You've Got the Touch!

"And for the length of one hour and thirty, the dullards and their ilk shall stare and drool into their uneconomical popped niblets as colorful moving likenesses of giant animated 'rowe-bots' strike and slap each other. No discernible purpose shall be evident in these goings-on."

I really tried to like Transformers: The Movie. I really did. I sort of get the appeal — the multitude of colorful characters, the bright animation, the synth Vince DiCola score. I guess maybe it works on some strange pop cultural level, if you're being generous. Still, it's a mess. A hot mess, maybe, but still a mess.

The visuals are leagues beyond what the Saturday morning cartoon ever managed to muster, benefit of a greater budget and a longer production schedule, but there isn't much more that actually stands the test of time. It's pretty easy to see the film was destined to be a cult hit (that is, horrendously unprofitable in every way), because without an affinity for these characters or the tiny toys they spawned, there's little to appeal to a broad audience.

But they tried. Transformers: The Movie is crammed with guest stars. Listed among the cast are Judd Nelson as Hot Rod, Leonard Nimoy as the evil Galvatron, Robert Stack as Ultra Magnus, and Eric Idle as Wreck-Gar. Tales of a near-death Orson Welles in the recording booth are the stuff of legend; his stint as the planet-devouring villain Unicron would end up being his last movie role, one he made no bones about disliking.

About the film, the New York Times said pretty much exactly what I just did, but with a certain degree of clout and authority that you just can't pull off unless you're, well, writing for the New York Times: "While all this action may captivate young children, the animation is not spectacular enough to dazzle adults, and the Transformers have few truly human elements to lure parents along, even when their voices are supplied by well-known actors."

But anyway. 

It's 1985. You're making a movie. Aside from Judd Nelson and a boatload of tag-along toy merchandise, how else do you bring in the coveted 18-to-34 demographic? 

Rock music. Lots and lots of rock music. During dialogue exchanges, during action scenes; whenever there's a lull in the Vince DiCola synths, cram a hard-rock scorcher into the cut and crank the bass. And, of course, no '80s movie desperately clawing for a piece of your box office dollar would be complete without a radio-friendly pop anthem to inject a little crossover appeal. Something along the lines of The Karate Kid's "You're the Best," or Kickboxer's "Never Surrender." 

Enter: "The Touch"!

A veritable soundtrack stalwart, Stan Bush was the go-to guy for a lot of studios searching for some feel-good rock to pad out their movie montages. Never mind the fact that all of his songs sounded exactly the same — drum machines accompanied by some combination of the words "heart," "will," "glory," and "hero" — his output was nice and generic at a time when studios were eager to hop on the mass-market gravy train.

And, really, what's wrong with that, in moderation? Out of the wonton soup of commonality comes the tiny minced pork nuggets of honest-to-goodness artistic expression. That's how it works; that's how it's always worked.

Does Stan Bush's "The Touch" reach that pinnacle? You be the judge.

Aubade to Arcades

"Apprehend my words, and look upon the horrors to be reaped by our posterity; there shall be, far in the Future, grand palaces of light and luminosity, immense jungles of plastic and steel and glass, bombarded throughout by the florid electronic screams of 'amusement' machines. Here parents shall surrender their children to the hellish caucophony — surrender them freely, and with relief! — to pursue their own crass consumerist exploits at the Churches of 'Macys' and 'JC Penney.'" 

A while ago — and by that I guess I mean almost a decade, Jesus — I wrote a tiny piece called "The Arcade of Your Dreams," where I lamented (nothing new) the state of affairs at a run-down bowling alley I use to frequent. Looking back, yes, that bowling alley was a dump and the arcades languishing there did bring to mind the abuses you sometimes see perpetrated to dogs, cats, and other animals under neglectful ownership. The only difference, aside from sentience and the capacity for suffering — and, really, is that so big a deal? — is that animals have organized groups and foundations that actively seek out their abuse and put a stop to it.

No such luck for old arcade machines. The connection may seem preposterous, and I freely admit that, well, it is — I'm just a stupid guy writing a stupid blog about stupid stuff, after all — but the neglect of aging coin-op machines really does yank at my heartstrings. They have no protectors, no advocates, no one to look after their well-being or protect them from cruelty. And they have no control over their eventual fate.

Incidentally (mercifully?), during the peak of the late-'80s/early-'90s arcade revival, some arcade cabinets were manufactured with batteries that would disable the game's inner workings when their lives came to a close. And some, the real bad-asses, the machines that didn't mess around, no sir, came with batteries that, while not explicitly designed to rupture, were highly likely to do so given enough time, and everyone knew it. They'd eventually spill their corrosive contents all over the game board and commit de facto suicide in an act of spectacular self-immolation.

(OutRun is a notable example; the mechanism whereby the game board is technologically disabled is called a "suicide battery." The leaky battery thing may just be a consequence of poor manufacturing or cost-cutting measures, but I'd like to think it was an easier, cheaper way of accomplishing the same thing.)

