Episode 04: The Lone Jogger

Cambridge and Sean is a weirding Way Media podcast. Hello and welcome to episode four of Pambridge and was Sewan, the podcast where Mark Begley and Ronnie Zyryggean talk about their interests and obsessions and all the stuff that got their juices flowing when they were young and continues to do so today. Here. I know that's gross. My name is Ronald Zygean or Mark calls me Ronnie, and I'm Mark Bigley.

You might know Mark from his other podcast Wake Up Heavy here on weirdingwaymedia dot com, and you might know me from my Skelevator YouTube channel. And if you're hopping over from there, welcome. I hope you enjoy today's episode. Yeah, welcome one and all, or welcome one. I think we have one devoted listener, so that's great.

We're going to find out who that person is and track you down and track you down and ask you questions, why do you listen to this? What do you listen to this nonsense? I'm excited about the subjects that we chose for today, are you too? Yes? I am very good stuff for both of our things.

They're great, they're great. I think we've picked out some pretty unique things. So, I mean, we're a couple of weirdos. So it works out perfectly. So why don't you go first?

Mark? What do you have first on your list? Oh? Which one am I doing first? That's a good question.

Let me sort that out real quick. In my head, I hadn't really thought about which one to do first. First up for me today, and I am finally diving into the toy arena. You have hit a couple of toys already. Oh yeah, I wanted to save some up because this is going to end up being a through line through most of the rest of these episodes.

Growing up in the seventies and early eighties, the toys that were coming out at the time were pretty amazing. I'd like to thank the greatest era of children's toys in all of humanity. Yeah, that could be wrong. I'm sure everybody has their own particular opinions about that when they grew up, But the seventies were definitely one of the first boons for kids toys. And this one is an odd one.

It is parallel to megos, which will get into eventually, at least for me. This was an eight inch figure with cloth accessories. I said cloth figures on one of our episodes. I think last time we were talking about he Man if Mego did he Man, and I referred to them as cloth figures. They're not cloth figures.

There action figures with cloth accessories, So actual shirts, jackets, suits, bodysuits, not painted plastic. And I think that's an appropriate statement to make because so much of what makes Mego figures charming is their cloth accessories. It's like, yes, I'd say, it's like makes up fifty percent of what makes them awesome. Yes, And it's not something that you see a lot in modern toys, right, I mean even with Star Wars at the time, a few had cloth accessories, but most of them were printed right plastic. And this figure I never owned, but I almost well, I broke one commandment and I almost broke another commandment because of this figure.

The commandment that I did break was the tenth commandment, bow shalt not covet because my friend had this figure and I coveted it. So the figure itself that I'm referring to is the Tomlind Cyclops and Tomlind I'm not real hip on the providence of these toys, but there were a lot of Mego copycats in the seventies, and there was Ahi, there was Lincoln, and there was Tomlind. And these are companies that may have done other things as well, had other lines, and a lot of them were novelty companies, and then they saw this successive Mego and they jumped on board. And like a lot of those other figures that were sold cheap on the racks and drug stores and toy stores and other places, they go for a pretty penny these days, which is the case with this Tomlind Cyclops figure.

So they had I think about four figures to start with, and the line was called the Famous Monsters of Legend, which is another rip to me. It sounds a lot like Famous Monsters of Film Land. Yes, the artwork for the cardbacks was ripped off from a coloring book, and I don't know the particular coloring book, but it was a fairly well known monsters, like not monsters, but mythological creatures. If you go to Platt Stallions dot com you can actually find all this information about the tom Land figures and they'll show the card back against the coloring book page. It's a direct rip up.

So these guys were just piggybacking on Migo's success, and I guess it was a UK company. The things that I read about it, since I don't really know much about them, were a little bit confusing. I saw one site said they came out in the early seventies, but another site said seventy seven, which to me is not early seventies. That's late seventies. And that sort of makes sense to me because I remember this happening, this coveting happening when I was in second grade and my best friend, Ricky Wadsworth, Ricky, if you're listening and get in touch, had this figure.

