformers, She-Ra, G.I. Joe and He-Man fought it out in a very toy cartoon heavy Kids' top ten. In November the only non-toy cartoons in the top 10 were Scooby Doo, Tom and Jerry and perennial ratings champion Woody Woodpecker. For whatever reason Woody Woodpecker disappeared completely from the ratings in February '86, leaving the non-animated Diff'rent Strokes in the number 1 kids' spot. Tom & Jerry also dropped out of the top ten and the two vacancies left by them and Woody were filled by the live action shows Little House on the Prairie and Too Close for Comfort. One of the criticisms leveled against the ratings system was that the kids numbers were largely inaccurate because children didn't take their reporting responsibilities seriously. I tend to agree that something fishy is going on here because Little House and TCfC were mind numbingly boring to me when I was 11 back in '85. I can't imagine them being more popular than He-Man. Then again, maybe I'm discounting the most powerful demographic of all: pre-teen girls!

Feb '86 was also the second consecutive report to use Kids' rank and share, allowing for a little bit of kid-centric ratings continuity to be established. Transformers and Thundercats continued to be the top toy based shows in February 86, both tying for third with a 31 share. In November '85 they were in fourth and fifth place with Transformers taking a 34 share on the kids chart, slightly edging out Thundercats which had a 33. Although they both improved in rank, the slight erosion in overall share indicated that the popularity of toy based cartoons was beginning to decline.

Other animated shows outside the kids' top ten:

Kids' Rank/Share	Household Rank/Share	Program	# of Stations	Feb '85 Shr	May '85 Shr	Nov '85 Shr
15/25	23/09	Jetsons	21	8	8	8
19/24	28/08	M.A.S.K.	26	9	8	9
22/22	31/07	Flintstones	7	6	7	6
22/22	32/07	Tom & Jerry	5	7	6	6
22/22	36/06	Heathcliff	18	6	6	6
27/21	30/07	Challenge of the GoBots	24	9	8	8
29/18	37/06	Voltron	20	8	7	6
37/14	40/05	Bugs Bunny	7	5	6	4
38/13	42/04	Popeye	3	12	8	7
39/12	41/04	Inspector Gadget	13	5	5	4
39/12	49/02	Tranzor-Z	3	4	4	4
42/11	47/03	Jayce & the Wheeled Warriors	22	5	4	4
45/10	48/03	Super Friends	7	6	6	4
47/09	43/04	Robotech	11	6	6	5

After debuting on the November '85 ratings in 17th place with a 27 share, M.A.S.K. loses a few points and drops to 19th, which is still not too bad. GoBots falls five places to 27th and Voltron actually climbs up the chart, going from 37th in November to 29th in February. Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors in 42nd place only falls one spot compared to November and Tranzor-Z rockets to 39th from 46th. Robotech at 46th remains the least popular cartoon in the kids' top 50. I am still amazed how Tranzor-Z remains so obscure in pop culture history and Robotech so lauded when the actual ratings of the day reveal Robotech's popularity to be well below that of most every other cartoon. It's possible the absence of Tranzor-Z merchandise in North America contributed to this while the less popular Robotech was afforded a toyline. Or maybe a cartoon about a robot that was just a robot didn't make as much of an impression as one about transforming robot fighter planes. Maybe the key to pop culture immortality in 1985 was not ratings popularity but whether or not a cartoon had Shoji Kawamori jet robots you could buy at K-Mart.

NEXT TIME ON RATINGSTASTIC ROBOTCARTOONALYPSE: The February '86 Early Fringe network ratings-featuring possibly the most robotastic top ten ever!

Duck Downers and the $24 1/2 Sentinel

Last week was full of anticipation and excitement as I was expecting to solve yet another great mystery of Roboplasticology but then I found a dead baby duck in my backyard. (He looked more like a teenager duck actually.) Now as a veteran of many great imaginary toy robots battles I am no stranger to death and destruction. I've seen whole planets devoured by Orson Welles and I've seen the very fabric of reality almost destroyed by Simon Furman's writing and I've even seen San Francisco get exploded so many times it may as well be the North American Tokyo. And yet I don't recall ever being as disturbed as I was when I found myself in the presence of inanimate poultry. So it's been a rough couple of days as I've been thinking a lot about my mortality and realizing the only things certain in Florida are ducks and taxes.

A LITTLE BOT OF 1984

Death couldn't have visited at a worse time because later on that morning a wonderful and fantastic thing happened-I got a new (26 year old) toy robot in the mail. I recently eBayed myself an unopened Sentinel from Robo Force as part of my ongoing research to uncover the true number of Robo Force mini comics released in 1985. Sentinel was the ideal robo forcer to find unopened because I theorized that since he didn't appear in any of the three Robo Force comics I found so far he may have had a unique comic featuring himself. He was also ideal because the Buy It Now was only 20 bucks plus like $4.50 shipping. Even GoBots don't go that cheap still in the box. It should have been a wonderful happy time but it was tainted because now forever etched in my mind alongside the day I got a Sentinel will be the memories of having to dispose of a dead teenage duck. I guess I'm bummed out by anything other than old toy robots coming to my house to die.


STEREOSCOPIC VISION IS KIND OF IMPORTANT AT 500 MILES AN HOUR

Sentinel the Protector is figure #4127 from assortment 48075, a good guy Robo Forcer whose bio makes him out to be some sort of Takumi Fujiwara of toy robots driving. But in the only story where he's driving the Command Patroller (Robo Force and the Mountain of Burning Ice) he ends up crashing it into a wall. Maybe Robo Force shouldn't have given the keys to the guy with his eyes on the sides of his head (which incidentally along with his white and yellow color scheme also makes him look like a duck). I guess if you're drifting then a head like that really keeps you on top of that all-important peripheral vision. But it's no wonder Sentinel crashed the Command Patroller totally to hell when his blind spot was pretty much the entire front of his face. The first sign that letting your robot drive was a bad idea is when he keeps going sideways all the time.


I THINK I WASN'T TOO BUMMED OUT BY ALDERAAN BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE ANY DUCKS

The big disappointment was that Sentinel didn't have a comic book different from any I already had. While it was cool to have a brand new (26 year old) Robo Forcer I don't think it was really $24.50 cool. Also disappointing was that my wife would not let me give that dead duck a proper Viking funeral. I wanted to set him afloat on a flaming box of Frosted Flakes in the river behind my house. But oh well maybe we all still got something out of these experiences even if they didn't end as exciting as I hoped. With this post the Robo Forcedom got a couple pictures of Sentinel that compliment nicely Shawn Robare's recent review of Vulgar and I got an appreciation for life and death that will add new dimensions to my enjoyment of future sci-fi stories about the destruction of San Francisco. It is somewhat comforting to know that 36 years of watching 10 billion movies with people killing or getting killed by exploding aliens, exploding dinosaurs, exploding robots and exploding alien robot dinosaurs still hasn't turned me into a totally numb heartless sociopath with absolutely no empathy for living beings like people, bothans and toy robots from outer space. Movies have instead turned me into a totally numb heartless sociopath with absolutely no empathy for people and toy robots from outer space, but who still has a soft spot for ducks.

ME:1
SOUL CRUSHING ENTERTAINMENT INDUSTRY:10,000,000,000