From the Dead Battery Society (www.arcadecollecting.com/dead/dead.html):

You may have heard the term "suicide battery" used before and wondered what the heck it meant. Several arcade game manufacturers decided it would be a good idea to put a battery on their arcade game motherboards that, when they die (and they will die), disable the game. Why they did this isn't exactly clear. Is it a way to artificially limit the lifespan of their games? Is it an anti-piracy measure? Do they want to assure that they will continue making money from the games by forcing you to send your boards to them for repair after a certain amount of time? Whatever their reasons, it sucks.

Programmed electronic suicide. Dignified, sort of, if you think about it. If only every arcade machine were so fortunate. Much worse fates were destined for the sickly residents at the Bowling Alley of the Damned. Me, from nine years ago:

Amid the devastation, I counted roughly half the machines were either not working properly or completely non-functional. Only one side of the Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 console was up to snuff, the Ms. Pac-Man cabinet was suffering from some serious screen problems, the Air Hockey table could only manage to register one player's score and not the other's and, to top it all off, the management had apparently taken a run-down Super Street Fighter II cabinet (complete with a glut of dirt, grime and cigarette burns) and hardwired it to play Marvel vs. Capcom. Ugh...

My post would end up being featured on the main Xanga page, garner about a thousand hits, and solicit over seventy comments from nostalgic twenty-somethings who, like me, couldn't stand seeing their old childhood favorites subject to outright cruelty.

Nothing much else ever came of it. 

And those arcade machines? The Ms. Pac-Man with the jittery, faded screen, the Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 with only one set of working controls? No protests were held in their name. There were no rallies, no hand-painted signs, no emotional pleas of "Free Q*Bert!" and "Motherboards Unite!". At best, someone, sometime, offered the owner a few bucks and hauled them away for scrap parts. More likely they were tolerated until they became unprofitable and were then unceremoniously thrown away, replaced by one of those gaudy "Stacker" machines, if anything.

Suicide isn't always tragic.

Heather Thomas + Pink Bikini + Hot Tub

"One would suppose there must be some great virtue in this 'beekeenae,' or 'bikini,' to make it so valuable in the eyes of the people of the Future; that it is the French who shall design it should be enough to put off the majority." 

A piece on Heather Thomas from a 1984 issue of Orange Coast Magazine begins:

Heather Thomas hates being underestimated. The problem is, television has a habit of underestimating blondes, at least when it comes to brains. The common image is that of the blonde whose significant beauty is matched only by her tendency to be feather-headed. But what else is new? The Democrats are still feuding, the Oscars are still handed out in April, and Tommy Lasorda still thinks God is a Dodger fan.

That, ladies and gentlemen, is an intro.

To be honest, though, Heather Thomas didn't really need an intro. At least not to any adolescent male thumbing through his mother's Orange Coast looking for tasteful bikini photos. (There are none — none of Heather Thomas, anyway — though there are two blondes seductively hawking HC Formula shampoo on page 26.)

Okay. I get it. Frown if you must — and somewhere, somehow, I know my ex-girlfriend just telepathically caught wind of that last sentence and is now judging me as I write — but believe me, in the world of clandestine male stimulation, there are worse places to go to for a little gratification than a glib, pretentious Bible of yuppie West Coast consumerism.

Taking a little detour at the self-serve station might even be considered commendable if you're holding a copy of Orange Coast. At least you're using it make the world a nicer place. If only for yourself, and only for a few minutes.

That's more than the editors of Orange Coast ever did.

More morally troubling, any average male with a sensitive disposition will tell you, is endeavoring to tickle your pickle...with a Christmas catalog. (*Gasp!*) Yes, men do that. (And by men I mean teen boys ages 12 to 17, roughly speaking. It's not an exact science.) So let's get over it. End the stigma. Be the solution.

But the mind still chafes. Yes, there is an underwear section and yes, Sears does sell bikinis, even at Christmastime, but that doesn't change the fact you're looking to slake your libido while a haloed Jesus, or a puffy-cheeked Santa Clause, stares disapprovingly at you from the front cover. Are those judging eyes meant for you? Or the spoiled little brat down the street who'll ask for, and duly receive, that $129.99 GI Joe U.S.S. Flagg aircraft carrier on page 421? Wasn't Jesus pro-masturbation? I forget. It's a long book.

What would God think? Does he make an exception on his Naughty List for male teenagers, to whom he saw fit to give gonads and testosterone and working pudendum, while all but guaranteeing they'd never get to use any of it by also giving them whisker mustaches and sweaty underarms and a face so scabbed over with acne it looks like post-WW2 Berlin?

...I don't know how we got here. But I'm sort of glad we've arrived. How about you?

