Since I shared an issue of the 80s kid's magazine Hot Dog! last week I thought it would be fun to take a look at an issue of one of its much more popular sister publications, Dynamite.  Also published by Scholastic throughout the 70s & 80s (and actually up until '91 or '92), Dynamite was aimed at a slightly older audience in the middle school range.  Dynamite was the brainchild of Jenette Kahn, a follow up to her first popular magazine Kids (which was written for kids, by kids and reminds me kind of a forefather of kids media movements like Nick News with Linda Ellerbee and the like), and it probably provided the framework for her eventual appointment as the publisher of DC comics in 1976 (at the astonishing Doogie Howser-esque age of 28.)  The magazine was the blueprint for the other Scholastic publications that would follow (including Hot Dog! and Bananas), featuring pop culture spotlights, games, puzzles and activities for kids 8-12.

Again, like Hot Dog!, I was pretty much completely ignorant of its existence growing up which I kind of regret.   Today I thought I'd share a portion of a 1984 issue that featured a National Lampoon style article on Mr. T (which imagined what it would be like if Mr. T changed his famous look…)

Personally I'm all for New Wave T, as it looks surprisingly natural ("I pitty the fool who don't dig on Wham!")   The cover of the issue, a caricature of Mr. T as a bookworm nerd, was provided by Dynamite regular Sam Viviano who would later go on to work at MAD magazine.   The image reminds me a lot of the episode of Silver Spoons (Me & Mr. T) where Rickey's dad hires Mr. T as a personal bodyguard because a school thug keeps stealing his milk money.  I wonder if it was, and if that's the case, then this is why I regret missing out on Dynamite as a kid because it sort of fills in the gap between the parody on shows like Sesame Street and magazines like MAD, which I always felt was slightly over my head in terms of a lot of the chosen parodies (which included a lot of movies and TV shows that were more adult than my taste at the time.)  You can see more of that kid-centric parody in the below comic spoof of the Alan Alda Atari commercials, also drawn by the awesome Viviano…

Alda was chosen as the spokesman for Atari computing back in 1983 and starred in a series of commercials aimed at getting young kids more excited about leaning though the wonder of home computing.

Dynamite had few regular features, the most iconic of which is probably the two-page Count Morbida games and activities spread in each issue. Drawn by Arthur Friedman and written by Suzanne Lord, Count Morbida exisited in a garishly colored world of monsters and maniacs that remind me a whole heck of a lot like the weird combination of the work of Edward Gorey and the Count from Sesame Street...

Why is it that kids of the 70s and early 80s seemed to get a daily dose of Universal inspired monsters and mayhem?  Don't get me wrong, I love that I got a chance to grow up on all of the action syndicated and Saturday morning cartoons, but I always felt like I sort of missed out on a lot of the monster fun that I'm really into as an adult.  Anyway, here's a quick story from a flexi-record that was inserted into an issue of Dynamite in 1975 featuring Count Morbida.

Another regular feature of the magazine was a spotlight on a popular celbrity, in this case Kate Jackson of Charlie's Angels and Scarecrow and Mrs. King fame…

Also appearing in a number of issues were bits by comic legend Joe Kubert…

In addition to these art lessons, Kubert had some of the faculty and students of the Joe Kubert School of Cartooning and Graphic Art providing illustration for a comic strip called the Dynamic Duo that ran in a bunch of issues.

I wonder if kids have anything that resembles these kinds of magazines anymore.  I know there are Nickelodeon Magazine and Disney Adventures, though I think they've both folded.  Is it just Highlights now?

1984?  It was a crazy year.  We saw the first Apple Mac computer (with mouse driven graphical interface.)  Michael Jackson claimed the crown as the king of pop winning all sorts of Grammys for Thriller.  Crack was introduced into the US while over a million people died of famine in Ethiopia.  The world didn't quite succumb to a secretive snooping big brother as foretold in Orwell's dystopian novel 1984, at least not at that time.  One thing is for sure, in the midst of all of this American television was having one of its best years ever with the debut of fourteen "classic" new series (though I'll let you all decide on the following show's classic status...)

Jane Curtin found her way back into the spotlight after her inaugural stint as one of the not-ready-for-prime-time players on Saturday Night Live.  Joined by Susan St. James, the duo launched Kate & Allie which would run for six seasons throughout the rest of the decade.  Night Court debuted, instantly making Richard Moll an unmistakable TV icon as well as making stars out of Harry Anderson and John Larroquette.   Airwolf took to the Skies blasting away a plethora of terrorist piloted bubble helicopters and making it cool to serenade eagles with a cello.  Soleil Moon Frye taught a generation of kids that it was cool to be weird and eclectic as Punky Brewster, a show that for all intents and purposes defines a lot of what we think of when remembering what it was like to be a kid in the 80s.  Scott Baio finally found his niche as a babysitter/heartthrob in Charles in Charge (brining along good friend Willie Ames for the ride.)

Angela Lansbury started solving crimes faster than she could make them up in Murder, She Wrote.  Michael Landon joined the must-have-been-blessed as one of a handful of actors to have three hugely successful television shows with the debut of Highway to Heaven (after the duo of long-running stints on Bonanza and Little House on the Prairie.)  Whereas Michael Jackson was the verified King of Pop, Bill Cosby took the crown as the king of television with the start of one of the most successful shows of all time in the titular Cosby Show.   Who's the Boss showed that there was still life in Tony Danza and Katherine Helmond after Taxi and Soap respectively, as well as introducing the world to a cute and scrappy Alyssa Milano.  Stephen J. Cannell was also having a banner year with not one but two new hit shows, Hunter (starring Fred Dryer in a career defining role as Detective Sgt. Rick Hunter) as well as Riptide, which introduced us to an awesome orange robot (the Roboz), as well as filling in the awesome aquatic vehicle action void left in the wake of or vehicle oriented shows (like Streethawk & Airwolf which also debuted in '84, as well as Knightrider and the Dukes of Hazzard which were already dominating the airwaves.)

And finally, the show that defined the look of the mid to late 80s, Miami Vice starring Don Johnson, Edward James Olmos, and Phillip Michael Thomas.  It vies with Hill Street Blues as the quintessential 80s cop drama and single-handedly ushered in the jacket over a T-shirt look for men in their 30s.  Mixed in with all of this scripted entertainment was another new series that would run off and on in one form or another for 20 years, TV's Bloopers & Practical Jokes (hosted by Ed McMahon and produced/hosted by Dick Clark.)  TVsB&PJ, most likely inspired by Candid Camera, would keep the practical joke game going and eventually inspire more insipid programming like Punk'd.  Ashton Kutcher is no Dick Clark, though, not even an Ed McMahon.   Also, debuting in the same year, though months later was ABC's answer to TVsB&PJ, Foul-Ups, Bleeps & Blunders hosted by perennial agitator Don Rickles and co-host Steve Lawrence.  The show was short-lived, never gaining the ratings of its predecessor.

Even though some of the other series wouldn't necessarily fall into the "classics" category, it doesn't mean that there weren't some interesting offerings.   Stacy Keach tried breathing new life into Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer (after Darren McGavin's run decades prior.)  One of my favorites from this season, Street Hawk also made its initial bow (and short 12 episode run to the cancelation finish line.)  Spinning-off from the Jeffersons was the zany emergency room sitcom E/R, which starred Elliot Gould and oddly enough George Clooney 10 years before he rocketed to stardom in another show also titled ER.   I remember catching this in reruns on the USA network when I was home sick from school.  Speaking of Spin-Offs, John Ritter exited Three's Company to star in Three's a Crowd as a more responsible Jack Tripper looking to get married to his girlfriend Vicky.  Even though he's free of the Farleys and Ropers of the world, he still has an overbearing landlord, Soap's Robert Mandan who plays James Bradford who also happens to be Vicky's father.  Before he became a household name on Valerie (later the Hogan Family) Jason Bateman was looking to parlay his experience starring on Silver Spoons with a new series, It's Your Move (also starring David Garrison of Married With Children Fame.)   I only remember catching a couple episode of the show, but I liked what I saw.  Bateman was the essence of conniving and smarmy as a kid which is what made his performance as Michael Bluth on Arrested Development all that much more surprising to me when it first aired…

Rounding out the failed but notable series in '84 was the first and only, full-on season of V, a continuation of the two highly successful mini series that preceded it.  As a kid I had two huge crushes, one on Jane Badler (who played the villainess alien lizard woman Diana) and Faye Grant who played doctor and revolutionary Julie Parrish.   I don't think I caught that many episodes of the regular series but I was obsessed with the two mini series and honestly I think I enjoyed it even more than Star Wars at the time.   I was always bummed that we only ever got one real toy from the franchise, the nazi-esque Visitor figure, though there was a planned 3.75" line that unfortunately never materialized…

1984 also saw the 1st annual MTV Music Awards.  I wonder if the music awards show will stop now that MTV has dropped the Music Television byline from their logo?