You might still have it. Yeah, I don't recall him having a lot of action figure toys, like I don't remember going over to his house and playing with megos and stuff. We did a lot of other things there, but he had this. Mom probably bought it for him cheap off the rack. I think if megos were like two to three dollars, these were probably under a buck to buy, and I just became completely obsessed with it.

Probably tried to find it at Long's or wherever else we went that had those cheap rack toys, never found it, And I don't know if I convinced him or asked him to bring it to school one day, but he did for whatever reason, and it got taken away by the teacher. Oh so she started on her desktop and I don't know if it was you know, get it back at the end of the day type of thing or at the end of the week, or what they did. Really, I saw this as my opportunity to steal the figure you talked about, what was it, the Batman eighty nine figures? Oh yeah, making you steal something from a rite aid or whatever. I was thinking in my twisted little head at the time.

Well, he won't know that somebody stole it. He'll just think the teacher got rid of it or something. I don't know what was going through my head. This was my best friend for talking about but I couldn't. I don't know how her desk was set up so that I couldn't reach up to actually get it.

And I remember it being on her desk, just out on her desk, So either she had a really deep desk or it was set up in such a way that a little eight year old couldn't reach over and grab it. So I lost my chance of getting one. Probably never saw that again after he moved away, But it is a figure that stayed in my mind for all these years, I mean almost forty years now. You sent me a picture of it, and it's esthetically really exciting looking figure and immediately reminded me of the Cyclops from the movie Kroll, and also reminded me of a Ray Harry Housen cycoss. That's the rip off, yeah, exact the Ray Harry Housing.

And so the people making it, obviously they know Forrest Jayackerman and Famous Monsters of Filmland because he always featured Ray Harry Housing monsters in his magazines, and obviously Famous Monsters of Legend is totally rip off of that. But I immediately thought of the Krull Cyclops and how in the seventies and eighties, and probably previous to that, probably starting in the fifties, the Cyclops. It's such a cool monster. It's an intriguing figure and can be a little bit spooky. And you talked about Rain Harry Housing, so you when you see that in Seven Voyages of Sinbad, I think, yeah, yep, hear that shows up.

It's creepy but fascinating, and they pulled a lot of their influences pretty obviously from multiple sources. Yeah, if you try to find this now on eBay, So bringing up eBay, this is something that I would look for. I didn't really know what it was called early on until I got involved with the Mego Museum message board, and since it's a Mego like figure, they have whole actions of the most message board devoted to these other companies that made eight inch figures with cloth accessories. So then I had a name for the company, I had a name for the figure, and I would search for it quite often, and as I mentioned, they are pretty pricey. Yeah, I would just keep looking.

Every once in a while, I pop up into my head. There was a guy called Doctor Migo who I think was one of the first to produce reproduction pieces for megos, so that like if you had an old Batman or an old Planet of the Apes figure, or an old Star Trek figure, you could buy boots or gloves or clothes, and a lot of what he did ended up being what those companies that were producing the repro figures, like the Star Trek line, like the early Planet of the Apes line, those were e MC figures, which was basically him. So I think he had some resin heads of most of these famous monsters. There was the fly. I forgot to mention what the other ones were.

So there was the fly based on basically the Vincent Price movie, a guy in a suit with a fly head, the Abominable Snowman, and oh shoot, always forget the fourth one. The fourth figure was a Morlock from H. G. Wells The Time Machine. I think they did some quote unquote universal monster figures as well later on down the line, which a lot of the companies did, like a generic wolfmanic if they could even call them Dracula I don't know, but generic Frankenstein's monster things like that.

