Robot Revolution: The one that's the good Transformers movie

 

 

Title: Bumblebee aka Transformers: Bumblebee

What Year?: 2018

Classification: Weird Sequel

Rating: That’s Good! (4/4)

 

As I write this, my channels have been a bit quiet, enough that the biggest news is a new entry in a franchise everyone has been saying they want to end but won’t stop putting money into. It also happens that I had been considering one particular entry for my semi-randomized survey of robot films. Without further preamble, I’m diving in. Here’s Bumblebee, the Transformers movie people actually liked, and as far as I’m concerned, the only other entry worth any attention was the one with Orson Welles as the Death Star.

Our story begins with the fall of the world of Cybertron to the Decepticons, during which the heroic Bumblebee escapes to Earth. That leads to a three-way fight with a Decepticon and a persistent military man, in which the sympathetic bot’s voice box is disabled. He goes to ground as a piece-of-kaka VW Beetle in what turns out to be the actual 1980s time frame of the original franchise. He finds a friend in a spunky teenage girl named Charlie who tries fixing up the Bug and is surprisingly cool with both discovering a robot from an alien civilization and legally owning a sentient AI. Soon, they bond over Eighties pop culture, and Charlie opens up about her actually moving tragic backstory. But the Decepticons are closing in, aided by a fair-weather alliance with the military over our military man’s objections. Robots will fight, character will be built, and cliches will actually be used effectively. And to quote/ rip off Brandon’s Cult Movies, congratulations, your toys sold well enough for you to live!

Bumblebee was a 2018 science fiction/ drama film directed by Travis Knight, previously known for animated films including Kubo, from a script by Christina Hodson.  It was the 6^th film in the live-action Transformers franchise by producer Michael Bay, and considered a prequel to the preceding films. The film starred Hailee Steinfeld as Charlie and Angela Bassett as the voice of the villainess Shatter, with John Cena and John Ortiz as the government men. Other voice cast included Justin Theroux as the hench-bot Dropkick and Peter Cullen in a limited role as Optimus Prime. The film was a commercial success, earning $468 million worldwide against a $135M budget, and was well-received by critics and fans as the best entry in the franchise. A direct sequel has reportedly been in development. In June 2023, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts was released as a second authorized prequel, without the involvement of Steinfeld or other cast and characters from Bumblebee.

For my experiences, I have already gotten a lot of ranting about Transformers out of my system with toy blogging and my review of the animated film (see also the Gobots movie…). The bottom line has always been that I liked the idea of the Transformers better than the toys, and I clean missed out on any incarnation of the TV franchise. When it comes to films, the 1986 cartoon had enough sheer weirdness to impress me, and the original live-action film was good enough for a viewing or so. After that, I completely bailed on the cinematic franchise until the present film came along. I saw it in theaters, and it earned what was for me somewhat grudging respect. In the time since, I’ve given it a fair number of repeat viewings, which if anything have improved my opinion. Saying it’s the best Transformers movie may be an easy joke, but this is far more; it’s one of the best recent treatments of robotics/ artificial intelligence to come out of what can still be considered the “mainstream” studio system. In those terms, the only other films to appear here that even suggest themselves for comparison are M3GAN and Robot and Frank, and those already set the bar very high indeed.

Moving forward, the one thing to get out of the way is that mustering goodwill for this one is going to require a high tolerance for both the franchise assumed mythology and general 1980s pop culture. The latter is where the “mainstream” description starts to feel like a “con” rather than a “pro” (also an admitted issue with Robot And Frank). What the film has going for it is a feel of sincerity rather than, or at least in addition to, the presumption of nostalgia that will definitely be hit or miss for people like me who were actually around in the Eighties. The bots are allowed to be truly good and very evil, and their battles see victories and defeats for both sides throughout the movie. It’s of further note that the stop-motion veteran director knows how to portray the bots in real-world environments in ways that make it clear who they are and who’s winning. The humans are the weaker element, but for once, it’s not because they are an underwritten afterthought. The problem is that there’s nothing here we haven’t seen before, a fact that is amplified by the frequent references and inside jokes. The payoff is that we can actually get to like these characters far more as the story goes along. The standout to me is Ortiz, a prolific character actor in a typically disposable role, whose character by any fair appraisal proves himself by far the most intelligent here without considering that he’s applying the rules of chess to a rugby match.