 

   

Anyway. Here are some vintage Heather Thomas pinups from the early 1980s. Ms. Thomas is more than a just great set of tits and some bangin' ass cleavage; women are not the sum of their jigglies. But Ms. Thomas's jigglies are some of the loveliest on record, and look especially good sheathed in a pink bikini "of such brevity she courts pneumonia," as Orange Coast Magazine puts it. 

And be sure to click on the pics for a larger look (you perv). It was a hassle creating the lovely diorama you see above, mainly because I'm pretty dense and HTML is about as user-friendly as a hockey puck in the groin.

So let's appreciate. 

Playing with Power: Mike Tyson Edition

"There shall be a man born, many years anon, a warrior unlike any our world has birthed. Hundreds of thousands shall congregate to witness his destructive deeds; he shall breath wonderful new life into the stout-hearted, beef-caked art of fisticuffs; and he shall entertain and enthrall, even as years later he confuses and alarms. He shall bear the name 'Ty-son,' and in the vernacular of the Future-Man: he shall kicketh monumental ass." 

Mike Tyson was the supercharged, larger-than-life heavyweight knockout machine the boxing world had been looking for since the late 1970s. The sport's top prize had splintered then, and the heavyweight championships (plural) had become a revolving-door spectacle of loose chins and loose decisions. Tyson debuted in 1985 and won twenty-seven straight fights, railroading sixteen of his opponents in the first round.  

Then he KO'ed Trevor Berbick in November 1986 to become the youngest heavyweight champion in history, at age 20.

Now Tyson was a household name. His monikers, "Iron" and "Kid Dynamite," graced billboards. His face was plastered on magazine covers. He appeared on TV touting Diet Pepsi as "the undisputed champion," accompanied in print ads by a real catchphrase for the ages: "While heavyweight champ Mike Tyson doesn't mind sharing his title...don't ask him to share his Diet Pepsi."

And, of course, he lent his name to one of the Nintendo Entertainment System's seminal game cartridges.

Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!!, with its exclamation points, its million-dollar endorsement, and its own 8-bit version of Iron Mike as the final boss, would have sold scores of copies even if it had been a complete travesty from title screen to end screen. Lucky for us, the game wasn't a catastrophe like so many other NES sports titles. (Some would say there are too many to count; I'd say there are eleven — Ring King, Slalom, Winter Games, John Elway's Quarterback, Dance Aerobics, Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball, Championship Bowling, Lee Trevino's Fighting Golf, World Class Track Meet, Skate or Die, and Skate or Die 2: The Search for Double Trouble.)

In fact, Punch-Out!! isn't just okay. It isn't merely good compared to the average NES sports title. It's a bonafide, guaranteed, one-hundred percent, no-buts-about-it, wham-bam-thank-you-Sam C-L-A-S-S-I-C, one of the greatest 8-bit games ever released, and one of the few NES games that can still turn the average adult gamer into a sweating, trembling, cursing pile of spent childhood dreams and leftover testosterone. 

It's no surprise many still consider it the quintessential boxing game.

The above television ad (viewable on YouTube here, here, and here) is one of the more memorable from Nintendo's "Playing with Power" era, featuring the Baddest Man on the Planet secluded in a darkened game room with a wall of TV screens and an NES hookup. Tyson has always been a bit of a nutcase — the years since his knockout of Trevor Berbick have proven that pretty conclusively, I reckon — but I never knew he was such a TV fanatic. Watching one television set apparently doesn't cut it; he's got to watch thirty-six of them. (I wonder what his bathroom looks like?)

Anyway, the spot ends with a voiceover promising kids a shot at the coveted heavyweight title, at which point Tyson swivels into view and bursts into a fit of maniacal laughter in a voice that is most definitely not his own. 

Incidentally, we wouldn't see a shot of Tyson acting this normal on TV again for at least another ten or eleven years.

Looking Back at the Incredible Crash Dummies — Part III

"The demarcations between men and wo-men will be blurred. There shall be not two sexes but one sex; a unisex. The sexes shall debate over which sex this new sex shall resemble, and the new sex him-her-self shall not know. This shall matter most urgently to those obsessed with sex." 

When the Incredible Crash Dummies toy line crashed in 1993 — pun intended, and I'm not proud of it — it left behind precious few traces of its existence. As ubiquitous as Slick and Spin and Spare Tire were during their three-year peak, it wasn't long before they were swept into the dustbin and disappeared from the minds of all but a few nostalgic nerds and collectors.

Even the coolest toys of yesteryear aren't put out to pasture. As soon as the next big thing comes peaking over the horizon, whether it be action figures that talk or baby dolls that pee or baby action figures that talk and pee and say grace, the old guard is rounded up, given a stern pat on the ass, and trucked off to the slaughterhouse. 

Even if that means big plans and big ideas go into the grinder.