Amigo even did that at one point, and then when Star Wars hit, which was shortly after the release of the first line, they repurposed all of the card art and their names and made them appear to be aliens instead of monsters of legend, again piggybacking on someone else's success. So I would look for these things. I would look in particular for the cyclops since that's the one that really put the whammy on me, and eventually found a decent enough one for a pretty good price, and so I did pick up he is missing his jacket and his scarf. And I actually bought two bodies. I have another body, so I don't know if it was to get a better head or better pants or something.

And I know that I got them for pretty cheap. If you go on eBay now to look for a Tomlin cyclops, you're looking at over one hundred dollars for incomplete ones that are about the same as this. I paid nowhere near that. Well, that's good. I wouldn't pay anywhere near that.

They are super duper cheap. This is I think a blowm old body, so very light. Yeah. Blowmold, for people that aren't in the know, is basically your shampoo bottle material. Plastic isn't serted in a mold, and there's a big puff of air that shoots that material out into the mold.

And the head is just like super super squishy, so very I can see the very thin vinyl and you can probably see through his head. Yeah, I see the sun shining through it. Yeah, it's a good looking figure. He's very cool. The pants are like super tight like Spandex, but pretty awesome, and it has this weird bunny.

The logo on the back is this strange bunny for some reason. That's awesome. So he's pretty fun. And I look for the vest in the scarf from time to time, and I can't even find With all those reproduction sites out there, like Figures Toy Company, I can't even find a jacket that's similar to what he had, this brown frazzled jacket and her red scarf for you know, because going out on a nine on the town, I guess. So, yeah, that was the one that really tested my fortitude as far as breaking some of the commandments.

Definitely coveted it and almost stole it, so that's so funny. The desk that I use here at home is an old school teacher's desk. It's all wood that has sort of lockable drawers and you know, to keep kids from stealing. But also I can see why if that thing was placed in the middle of this desk, a little eight year old arm wouldn't be able to reach up and grab it because it's a big, wide tabletop. I distinctly remember it being on top of her desk instead of like in a drawer, because in a drawer in a locked drawer room makes sense.

I wouldn't be able to get it, and if it was up against a wall and just deep enough to where a little eight year old couldn't reach up, I understand it. But I hope he got it back. Maybe that's why I don't really remember seeing it or with it much at his house. Who knows what teachers did back in the seventies. This is mine, I have a child, and it is now.

Well, that could have been the case. I hope we got it back too, because that is an amazing figure. I love our conversations because we get to kind of indulge in the things that we are interested in, but also because I always learn a little something new from era just previous to mine. Your era, that's cool. That is a beautiful figure.

He would have been a little baby. Yeah, and our show is indulgent if nothing else, that's true. Aren't all podcasts indulgent? Yeah? I think they are.

I think they are for sure. I think that's it for this little guy for me. So what is your first major obsession? I'm glad that yours reminded me of the movie Crawl. That would definitely be something that I'm going to want to talk about in the future, because that movie is remarkable and in a similar way aligns with ripping stuff off.

Yeah, ripping stuff off. Also what appeals to me about what I am going to talk about today, which is Popeye, predominantly in the nineteen eighty movie by Robert Altman, because that's what got me into Popeye at the very beginning of my young life. And that movie is very similar to Kroll in this particular way in that it's not a great movie, but that it has this very special quality to it, you know, something that always blows my mind. It's how a movie like Plan nine from Outer Space, for example, is given the label of being the worst film ever made, but it has so much heart to it that you can't help but love what's happening in it. It's a beautiful film because of the amount of love put into the making of it.

Even though it's not great. The Popeye movie, directed by Robert Altman, starring Shelley Duval and Robin Williams a multitude of other great actors character actors, is not perfect, and it's super strange, especially for Robert Altman. It's way out of left field for him. Makes me wonder constantly, like what why would Robert Altman may even make this movie? To begin with, there's a great episode of the Projection Booth was like blanking up Projection Booth podcast.