Meanwhile, the thing that has to be talked about for this feature in particular is Bumblebee himself, an absolutely first-rate “sympathetic” bot. Again, it’s especially noteworthy that this is done with an animator in the director’s chair (and a woman as writer to boot), and the character shows everything that can be brought to the table: He has distinctive features, mannerisms and an expressive face. The most interesting part of the setup is his lack of speech, which to me could have been all the more intriguing if it was a permanent part of his personality rather than a posited physical (mechanical???) injury. (On the gruesome side, aphasia is a very real problem for victims of major head trauma…) The results are a little hit or miss, with a high proportion of cutesy pratfalls and still more pop-culture references. In form for the film, the premise gets fully developed into what becomes a thoughtful portrayal of nonverbal/ preverbal intelligence. It’s especially striking to see the bot contextualize music and audio snippets to express himself and draw out his human counterpart. For that matter, there’s dark irony in the further contrast with the highly articulate and very anthropomorphic villainess, who proves that familiarity in no way reduces menace.

That leaves the “one scene”, and this is a rare case of a scene that upped the rating. Partway through, Charlie ends up at a beach party where someone brings up the established backstory that she was once on the school diving team. When one of the jerks takes a dive that would definitely not be safe if you don’t happen to have a topographical map, the gathered kids cheer for Charlie to do the same. The parked Transformer joins in, bumping her with an open door and playing an egregious track from the animated film. We get all the Eighties movie buildup as the spunky heroine goes to the edge… and then walks right back. It’s a calculated anticlimax, and what impressed me enough to raise my opinion of the whole movie is that this is contextualized as Charlie absolutely in the right. It’s a moment that proves a film can both use cliches and subvert them effectively. It’s just right to bring this one from 3 to a (kind of) perfect 4.

In closing, this is a case where I’ve already covered everything, for once including the rating. Enough time has passed to say that this is not a “great” movie, but it would not be at all surprising if the next five to ten years sees it hailed as a “classic”, which has certainly not been the case with any other live-action incarnation of the franchise. On its own, it might be no more or less than “pretty good”, but after what came before, it’s the kind of film where just being adequate would be enough for a seasoned viewer to kiss the ground. Sometimes, you have to take what you can get, and fortunately, this is one that more than delivers. My highest compliment is that I’m glad to have gotten to it. “I’ve got better things to do tonight than die!”

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Dinobots Part 3???

 

It's the last day of the month, and I remembered that I had for the very first time missed an installment of this feature last month. So, I thought over what I had backlogged for a post. That brought me to the "dinobot" category, which got its own post a while back, plus a follow-up for quite possibly the worst toy I have reviewed in the entire history of this feature that I bought new. (And as a reminder, I started with the patchisaurs...) I still had to think over how much I had that I hadn't covered before, which still left me with the two items I usually aim for as a minimum. As a bonus, they had something more in common: They are both incarnations of an authorized Transformers subline, specifically a bot who had the distinction of being possibly the most annoying character in the (animated) Transformers movie. Without further ado, here's Grimlock!

Now this is, to my best recollection, the more recent acquisition of the pair featured here. It's one of a number of specimens I have sighted in the last two or three years that seem to form their own line. The unifying features are that they are all based on G1 characters (or versions thereof), and are all quite large despite a low price for an authorized Transformer. I finally bought this guy at a sale price to see if it was worth buying more. Here's a couple pics to give an idea of what we're dealing with.

"I may look like I'm only a T. rex made of metal, but I'm really also... a far less threatening humanoid?"

So, the first thing I have to say is that I actually like the underlying idea here. The very plastic they're made of screams cheap, and close examination and handling will show them to be even more so than they might appear in my pics. The upside is, they are much sturdier and more robust than their new or old counterparts of any size or price. As a bonus, they actually do a good job covering both the collectible and actual toy markets. If you want 1980s nostalgia, it's a good return for the money. If you want something to give to a kid, it won't be in pieces within a day. The real problem is, it demonstrates all the worst qualities that a G1 Transformer could have. It's awkward, overcomplicated and just plain clunky,  especially in the alt mode that is supposed to be the selling point. Here's one more closeup to show what I mean, with the second specimen for comparison.