The final two Crash Dummies figures to be released in the U.S. came bundled with VHS copies of the 22-minute cartoon pilot — a snazzy gold-and-purple version of Junkman and a new dummy named Ted, who came decked out in shades of green, grey, and black. Their card backs hinted at the release of a brand new third wave of figures that would mark the return of series mainstays Slick and Spin (now with mysterious new heavy-lifting action), and the Pro-Tek debuts of Axel, Dash, and Skid the Kid.

It never materialized. The line was cancelled before any of those new toys hit shelves. Even more peculiar, the Ted and Junkman VHS cardbacks teased the release of the very first female Incredible Crash Dummy, a lanky, beanpole-shaped specimen called "Darlene."

Turns out, this long and lanky Darlene, she of the pink and yellow Pro-Tek suit, had a checkered past. She'd been prototyped years before along with the very first Crash Dummies toys. This, from a 1992 piece that ran in Newsweek (and reproduced in its entirety right here because, damn): "In focus-group sessions, the company found that the Department of Transportation's female character, Darlene, didn't play well with little boys, who cringed at the notion of cracking up a girl. So Darlene became Daryl."

Um. 

...What?

"'He still has a strangely shaped chest,' says Neil Tilbor, the former head of research and development for Tyco's boys' unit." 

Well fuck me bald. He really does!

How about that? Daryl always did look and feel a little different from the other dummies. (Well, except for Pitstop, a Canadian Tire exclusive, who shares his sculpt.) No wonder! He was a boy in a girl's body! 

Apparently, after two-and-a-half years spent languishing on the junk pile, Darlene, not Darlene-turned-Daryl but plain old Darlene goddammit, was finally set to make her debut alongside the boys. (Note the twin pink ribbons attached to her head, mimicking flowing hair — a neat way, seems to me, of giving a pretty genderless plastic dummy some, uh, feminine mystique.)

But like I said, it was never meant to be. Predictably, Darlene, like the newer versions of Slick and Spin, never made it out of the factory.

That seems a pretty bitter pill to swallow for all the female Incredible Crash Dummies fans. (And there were more than a few, if you'll believe the anecdotal testimony of a guy who admittedly can't recall his last meal unless he looks down at what's left of it on his shirt.) I distinctly remember being five or six years old and telling my female cousins they couldn't play Crash Dummies with my brother and I because, of course, these were "boys' toys," and girls couldn't play with boys' toys. The older of my cousins, who also happened to be about twice my size, stood her ground and barked: "Why the hell not?"

I like to think that's when the modern feminist movement was born.

Death of a Toyline: A Coda

"The grand enter-prises that create these miniature idols shall belch them forth as if from great gaping jaws — and shall snap shut these jaws as quickly as they are opened. For they know that in so doing they enslave the population to their rhythm. The rhythm of the corp-oration." 

The death of a toyline is never a pretty thing.

These sorts of hold-the-phone, cancel-the-cake, party's-over brand "reshufflings" generally don't show any respect to the work put in or the memories fostered. The toy business is, after all, a business. When profits are down — or when Market Research says toy tastes are on the move — shock-and-awe turns into scorched earth. 

That's the nature of the beast.

Recall now the outrage and betrayal you felt when you heard your favorite TV show was cancelled during mid-season reruns. And on a cliffhanger! No series finale, no tying up loose ends, no farewells, no goodbyes, no stoic, heroic looks at the horizon in quiet preparedness for things to come. Not even a crazy-making visit from the Devil to a slobbering J.R. Ewing and a offscreen gunshot, later to be retconned by a TV movie.

None of that. The characters you fell in love with? They don't exist anymore. 

Deal.

Now consider this: toy collectors, and to a lesser extent, the kids for whom the toys are actually produced (because, let's face it, attention spans are limited among the Froot-Loops-and-jelly-sandwich crowd), feel that gloomy sense of disappointment every time a toy line bites the dust. Every. Time.

Some lucky shows get a proper sendoff, but there's never a series finale for a fading Ninja Turtles toyline. There's no tear-jerking tribute for He-Man or a special clip show for Biker Mice from Mars. And although I just said toy collectors suffer more from the cancellation of a line than the kids do, I'm going to contradict myself entirely now and say that the whole grieving process is much tougher on kids, because collectors have had their spirit trampled by an uncaring and corrupt world for years and years, while kids are walking bags of emotional vulnerabilities still ripe for disillusionment.

I don't have to paint a picture for you. But I will.

One day all your endearing little playtime buddies vanish from store shelves. No foreshadowing, no goodbye note. Even worse, they've been replaced. So the new Star Wars figures are cool, yeah, you get that — and by God, they've finally gotten Darth Vader's cape right after fifteen some odd years — but those considerations can wait. Right now there's no consoling the wide-eyed little seven-year-old who hurried into the action figure aisle at Kay Bee only to discover that his (or her) playtime buddies haven't been waiting for him. Or her.