Ronnie just had a stroke, I just totally did, which seems to happen more frequently. A great episode that talks all about his sort of all about everything about that movie. It's perplexing. The Harry Nielsen soundtrack is legendary at this stage. Even Paul Thomas Anderson used a couple of songs from that soundtrack in the movie Punch Trunk Love, which is, in my opinion, of a masterpiece.

It has a certain an appeal. If you grew up with that movie, if you watched it as a kid, there's a guarantee that it will strike a nostalgic chord for you. But if you watched it later on, there's a guarantee you'd be like, what the heck is this? It's fun when those directors, I mean, he had a pretty wide swath of interesting films, I think a lot of times a certain chunk of them, like early seventies Altman, Yeah, yeah, and then after The Player he had sort of another string. Yes, but there are a lot of odd ball movies.

Yeah. In amongst his ouvoir Three Women stands out Three Women. It's so good, it's so amazing, and it's super weird and surrealistic. And Shelley davolves in that one too, Images Images, which is amazing. People that have listened to my show in the past.

No, yeah, that was a recent discovery of mine that really really smacked me upside the head. It's so good. He was really willing to go out on a limb. Always he was willing to go out on a limb. With his films.

Those early seventies movies and right up to Popeye are really strange. Some of them are really strange. None of them have moments where characters are breaking into songs. That's what makes Popeye pretty unique. Well Nashville, I guess, but that's small oh yeah, not musical style, breaking this song like you're talking, Yeah, exactly.

The dialogue becomes it's part of the realistic aspect of that they are singing and performing. So watching the Popeye movie on constant repeat as a kid along with I was watching I Want to Talk About King Kong too, because he used to watch that obsessively as a kid too, and Star Wars and I probably wore out those vhs tapes. Popeye did something to me that was very strange. I wanted to make those arms. I wanted to make those rubber arms totally understandable, totally understand this.

They're so strange. Notice I'm using strange instead of weird. I'm trying. It's going to make a comment. I did it first.

A right, here's our word for the day, folks, here's our word for the day. Ding So Robin Williams in those prosthetic arms, the outfit. I got a Bendy figure of Popeye as a kid, and I got really interested in the lore. I'd seek out the cartoons. Back then, you could get really cheap collections of the cartoons on VHS tapes.

Every once in a while. Now, just like with Star Wars and Masters of the Universe, that obsession will come back in a very powerful wave of nostalgic interest. Popeye is definitely up there, and it's something that I've ever since I was a kid, I've always wanted to have, like the perfect toy version of that. The Bendy is all I had. I did get a clushy later on, maybe when I was in grade or something.

Don't tell anybody not too long ago Mesco came out. Did you see that? Yes, the Mesico figure that came out maybe three years, four years ago, previous to the pandemic, I think right before. There's been a few versions of it, but they're extremely expensive now online. I totally missed the boat on it.

They're the one twelve series, right, Yeah? Are they twelve inch scale? Maybe they're more like seven inch, I think, I yeah, No, I think you're right, yes, but they do have cloth clothing. It's based on the cartoon, but sculpted in a very realistic way, so it looks like Popeye, it looks like Bluto. They're very cool, but they've got like you can see stubble, and the skin is sculpted in a way that looks very realistic, and they are freaking amazing.

You know how sometimes we feel like in the Cosmos, we start to think about a thing again and suddenly the planets aligned and there's this resurgence of interest. I certainly felt that way into nineteen when all the announcements were popping up about Masters of the Universe stuff. I was like, Wow, that's really interesting, because I've been thinking about it a lot, and over the last two years or so that seems like the universe has been saying, you know, whispering my ear, popeyeyeye. Those figures are cool. They're even more coming out too that are based on the cartoon.

Mesico has got it. Some few other companies have some coming out. They look pretty amazing, So it's good stuff. The soundtrack is I want to go back to the soundtrack here is incredible. If you're familiar with Harry Nielsen's music, you know that man is extremely talented.