Now for the second dino/ bot, I got him as another already cheap item at a reduced price, in a $5-10 range not much lower than what I got the big one for. What I got is in hindsight more streamlined and attractive than the one I got later. A few pics will show, however, that it shares most if not all of the same underlying problems.

"Small legs, smaller arms, what could possibly go wrong?"

What will be especially conspicuous are the stumpy legs of the dino mode. It is of further note that both designs have the tail of the dino folding back to form the legs of the humanoid bot, which is far from the most ungainly transformation step (at least the head isn't literally coming out of the pelvis...), but still a complication for both modes. A unique problem is that there is a very strange joint connecting the rib cage and head of the dino to the rest of the body (visible as the black panel on the back), which has repeatedly separated entirely when I do this. Here's a sequence to show this is supposed to work.

Hup, hup...

So far, so good...

Ta da!!!

Hmm...

Okay, this is not optimal.

Of course, the underlying problem is, what does a dino bot really do? In terms of camouflage, this is perhaps the single most egregious case of the transformer concept defeating itself. (Then again, there's also the one "disguised" as a flying saucer.) An obviously metal dino isn't really disguised as anything, which the authorized Dinobots did effectively admit. If you did make it look like an organic dinosaur (the simplest explanation for whatever the Hell the Walmart cyborg dino was), then it's still something regular humans will know is "supposed" to have been extinct for many millions of years. By comparison, even the Changeables disguised as things people eat make marginally more sense. (And, as I ranted in the Gobots movie review, looking like actual rocks would be close to ideal.) Then, even with disguise out of the picture, there's still the question of how the transformation improves on what you already have with the dinosaur, especially an already bipedal one like a tyrannosaur. A carnosaur has massive jaws, two arms and two legs that can all be further modified in size and functions. A humanoid robot has two arms and two legs. The real answer is that robot dinosaurs were both of the things '80s kids loved, and a Transformer that doesn't transform would have been admitting the jig was up.

And that brings us back around to the big bot. If you were wondering why I didn't show the humanoid bot before, the simple answer is, he's just too big to shoot without reorienting the camera. So, I waited till the end to try a pic, which required further experimentation with lighting on the Couch Mark 2. Here's the big guy with mini Grimlock, the reissue stego bot, the Marx Japanese officer and the Truckstop Queen. Behold, ye mighty, and despair!

That's all for now, more to come!

No Good Very Bad Movies Special: The one with Slinky killbots

 

 

Title: The Super Inframan

What Year?: 1975

Classification: Prototype/ Irreproducible Oddity

Rating: It’s Okay! (3/3)

 

As I write this, I’m approaching 2 and a half years of writing this blog, and reflecting depressingly on just how far my view counts have gone down. So, of course, I have planned out one last ride to clear out my backlog. For this feature in particular, I had one more thing that wasn’t fitting in anywhere else, a movie so legendarily weird that I hadn’t gotten around to watching it. I took a look, and I knew it always belonged here. I also knew that it was something that I needed to wait to watch until I was ready to review, because this is the kind of movie where the first impression is what matters. I present Super Inframan, a movie possibly as weird as House.

Our story begins with a bus load of kids apparently on their way to defeat the Red Army with sonic warfare when they are attacked by a mysterious pterodactyl creature. In the aftermath, we learn that it’s the work of a mysterious ancient queen named Dragon Mom who has only just made herself known to the modern world. The actual military with guns, tanks and attack aircraft are helpless against her hazy combination of magic and super-science, but a scientist who for once has the full backing of the government believes he can turn the tide by transforming a heroic volunteer into Inframan, a cyborg with whatever powers will barely defeat the latest wave of Dragon Mom’s biomechanoid goons. Meanwhile, the monarch has sent an infiltrator to destroy the mentor’s headquarters while her forces close in. Inframan keeps her at bay, but when the scientist and his daughter are kidnapped, it’s up to the superhero to take the fight to them. There’s no doubt of the outcome, but you will still have no idea what’s going on!