But there's a glimmer of hope. Maybe they've just moved? Y'know, maybe to the lower shelf? No. A quick scan left, right — no, they haven't moved. They've vanished.

And the epitaph is worse. Because no toy store rips its inventory off the shelves just to let it sit idle in the back room collecting dust. They have to liquidate that shit. So, yes, in fact, your heroes in polymer and plastic HAVE moved. You learn this in the most terrible way possible, having hassled your mom for a Boba Fett — but only halfheartedly because, for Christ's sake, you're in mourning — and then happening upon the bright happy sunshine faces of your best buds on the way out, sitting in a pile near the exit. 

The bargain bin. Thrown in a heap by a minimum-wage-earning Barney Fife who's got a dental bridge, a Toyota Corolla, and a boner for the cashier in Checkout #5, and who couldn't give less of a dry shit about your "buddies."

And your heart tells you, even while your brain does the same, that this is the last time you're going see them. You're only seven years old and you're still a lifetime away from figuring out a tax plan or programming a VCR, but you're smart enough to know your favorites won't last. Not at that price. They're no longer in the "cool toy" aisle, but at 47¢ marked down from $7.99, your fellow brats — and the too-old-to-be-excited-about-toys-but-still-haunting-the-toy-store adults — will rip and claw at each other for dibs.

And the newly-minted Boba Fett bouncing around your Kay Bee bag? 

He weighs a thousand pounds now, because he was full price and he's the only thing you're getting on this trip, and your mom, who's still pissed that the car isn't back from the shop and that she has to haul around town in the old family pickup truck with the nude lady air freshener and "Fuck You" hat in the glove compartment, damn well made sure you knew it.

So it goes.

Looking Back at the Incredible Crash Dummies — Part II

"The Retromancer [...] shall be an odd creature. He shall not know when to quit, nor when to thusly shut up, and will prattle on about the accounts and the descriptions of the aforementioned Dummies, and their accursed, Devilled synthetic flesh shall not deter him. He shall be indefatigable in this pursuit. Just not in other, more valid, more rewarding pursuits." 

Of course no toyline, not even one based on unmitigated vehicular carnage, is really complete without a few villains to spice up the playtime action.

Torturing tiny plastic dummies is fun and all, but what really determines the success of a toy franchise is whether the enemies are cool enough to keep things interesting. It was obvious by 1992, about a year and a half after its debut, that something, something evil, had to be added to the Incredible Crash Dummies line.

The Ninja Turtles had Shredder and the Foot Clan. G.I. Joe had Cobra. And the Crash Dummies had, tada, the Junkbots, led by a spurned former crash test dummy with a backstory steeped in a nice minty tea of neglect, treachery, and betrayal. 

Fired from the Crash Test Center (playset available at your local K-Mart, of course), this unnamed victim of cold-hearted Upper Management cursed the very existence of his plastic-headed brethren and sought refuge in a local junkyard, hoarding and brooding and plotting revenge a la Phantom of the Opera.

And you thought everything was nice and neon in the land of vehicular safety.

Along with a repudiation of the crash dummy society that tossed him to the curb (here's a story lesson for ya, kids: even your favorite heroes get sacked and go batshit sometimes), came a dark desire for revenge. At least, that's what the supplied quotes on his backing card indicate: "Why should I crash cars to help humans? Who needs humans? Machines should rule the world!"

And so the newly-styled "Junkman" created his Junk Army, as one does, and birthed three nefarious minions: Jack Hammer, Piston Head, and Sideswipe. And so the four evil bad guys could now terrorize their do-gooder counterparts with such dastardly deeds as sabotage, kidnapping, and the worse offence of all, neglecting to separate their recyclables.

Pieced together from odd scraps of junkyard garbage, jutting and bulging, topped with steel radiators and spangled with mangled axles, the Junkbots were pretty damn bad-ass for a toyline aimed at "children aged 3 and up." 

Truth be told, they may well go down as the most fearsome action figure enemies of the early '90s. Bebop and Rocksteady were buffoons, after all, as was Shredder. Given the choice of throwing it down with a ninja or a six-foot-tall mountain of scrap metal and carburetors, I'd pick the former — a ninja I know I can kill with a well-aimed shotgun blast to the face.

Of course, while the Incredible Crash Dummies were designed to be broken apart and put back together over and over again, in reality a Crash Dummy only had a life expectancy of about one or two good years. Too much punishment (or the kind of punishment meted out by a kid with deep-seated anger issues) meant a sure demise for the figures' tiny internal springs, rendering the toys useless. 

There's no use having a crash test dummy around if you can't pop him back together for another suicide run when you get bored with the LEGOs.

This fundamental design flaw perhaps had something to do with the line's ultimate demise only a year after the debut of the Junkbots, in 1993. (By the way, that's not me in the above picture. I was five in 1993. I envy his mustache, though.)