Nielsen Schmielsen. That's right. There's a beauty to that soundtrack. It surpasses camp and goes straight into the realm of the magical. In my opinion, I think the soundtrack is what makes that movie so unique.

The set design is what helps make that movie so unique. And one of my goals in this life, if I can, and if my wife will, my amazing wife will let me in. She's listening. She's listening. She's right over there, she's listening right now.

The island of Marfa, where the film was made, the set still exists. It's been altered quite a bit over the years, repainted and gussied up. Yeah, they keep it up, don't they. They keep it up, so it doesn't have the same weathered look that we see in the movie, but because it's such a ramshackle set, you know, it still carries the aesthetic of like weather worn seaside town and it's still there. They've turned it into an amusement park without any rides, of course, but it's just like you go there and you walk around.

It is a dream of mine. That is one of the most spectacular sets ever made. It combines another thing that I was obsessed with, or have constantly been obsessed with, which is tropical locales. It combines that really blue ocean with also a deserty landscape and piece together homes. Just recently, I had an injury to my foot.

I won't go into details, but I was laid up in bed for two weeks and was rewatching a lot of eighties movies, watched Popeye, and it just takes me back to that place in time. I can see why I was interested in special effects makeup, probably know definitely stemming from that movie Monster's book we talked about earlier, but reinforced by the prosthetics of those weird arms. Probably the reason why I have an anchor tattoo today. I did not know that, Yeah, probably the reason why I love the ocean, and probably the reason why I love ramshackle towns and living in the Central Valley. There are a lot of little, teeny tiny towns that I just love so much.

I love driving through them and looking at building that have been mended, you know, using scrap wood, and I think that's definitely why I like certain bands. When I listened to the Harry Nilsen soundtrack, it reminds me a lot of why I loved the album so much. Deserters Songs by Mercury Rev. That album is very influenced by Harry Nielsen in a lot of ways and has a kind of melancholic whimsy that the soundtrack to Popeye has too. So watching that movie again just last week really reminded me so much of why I love what I do.

Love. My wife and I the first trip out to Target after I was able to walk around on my foot, We're in the men's section and we saw a Popeye T shirt and Target and it's almost like the cosmos is like here, you go, really glad to find that and just trying to not spend money on toys right now. But there's a lot of cool Popeye toys out there, so I have seen them, and I wasn't sure. I knew the ones that I had seen that were probably those Mesco ones were super pricy, and I was like, yeah, no, I think maybe I'll get a Bendy at some point. Yeah.

So I saw that movie in the theater and I went to see it because of Robin Williams, because of morkan Mindy, which was definitely obsession of mine. I had freaking suspenders that I wore on picture day in I think third or fourth grade. So that's a wonderful picture. Hopefully I can find it and use it at some point. Isn't there a spinach button on the Mork and Mindy suspenders?

Look, I'd have to look, that would make sense. Yeah. So I used to watch the cartoon. It was one of those syndicated cartoons that played constantly on Channel twenty six, and I loved the car tune. I think when I went to see it, I was like, this is not like the cartoon yet, And I don't know.

I'm sure the trailer or TV spots indicated that it was a musical, but I may not have really realized how much of a musical it was, so that really threw me off. So I left very disappointed in that film. Yet I have gone back to watch it multiple times over the years. It's not something that I go back to yearly, like you talked about last time, with that disappointment and then excitement and disappointment and excitement, and I get excited every time I watch it because I think, Oh, it's going to click this time. Yeah, yeah, and it hasn't really, Although I can't remember the last time I watched it, it was probably before I met Carlita, so it's been a while and I enjoyed it more.

Those arms are definitely fascinating. I know, I was fascinated by the prosthetics in that film and the fact that they're so hairy, like his real arms are. It's kind of weird because I didn't have hairy arms and the cartoon. It's something that I've been meaning to watch with Cleo for a while, and I'm not willing to pay money to watch it. So it comes and goes from streaming quite a bit, and then I just I miss it and I realize that it's left.