Super Inframan was a 1975 science fantasy film by the Shaw Brothers (see Mighty Peking Man, Meteor). The film was regarded as a knockoff of the Ultraman and Kamen Rider tokusatsu TV series. It has also been described as the first Chinese superhero film. Danny Lee was cast as the titular hero, with Terry Liu as Dragon Mom and Dana Shum as the minion She Demon. The film’s profile was improved by a favorable review from Roger Ebert, who stated, “When they stop making movies like Infra-Man, a little light will go out of the world.” The movie has remained popular as a cult film, receiving favorable reviews from James Rolfe and Brandon Tenold. It is currently available for digital rental and purchase from Google/ Youtube, but not on the Amazon US platform.

For my experiences, I heard of this one from Brandon’s Cult Movies, and was immediately interested. What has fascinated me is the multiple directions of evident influence. On one hand, it’s quite obvious that the Hong Kong auteurs were ripping off Japan. On the other hand, there’s plenty of evidence that Japan more than repaid the debt, egregiously through the Super Sentai/ Power Rangers franchise. I have continued to wonder about its influence on movies I had reviewed: The Transformers animated movie; House, which I really did not like; and Everything Everywhere All At Once. I finally bought and watched the present a few days before this review, which I started and then stopped before coming back as I approached my usual 3-day limit. That was about the time I needed to digest this properly. What I find is that I still cannot quite make up my mind, and what truly vexes me is whether this was meant to be funny.

Moving forward, the counterintuitive thing about this film is that it is not actually random in the way that House and Everything Everywhere All At Once are. Sure, the visuals, the effects and the powers of the hero and villains look like they could have been conceived by placing nouns on a dart board. At its narrative core, however, this is deceptively linear. The story and stakes are clearly defined. The villains and other entities are introduced early. The authority figures are competent enough to help, and draw an equally measured effort by the villainess to remove them before they get further. The characters are genuinely developed into generally interesting ways. As a corollary, the film plays its influences and premises on something resembling a “straight” basis, which is even stranger to say considering the villainess and her utterly demented goons. The mutants and biomechanoids may be surreal apparitions brought to life with indifferent production values, yet they are quite consistently portrayed as legitimate threats to the hero and the world, with genuine personalities to boot. This shows especially in the finale fight with the queen and the slinky goons, who thoroughly pummel the hero.

If there’s a con, it’s a shared feature of very weird Asian cinema: This rides a razor edge between inspired and simply exhausting. This is where the seeming seriousness of the material comes closest to being a defect. There are moments where the somber tone is welcome, especially in light of the kiddie fare that the tokusatsu/ kaiju genres were already devolving into. There are others where having a good laugh is your only shot at getting through this damn thing in good spirits and with some vestige of your sanity. Again, this is especially evident with the villains, particularly Dragon Mom herself, whose bizarre regenerative powers have regularly been discounted as comical. The highest toll, however, is for the good guys. This is set up as a superhero plot with real stakes and genuine weight, and it holds up for a while. By the professor’s solemn warnings, Inframan himself can only gain his powers at the price of terrible pain and an uncertain future, a problem we can easily believe after seeing the transformation. After a while, however, it becomes clear that the toll is never going to come, at least in any way that figures in the story. Thus, the most compelling element of the story becomes a bait and switch.

That brings me to the “one scene”, and I went through a new viewing to get back to it. Around the 40-minute mark, Inframan and a squad of enthusiastic agents chase after a double agent sent by Dragon Mom. A fight between the good guys and minions is in full swing when a newcomer appears. We get our first look in a distance shot of a desolate quarry. The figure stands at the top of the rock face, its face hidden by some kind of mane, and announces itself with a truly unnerving laugh before literally leaping into action. It quickly proves to be one of the most formidable antagonists out of the entire rogues’ gallery, trading blows and laser beams with Inframan until the hero finally dives into the water of the dodgy mill pond. The creature continues to fire away, drawing a blast like a depth charge with each shot, of course laughing all the while. What stood out on second viewing is that it finally stops and looks for any sign of the hero, dead or alive. As it peers into the water, it makes a sound quite different from the laugh or whatever it is, almost like a cat’s meowing. Naturally, that’s when Inframan counterattacks. It’s a well-choreographed scene that works far better than it should, in no small part because the film actually conveys a real sense of danger.

