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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 obviously 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 obviously 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 obviously 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 obviously 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?)

So by "next week" I guess I really meant almost-a-month.  I didn't plan on getting sick twice in the past month, not to mention the latter bout lasting for almost two weeks straight.  Stupid Bronchitis.   Anyway, I'm still hacking up a lung, but I believe I can think straight enough to write about the World of Coke…

As I mentioned in the last post, the wife and I made our first couple trips to the World of Coke here in Atlanta this past November and I had no idea how much of a weird effect it'd have on me.  For all intents and purposes I cut myself off of carbonated soft drinks a couple years ago, only breaking my vow of non-soda when I see a new variety or something along the line of the recent Pepsi Throwback products.  When we hit the World of Coke museum I was also preparing myself to indulge in their insane 60-odd flavor tasting room, hoping to sample some interesting concoctions from all over the globe.  But before I get to that I thought I'd talk a little bit about the museum and the self guided tours offered by Coca Cola. One of the main reasons we chose to visit was that we were looking to spend the day in the city and we wanted to hit something in addition to the Georgia Aquarium, but we didn’t want to go broke in the process.  At $15 per person, admission into the museum is only a little bit more expensive than going to see a movie these days, so it seemed like a fun, cheap way to spend the morning.  We were also sort of curious about the new WoC building since the last time we were in this part of Atlanta it was still under construction.  The area it self is pretty nice.  In addition to the interesting architecture of the building (including a wild three-story-tall coke bottle suspended in an adjoining glass structure – not pictured below), there's a pretty decent-sized grassy park area in the rear of the museum (sort of in between the WoC and the aquarium) that looks like it would be great for picnics downtown.

I can't speak for the previous location, but the design and layout of the new building is pretty nice, though there are some annoying traffic issues.   Basically, when you enter the museum there are three queuing areas before you're left to your own devices for the two self-guided tours, gallery and soda tasting areas.  The first room is potentially the most boring as it’s the only official queuing area with only a few statues and some flat screen TVs talking up the importance of Coke.  The second room is an interesting exhibit of Coke signage, as well as a couple cases of antique memorabilia (and some Coke-inspired paintings by Norman Rockwell), where a Coke tour guide shares some trivia and gives an overview of what to expect in the museum.  Though this area is basically another way to corral the visitors for a bit, there are a ton of things to keep your attention including a couple of awesome vintage Coke machines…

After a fifteen minute spiel on the virtues of soda advertising the crowd is ushered into another room, a decent sized theater that acts as the third and final queue before you get to explore the museum.   The theater features short animated film called Inside the Happiness Factory, which is a much longer version of the weird Coke commercial that aired continuously in movie theaters a couple years ago.  Basically the whole thing is a fantastical take on what happens after you put a quarter (how long has it been since you could score a Coke for a quarter) into a Coke machine and the insane process that the bottle goes through before it's vended to the customer.  Propaganda at its finest, the film is sort of mind-melting when you try and consider the target audience and the process behind the story and character design.  Honestly, this thing is all over the place, but instead of shooting for an upbeat, broad bit of schmaltziness (like the I'd-like-to-buy-the-world-a-Coke campaign of the early 70s) you can see the creators trying to specifically target all sorts of age groups and interests.  There's some weird Gary Larsen-esque Farside-style humor in a sequence that involves snowmen being put into chipper-shredders to cool a Coke bottle right alongside some Blue Collar Comedy Tour style hick humor featuring two bumbling guy's guys.   The overall character design is very alien in nature (think Close Encounters mixed with the Thumb Tech Deck figures) that evokes the custom vinyl toy movement.  There's weird sexual innuendo, a giant slug in what I can only describe as flying bondage attire, and inexplicable anthropomorphic furry lips on spiked dog leashes.   Now I'm not saying I'm an authority on what does and doesn't make for audience-bridging pop culture, but I'm really surprised at how "on board" the company seems to be with this campaign.  There's even an official comic book!  Well, I guess if Max Headroom managed to capture the hearts and minds of walks of like 25 years ago, then lollipop sucking, baton-twirling thumb-women have a shot…