There were a couple more Saturday morning cartoon specials as well.  On NBC we had the Laugh Busters co-hosted by Alfonso Ribeiro, Thom Bray (of the new show Riptide), and Danny Cooksey the newest addition to Diff'rent Strokes who would go on to star in the Nickelodeon live action show Salute Your Shorts as Bobby Budnick (as well as voicing Montana Max on Tiny Tune Adventures.)  In addition to the Smurfs and Alvin and the Chipmunks the special also featured the Mr. T cartoon, the Snorks, Pink Panther and Sons and my favorite Kidd Video.  On CBS later in the week we got a chance to see Saturday's the Place hosted by Joyce De Witt and Ted Knight of all people.   This special featured the Richard Pryor series, the various shows on the Saturday Supercade, the Get-Along-Gang, the Muppet Babies, and Dungeons and Dragons.  I really wish these specials would find their way to DVD someday.   Speaking of kid's shows, 1984 also saw the introduction of the cable-only series KIDS Incorporated which always reminded me of a musical version of Saved By the Bell.  Though he wouldn't appear as a regular until the following 1985 season, the show introduced me to Ryan Lambert who played the badass Rudy in the Monster Squad.

There seemed to be a ton of candy ads in this issue, but the one that really caught my eye was a mail-in offer for a Skittles or Starburst belt.   I wonder if any of these are still circulating around on the secondary market? 

Anyway, next time, 1985…

So I meant to post about this a week ago, but I finally found an insanely well-stocked vintage toy shop in the (more or less) Atlanta area.  It's called HD Comics and Toys run by a couple of swell gentlemen, Billy and Steve.  They're located about an hour north of Atlanta in the Pendergrass Flea Market (a kind of neat place where you can get anything from rebel flag bikinis and nun-chucks to bootleg toys and candy cigarettes by the carton.)   I hadn't been by the flea market in a couple years and I was always sort of bummed by the fact that there weren't any decent places selling vintage 80s era toys and stuff, but on a trip a couple weeks back I stumbled into Billy & Steve's shop (it's actually a store inside the huge flea market building) and my jaw literally hit the floor.  Filling three pretty decent sized rooms from floor to ceiling were hundreds upon hundreds of pegs filled with in-original-packing toys from the last 30 or so years.

At first I thought it was mainly superhero figures (they had all sorts of DC and Marvel stuff dating back to the late 80s, early 90s), but as I started looking closer I realized that these guys have almost every decently popular toy line that I could remember.  Just some of the lines I spotted included the original Batman movie figures, Robotech, Voltron, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, the Tick, The Shadow, Indiana Jones, G.I. Joe, Bravestarr, Doctor Who, Go Bots, Star Wars, Supernaturals, Food fighters, Starriors, M.A.S.K., Lone Ranger, Thundercats, Silverhawks, Masters of the Universe, and even Welcome Back Kotter dolls in the original boxes.

It's everything that I've been looking for in a vintage toy store.  They currently don't have a website, but if you're in the Atlanta, or North Georgia area I highly suggest you stop by and check out their store.  The prices are reasonable (e.g. lower than eBay), and you can’t beat the experience of finding vintage toys on the pegs.

While I was there I picked up a couple of toys, and the one I was happiest to find was an in-box Robo Force figure…

They had four or five different robots in their original packaging, but the one that caught my eye was Enemy, the Dictator, a villain from the Robo Force line.

A couple years ago I did an episode of the Saturday Supercast podcast with Jerzy Drozd and our friend HooveR, and we got on the subject of Maxx Steele's Robo Force.  We'd all had the toys and were both nostalgic and perplexed by their built-in robot-arm-crushing mechanism, which we all sort of agreed was more of a cute hugging action.  When I saw this guy I had to have him…

You can see on the packing above that the hugging action of these guys in intense.  Robo Force was released in 1984 by Ideal, most likely to horn in on the coming plastic robot craziness in America.  Tonka's Go Bots had hit the shelves at the end of the previous year and were selling like hot cakes, and Hasbro's Transformers line was gearing up as well, and even those these guys didn’t transform, my guess is that Ideal saw the trend and wanted on-board.   I'm not sure if the figures were just re-issues of a Japanese toy line or if they were born and bread in America, but in playing with the figures, it sure feels like the latter. 

Honestly, though these guys look cool, and I actually dig the concept behind the story, I'm less than thrilled by the playability factor.  Seriously, aside from a chest plate that drops open to reveal some awesome lasers, all these guys can really do is lightly hug your finger or another small toy.   They're also kind of fragile, in particular the mechanism that moves the arms, as noted by my experiences with my original figure (I stretched out my old toy's arms past the point of hugging), and the warning note that was slipped into the packaging…

All in all the fact that you could find these guys for about $4 back in '84 (a huge thanks and shout out to Steve at the Roboplastic Apocalypse for putting in the hard time to collect all the great vintage toy robot ads from the 70s and 80s) must have been awesome considering that Go Bots sold for around the same price and the Robo Force figures are litterally huge in comparison.  The figure in the box looks pretty darn impressive too, so Ideal managed to get that right.

Getting back to the story for a second, did you read that flavor text on the back of the box?  Enemy can decimate an entire world with the laser sticking out of the back of his head!  That's stupid awesome.  He doesn't even have to look back to see the carnage he leaves in his wake, that's how evil he is...

The figures also came with a mini-comic in the vein of the Masters of the Universe (which I hope to get scanned in and posted sometime this week.)

Long live Maxx Steele!

Looking back, I spent an inordinate amount of time reading as a kid, though I never really had a window into kid-centric magazines. I was always more of an “inside” kind of kid, and I always seemed to have a lot of books around, mostly hand-me-down read-alongs and Judy Blume books from my sister. Unfortunately this really didn’t translate into magazine reading for the most part. Instead I’d spent my allowance on the odd Spider-Ham comic, though eventually I did start picking up issues of the G.I. Joe and Nintendo Power magazines when they debuted. So I completely missed out on issues of Muppet, Thundercats, Stickers ‘n Stuff, and Highlights (though I did devour these on any and all doctor visits), and more importantly the Scholastic family of magazines including Peanut Butter, Wow, Hot Dog!, Dynamite, and Bananas…

From what I can gather, these magazines were mostly available as subscriptions through the various Scholastic Book Club flyers that were passed around during elementary and middle school. These magazines were more in the vein of Highlights and the various cartoon branded mags (like G.I. Joe, Go Bots, and Thundercats), than say an issue of Muppet (which was more like most standard magazines on the market), with almost no advertisements and a relatively small page count. I recently picked up a stack of back issues of Hot Dog! That I thought would be fun to share.

Today we have issue # 17, from February, 1983 (gathered from the context clues on the inside front and back covers), which features a cover story on the Pac-Man animated series, as well as articles on action figure collecting and penguins and a bevy of regular features including jokes, puzzles, activities and a story…

Hot Dog! really seems like that first stepping stone towards becoming a pop culture enthusiast. Aimed at early readers in the 2nd to 4th grade range, the magazine typically featured a cover story dedicated to pure escapism covering movies, cartoons, toys, or child stars. Though the rest of the issue was geared more towards learning activities, reading skills and more informational articles, I have to assume it was this main story that really hooked kids, getting them to convince their parents to order the magazine. Hot Dog was the brainchild of Jane Stine and her husband the “jovial” R. L. Stine (who most probably know for his later prolific work behind the Goosebunps and Fear Street children’s books.)