In closing, I come to the rating. What I suppose might seem odd is that I didn’t simply give this one the Unrated ranking, as I did Everything Everywhere All At Once and House before it. I certainly considered that very strongly, before and after actually watching it. I suppose the difference is that the other films were very much exceptions to my usual rules. By comparison, this one is exactly the kind of movie I would normally view and review. Within my admittedly skewed framework, I can understand what they were trying to do. In those terms, it’s not great, and was presumably never intended to be. It is good, hallucinogenically weird fun, and its light truly deserves to burn for a long time. With that, I can once again call it a day.

Retrobots Revisited: Changeables Gen 2!

 

It's my day off on the last week of an "off" month, and I've been trying to work ahead a bit. For the post today, I have another bot lineup, following up on what seems to have been my last installment of this feature, the McDonalds Changeables. Since that post, I made a couple orders adding to my collection, from later releases I consciously declined to pick up back when. Here's the first pic of the lineup including one we met last time, all based on vintage packaging that's probably being collected on some far-off planet (all that just to reference my review of The Hidden).

Of this lot, the one featured before is the first-wave McNuggets bot. The others are supposed to be a very similar sandwich box marked Quarter Pounder, and a pancake box that obviously isn't disguised from all angles. It's noteworthy that, where both Transformers and its rivals and competitors often took these shortcuts, this is the only Changeable to do so, thus one more reason they're awesome. Here's the group transformed. The McNuggets is cool as always, the flapjack box is silly, but the Quarter Pounder is just... not... right.

Needless to say, it was the sandwich-box bot that got me interested in expanding my collection. What makes him and other "G2" bots different is that there's a lot more detail painted on, which in turn makes it more difficult to find them in good condition. The Quarter Pounder in particular is prone to wear on the outer box detail and the face; the one I finally got is in moderately good condition. On close examination, I found some streaks on the inside that must have worn off during "transformations", and quickly concluded the only good option is to leave him in bot mode. And that face... dear Logos, the face... You can only appreciate it in closeup.

"Have I told you how I got these scars?"

Something I realized as I did further research was that two of my figures, the Fries and the Big Mac, were G2 figures, released with different colors. This incidentally explained why the Fry bot's fists are visible when he's not transformed; originally it was all red anyway. It also accounted for a vague memory of what I took as the original Quarter Pounder on the Happy Meal boxes, as it turned out both originally had the same yellow/ blue colors. Since many of the online offers included duplicates, I looked into getting a G1 figure for comparison. I didn't care for the prices, but I did end up with an extra Big Mac in better condition. I noticed after posting this, there's a further, minor difference in the molding of the lettuce, which is completely gratuitous compared to the expense of multiple molds. Here they are with the G1 Quarter Pounder; even in the pic, I can tell the one on the right is the one I already had.

Something else I confirmed in my research is that I had already sort of had a G2 bot, in the form of a 3rd wave of transforming toys that became dinos instead of bots. Here's a lineup of that one with the Fry and Shake bots. You can see the extra detail on the Fry bot's face, which is solid, deep blue in G1. I also determined that the Shake bot's red/ blue detail is painted on, something I initially thought was unique but then confirmed on the McNuggets bot.

And here's a closeup of the dino.

And last and probably least, here's a couple burger-based Transformers. The first is one I'm sure I held in my hand in the second-hand stores back in the day, which the extra Big Mac bot came with. The other is another dino, clearly based on the Big Mac bot but definitely of separate origin. The Cheeseburger bot has a kind of charm, but definitely doesn't measure up to G1. The dino is just weird.

"I have no mouth, and I must siiiiiing..."