The first time the wife and I sat though it we were sort of left in a daze of shock and awe.  I do have to say though, that upon future visits to the museum this short film becomes just this side of unbearable as you have to pass through the theater to get to the museum so you have to watch it every time you go.   It's sort of commendable in that it appears that Coca Cola took a cue from Disney theme parks in the crowd control and flow department, but unlike Disney you're sort of punished upon repeat visits.

Anyway, after the film ends you're escorted into a very bright atrium that opens up to the various sections of the museum.  On the ground floor there are three sections, a meet and greet photo-op area for the Coca Cola polar bear characters (again in the best Disney fashion), and two self-guided tour opportunities.  One of the tours takes you through the history of the brand, beginning in a recreation of an 19th century drug store/soda fountain and continuing on through a variety of Coke highlights including antique bottles and merchandising, international signage and brands, and artifacts from Coke's various sponsorships (including the Olympics and the on-board Coke dispenser used by NASA on space missions.)  The highlight of this tour was what I like to call the Wall of Awesome…

…that features around a 100 different bottles/cans/cartons of Coca Cola brand beverages from all over the world and all throughout the company's history.  I'm a huge fan of branding and package design so it was awesome to get a chance to stroll back in time to see vintage cans of Surge, Cherry Coke, Tab, and OK, as well as bottles of Mello Yello, Mister Pibb, and the small old school Styrofoam-paper-wrapped bottle of Diet Coke.   Noticeably absent from the wall was a can of New Coke, but there is one hiding in a display elsewhere in the museum.  The second tour focuses on the mechanics of bottling and distribution with areas of working equipment that's busy packing cases and mechanically carrying bottles of Coke up to the tasting area (more on that in a later post.) The second floor of the museum features four areas including two more theaters, a gallery, and the coveted tasting area. 

The gallery features, from what I can gather, is a rotating selection of Coke-inspired artwork as well as two other exhibits, a mini, multi-media display that covers the New Coke controversy and a recreation nook with Coke-inspired furniture and a collection of Coca Cola pins.  Then there are the two theaters, one in a separate room that features a very zany 3-D film complete with wind and water spritzing effects, and a second that more open and features reels of various Coca Cola commercials from both around the world and throughout the last 60 or so years.  Again, you can so see Disney's influence in the 3-D film which tries it's best to mimic the experience of the 3-D films at the main Disney theme parks (the Bug's Life flick at Animal Planet, the Muppets flick at Hollywood Studios, the Honey I shrunk the Audience flick at Epcot, and Disney's Philharmagic at the Magic Kingdom.)  Unfortunately, instead of focusing on entertainment the film is yet another sledge-hammer-to-the-head advertisement.  By this point the museum was completely living up to my expectation of being strung out on Coca Cola propaganda.  As much as I love branding, it's kind of draining to sit through hours of programming like this. Luckily Coke saves the best experience for last, the Tasting Area.

In part 2 of this look at the World of Coke I'm going to delve into the overall tasting area experience…

So, I thought I'd start off this new column with a quick explanation of why I wanted to start writing about bubbly colored sugar water, as well as to sort of backdate the column to include some pieces I wrote about six million years ago that really seem to fit into this whole idea.

First, the backdating.  Content-wise on this site, one of the first things that I couldn't wait to write about on this site was my love of the 7-Eleven Slurpee, and the various related frozen soda-esque drinks that dot the landscape of fast food joints, gas stations, and convenience stores in America.  While breaking down all of the various nostalgic memories of food-related items into categories, I can't help but notice that a few float to the top.   When I think of fast food, I think of Long John Silvers.  Favorite at-home food item as a kid = Chef Boyardee Mini Raviolis.  And when I think of my favorite drinks, Slurpees are right up there at the top.