In this issues the main hook was the Hanna Barbera Pac-Man cartoon, with an article mostly dedicated to an informal interview with Pac-Man voice actor Marty Ingels (husband to Partridge Family mother Shirley Jones, and step father to her son Shaun Cassidy.) There are some interesting tidbits in the article by Megan Stine, including mention of the pre-cartoon-syndication issues with advertising toys and games during a branded animated series and how this affected the look and fell of the cartoon itself (dropping the use of the Pac-Man arcade game sound effects as it might be misconstrued as in-show advertising.) I think this is fascinating considering the entire landscape of children’s television was about to be changed by the debut of the He-Man and G.I. Joe cartoons.

It’s also kind of neat to get a bit of insight into how Ingels landed the role of the big yellow chomper, even if the idea that the casting directors didn’t give him an option sounds a little far fetched. At the same time, reading up on Ingels and his insanely litigious hobby, I can totally see him lucking into an audition by chance and refusing to accept the role. It fits with his character at least.

Each issue of Hot Dog! also featured a page dedicated to reader-submitted jokes based around unfairness in the column called simply enough It’s Not Fair! Kids were charged with coming up with a punch-line to the titular setup, the best of which would be selected to appear in the next month’s issue with an accompanying illustration by the awesome B.K. “Bob” Taylor (who illustrated the Awesome All*Stars sticker cards I’ve talked about in the past.) Taylor has a great style mixing the parody of caricature and fine detail work that makes for great children’s illustration (in the footsteps of MAD magazine.)

This issue also features a short article on action figure collecting by Eve Ronan. Though the write-up ignores most of the landscape of boys action figures throughout the 70s (including omitting the wildly popular Shogun Warriors and Six Million Dollar Man figures), it does provide a bit of insight into the coming collecting frenzy that would overtake so many young boys throughout the 80s. I think she hits the nail on the head when she talks about action figures as collectors items instead of playthings, though I think Masters of the Universe figures were more about play than a lot of its contemporaries.

Again, it’s also interesting to note that as far as Ms. Ronan was concerned, He-Man and G.I. Joe weren’t media tie-ins, though little did she know that cartoons were in the works almost from day one with both action figure sets. Also, I had never heard of the glistening commandos in the Eagle Force toyline from Mego, so it was kind of cool to get a chance to see these. Anyone out there have these as a kid?

All in all I kind of wish I had subscribed to Hot Dog!, but I guess I was more preoccupied with selecting the most recent Garfield collection or Choose Your Own Adventure title to check the box next to this magazine in the book club flyer.

When I think about growing up as an American in the 80s, three things come to mind, seeing Lee Iacocca's "autobiography" on at least a dozen of my friend's and family's coffee tables, listening to Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. in the car with my dad, and watching Rocky IV for the first time on cable.  The movies Top Gun and Gung Ho are also up there, but those first three really bring America and the 80s to mind.  Of the three, only Rocky IV snagged its own set of Topps trading cards and more importantly, stickers (though I'd be willing to bet good money that there were some sort of Born in the U.S.A. stickers floating around, even if they were bootlegs.)

Now aside from the 80s era "America is #1" sentiment that I get from the flick, one of the other main things that I take away from Rocky IV is just how Over the Top (pun completely intended) Sylvester Stallone films are.  Besides single-handedly fighting and winning the cold war by knocking out Dolph Lundgren's Ivan Drago, Sly Stallone has been the penultimate ennui-filled cop (Cobra), he was responsible for re-starting and re-ending the Vietnam war in Rambo First Blood, Part II, he made mountain climbing into riveting action in Cliffhanger, he almost made Estelle Getty an action star, and reprising his role as Rambo in 2008 he showed the world that it was indeed cool to blow people up again on film, even if he did look like a haggard, old, body-building woman when he did it.

Personally, my favorite aspect of the film is Dolph Lundgren, who many people might not realize is probably the smartest man in the action film genre to date.  The guy holds a master's degree in chemical engineering and he's a Fulbright scholar for crying out loud.  His brain could beat up my brain with its cerebral cortex tied behind its back while he beat my body to a bloody pulp with his third degree cloth black belt.  Literally with his actual cloth black belt.  Seriously though I loved the strength he exuded as Ivan Drago (the dude is made out of steel) and eventually he would go on to embody a couple of childhood super heroes, He-Man and the Punisher, in films that weren't well received but were still awesome.

As far as this sticker set goes, like it's predecessor, the Topps sticker set for Rocky II, it makes awesome use of the typical Topps bold outline on the die-cut stickers by making them into the shape of boxing gloves.  I think these are the only Topps sticker sets that thought that design aspect through to that level (well, actually the A-Team sticker borders were in the shape of file folders and I guess the Alien stickers had an egg border on some of the cards...)

I kind of wish we'd gotten a scruffy, bearded, climbing-a-mountain-to-train-for-the-big-fight Rocky, not to mention at least one Brigitte Nielson sticker, but I'm happy that at least seven of them featured Drago.  I wonder why there weren't any Rocky III cards and stickers?  Was Mr. T as Clubber Lang just too much awesome to be contained in a boxing glove-shaped sticker?

When looking through the TV Guide Fall Preview issues that came out between 1977-1990, I find all sorts of little nostalgic gems, not to mention a parade of stars that I know and love.  Even when a lot of the new shows don't last, the stars do, eventually going on to successful series and some even making the jump to film.  But for some reason 1983 just doesn't seem to be a big year for television, at least not in terms of classic shows starting up or getting any before-they-were-stars insights.   It's not totally devoid, but it's a little sparse on excitement.

The first thing that really jumped out at me was the introduction of the A-Team, which is by far the most notable new show that year (at least in my skewed perception.)  Sure there are a few other notable shows making their debuts, namely Webster, Hardcastle & McCormick, and Scarecrow and Mrs. King, but the A-Team is really where it's at, at least in the iconic television department.  Honestly, I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that 1982 had twice as many lasting and memorable debuts (Cagney & Lacey, Knightrider, T.J. Hooker, Remington Steele, Cheers, Silver Spoons, Family Ties, St. Elsewhere, and Newhart)?  Maybe with all of those shows still on the air, as well as shows that had been going from years prior (Simon & Simon, the Fall Guy, Gimmie a Break, Hill Street Blues, Too Close For Comfort, and Magnum P.I. just to name some of the shows from the previous two years) there wasn't a real big push for new programming in 1983.   Of course, 1984, when we get to it, will introduce like thirteen long-lasting and memorable series, so I guess '83 was just a dud.

That isn't to say there aren't a few interesting faces popping up in some of these short lived new shows.  In Goodnight, Beantown we get to see Bill Bixby looking for his third hit show (after the Incredible Hulk and the Courtship of Eddie's Father.)  Alec Baldwin pops up in his first adult performance as Dr. Hal Wexler, part of a trio a doctors in Cutter to Houston (which sounds like the core plot of Northern Exposure six years before it would premier on television.)  Jim Varney, in a rare pre-Ernst role, rounded out the cast of The Rousters about a family of carnies (sounds like he still plays for the same kind of Ernst laughs though.)  Cybill Shepherd, David Soul, and Sam Elliot star in The Yellow Rose, a failed attempt (looking back 27 years later) at taking on Dallas.  Richard Dean Anderson makes a pre-MacGyver appearance in Emerald Point N.A.S., a naval romance set somewhere on the coast of the Southern U.S.  Madeline Kahn got her own titular show Oh Madeline.   We also get to see a pre-NYPD Blue Dennis Franz in the Bay City Blues.   The star-studded Hotel makes its debut featuring a young Connie Sellecca alongside James Brolin and Bette Davis.   Bill Bixby wasn't the only Incredible Hulk star looking for work after the show ended, Lou Ferrigno stars as paramedic John Six in the emergency room drama Medstar.   All in all 1983 feels like the eye of a hurricane (the hurricane of 80s television history that is.)

