07/07/2018 · 2:45 pm

Mistake #1: No weapon accessories.
Unless you were alive and paying attention in the 1980s, you probably didn’t know that Transformers weren’t the first toys in America that changed into vehicles. “GoBots” were.
Transformers came from Rhode Island’s Hasbro, in 1984. GoBots came from Tonka, makers of fine metal toy trucks, in 1983. That may be why Hasbro did everything right, from the start- they saw what Tonka had already done wrong. And oh boy… Tonka did just about everything wrong.
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Worst Of All
Tagged as 1980s, 1983, 1984, Bandai, Bob Budiansky, corporate crap, DC comics, Denny O'Neil, Dreamwave, giant robots, GoBots, Hanna-Barbera, Marvel comics, Rhode Island, Simon Furman, Tonka, toys, Transformers
06/14/2016 · 5:04 pm
For the past ten years, one Rhode Island company has made me so deliriously happy, I’ve considered corporate personhood, so I could ask for its hand in marriage.
Hasbro.

They even threw in a rubsign. Hasbro is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.
2006 was the year this little toy company had a subline of their Transformers toys called “Classics”; new figures of favorite characters from the 1984 cartoon. And a funny thing happened- these robots from an old show sold very, very well. Characters like “Bumblebee”, “Megatron” and “Optimus Prime” were familiar to a enviously broad range of people. They had staying power equal to Superman or Batman. The world was on the cusp of finding this out. Continue reading →
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Filed under Animation Analysis, Bad Influences, Faint Signals, Idiot's Delight, Movies You Missed, Nostalgic Obsessions, Robot Toy Fetish, Saturday Movie Matinee, Thousand Listen Club, Unfairly Maligned
Tagged as "Weird" Al Yankovic, 1980s, 1985, 1986, 1990s, 1996, 2000s, 2007, 2011, 2014, Beast Wars, Boogie Nights, DEVO, Don Johnson, Eric Idle, Frank Welker, G.I. Joe, John Moschitta, Judd Nelson, Lionel Stander, Mark Wahlberg, Michael Bay, Monty Python, movies, Nelson Shin, New Jack City, New Jersey, Optimus Prime, Orson Welles, Pawtucket, Peter Chung, Peter Cullen, Rhode Island, Ron Friedman, Shia LeBeouf, Star Wars, Steven Spielberg, Tailothepup, The Simpsons, The Transformers: The Movie, Transformers, Vince DiCola
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