centurions

monkeyFLASHmonkeyBACK… The Toys That Got Away

Posted on by sgottahurt

The year is 2006.  The 20th Anniversary Edition Optimus Prime has just been released.  Upon hearing this, something else might have been released… in my pants…

When I was a child, there was nothing I wanted more than Optimus Prime.  The problem was that he cost $20, and I had a difficult time saving up a score of buckeroos.  There was always something else I wanted that cost exactly what I had, so alas… no Optimus Prime.

UNTIL NOW:

Hellz yes.

My dream has been not only met, but exceeded.  This celebratory edition may not include the weapons base trailer, but he looks just like the cartoon – in robot and vehicle form!  It’s an insane representation!

So what broken dreams are left floating around my adolescent heart, you wonder?

They are, in no particular order:

  • Centurions – Wild Weasel

This went to Sam Rockwell, right? It was Jake Rockwell? Oh well.

You might not remember Centurions for their cartoon or toys (there were 65 episodes produced!), but I will never forget this cool vehicle idea.  In retrospect, the real world application of it wouldn’t fly roll past production, and in further analysis, I probably liked it because it reminded me of TRON (you probably don’t remember that old 1982 movie either).

  • Star Wars – Tatooine Skiff

Everybody wanted this; nobody had it.

This one still didn’t live up to the Desert Skiff we all wanted with every fiber of The Force, but it was better than what was originally offered.  And too bad it came out after I started collecting M.A.S.K.

  • M.A.S.K. – Razorback

This car could arch its back. For some reason.

I still consider M.A.S.K. the best toy collection of my youth (StarCom was a close second), plus I was blessed in prolonging my longing for the vehicles I missed the first time around when they were getting dumped in KayBee Toy Stores years after they were gone from store shelves… on clearance.  I never got a second chance to get Razorback, but I still have dreams about finding them still (this is 100% true).

  • Transformers – Grimlock

Me, Sean, want Grimlock badly.

Perhaps there’s a 20th Anniversary Grimlock on the horizon?  How about 25th?  30th?

InASense, Lost… Commercials For Quote-Unquote Religions

Posted on by sgottahurt

I remember being a lad of about 29 years old, and I finally gathered the nerve to ask my mom, “Where do babies come from?”

I often think back to my childhood, and remember Saturday mornings as a kid.  Rolling out of bed from underneath my taped together Garbage Pail Kid posters.  Grabbing a box of Cocoa Krispies and the biggest bowl I could handle.  Turning on the TV without a remote control because we had none.  Zoning out to crappy yet awesome cartoons and the commercials that sold me on Transformers and Star Wars and Centurions and M.A.S.K. with little to no effort.  Then there would come along one of these ads:

Granted, it’s not one of the most heartwarming, but very often, they’d catch me by surprise and effect me on a personal level.  Gee, maybe I should help my neighbor shovel the snow instead of throwing snowballs at them from my fort, I might consider.  What I didn’t realize at the time was that it was a COMMERCIAL FOR A RELIGION!  If I wasn’t born and raised Roaming Recovering Roman Catholic, seeing Jesus H. Christ’s name up there might have been a red alert, but I was, so it didn’t.  (Also, I wasn’t raised in a way that told me we were the only ones that were right, so at least I had that going for me.)

So now this little vid is making it’s way around the web.  I recieved it via a link in an email from frequent idea spurner Dave, and I watched it in similar wonder to the old LSD, er, I mean LDS commercials.  It was beautiful, and in fact made me happy to be alive.  Damn YouTube and their header captions:

I guess what I’m saying is it’s much more effective than this old thang:

In other words, how can so many inches of Tom Cruise can be wrong?  (My guess: 60 of his 67…)