And for something different, here's one that got away. Something I had already confirmed is that the Shake bot was replaced by a completely different design in G2, which was wonky even compared to the flapjack bot. But then I found a listing for this, by a seller in Australia. It looks like a repaint/ upgrade of the G1 bot, except this time, there's clearly a new faceplate. I didn't get it because of the price, including a big hit on shipping, and I haven't seen any independent confirmation of its provenance. For now, it must remain a mystery. And wow, that face...

And to wind things up, a couple reference model pics. First, Connie and Cassie, back on the stand. I got out the purse from the box the Trailer Park Princess came in, and Cass has been rocking it.

"I don't know, maybe I should give King Kong another chance. But what would we have for dinner?..."

And as an extra project I might get back to, I've been testing out the articulation on the Lanard large Alien figures to see if I can get a pose that's actually threatening. This is the best so far...

"Wait a minute, we're robots... but we're disguised as something it can eat???"

That's all for now, more to come!

The Legion of Silly Dinosaurs: Generic Dinobot unboxing!

 

To start the new year, I've been sticking with a plan to slow things down while I decide how much I might want to shake things up. In that spirit, I decided to do a post for this, my longest-running regular feature (see the patchisaur post, from even before I was doing movie reviews), on a weekday instead of the weekend slot it has long since settled into. I'm doing this in part because I just acquired something that wouldn't make for as long a post as many I've made under the Legion banner, and I needed an unboxing to give it its due. Here's a few pics of the item in its glorious, terrible packaging, photographed with my camera phone.

This is a little line I have sighted independently at a couple different places over the last few months. You can  see on the box that there are four of them, of which I'm sure I've seen at least 3. What may not be entirely clear is that the labels are hilariously mixed up. The name of the Ankylosaur, present here, has its name under a T Rex, whose name is given to a ceratopsian. Less explicably, the actual ankylosaur pic is labeled "Dragon King Kong", while a spinosaur is dubbed "The Dragon and The Spirit".  Note that there's already two names visible for the line, "Dinosaur World" and "Dragon Knight", of which the former might well be the name of some wider line that has yet to emerge on my radar. All in all, it looks like an unremarkable example of a knockoff/ generic line that isn't that much like anything else, beyond giving another retread of the venerable "dinobot" concept. But what's on the inside? First, here's a couple more pics of the box, because the "real" collectors always love packaging and I love to make them cry.

Now here's the open box and interior packaging, which can get interesting. The big surprise was a floral background that wasn't visible at all from the outside. We now know that plant life in the Mesozoic wasn't as different as we once thought, but I doubt it included sunflowers...

Now, we have the dino. It looks pretty nice, stylized and a little old-school, almost like something from Lego. Now for transformation, the first thing that stands out is that the back piece comes off as a shield. It's a design choice that's cropped up now and then for a very long time, which can be convenient for the designer and the collector, though to quote Toy Galaxy, you will lose the shield.

This brought me to the really ugly surprise: To complete the transformation, you also have to remove the tail. That's no great loss, considering how convoluted dinobot robot modes already get, but it's very difficult to put back, and not immediately obvious if you broke it outright. An extra detail is that the head (helmet???) you see on the box has to go on top of the one on the figure. Here's the bot mode with and without the attachments. I kind of like it with the "small" head; it's odd and kind of goofy, but at least it doesn't look like a direct copy of Optimus Prime.

"I have no hips, and I must dance."

And for an extra pic, here's the bot with a dino I picked up at the same shop. It's a soft-rubber brackiosaur with a sound gadget, also definitely old-school. (Depictions with a resonance-chamber thingy still haven't caught on.) You don't really see that many brachiosaus, so I bought it for more than I'd usually pay. Still a long way from the worst in my collection; I'm looking at you, bigmouths.

With that, I'm wrapping this up. If anything, I offer this as a snapshot of what dino collecting is like. It's a field of wide variety and wildly varying quality. Outside of Marx and Jurassic Park, there isn't the market ecosystem and unifying community you get if you're collecting a brand or franchise. For those who are really into this, it means that every item is potentially one-of-a-kind, and every encounter an opportunity that may not be repeated. Sometimes, you find something good; sometimes you get junk; but you rarely buy something you regret paying for. And with that, I'm done for another day. That's all for now, more to come!