Joining the ranks of the almost forgotten, yet interesting shows of TVs past is slightly odd entry called Manimal, a Glen A. Larsen production (who also brought us Knight Rider, Battlestar Galactica, Buck Rogers, BJ and the Bear, and Magnum P.I.)  The series centered on animal behavior professor Jonathon Chase who had the unique ability to shape-shift into animal (including mammal, reptile, or fish), which he uses to fight crime, secretly helping out plainclothes cop Brooke McKenzie.   Even though the series was cancelled after eight episodes, it has developed a pretty strong cult following over the years.  From what I can gather the special effects were pretty good, which shouldn't come as a surprise as they were crafted by master artist Stan Winston.  I'd be willing to bet that had the show managed to hang on a little longer, and given a slightly larger production budget, Manimal could have easily become the next Knight Rider.

There were some other fun tidbits in the issue though including an interesting ad for the Atari Service Centers.  At first blush it makes total sense, I mean 1983 was pretty much the peak of their domination and it was just before the crash of the home video game market.  It seems strange though that they were so successful that they could afford to run and staff 1,600 locations across the country.  I'm assuming it was in conjunction with another established company and maybe Warner/Atari either certified/trained some existing staff or maybe just had one employee placed at an existing electronics repair shops.  Seriously though, didn't it make more sense to have customers mail in their systems for repair, even 27 years ago?

Also, I've talked about this before, but I miss all of the spot illustrations that used to pepper magazines, not to mention the paintings for movie posters and advertisements.   There's an awesome watercolor portrait ad for the flick Between Friends, an HBO film starring Elizabeth Taylor and Carol Burnett in this issue.  In the 70s, TV Guide used to have a ton of Jack Davis style illustrations (drawn by Dave Arke) done for movies and specials premiering on the local affiliates that were just awesome, but some time in the early to mid 80s there was a switch to cut & pasted photo collages that were just sort of fugly.  Ever since there's been a steady progression of perfecting the superimposed photo and integrating CG artwork that’s just made most magazine ads and movie posters boring and homogenous.  In addition to the Between Friends art, there's alao a couple of pieces of Arke work, one for the season premiere of Real People and a second for the debut of the show We Got It Made.  Just look at that insanity!

Even though 1983 wasn't all that big for live action television debuts, it was freaking huge for the world of animation, in particular syndicated weekday after-school fare.  Not only did He-Man and the Masters of the Universe start running all over the country (though it's strangely absent from my TV Guide copy so I guess the Canoga Park, California local affiliates didn't carry it), but '83 also saw the debut of the original G.I. Joe sunbow miniseries.  This was the beginning of a boom that would rock the world of animation and usher in hundreds of shows throughout the rest of the 80s and on to today.  If you're curious about that first G.I. Joe mini series you can listen to me wax nostalgic about it with my co-hosts Jerzy Drozd and Kevin Cross in a two-part special of the Saturday Supercast.

One of the things that I completely missed out on in the 80s were a series of prime time specials that gave a sneak preview of the Saturday morning cartoons starting that season.  1983 featured a couple (though one of them is billed as an awards show), one on CBS hosted by Scott Baio fresh off the set of Joni Loves Chachi while the other aired on NBC and was called the Yummy Awards (which was hosted by both Dwight "Howling Mad Murdock" Schultz and Ricky Schroder.)  The CBS special also featured Sorrell Booke and James Best (I'm sure as their Dukes of Hazzard characters Boss Hogg and Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane), as well as previews of shows like the Saturday Supercade line-up (Donkey Kong, Q*Bert, and Frogger), Dungeons and Dragons, and the Biskitts.  The NBC special was a bit more star-studded featuring appearances by Mr. T, Kim "Tootie" Fields & Mindy "Natalie" Cohn from the Facts of Life, Justine Bateman, Bozo, and Gumby.

Also, repeated from the 1982 issue, there's another ad for Beefeater's Delight.  To keep from misquoting myself I'll just provide an excerpt from that previous post:

"Probably the weirdest ad I've seen so far in any of these TV Guides was the small one above called Beefeaters Delight!   From what I can gather the ad is for entire sides of hanging beef at amazing prices, but what I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around is the idea that it's being presented to the general public instead of in another more industry-centric fashion.   I mean, I realize there are a ton of hunters out there that kill, keep and eat entire deer carcasses, but seriously, who invests in an entire half cow?  That's why we have supermarkets right?  I do have to say that the insert advertising 5lbs of hotdogs or Bacon for $.99 a pound is mighty tempting.   I wonder what that would work out to in 2008 dollars?"

Lastly, I found it kind of interesting that the real life husband and wife duo of Alex Karras and Susan Clark not only had the debut of their new sitcom Webster, but also a made-for-TV movie called Maid in America that they also produced.   I guess it was a big year for the couple.

Next time I'll take a look at the 1984 issue which is jam packed with classic TV debuts…

Robotech is one of the main cartoons and toy-lines that I mostly missed out on in the 80s. I say main because of the plethora of shows that hit the airwaves and toys clogging up the aisles at the local Playworld Robotech is one of the more memorable franchises. Cartoon-wise I’d put it right below G.I. Joe, Transformers, He-Man and Thundercats, fleshing out the top six shows, more or less equal with Voltron. Toy-wise it was probably a little farther down once you consider Star Wars and Go-Bots, but it was probably still a bit wider known than say StarCom, Bravestar, or the Dungeons and Dragons toys.

The weird thing about the show, and the main reason that I never got into as a pre-teen is that for all intents and purposes the cartoon is a soap opera. Set in space and featuring awesome transforming semi-robotic aircraft and giant aliens, but a soap opera none-the-less. The few times when I’d tune into an episode all I ever caught were a bunch of guys talking and a whole lot of annoying Minmei. It just looked so boring and I never caught hide nor hair of the awesome looking mecha from the show bumpers. Fast forward to my freshman year of high school. I ended up hanging out alone at a friend’s house afterschool everyday since I attended a school outside of or zone (no bussing to where we lived) and because my friend worked part time in a local grocery store. I’d crash at his house for a few hours waiting for my mom to pick me up after she got off work and there were only a couple of channels that came in decently on my friends TV. One of these channels, our local UHF affiliate channel 69, ended up showing a couple episodes of Robotech each weekday around the time when I was stuck in his house. I lucked out and caught the series from the first episode of the first (of three) series and managed to catch almost every episode at least twice over the course of a couple years. I was now at the perfect age to be totally swept up in the corny melodrama while also still enough of a kid at heart to completely fall head-over-heels for the design of the Veritech fighter jets. I never realized that Takara/Hasbro swiped the toy design from the original Macross show for one of the characters in the Transformers toyline (Jetfire.)

After becoming a huge fan of the show I was now suffering from a severe lack of Robotech merchandise to spend my hard earned allowance on, and it was completely by chance that I first stumbled upon these lenticular puffy stickers originally released by the Imperial toy Company in 1985…

My local comic shop apparently found a huge assortment of the stickers at a Big Lots consignment store and they ended up buying them out and stocking them at the shop. When I came in on a new-comic Wednesday I was struck silent by a bin full of these stickers. I couldn’t believe my luck and ended up picking up like fifteen packages. Over the ensuing years, as my fever for the show died down, I managed to misplace the stickers over a bunch of moves and have regretted it ever since. For some reason these stickers completely eluded me when I was first putting the Peel Here column together. I could never find them on eBay, and even when they did pop up they were horrendously expensive or came in a sealed box of like 500 packs, which was just crazy.

A little while ago my friend Jerzy (of the Art & Story podcast) sent me an almost complete set of the stickers out of the blue. They were a little tattered and worn, but I was super excited to finally have my hands on them again. For some reason they got stuck in a pile of papers and I forgot about them again for awhile. In my effort to start digging up all of my old Branded projects I found them again recently, and then purely by chance I also found some more mint in package at a local flea market, so I finally got off my butt and scanned these in. One of the things I was hoping to achieve with the collection of stickers I’ve amassed in the past four years is to have a representation of all the toylines and cartoons I have nostalgic feeling for, and these stickers have gone a lone way to plugging the Robotech-shaped hole in the collection. I’m still missing some Thundercats and Bravestarr stickers, but there’s always time…

It’s funny, even though I’ve owned these stickers on and off for the past fifteen years I never took the time to read the back of the packaging. I love how random the suggestions of where to stick these stickers becomes, going from notebooks to toes, ears, mittens, and flower pots.