After going supernova and shedding off an amazing assortment of tie-in merchandise, including Incredible Crash Dummies sticker books, wallets, bean bag chairs, Valentine's Day cards, lunch boxes, blow-out party favors, pencil cases, View Master reels, piggy banks, sunglasses, wallets and wall posters — all plastered with adorably hokey catchprases like "Slammin' and Jammin'!", "Doing the Boulevard Bounce," and "You Drive Me Up the Wall!" — the whole thing vanished from sight, leaving a lot of memories, a lot of history, and a whole lot of tiny orphaned plastic arms and legs.

...And, truth be told, some odd curiosities as well. More on those next time.

Looking Back at the Incredible Crash Dummies — Part I

"The Future-Man shall ride in his high-speed chariot, unable to save himself from the minutest catastrophe or chaos at the wheel. He shall roll forth, crushing and crumpling children underfoot; wrecking property and lives; cracking his loins and eradicating his future offspring as a result. His metal-framed menace shall come equipped with safety devices that he shall not use, lest he look weak and womanish in front of his comrades. Literal dummies — abominations in human form made of synthetic material — shall be pressed into action to advise him, and only then shall the idiot endeavor towards his own well-being and that of his countrymen." 

After the Crash Test Dummies first appeared in a series of public service announcements jointly produced by the Ad Council and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, it wasn't long before someone, someone perhaps a little unwell, concluded that Vince and Larry were popular enough, and marketable enough, to warrant further attention. 

An avalanche of merchandise followed — from plush dolls and bumper stickers to board games and T-shirts. 

Tyco began manufacturing "Incredible Crash Dummies" toys in 1991, minus Vince and Larry, who were scrapped — pun not intended, but tolerated — due to copyright issues. Over the next few years, the franchise grew, creaking and groaning, as a computer-animated cartoon pilot was produced, new vehicles and playsets were added to the toy line, the main dummies received backstories and villainous counterparts, and video games (terrible ones) hit the shelves for all major platforms.

Dash. Dent. Skid the Kid. Spare Tire. 

And "the Dummy Pets with 9 Lives," an inseparable cat-and-dog duo named Hubcat and Bumper. (Hubcat!) These were the crazy, bug-eyed, head-twisting, neck-springing, road-rashed and roadkilled stars of the Incredible Crash Dummies. 

Unlike practically every other toy on the market, the Dummies' claim to fame wasn't a Saturday morning cartoon show or big-budget blockbuster. No, the Dummies had to fight for shelf space on merit. While the Transformers rose to glory by being the action figure equivalent of an Erector Set — enterprising young devotees in a constructive frame of mind could click and clamp them into their vehicle counterparts — the Dummies were pretty much the opposite.

They weren't con-structive, they were de-structive, and if you can stomach that bit of pedantic analysis, then here's another: if you had a suppressed mean streak in you, if you got chills at hushed schoolyard accounts of those bizarre Faces of Death VHS tapes, if you loved the sight of crushed cars and roaring monster trucks and NASCAR crashes and news clips of gas plant explosions, the Dummies could grease your wheels and feed your monkey, all right.

The Incredible Crash Dummies rose to prominence in an overcrowded toy market because of one simple design feature, and one design feature alone: they broke apart. Literally. All you had to do was press the tiny button on their chests and your colorful plastic buddies would fall to pieces for you.

To this end, well over a dozen pint-sized vehicles came to market alongside the titular mannequins, and at least one torture apparatus: a strap-'em-down and press-their-guts-out contraption called the "Crash 'N Bash Chair." (It came in baby blue.)

The vehicles were varied and they were magnificent. There was the brutal Crash Flip-Over Truck. The Student Driver Crash Car. The ruthless Slam Cycle, with its detachable sidecar and spring action ejection seat. The Crash Go-Kart. The Crash 'N Dash Chopper. The Crash Cab, pop-off front wheels and destructible front fenders included. And, let's not forget, the Dummy Dirt Digger, the Bot Hauler, and the Junkbot Wrecker.  

And the Crash Lawn Mower.

The Crash Plane was perhaps the deadliest of all. Rubber straps inside its cockpit held an unsuspecting dummy captive (perhaps Chip, perhaps Flip, or perhaps Daryl, who came in a snazzy Pro-Tek suit and would "Pop his Top!" at the push of a button). A dependable internal mechanism would cause both wings to fall off when the plane's nose was pushed, so piloting it into enemy airspace for a bombing run meant the thing would literally start bursting at the seams. Throw it full force against the garage door, and airplane parts and tiny limbs would go flying in a sadistic show of carnage.

Of course, it'd all dutifully snap back together for another run afterwards.

In keeping with this general theme, the Crash 'n Dash Chopper later came complete with a side-seat that could be removed at will, meaning you could roll the bike across the carpet at full speed and then unleash the helpless passenger to roll to his fiery death. Or, at least, into some strategically-placed LEGOs.

