Magmax Beyond Thunderdome

Magmax looked awesome on a video rental shelf. That cool robot fighting what looked to be Mecha King Ghidorah in space was hard to deny. It was rented and brought home for a weekend of space robot adventure fueled by Ecto Cooler and some pizza. The game I brought home was not the game I had thought I rented. Thanks to the pictures on the back of the box, I had assumed you played the robot the entire time. Not so much. 

Instead you start out as a small space ship flying and shooting your way through a horizontal playing field. As you go, parts of the robot are collected slowly building the full robot. Of course every hit looses a piece of that robot. The game never ended, just went on a continues loop until running out of lives. Occasionally you'd face the big bad boss Babylon, the Mecha King Ghidorah look alike I mentioned earlier.

Magmax wasn't what I expected going in, but still was a lot of fun. I'm mostly familiar with the NES version though it's on a variety of other systems. Originally starting it's life in the arcades, which explains the endless nature of the game. Just keep shooting until you run out of quarters. The game isn't completely forgotten by time, but doesn't come up a lot either. I do see occasional fan art which is nice. I'm not saying it deserves a much better legacy, but it would be nice if more people knew what I was talking about more often. Which is at least a quarter of this site's content.

Starcom was pretty rad

Starcom was a pretty neat short lived line of toys with a matching short lived cartoon. If you read off the list of companies involved it sounds more like an itinerary of presenters at a merchandising expo. Toys by Coleco, cartoon by DiC and distributed by Coca-Cola Telecommunications (sometimes big companies own other big companies), and developed with the help of the Young Astronauts Council to get kids interested in NASA. Under all that was actually a really neat bunch of space toys.

Starcom would fight the ill intended Shadow Force in another epic struggle of good vs evil. Toys were smaller space themed (like the name would suggest) vehicles with small scale figures. The figures has cool little guns that your mom would tell you would get sucked up by the vacuum cleaner. The figures were pretty dang cool with the NASA inspired good guys vs the evil sci fi fantasy inspired bad guys. Because things you find entertaining are bad in the eyes of things you find boring.

The most dominant play gimmick was the 'Magna Lock'. If this was a fan wiki, I'd make a bad joke about that. This is a fan blog, so I'll make a bad reference. The Magna Lock was a series of magnet plates on the vehicles and play sets as well as on the feet of the action figures. This was meant to simulate the gravity boots of the space explores as they fight in zero gravity. What happened more often was the figures got stuck on the refrigerator.

Starcom had a pretty short life, according to Wikipedia the cartoon only had 13 episodes. Also according to Wikipedia the line only lasted around two years, though it did get a second life when Mattel released the toys in Europe and Southeast Asia and was apparently pretty popular there. From my own memory, I remember liking the cartoon quite a bit. I'm sure I could find a few episodes on DVD thanks to budget releases as seems to be the home for old cartoons. Which isn't a bad thing,  video racks at discount stores have long been a staple of my entertainment.

I had a few of the toys, bought on clearance at Kay-Bee toys. Like a lot of oddball sci fi toys of mine, they'd find their way in a weird homogenized city made of such toys. They were the perfect scale to interact with my Transformers and often found themselves operating under the command of Hi-Q. Hi-Q was a fair leader who made sure everybody got their 15 minute break every 3 hours.

Star Bird

The Star Bird is another one of my older brothers toys that left an impression on me. Sure by the commercial it just looks like a spaceship that could blend in with your Star Wars toys. That's obviously the intent, make a space ship that would grab the eye of all those kids wanting Star Wars stuff. Something about it's design always stuck with me over the years. It's just classic space opera. If you'd take the time to look into the line, you'll find there was two other similar ships and a base available. Pretty cool for what could have been a one and done toy. I used to fly my brothers Star Bird around, shooting down imaginary bad guys and deploying the front section in times that the pilots would need to double their numbers. If it's one line that I'd love to make a  return, even if unofficially, it'd be Star Bird.

Steel Jeeg intro

I learned of Jeeg from Baron Karza of Micronaughts. Noting that his mold came from the Jeeg Magnemo toy mold and not a Microman, I see Jeeg constantly in Microman and super robot circles. It's funny how these things work out. Red Falcon is Death Cross, Baron Karza and Force Commander were Jeeg toys with new heads. Meanwhile, a Transformers fan who's older brother had Mego toys, learns of all these other things because of the association. I must have really been born at just the right time, because that 80's Star Wars space opera influence on everything really colored the rest of my life.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

Well, that sure was a blast. A real fun, just thrill ride of a Star Wars movie. I've been hearing the usual amount of naysaying doing the usual naysaying, but I thought Solo was perfectly fine. Honestly, I was very surprised as going in as I was expecting a mess. What I got was a fun adventure with a young Han Solo and a bit of set up to how he became who we knew him to be later on.

I'm trying my best to not spoil anything, so the best I can tell you is that Solo, like Rogue One, isn't your standard Star Wars movie. That's probably got alot to do with why I enjoy these Star Wars Stories films so much. By exploring the expanded universe (sans novels) they can afford to be different than the saga movies that dwell more on Jedi, the force, and the overall major points. Here we get to see things that were mentioned in the Saga fleshed out in grandiose ways.

Solo is a great heist film set in a space opera setting that takes place in one of the most famous film series in the world. I'm very happy with what I just watched and look forward to getting that Blue Ray.