As a kid I wasn't really allowed to drink much soda.   Usually I was permitted my fill of Shirley Temples while dining at Red Lobster on special occasions, or whenever we hit a fast food joint, which was pretty rare.   The only exceptions were a free pass to get a Slurpee anytime we'd hit a 7-Eleven, or an Icee when we went to K-Mart. At the time I never equated frozen drinks with soda, most likely because I tended to stray from the basic Coke version of these frosty beverages in favor of whatever fruit flavor was available at the time.  But when you break it down, most of these frozen drinks are just slightly less carbonated sodas, so the series of article/reviews I did feel like they fit into the new column's tone and content.   I've also written about some crazy sodas over the years, so I figured for simplicity's sake (at least as far as making the site archives nice and neat) I'd include all of these past bits.

Now as far as why I all of a sudden have the bug to write about soda, well that came about this past November when the wife and I made out first visit to the World of Coke museum here in Atlanta.  Though I've lived in and around the Atlanta area for the past 20 years I never made it over to this liquid sugar shrine, and while twiddling our thumbs in boredom one weekend it finally seemed like it was time to check it out.  Honestly, I wasn't expecting the museum to alleviate my boredom as it really does seem like a hokey cash-grab by one of the nations largest companies, not to mention that it was almost certain to be two or three hours of in-your-face advertising that I was paying for the privilege to sit through.

While my cynicism for the experience was more or less confirmed, I had to admit that there was a charm to the place, in particular the final stretch of the self-guided tour which consisted of a free, all-you-can-drink tasting area.  This was the section I was really looking forward to having had an inkling of what it would be like after a couple recent visits to Disney's Epcot which houses a miniature version of this tasting room in the Future World section of the park called Club Cool.  Whereas there were only 8 flavors to choose from at Epcot, the full on World of Coke tasting area features over 60 different Coca Cola brand products.  I scoffed when the tour guide challenged everyone to try all the flavors, and then I left the museum with an intense tummy ache after only making my way through 50 off varieties.

Not being one that backs down from a stupid challenge, especially a stupid pop culture challenge, the wife and I decided to go back to the museum two weeks later determined to not only try each and every drink, but to also write up some reviews and thoughts.  You know, for content on Branded.  Anyway, after achieving this inane diabetes-inducing goal I inadvertently got soda fever and was curious about how many different varieties were peppering our local grocery and specialty stores.  100 bottles later I decided that the only way to justify the sugar intake, not to mention the expense, was to cover all of these finds for the site, hopefully jarring some interesting thoughts and observations along the way.

Next week I'm going to dive into the column proper with the first of a three part look at the insane tasting area at the World of Coke.

Usually around this time of year I can't help but slip into a post holiday internet coma, not unlike the hibernation schedule of many rodents, large hairy mammals, and marsupials, just with a lot less sleep-induced burning of fat, and a lot more avoiding the computer.  Seems like I've been shaken awake this year though and will probably start posting on a more regular schedule.  So I wanted to take a second and announce a new column I've been preparing, Soda Pop Culture. 

Hopefully it'll be taking an interesting look at the plethora of fine, fizzy, sometimes caffeinated, sometimes fruity beverages that have been keeping this country happy and alert for over a hundred years, not to mention contributing to the population's ill health and unfortunate rise in diabetics.  Sound like fun?  I hope so.  Since Peel Here has been winding down for awhile, I thought it would be nice to switch gears a and slip away form ephemera for awhile and get back to some of the r oots of this site.



I'll also be making a lot of noise about one of the projects I'm working on for this year that I’'m really excited about, the 1st Up! Fair coming November 19th and 20th, at the Carnegie Center for Literacy & Learning in Lexington, KY.  Heck, it even got me excited enough to put pencil & ink to paper for the first time in over a year (by designing and drawing this banner…



Anyway, consider this bear nudged.