I also think the designers did a good job representing the various mecha from the initial Robotech series. They feature four different Veritech fighters including a few variations on Rick Hunters initial jet (in its various forms as well as in and out of armor), Max Sterling’s fighter, and a couple of generic and training jets. I was also happy to see a sheet with mostly Zentraedi fighters including Miriya’s female battle armor, Khyron’s deluxe battle pod and a basic battle pod. The only thing I’m really missing are some stickers devoted to the actual characters, but these are pretty darn cool, and like the Transformers and Go Bots lenticular stickers, these make good use of the image changing aspects…

I think winter is finally passing in my area and the theme for Spring here at Branded in the 80s is certainly spring cleaning.  Along with diving into my mostly un-read collection of Choose-Your-Own-Adventure-style books, I’m also going to try and dive back into some of the other projects I started on Branded awhile ago, namely looking at my collection of TV Guide Fall Preview issues from 1977-1990.  I've already covered the 1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, & 1982 issues, so this week I thought I'd fill in the gap by taking a look at the 1979 issue…

As you can read in the short segment labeled Changes in the pages above, 1979 was all about change, not only as the decade came to a close, but in the TV landscape as well.  A number of beloved and new hit shows were experiencing drastic cast changes, from the majority of the cast of All in the Family taking a proverbial hike, to Kate Jackson and Radar (Gary Burghoff) leaving Charlie's Angels and M*A*S*H respectively.  Mork & Mindy also saw the dismissal of the matronly but fun Elizabeth Kerr, as well as a diminishing role for Conrad Janis who played Mindy's father in lieu of new cast members including Jay Thomas and Jim Staahl.  Heck even the Ropers left Three's Company making way for Don Knott's return to prime time as Mr. Farley.

On a side note, and I think I've mentioned this sort of advertising in the TV Guides before, but I am still surprised to see the Coke brand so prominently displayed in the above Bacardi rum ad.  I know rum & Cokes are pretty damn common, but it just goes to show how much more loose companies used to be with their image and branding. Also, it's kind of awesome to see dueling tampon ads.  I guess feminine hygiene companies think alike with the same ideas when it comes to promoting just how well their products work.  Honestly, I have to agree that if it works for a gymnast, it'll work for anyone… As for the slate of new shows in the '79-'80 season, though there were only a few stand-outs that would go on to become TV classics, we were introduced to a ton of emerging actors and actresses that would graces our screens for years to come.   Right off the bat we have the show Working Stiffs which features the first big roles for both Jim Belushi and Michael Keaton.  Keaton had done some walk-on and guest star roles before, but this was his first starring role (as Mike O'Rourke, brother to Belushi's Ernie.)   Belushi, though he hadn't done a whole lot of broadcast TV yet was certainly an up-and-comer having done a stint at Second City and of course as the heir-apparent to his real-life brother's insane comic styling.

Some other stars getting their initial breaks were a young Rob Lowe in what looks like a dra-medy (in the vein of 8 is Enough) called A New Kind of Family, Martin Short and Joe Regalbuto (of future Murphy Brown fame, though I'll always know him for his role on Street Hawk) in the Associates (also starring Tim Thomerson who graduated to a ton of great B-movie work in the 80s), Mark Harmon (hot off his appearance in the ginormous mini-series Centennial) in the show 240-Robert, a young Lorenzo Lamas in California Fever, Kim Basinger & Don Johnson in early roles in the adaptation of From Here to Eternity, as well as Rosanna Arquette and Tracey "Growing Pains" Gold in Shirley (yet another widowed mother with a bunch of kids vehicle for Shirley Jones.)  Though none of these shows lasted more than 1 season, all of these actors and actresses would go on to become pretty big stars in either television or on the silver screen in the subsequent decade.   Just goes to show that everyone starts out at the bottom…

There were also a lot of other shows that featured some more established actors and actresses, though none of these lasted all that long either.  Brian Dennehy played single father and hotel detective Arnie Sutter in Big shamus, Little Shamus, James Earl Jones took on the titular role of detective captain Woody Paris as a part time criminology professor, part time sleuth in the show Paris, Robert Conrad put on his best James Bon impression for the spy thriller A Man Called Sloane, Claude Akins headed up the semi-successful Misadventures of Sheriff Lobo, and Louis Gossett Jr. took on the Lazarus Syndrome.

There are a couple of shows that I never got a chance to watch and am really interested in.   One is the Mork & Mindy spin-off Out of the Blue starring James Brogan as an honest to goodness guardian angel to a family of five orphaned kids in Chicago.   I find it fascinating that the writers and producers decided to take an wacky science-fiction comedy and pair it with a wacky theological comedy.  The other sounds like it was scripted just for me, Struck By Lightning, which is a sitcom about the further adventures of the Frankenstein monster (played by the perfectly odd Jack Elam who I know mostly from the Cannonball Run film as the doctor you don’t want sticking you with anything, but he was also in Once Upon a Time in the West, at least for the opening credits) and the descendant of Dr. Frankenstein, science teacher Ted Stein.  Basically Stein inherits an Inn, and while inspecting the property he meets the caretaker Frank who claims to be the 229 year-old monster from Shelly’s novel.  Hilarity ensues, at least I assume as I couldn't find any video on youtube to back this assumption up. I'm also glad to see an ad for an ancient 26" Sony Trinitron television set.  It's like seeing the grandfather of my current 27" Trinitrin that I've had since I first moved out on my own 14 years ago. The Proud-As-a-Peacock NBC T-shirts are pretty neat as well, though honestly, who was rushing out to pick up an NBC T-shirt?  Granted, they’re only five bucks, but c'mon, these should have been free considering all the free promotion and all…

Similar to the insane plastic jogging suits of the 70s and 80s, we also have and ad for Slim-Sleepers, pajamas made out of the waterproof Tyvek material that basically makes you sweat while you sleep.  Now I've used Tyvek for years, not to lose weight mind you, but to ship out packages.  Pretty much most Fed-Ex and USPS "paks" are made of the material which is great for keeping paperwork safe and dry in transit, but seems just this side of insane to consider as sleepwear.  Besides, even if it does work, who wants to wake up in a pool of your own sweat! Not every new show was a bomb in '79 as we got to see the start of a handful of successful series including Hart to Hart, Trapper John, M.D., Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, and the much more down-to-Earth spin-off of Soap, Benson.

Next time I dip into the collection I'll have some highlights from the 1983 Fall Preview issue.

For this week's Awesomely Overdue Books column I thought I'd continue on with some more Find Your Fate books from my collection, in particular some of the more girl-centric volumes.  First up are three volumes of the Jem FYF series, titled Jewels in the Dark (written by Rusty Hallock), The Video Caper (written by Jean Waricha) and The Secret of Rainbow Island (written by Judith Bauer Stamper) respectively.  There were three published Jem Find Your Fate books, though there are an additional three rumored unpublished volumes.

Though not quite as action packed as other shows animated by Sunbow back in the 80s (like G.I. Joe, the Transformers, and the Visionaries), Jem was still exciting, filled with intrigue and had its fair share of science-fiction elements, so much so that I never felt weird watching it after school.   In fact it shared a lot of the aspects that made She-Ra feel more like a cross demographic show, and not just another girl's cartoon.  When I first cracked the cover on the Video Caper I was curious if these books would have the same bad choice pitfalls that he Transformers books featured. I was curious if you could end up getting Jem or one of the Holograms (her fashionable band-mates) killed by choosing too hastily.  I couldn't help myself and I broke one of the cardinal rules of CYOA-style books, I flipped forward to find some of the ending pages, and sure enough, there is a death scene.  I still find this really disconcerting considering these are branded properties and kids can get really invested in the characters, even if they could make different choices next time and have Jem save the day.

Anyway, another concern I had when cracking open these books are just how well the authors handled the material.   Were they "written down" to a kid's level?  Were they just sort of knocked-out considering the format, or did they try and put a little more effort into them?  With the Video Caper I can honestly say that Ms. Waricha dropped the ball a bit.  One of the first lines in the book is so hackneyed it's laughable, "Before you leave , you can't help but notice yourself in the mirror and think how truly outrageous you look…"  'Cause you know that Jem is truly outrageous right?  Truly, truly, truly outrageous.