Super Mario Excitebike — Only in Japan

"This mustachioed manual laborer shall become an icon among the common people — a hero cast in their own image. Taking possession of his form, they shall attempt to compensate for their own failed dreams and enterprises by hopping over arbitrary obstacles, trampling anthropomorphized fungi, and collecting imaginary currency. He shall be transmitted through clouds, from the heavens, into the homes of his idolatrous followers — and he shall partake in numerous activities the populace shall be too apathetic to pursue; tennis, golf, and motorized bicycle riding." 

Beginning in 1995, the Big N's own "Satellaview" — a satellite modem add-on for the Japanese Super Famicom — offered lucky consumers the chance to experience the cutting edge years before the Xbox Live marketplace or Wii Virtual Console brought downloadable gaming into the mainstream. 

For a measly ¥4,000 (around $115), pioneering Japanese gamers got a box full of wires, connectors and cartridges that, once correctly installed — according to popular myth, anyway — would beam exclusive game content, remakes of classic Nintendo cartridges, and live gameplay broadcasts directly into their Super Famicom consoles, prompting many an Asian to exclaim, "Super Happy Fun-Time!"

Christ. That was terrible. I'll work on that, I promise.

Users would boot up the system, design and name a unique avatar, and then go wandering about a cityscape gameworld designed, basically, as one great big menu for the BS-X (Broadcast Satellaview-X) service. During set broadcasting hours (between 4:00 PM and 7:00 PM, by most accounts), one could navigate the little town and download the latest Zelda game, receive up-to-date industry news, or see their own scores posted up against their fellow countrymen's.

And how'd it all look? Well, it was very cute. And very, very Japanese.

Games varied from exclusive broadcast-only sequels (F-Zero Grand Prix) to stand-alone titles (Radical Dreamers). BunBun Mario Battle Stadium, meanwhile, sort of fell into a category all its own, as a reskinned version of the venerable 8-bit Excitebike, repackaged with the Mushroom Kingdom cast and updated to 16-bit. (BunBun, for the record, means "shake-shake," but can also mean "the sound of bees" or "a buzzing sound.") 

So, literally speaking, the game's title translates to Vroom-Vroom! Mario Battle Stadium. 

Again, the Japanese.

It saw release in May 1997 as a live game broadcast and was then available for download in three more installments, each offering new updates and an expanded character roster. (Yoshi finally made it into the main cast in the fourth go-round.)

Alas, BunBun Mario Battle Stadium's ultimate fate was sealed from the beginning, just like all the other Satellaview titles. It never was released in any form in North America, and after the Japanese-only peripheral got the boot in 1999, the service was discontinued. 

By then, no one was interested in firing up their old SNES consoles for a few rounds of Mario-themed Excitebike; kids were busy with their PlayStations and Nintendo 64s, and even more advanced consoles were just around the corner. But it was the advent of affordable high-speed Internet that finally dealt a mortal blow to the impractical satellite gaming business.

Street Fighter II Action Figures and G.I. Joe's Midlife Crisis

"These corporate, corporeal entities [...] shall produce tiny effigies of the deplorable set and create new terms to advance their influence: 'doll' shall be considered weak and unmarketable and girly, and so they shall be termed: 'action figures.' And these action-figures shall enter the susceptible psyches of impressionable and foolish persons by virtue of lustful moving displays of cunning and precocity. The children shall see, and shall want, and shall set upon the adults; and the adults shall rue, and surrender. And the beast will thus be fed." 

We're all familiar with Street Fighter II. There's little that hasn't been said about the game that revolutionized multiplayer gaming and shaped the future of the worldwide arcade scene. With its easy-to-learn but tough-to-master controls, lush, colorful graphics, and a groundbreaking cast of selectable characters, SF II virtually created a genre unto itself and became an instant phenomenon both in North America and abroad.

Still, it's easy to forget just how big this game actually was outside the arcades.

 

Not since Pac-Man had an arcade property exploded onto the pop culture spectrum with such blunt force, casting a lovely array of shrapnel across multiple mediums. 

Two animated television series (one produced for the American market and another for Japan), an array of arcade updates (Championship Edition, Turbo, Super, Super Turbo), phenomenally popular ports for the Super NES and SEGA Genesis (but also for Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64, ZX Spectrum, Atari ST and, would you believe it, Gameboy), a Jean-Claude Van Damme action vehicle featuring Raul Julia and Kylie Minogue —

— and the requisite number of collectible tokens, pogs, and foodstuffs. And one long incomplete sentence. And another one.

And, let's not forget, action figures.

The Capcom Street Fighter II figures came to market as a subline of the G.I. Joe toy property, not a bad idea in and of itself. 

