Transformers: This might come as a surprise to a lot of people but I always found Transformers to be highly overrated. I am discussing the figures themselves and not the animated series that was so many different levels of awesome they had to construct a periodic table of awesome just to quantify it. But the toys themselves proved the basic point that if you try to be two things at once you fail at both. Let’s say you are given an Autobot for Christmas. After whining about not getting Starscream you start to play with it as a car and discover it doesn’t roll very well and can’t keep its car shape. So you turn it into a robot and it is armed but it doesn’t have the sleekness or freedom of movement that you’d like. Still, better than a GoBot. What a waste of plastic those things were.
(Comment on the movie. It can’t be considered a Transformers movie unless Soundwave is involved. I’m sorry but that is the rule. They said they couldn’t include him because they didn’t want to break the law of the conservation of mass in the operation of transforming. This even though we completely ignore what happens to the tractor trailer that Optimus Prime is carrying every time he transforms. Completely unfair. Even worse than Megatron no longer being a gun.)
MASK: This is the completely forgotten toy/cartoon series. It was kind of this combination of Transformers and G.I. Joe in which you had people using military vehicles masquerading as regular cars. Why I was taught as a child that all cars should be armed is beyond me. MASK should be used as a case study in business school in the importance of naming your product. The toy series and cartoon was released in 1985, the same year the movie Mask was released. If you wanted to freak out your parents as a kid in the mid-80’s ask for a MASK action figure. No one wants to get their son a Cher action figure.
Oh and MASK stands for Mobile Armored Strike Kommand. Sigh. I think I lost twenty IQ points writing that sentence.
Those Little Plastic Army Men: Oh, let me count the ways that these guys ruled. First, after the Stratego debacle I finally received toys that allowed me to fight World War II battles and that means tanks and bazookas and flamethrowers. Also, thank to their relative inexpensive nature it was incredibly easy to bring in a few new brigades of reinforcements. I should thank my parents for getting one of my brothers the Guns of Navarone playset that taught me the importance of having the high ground in any military battle. (It was this huge mountain playset where you could either a) decide to play it as is and try to defeat the Nazis or b) use it as a secondary Death Star and lead an X Wing assault against it.) More importantly, I still remember that several of the plastic guys were of someone being shot with their helmet flipping into the air. War takes on a little different meaning at eight when you see that on the basement floor in front of you.
GI Joe: (No, that is not a picture of my apartment. I never did get the aircraft carrier.) The amount of time I spent in my youth watching GI Joe cartoons is too much to even try to calculate. Especially when you realize that there weren’t that many episodes and they all had the same plot. Here is my concern about the modern US military. The people leading it will all have watched the show growing up and we have all been raised to believe that it is perfectly fine to hang completely exposed on the outside of a vehicle in the midst of a battle. Or that all assault vehicles should have large glass windows in the front so that the driver can see clearly. As always, one wanted to have the Cobra guys. Even Dr. Mindbender was cool in comparison to Shipwreck (who looked as though he moonlighted in a Village People cover band in his off hours.)
M.U.S.C.L.E.: I had some of these as a kid. I have no idea why. I’m not sure how was one was ever meant to play with them. Maybe I thought that since they were Japanese they had to be cool. If anyone can fill me in I would be glad to know.
He-Man: (As you can guess, I’ve been grabbing these images off the net. I am incredibly scared as to what might be behind these black bars.) Ok, I had He-Man action figures as a kid. A lot of them. And they were played with constantly. Not sure if I should admit it but hey, I’m reading Shakespeare’s Henry IV Part II this week so I think I turned out ok. What is most interesting is that the way I played with them completely changed as I grew up. I started off following the plot of the cartoon show as He Man led the charge to clean up Eternia of Castle Greyskull, which was another one of those cool toys as a kid. But as I grew older that changed.
I realized that the He-Man figures worked really well as wrestling action figures. The WWF action figures at the time were horrible but with He-Man you had a lot of flexibility and a lot more natural flexibility. Then I realized that four gym shoes provided a makeshift ring and a plastic milk crate a steel cage. So it went from from defending Eternia to competing for the Galactic Heavyweight Title. I hope this shows that I was creative as a kid. Probably shows that I watched way too much pro wrestling.
Star Wars: You know I had to finish with this one. The picture is of my actual printer where from left to right I have Darth Vader, a Tie Fighter Pilot, R2-D2, Boba Fett, a Stormtrooper and Chewbacca watching over me. This was the absolute ultimate in toys with me for ages. I even had two stormtroopers because you could always use more stormtroopers. There was nothing better than the Death Star playset. Here is what you got with it: a gun and turret in order to launch X Wing raids on the station, a sliding bridge and rope to recreate Luke and Leia’s swing, the control room to recreate the battle scene (or as often, have Luke crash into when he fell off the rope swing), a trash compactor with foam trash and trash compactor monster and finally, a freaking elevator to get the figures between floors. Absolutely nothing better than that.
Sure it is probably a little embarrassing that I actually have these things sitting on a desk underneath two diplomas but I like what they symbolize. They are from when I was a pure and innocent kid who just liked to sit on the floor of his bedroom and create adventures out of every corner of his mind. Every time I look at them I have to smile and I don’t think anyone could complain about that situation.
Wednesday Night Music Club: To stay in the holiday spirit here is a song from a Christmas record you need to own: Mindy Smith’s “My Holiday”. Watch it, listen, buy it. Makes the holidays perfect.
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