Along these lines, the choices, or more accurately the paths that you take after making choices, are poorly handled as well.  The initial choice forked in two directions, and if you pick path A, lit leads to path B anyway without advancing the story or adding anything.  It's almost as if there really is no choice.  Also there are only a handful of choices to make with each ensuing path, with most of the pages instructing to turn to a specific page with no decision-making needed.  Actually, in the Secrets of Rainbow Island there are only four choices in the entire book.  Heck the plot even gets left behind in a number of the paths.  In the Video Caper the build up to the story involves a couple of speed-bumps that are completely left out of the second half of the story including the fact that Jem and her alter ego Jerrica are expected to tour London together with Jerrica's more-or-less boyfriend Rio (and unless Synergy projects a hologram version of one or the other, this ain't happening.)  Also a princess is abducted in the first half of the story and in the second half this plot point is forgotten in some of the paths.

I was also surprised to see that the books were written in the second person, so the reader is not only a character in the story, but takes on the role of Jem. The Transformers books, a couple of which were also written by Judith Bauer Stamper, were in a more comfortable 3rd person narrative where the reader was urged to make choices for the Autobot and human characters.  So not only can a path end with Jem's death, in essence the reader dies along with her.  Again, for kids I would think this could be heady stuff.  All in all I'd have to say that these Jem Find Your Fate books are pretty much at the bottom of the CYOA-style book barrel.  Not only are they painful to read, they're also not illustrated, so there isn't even fun stuff to look at.  These were a total cash grab by Ballantine who must have done the math and figured anything with the Jem logo would turn a profit regardless of who badly written they were.  It's a shame too because the cartoon was pretty good and I'd hate to think there were any girls turned off to the series because of the books.

The other book I wanted to mention is titled Morgan Swift and the Kidnapped Goddess (written by Sara Hughes in 1986.)  From what I can gather the main character Swift, was created by Random House/Ballentine as an answer to Indiana Jones for girls.   Swift is a high school science teacher with a keen fashion sense and a penchant for exploring jungles and pyramids in her off time.  There are two Swift Find Your Fate books (including M.S. and the Treasure of Crocodile Key), as well as a few prose books also published by Ballantine/Random House in 1985-6.  The two Swift FYF books are actually part of a larger series of Find Your Fate books that also includes a series of Indiana Jones and James Bond (all based on A View to a Kill) books.  I suppose this was considered their action/adventure line of Find Your Fate books, though all of the books really fall into that category.

This volume is also written in the second person, which is a format very common to CYOA-style writing and one that grates on my nerves.  Probably the lest used in the history of fiction, the second person narrative is by design an affront to the reader's sensibilities, forcing them to agree with statements of character and desire.  For instance, in the Morgan Swift book there's a passage that reads:

"She's your science teacher, only the coolest thing to grace the halls of Coolidge High.  She's wearing a dark purple jumpsuit and her red leather cowboy boots.  She never looks like anybody else, and she always looks great."

Now I can get onboard with the idea of the author using the second person perspective to force one idea on the reader, say that we think Ms. Swift is the coolest thing on two feet.  But to further suggest that the eye-piercing matchup of a dark red jumpsuit and red leather boots looks great is just too much for me.  At that moment I'm ripped from the story and all good faith from the author's words are gone.  My suspension of disbelief is shattered, and yes I realize that this is just a kid's book, but it shouldn't matter.  I never feel this way reading Judy Blume or James Howe, both of which hold up to adult scrutiny.   Again, the second person is just a very difficult perspective to sell to the reader.  You have to REALLY be able to target the intended audience, and people, as much as we might believe can be completely predictable, are usually too varied to target in such a manner.

Similarly there's an issue with prior knowledge that is in my opinion impossible to pull off without some sort of amazing familiarity to back it up.  Another line in the book reads, "It's on the tip of your tongue to ask, 'Is that when you were in the monastery?'"  Before this reference we literally know nothing about Ms. Swift except that she's qualified to teach high school science, has horrible fashion sense and has spent at least a day in Southeast Asia.   So the author is forcing the reader to have instant background knowledge of Swift, and it's very jarring.  This is where second person leads and it's a very perilous and annoying road.  At least after this reveal the reader is informed of a slew of other rumors about Ms. Swift (she used to date Sting!), so later on this sort of trick will work better as we actually have prior knowledge.  Anyway, even though the book is written in the second person, this time you play the sidekick, a student, Shortround to Morgan Swift's Indiana Jones.

When it comes to decision making time this raises another unfortunate issue as Swift is the main protagonist and it's laughable that when the chips are down she'll rely on you to lead the way.  The first choice is presented after it's revealed that your town has a traveling art exhibit from Meronga.  After bumping into Ms. Swift at the museum she explains a little bit about a priceless wooden statue, when all of a sudden three masked men burst in and steal the artifact.  Without thinking or hesitation you follow Swift outside to her car and speed after the thieves when you're presented with a choice of two paths.  Honestly at this point Swift is in control so why is the reader prompted to decide?

Anyway, even for these pitfalls the book reads much better than the Jem volumes.  The Swift character is strange, a mix between Indiana Jones, MacGyver and a witch.  The book does have some great illustrations by Ann Meisel as well.

In future installments of Awesomely Overdue Books I'll get to at least one other "mostly for girls" series, a handful of Dungeons & Dragons branded romance CYOA-style books.

Recently a couple of blogs that I frequent celebrated their four-year anniversaries (Old Man Musings and Cavalcade of Awesome), and it got me thinking about Branded’s upcoming 4-year (which hits this coming Wednesday the 17th), but not necessarily about any jubilation. Though I’m glad to have stuck it out this long and I’ve met all sorts of great people since starting this site, what I really started thinking about was the fact that I have all kinds of stuff that I’ve accumulated over the years, specifically to write about, which has been pushed to the side. On a side note, my wife and I have been watching an inordinate amount of episodes of Clean House recently and though we’re no where near as clutter intensive than any of those families, we’ve been asking ourselves what we would do in their situation (where they’re encouraged to donate or sell the majority of their stuff for the good of an organized clean house.) The wife had even commented on my ever growing collection of Choose Your Own Adventure style books the other day, wondering when I was ever going to get around to reading them and I mentally put myself in the Clean House mode and tried to imagine getting rid of them.

All I could think of was Hell No. But I have to admit that they’ve been sitting for over two years unread (in fact, here’s where I first mentioned getting bitten by the CYOA collecting bug almost exactly two years ago), and I began to wonder when I’d have the time to tackle them. Well, now is as good a time as any I guess. I decided to start with my run of Transformers Find Your Fate books.

The Find Your Fate books published by Ballantine were potentially the biggest single competitor of Bantam’s Choose Your Own Adventure series bringing all sorts of brand-name properties to this style of children’s book entertainment. With such branded luminaries as Indiana Jones, James Bond, Dr. Who, G.I. Joe, Jem, Tales From the Crypt, Thundercats, the Three Investigators, Golden Girl and Transformers, Ballantine was betting on character familiarity to win out over the originality and popularity of the CYOA series. Ultimately Ballentine published sixty seven books under the FYF heading and they ended the series in 1987 (trying unsuccessfully to revive the franchise in 1995 with a single volume of Find Your Unfortunate Fate Tales From the Crypt), bowing out to the CYOA empire (which ran until 1998 initially and had over two hundred entries published.) Though these two publishing houses clashed throughout the 80s on the CYOA-style adventure book front, the ultimate irony is that both companies are now divisions of Random House.

Anyway, as far as the Find Your Fate series is considered, for a nostalgia buff like me, these books are all gems because of their branded nature. Though I didn’t have any Find Your Fate books while growing up, I can imagine how awesome it must have been to more or less get a chance to control the actions of some of your favorite cartoon and movie characters while reading about their adventures. To me it seems like one step closer in getting into that character’s head than just playing with a toy, and much more involving than any of the branded Atari games of the period (for all of their generic boring adventures, e.g. E.T.) So what were the Transformers books like? First off they were part of the Junior subset of FYF books, so they only clock in at around 75 pages, and they’re slightly larger in format, sort of like a pre-chapter book.