The venerable G.I. Joe was going through something of a mid-life crisis at the time, and was looking to diversify. As a result, during the early '90s we got wave after wave of bright new figures pressed into action under different banners: Battleforce 2000, Ninja Force, Eco-Warriors, Star Brigade, and the well-remembered (at least by me) Blast Corps. 

By all accounts, though, the Street Fighter II line it was a slipshod endeavor from the beginning.

Mostly assembled with scattered parts from older figures (for instance, Ken was basically just a new head atop an old mold for 1992's Storm Shadow), the wild and woolly Street Fighter II characters were hastily put together and looked about as accurate as you'd expect from a toy line made famous for its exacting standardized proportions and svelte interchangeable crotches.

Still, kids gobbled them up, thanks in large part to commercials that made the line look like the biggest thing to hit your neighborhood since the great nor'easter of '89. 

Shifty manufacturing practices aside, Hasbro knew a hot property when they saw it, and marketed accordingly. Half a cup of cheesy dialogue, a few tablespoons of electric guitar, a couple of flying plastic vehicles, and a pinch of ethnic stereotyping ("You know 'em, you love 'em — SO CORRECT EM!"), and the G.I. Joe Street Fighters were well on their way to success.

If we're justified in placing our trust in large corporations, then links to YouTube videos will still work just dandy, even if you're reading this in 2047 and the human/mutant hybrid sitting next to you on the rubble pile is hogging the Wi-Fi. So click here to see the commercials. Or here. Or here.

I'm hedging my bets.

A Closed-Circuit Electronic Playground

"Dissatisfaction with thine lot will be a great civiliser of the race, tho the self-same discontent, source of all improvement, will be parent to no small progeny of absurdities: future people, Future-Men, will seek the replacement of reality with alt-reality; tired of their day-to-day, weary of their vulgar chariots of Pinto and Gremlin and Comet and their dreary professions, the masses shall grovel and pray before the flashes and sounds and colors of miracles in art — art borne of electricity, not only of alternating variety, but of static, too! Shall grovel before creations of the new alchemist, the blasphemous Magna-Vox!" 

There was no guarantee in the summer of 1972 that video games would ever be anything but a strange technological curiosity.

It was in this atmosphere that consumer electronics giant Magnavox marketed what up until that point had been known only as "the Brown Box" — Ralph Baer's electronic brainchild, a switch-programmable video game unit six years in the making. The man came up with the idea on his own while working at Sanders Associates Inc., a defense contractor operating out of New Hampshire. He jotted down his idea, designed the unit himself, and filed the first-ever U.S. patent for a video game two years later (a patent Magnavox would go on to defend in court dozens of times, earning more than $100 million in the process, more than it got from actual Odyssey sales).

Another three years would pass before any major U.S. television manufacturer agreed to take a chance on the device. Magnavox introduced the machine in 1972, promising a "closed-circuit electronic playground" for $99.95 — nearly $550 in today's dollars.

For that price, the Odyssey did remarkably little. Ralph Baer's little machine was a monstrous-looking thing — combination white plastic and faux wood grain, a jagged, unwieldy device tassled to a pair of box-shaped controllers. Its "cartridges" were actually mobile printed circuit boards, sans cover art or logo. It came packaged with twelve of these cartridges: Table Tennis, Tennis, Football, Hockey, Ski, Submarine, Cat and Mouse, Haunted House, Analogic, Roulette, States, and Simon Says, most of these only playable when combined with dice, poker chips, score sheets, and game boards included with the machine.

The narrator in an early Magnavox promo film decrees reassuringly that the Odyssey "master control unit" — a fantastic name for a machine with no onboard processor and exactly 0 bytes of memory — is, quote, "The electronic game of the future, and the family's best foul-weather friend."

"The game cards activate lights on your television screen that bounce, float, or extinguish on contact, depending upon the particular game you've chosen to play." More nuanced instruction follows: "Press the special tennis game overlay into position on the television screen and you're ready to begin an exciting, fast-paced tennis game!"

"Overlays" were the Odyssey's quaint little solution to a big problem: at a time when slide rules were king and digital watches were still the stuff of science fiction, the Odyssey's simple transistor-resister-capacitor architecture made it incapable of displaying anything like a Super Mario or Pitfall Harry, let alone a Mushroom Kingdom or a rattlesnake-infested jungle, even an 8-bit one.

Solution: each game came with its own translucent plastic overlay.

The Odyssey user manual provides clarification: "Static electricity will normally hold the overlay in place on your television screen. However, should the static charge not occur (and it may not, due to atmospheric conditions), two holes are provided in each overlay which will allow you to tape the overlay to your television screen."

More from the manual: "With Odyssey you participate in television, you're not just a spectator! The exciting casino action of Monte Carlo, the thrills of Wimbledon, the challenge of ski trails, can all be duplicated right in your own living room!"

So. In 1972, apparently, video games were expensive — but talk was cheap.