Retrobots Revisited: McDonald's Transformers!!!

 

In planning out what I wanted to do this month, my big decision was that it was time to do some robot posts. That left me with a pretty short list of new and old material I hadn't gotten to before. The one that came to the top was old friends from way back. Here are the Changeables, possibly the most awesome Happy Meal toys and among the greatest Transformers knockoffs ever. To get this going, here's a lineup of the ones I actually had back when.

The start of all this is back in 1987, when McDonald's released a series of 6 transforming-robot toys called Changeables. As seen above, they were simple, robust, and boldly simple design. Between my brother and I, we got one or two each of the ones shown here, the McNuggets, the Egg McMuffin and the Quarter Pounder bot. They very quickly became among my favorite bots, often mixed in with other Happy Meal toys. For one reason or another, we missed out on the rest of the original set, though I had looked enviously at the artwork and advertisements for them. (See BattleGrip, previously my best source for Tonka Play People, for a look at the original Happy Meal box art.) What surprises me more is that I didn't get any of the 2nd series in 1988, which featured 6 new bots plus reissues of 2 of the originals (which I will get to in a moment). I did sight these later bots in the second-hand stores, eventually mixed in with the dino-themed Series 3, but I never bought any for reasons I didn't quite analyze. In hindsight, they simply weren't the same. I did remain interested, however, in getting the ones I missed the first time around. Eventually, many years later but still a long time ago, I found all the ones I didn't have all together. Here's the lineup of the rest.

As seen here, the rest of the set were a Big Mac, Fries and a Shake, the first 2 of which were revived with Series 2. What interested me was that, while the Big Mac had pretty much the same "plan" as the ones I had all along, the Fries and the Shake were quite different. The fry bot is just kind of odd, almost troll-like, while the drink bot is downright towering, to the point that it looks even taller than it actually is in a lineup. (What I really can't account for is that the McNuggets bot is taller than all the rest except this one.) I was happy to pick them up, and have continued to revisit them regularly. Here's a lineup of the set in alt mode.

Of course, in rational hindsight, this doesn't really make much sense, if any. They could kind of blend in, if they were full-sized, which is more than can be said for a lot of alt modes. On the other hand, they would still be small. Then the big problem is, they look like things that are edible, which isn't much of a survival trait. That wouldn't be too much of a problem if their adventures were inside a McDonald's; after all, most people who saw unattended food on a table or counter wouldn't just grab a bite. (Clearly, the best disguise of all would be a burger with one bite taken out of it...) Sooner or later, however, either someone is going to try to eat them or just throw them in the trash, though that would certainly make for an adventure in itself.

Meanwhile, there's the further question of how these things age. For the most part, they hold up very well. The arm joints are solid to this day, while the "waist" articulation has gotten a little creaky on the McNuggets. The only one to have trouble from an early date is the McMuffin. For some reason, his design has the body raise only halfway, which looked vaguely cool on the original. On the one I could find, however, it has long since worn out to the point that it simply won't stay up at all. Here's a closeup of how he would have looked in his prime.

And here's a rear view of four of them. It shows certain problematic aspects of the designs, but also just how well-constructed they are.

And why not one more pic with the Truckstop Queen and Ken R. Wampa? As I was saying, looking delicious isn't a survival trait...

With that, I'm ready to bring another meandering memory to an end. As a bonus, here's links for a Toy Galaxy video and a commercial for Series 1. That's all for now, more to come!

Retrobots Revisited: Droids!

 

At this writing, I'm closing on 2 years since I started this blog and about one year since it really got going. I've again been reminded that I have again gone a while without doing much with my robot features. To make up for it, I decided to do an extra post on something I'm surprised I didn't cover a lot sooner, the droids of the original Star Wars Kenner droids. These are the definitive representations of the most iconic and influential pop culture robots in history, and as we will see, the strange thing is that there really weren't that many of them. To start off, here's the tallest and arguably greatest of them all, IG88, with the Voltron mystery red guy and C3PO; he's okay, I guess.