There were nine books in the series, the first six of which were released between December 1985 and April 1986 and were concerned (more or less) with pre-Transformers the Movie events in the timeline, while the last three books were published in September 1986, a month after the movie hit theaters and they involved the post movie characters. Here’s the list:

#1, The Dinobots Strike Back (written by Casey Todd)

#2, Battle Drive (written by Barbara & Scott Siegel)

#3, Attack of the Insecticons (written by Lynn Beach)

#4, Earthquake (written by Ann Matthews)

#5, Desert Flight (written by Jim Razzi)

#6, Decepticon Poison (written by Judith Bauer Stamper)

#7, Autobot Alert! (written by Judith Bauer Stamper)

#8, Project Brain Drain (written by Barbara & Scott Siegel)

#9, The Invisibility Factor (written by Josepha Sherman)

William Schmidt handled the artwork on all nine of the books, and was responsible for executing one of the more interesting aspects of this series of books, namely the choice to use the toy designs for the characters rather than the cartoon incarnations. This was sort of a running theme with a lot of the Transformers merchandising, in particular the early Marvel comics and a bunch of stickers and lunchboxes (which heavily used repurposed toy-packaging art.) Though a lot of toys resembled their cartoon counterparts pretty closely, there are some glaring exceptions like Ironhide and Bummblebee who look quite different, and in Ironhide’s case not at all like a robot. Also fans of the toys will surely mock Megatron’s, um, manly stature as the design of the action figure ended up with an unfortunate placement of his gun-mode’s trigger. So to see these weird designs pop up in the artwork of the books can be kind of comical at times. Also, it’s kind of weird to see Schmidt re-draw some of the characters from their exact pose on the toy packaging artwork, again something that longtime fans will notice immediately. My favorite contribution by Schmidt though involves his use of reference material for some of the background elements in the ninth book, The Invisibility Factor…

The design of a scientist’s spaceship is a direct rip of the Millennium Falcon and later on in the story the Autobots are flying through an asteroid field in a ship that is unmistakably one of the Imperial Shuttles from Return of the Jedi. I sure hope those Autobots have the proper code clearance to get by the Star Destroyers and to continue on to Endor…

Schmidt also worked on a series of Star Wars novels in the 80s, the Lando Calrissien books, so my guess is that he had some SW reference material lying around and decided, "Why not?"

Along with the choice to use the character designs from the toys as opposed to the cartoon, the writers were also given notes that appear to have come from the Marvel comics instead of the Sunbow show. The most obvious example of this is the inclusion of the human character Buster Witwicky in place of the more common character Spike from the cartoon. In both the comics and the cartoons (and the new movies as well, though Shia Labeof is playing a variation named Sam) the Autobots are aided by the Witwicky family, namely Spike (in the cartoons), Buster (in the comics), and their father Sparkplug (comics and cartoons.) Whereas Buster was initially the same character as Spike for the comic book continuity, he was eventually retroactively turned into Spike Brother when Spike was introduced into the comic series as the Headmaster counterpart to Fortress Maximus (as he was also on the toy.) Anyway, the books feature Buster, which leads me to believe that the authors were probably given a series bible that related to the comics, as well as character designs from the actual toys. My guess is that this was a little bit confusing to kids who didn’t read the comics and were just fans of the cartoon.

Similarly some of the Tranformers characters are miscast in the last three books of the Find Your Fate series, in particular Hot Rod who hadn’t turned into Rodimus Prime even though the books feature Galvatron, so the stories are definitely post-movie in continuity. Maybe the writers were working from a bible that didn’t reveal the ending of the movie? Also there are a handful of characters that pop up in these last three books which were killed off in the movie, namely Prowl.

All in all, as CYOA-style books go, these Transformers Find Your Fate Junior books are sort of on the annoying side in that they read as if there is only one true path through the story. Though I’m not steeped in the CYOA community (if there even is one, and I’m sure there is), my guess would be that there is a fundamental rift between fans as to how the books read in terms of decision-making. The are two camps as I see it, one in which the decision trees give the impression that there is a right and wrong choice, and by continuing to make the “right” decision leads to the some sort of prize (be it a longer more satisfying read or the “best” ending), and a second in which the decision-making is less about winning the adventure and more about crafting the story as you go.

As a kid I fell into the former camp, but as an adult reader I’m way more interested in the latter concept, that this style of writing is to make the adventures more involving by giving the reader a chance to participate. This also strengthens the idea that you could read these books numerous times choosing differently each time to get a completely different, yet satisfying experience. The thing is that not all CYOA-style books are written so that you can feel satisfied in making whatever choice you desire, in particular these Transformers volumes. In a lot of cases the choices are clearly right and wrong, and by choosing the “wrong” option you’re directed to a bitter end for the characters involved. This in essence punishes the reader for making a hasty, in most cases violent or greedy, choice and promotes the idea that there is only one correct path through the story and the trick is to find it. In most of these Transformers books there is one point that a choice leads to a character’s grisly death. I actually find this kind of disturbing as it really puts this outcome in the reader’s hands, and for some kids this must have been heart wrenching. Heck watching Optimus die in the ’86 movie was bad enough without me having to feel responsible on top! Little Bobby is so excited about the prospect of defeating Galvatron one and for all that he decides to have Hot Rod and Kup take an invisibility device away from it’s designer, only to have Hot Rod disintegrated by a booby trapped self-destruct option on the device.

On the other hand, maybe this is the sort of tactic that really hammers home moral responsibility, much more so than the famous PSAs at the end of so many of 80s cartoons. Taking the horror movie route and illustrating that bad behavior results in death.

I do have to say that the stories end up mirroring the three act structure of the cartoon episodes pretty well, and the overall concepts are relatively fun. The various writers do a pretty good job of sticking to the overall character traits as well, so these are a fun way to expand on the universe of the cartoons and comics if you’re a fan of the Transformers. Oh and for all you kids out there, if we are going to treat these books as if they’re a game to win, don’t cheat by writing in the book…

Though there's a distinct drought of upcoming 80s cartoons being released on DVD, there are plenty of interesting live action 80s television titles that are about to start popping up on shelves.   If I had to make a guess as to three 80s shows that I figured would never see the light of day on DVD it would have been Small Wonder, Street Hawk, and Max Headroom.  Amazingly enough these three titles are actually becoming a reality thanks to the folks at Shout! Factory (which is quickly becoming my favorite outlet for DVD production and distribution.)

Small Wonder was one of those shows that filled the gap between afterschool cartoon watching and primetime when my parents took control over the TV.   I'm pretty sure I remember watching it on the USA network in first run syndication, and for some reason I seem to remember catching it alongside episodes of Out of this World as sort of a double whammy of crazy girl power insanity (OotW was a show that revolved around a girl named Evie that has some nifty alien powers, in particular the power to stop time around her by putting her fingers together, because her father was an alien.)  For those not familiar, Small Wonder was a sitcom that ran from 1985 to 1989 and revolved around a nuclear family that consisted of genius engineer father Ted Lawson, his wife Joan, their biological daughter Jamie and their adopted robot daughter Vicki (a project Ted brought home from his robotics firm dayjob.)  The series has the same basic premise as ALF, with the Lawson family getting used to their exceptional new family member while also trying to keep her robotic secret from neighbors, friends and family.  Honestly, I figured this was one of those shows that would fester in the mire of obscurity, in particular because were no big stars attached that have gone on to create any buzz for an archival release of the show.  But it's becoming clear that this is where Shout! Factory really excels when it comes to picking DVD projects.  Small Wonder season 1 is already available on DVD…

If that series wasn't obscure enough, coming on July 13th (just in time for my birthday) we're also going to see the release of Street Hawk the complete series…

Before the internet, Street Hawk was one of those shows that I only managed to catch a couple episodes of before it fell off of network TV and since then also seemed to fall off the face of the earth.  I could never convince my friends that the show even existed.  Street Hawk featured an awesome futuristic urban combat motorcycle and helped round out the collection of vehicle-based action shows of the 80s alongside stuff like Airwolf, Knightrider, the Dukes of Hazzard, and to an extent, the A-Team.  Starring Rex Smith as Jesse Mach, an ex-motorcycle cop recruited by a secret government agency to fight urban crime at speeds up to 300 miles per hour, Street Hawk featured my second favorite vehicle (right behind the chopper in Airwolf).  In fact, it's probably because of these two shows that I fell so in love with Brad Turner and his motorcycle/helicopter Condor from the cartoon M.A.S.K. as it joined two of my favorite designs into one badass mode of transportation.  The Street Hawk series was more of a hit in the UK, receiving a series of picture books and novelizations, though there was at least one lunch box released in the US.  There was also an unofficial G.I. Joe figure released abroad that came with a similar black motorcycle.

