Riding Primal Waves

Despite everything that's come out since, I still view Optimus Primal toys from Beast Wars to be some of the best Transformers ever made. I'm still just as impressed as I was back then when I play with one now. The look, the stature, the play value. Just great figures. I'm also admiring the weirdness of some of the toys. Transmetal Optimus Primal's vehicle form is a hover board. That's just silly. Though seeing a gorilla fly through the air on a rocket powered hover board while wielding giant maces? Ok, that's still silly, but that's also pretty great.

I think a mistake a lot of people make when considering Transformers is adding in realism. Which... uh... is completely out the window on arrival. Alien robots hiding among Earth by disusing themselves as vehicles is far fetched, but what kind of disguise is a robot dinosaur, a ufo? It's silly, it's fun, just turn off your mind a little. Beast Wars... hey look a gorilla is fighting a dinosaur. It's fantasy and not far removed from the time that TMNT ruled the toy shelves. A surfing gorilla wasn't that unheard of. It's admittedly firmly rooted in it's time and that's ok with me.

I Miss Batmania

If you Google Batmania, you'll get a million results including a Wikipedia entry on a fanzine probably written by said fanzine creator. Though for an entire generation of folks, Batmania specifically refers to the media blitz surrounding the 1989 Batman movie. Toys, games, fast food tie ins, it's the kind of thing I love. It continued for each Batman movie up until 1997's Batman Forever.

Following Batman movies had various tie ins and stuff, but not the awesome craziness of a Batman cheeseburger at McDonald's (back when you wanted to eat there). While which series of Batman movies are 'the best' is often debated in nerd circles, I'm pretty biased to this era. Not just for the Batmania, because dude, I love those movies.