 And here's a pic with the Truckstop Queen and Ken R. Wampa, plus a Rock Lord. Note the rock bot is about the same height; with both at full height, I think IG is still just a little taller.

Now, it's time to back this up. The lineup here represents about 3/4ths of the Kenner "vintage" droids I have. The other two are a worst-possible-condition R2 and an R5D4 I'm sure I have but couldn't find on short notice. The further backstory is that I picked up most of these, including IG, in mid- to late elementary school, well after the end of the Kenner line. I also recall I lost or broke specimens of IG and R5 then bought them again. (The latter was a victim of a carbon freezing accident.) IG was certainly the coolest, notwithstanding the fact that we never saw him in action in the movies. He's tall and streamlined, outside of the unnecessary molded detail. The one problem is that he isn't made the same as other figures. The arms are a bit rubbery, and need to be watched for breakage, while the legs feel slightly and unpleasantly sticky with age. Still, he's easily among the very best of the vintage line, and I'm sure kids put him through a franchise worth of adventures. Next up, C3PO and his weird cousin, the alleged Death Star Droid.

"Trust me, you're lucky you weren't in the cartoon...."

What I remember about these guys is that they were among my later acquisitions. I got C3PO second-hand in maybe 3rd or 4th grade, and didn't get the other guy until as late as high school.  I can further recall seeing the bug-eyed droid in an image in the Star Wars story book, as one of the broken-down droids in the Jawa sandcrawler. That in turn brings up one of the wonkier moments in the "Expanded Universe", when the droid handbook tried to explain the "Death Star droid" name as a "thing" in the Star Wars universe. Per the actual movies, even kids could work out, he was just a droid, and if it showed up in both the junk piles of Tatooine and the corridors of the Death Star, then they were already everywhere. And that brings us to what I suppose was my favorite, the power/ "Gonk" droid, pictured with Threepio and a Tomy bot for feature continuity.

As a kid, I absolutely loved this guy, and I still can't say why. He didn't really do anything in the movies, he looked silly, and the only things the toy added were the clicky gimmick in the legs and the antenna that's always missing. I can further recall deliberately pulling the antenna off mine because it annoyed me in some way, then throwing it away when it turned up in a sweep for loose accessories. To me, that just made him look more like he does in the movies, so I was happy. Here's a couple detail pics.

Finally, we have the medical droids from the Empire wave of the line, 21B and FX. Here they are together.

21B is besides R2 the only droid I'm absolutely sure we got new. I picked up the other droid already missing a couple arms. They were both awesome in my eyes. It's intriguing in hindsight that they made figures this detailed out of robots that were specifically shown as made to help people. (An extra factoid, 21B is the only droid besides Threepio to get any lines in English in the first two movies.) Of course, this went out the window in playtime. FX especially was great as an evil robot/ supercomputer, and it actually made sense for him to sit around while the evil scheme played out. Here's one more pic of him.

The thing about all this is that this brings us not only to the end of my collection but pretty close to the end of the droids in the Kenner line. The only droid I haven't covered released on card in the vintage line is Zuckuss/ 4LOM (I really don't care...), which I know my big brother or I must have had simply because I remember having his triple-barreled gun (which I usually gave to Bossk). The only new droids released for Return of the Jedi or the last-ditch Power of the Force wave were 8D8 and EV-9D9, and then mainly as add-ins for playsets. Throw in the probe droid from the Empire Hoth turret playset (which I was so unaware of I built my own to fill the gap), and you have only a dozen unique droids in the entire vintage line.  It would barely fill one wave of the Transformers or Gobots line, but clearly, they had influence far beyond their numbers.

Then fast-forward to the 1990s, when all things Star Wars were rebooting, and it was so... much... better. R2D2 looked like he did in the movie, 8D8 was findable, and we even got a probe droid. Here's a few pics of just a few I have lying around with vintage figures for comparison.

And one more...

"Did you say something about mini rigs?"

Now, I'm ready to wrap this up. If there's a lesson, it's that things can and do get better, but what came first can still hold its place, especially when you're old enough to remember when it was new. That's all for now, more to come!