Rounding out the obscure TV DVD releases in August is the complete Max Headroom.  Starring Matt Frewer and Jeffrey Tambor, Max Headroom was one heck of a crazy sci-fi show whose virtual titular character spilled over into the mainstream in the 80s becoming a cult product spokesman, most notably for New Coke and MTV.   The series used speculative fiction to respond to the insane climate of crass commercialism and greed in the mid 80s, in particular on television, and honestly seemed like a very unlikely candidate for release on DVD.

Between these upcoming titles and Shout! Factory's recent re-release of classic 80s cartoons the Transformers and G.I. Joe, not to mention releases of shows like Freaks and Geeks, My Two Dads, Mr. Belvedere, Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors, and Punky Brewster, the company is really winning me over as a loyal fan.  Shout! Has even snagged the rights to continue releasing the Facts of Life on DVD.  I'm hoping they get similar distribution rights to stalled DVD releases like Silver Spoons and Perfect Strangers…

Just the other day I was putting away some books when I came across my copy of the awesome Wacky Packages archive that was put out by Abrams a few years ago.  I don't typically pick up many coffee table books, but this one was special as the design was just fantastic and I'm a big fan of Topps sticker cards (as evident in the Peel Here archives), in particular the painted non-movie parody sets like the Garbage Pail Kids, Weird Wheels, and of course Wacky Packages.  I never got my hands on any Wacky Packs as a kid so the Abrams book was the perfect opportunity to acquaint myself with the first seven sets of sticker cards…

As I mentioned the design of the book is super cool, and it's what initially sucked me in.  The volume is hardback, but in a smaller scale (about the size of a premium format paperback), and has the coolest waxpaper dust jacket that evokes a fresh pack of Topps sticker cards.   The book contains all the stickers from the initial seven series of Wacky Packages, one sticker per page (so each painting is presented about twice as large as the original printed stickers.)  There's also an interview with Art Spiegelman, who worked on this and other Topps card sets in the 70s and 80s.   After flipping through the book about a million times I was hoping that Abrams would think about releasing similar volumes for other Topps products, in particular a series dedicated to the Garbage Pail Kids.  Heck, I'd love to have a nice volume that just had the first couple sets of GPKs which would work as a nice reference piece as well as a great John Pound art book.  Besides, the 1st series GPKs are pretty rare and expensive so it would be nice to have an affordable way of getting a nice close look at the artwork from that set.

Well, even though I haven't seen any movement on that front, I was pretty jazzed to see that Abrams has a second Wacky Packages book slated to hit store shelves in April of this year.  The new volume is called New, New, New and looks like it will contain series 8 through 14 and will feature an introduction by Topps veteran Jay Lynch…

There were a total of 18 sets of Wacky Packages produced between 1973 and 1991 as well as an additional 7 new series sets produced between 2004 and 2007 for a grand total of 25 sets.  I'm hoping that Abrams puts together at least one more volume that contains the final 4 original series sets, though I'm sure a lot rides on the sales of this second book.  You can pick up both volumes for around $30 which is still a great deal when you consider the price of the original out of print sticker sets on the secondary market.  Still crossing my fingers that we'll see some sort of Garbage Pail Kids book in the near future as well...

So aside from some odds and ends here and there, new releases of out of print 80s cartoons on DVD have really been slowing down lately (though we did finally get Scooby Doo's All Star Laff-a-Lympics on DVD.)  I think a big part of this is a mixture of the switch from DVD to Blu-Ray and the general decline in DVD sales.  Just like with VHS when DVDs became cheap there was a too-quick boom where people bought tons of them and then a year or two later were scratching their heads trying to remember why they accumulated a collection of 300 plus movies and television shows.  DVD collecting is one of my main hobbies, in particular building specific libraries (e.g. 60s, 70s, & 80s cartoons and all of the flicks from the 80s that I loved as a kid), so even though I have what seems like six million DVDs I'm not phased in the least. Back to the 80s cartoons though, it's kind of a shame since there are still a handful of shows that I think really deserve to be available on DVD (like Kidd Video, the Dinosaucers, the Visionaries, Teen Wolf, TigerSharks, and Jem just to name a few.) 

There are a couple of promising movements in the realm of DVD releasing though, namely print-on-demand technology and anthology sets.  Amazon has been playing around with a p.o.d. model by partnering with MTV/Nickelodeon on a series of 90s releases like Doug, the Rugrats, the Maxx, the Head, and Rocko's Modern Life.  I'm not sure how well these titles are selling, but I can say that I've been more than happy with the quality of both the Maxx and Rocko DVDs, and I'd love to see some future releases of Ahh! Real Monsters, Pete & Pete season 3, Hey Dude, Salute Your Shorts, and maybe some 80s titles as well like You Can't Do That on Television or a best-of Pinwheel.  Similarly, Warner Bros has also been playing around with p.o.d. with their Warner Archives releases, but so far I've found the selection to be wanting and the prices are way too high (but you can finally get Lilly Tomlin's Incredible Shrinking Woman and the Rankin/Bass Life and Adventures of Santa Claus, which is awesome.)  The one company that's really got me excited though is Shout! Factory which has decided to start their own p.o.d. service that's specializing in continuing releases of shows that have received initial sets that didn’t sell well and have since stalled like C.O.P.S. and Mr. Belvedere.  I'm crossing my fingers that there is a volume 2 release of Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors in the cards…

I'm not quite as interested in the anthology releases that have been coming out, mainly from Warner Brothers, but there is one that has peaked my interest called Saturday Morning Cartoons: 1980s, Vol. 1...

Warner has previously released two volumes each of 1960s and 1970s sets that are interesting, but unfortunately they were a little off-the-mark in my opinion because they contained episodes of shows already available on DVD.  If there’s one practice I hate with DVDs it's double dipping, and these are the worst because in order to get episodes of shows like the Herculoids or Shazzan you have to also buy episodes of the Flintstones and Hong Kong Phooey.  Nothing against those two latter shows, but they're already available on DVD and if you happen to own them than these episodes are just taking up valuable real estate on the anthology releases. I think Warner has finally gotten the message though, and with the 1st 1980s release they concentrating on putting out a collection of shows that have never been on DVD before.  The set consists of single episodes of the following eleven shows:

Mr. T

Thundarr the Barbarian

Dragon’s Lair

The Flintstone Kids

Galtar and the Golden Lance

The Biskitts

The Completely Mental Misadventures of Ed Grimley

The Monchichis

Chuck Norris: Karate Kommandos

Tex Avery’s the Kwicky Koloa Show

Goldie Gold & Action Jack

Though I'd love full season sets of Thundarr and Mr. T, I'm glad at least that these shows are going to see the light of day on DVD.  When I first started collecting cartoons on DVD my mission was to get 1 episode of every show I watched as a kid on DVD, and this set will fill in a good chunk of those gaps.  I can only hope that they continue this trend with at least a second volume.  I'm not sure what shows Warner holds the rights to (even though I realize they own a good chunk of Ruby Spears and Hanna Barbera), but I'd love to see some episodes of Turbo Teen, Pac-Man, Teen Force, Astro and the Space Mutts, Fangface, Captain Caveman, the Frankenstones, The Shirttales, Rubik the Amazing Cube, the Snorks and Kidd Video.

Oh and while I'm on the subject of 80s cartoon releasing, I have to say that there is another "innovation" that's begun to take a foothold lately that I'm not a big fan of, iTunes only digital downloads.  Whereas I'm all for the idea of more streaming and downloadable content, I hate it when releases are subject to only one medium.  It was recently announced that both the Dinosaucers and the Karate Kid cartoons are going to be available on iTunes.   I'd love to have the Dinosaucers on DVD, but maybe I’ll have to settle for watching them on the computer (or eventually on an iPad maybe?)