It's been on Netflix before in the past, and it's streaming somewhere right now. I know that because I just at the beginning of the month. You know, all the streaming services get a big, whole, huge pile of movies, and I saw it on one of them. I just need to figure out which one and finally sit down and make her watch it with me. She has no connection to Popeye whatsoever.

I feel like, because she's a team now, you may have missed the boat on being able for it to be enjoyable for her. I think so. I know for sure that that movie is not going to appeal to someone who's older unless they saw it once or twice as a kid, which is part of it's no let me take that back, because I think that if you watch it as a teen, you won't like it. But if you watch it in your thirties or forties, I think you'll you'll understand its appeal. I remember nothing of the music except for the oil song.

And he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me, he needs me. Because of that show, the Natasha Leone show Russian dol Oh. Yeah, it had that Harry Nielsen's song on the end of every single episode, right, And I was like, man, I love the song. God, get up, God get out, gotta get home for the moning comes. What if I gotta be dad gotta get home.

He He's one of those guys who I would always hear about. Knew the song from Midnight Cowboy, of course, knew a lot of the other songs, just in bits and pieces. I think that and watching the movie Head where the performance of Daddy's song just absolutely blew my mind and I'm like, I need that song. And then I downloaded his first two albums, or maybe not the first two, but Nielsen Schmilson and Son of Nielsen. I think I have the album is called Son of Schmilson on my phone, so that right now I think might hit stronger.

I think at the time I dismissed it because why is Popeye a musical? They never sang in the cartoons. It is a really strange decision. The one thing I can say about the movie that did align with the cartoons, and not the later cartoons, but the very early cartoons of Popeye. He is always mumbling under his breath, saying sometimes slightly inappropriate things.

I didn't realize that until my recent rewatching of it, of how much that was a way that they could align with the early cartoons. Yeah, no, one's breaking into song. And it's interesting because if you watch The Long Goodbye, Elliott Gould does that mumbling yeah a lot in that movie. And that is a Robert Altman movie, and I believe it's in there because Gould was a Popeye fan. Oh that makes also Robert Altman.

But I remember I think it was an interview with Gould again on Projection Booth because they did an episode on The Long Goodbye, and I just always noticed that later on in life, knowing that he had directed both movies. And I loved The Long Goodbye, and I'm like, hey, he's doing Popeye here, constantly mumbling that's cool. If the we watched The Long Goodbye, I haven't seen that in like twenty years. So it's so good it is. It is good if it must be the player Pappy year bread and see pipe smoking Tim, what's next on your list?

This is another one with a long time between happy endings. So I have my Tomlin cyclops now after three or so years of coveting that, and then my next item was filled with obsession, disappointment, and then ultimate happiness about forty years later. Yeah, so I became hyper obsessed with Stretch Armstrong as a kid. It came out in nineteen seventy six. This was one of Kinner's pre Star Wars massive hits.

It was extremely popular. I remember the commercials. They were fantastic James Wrong from Kinner. It was a concept that I had never seen before. I don't think it had been done before.

This figure that you could pull and stretch and it would bounce back, and it was about Oh. I'd say, they're what ten inches tall or something like that, maybe even taller. Might it might even be roughly twelve in scale. But it was his face. That face sculpt was so powerful.

Later on in life, I would realize, oh, this is very Kirby esque. He has that Jack Kirby superhero face without the weird wide set eyes that he does never did. It was just such a striking image. I wanted one really badly. I know that I must have bothered my parents about it for a good while.

And I think one of my friends, the kid that I mentioned, had this great house out on Sunnyside and a lot of the stuff that I never had. I believe he had a Stretch Armstrong, so at least i'd get to play with him when I was over at friends houses. So I think this went on for a while. I never really understood why I didn't get one, because they were probably everywhere at that time. I think they were made from seventy six to eighty that original stretch Armstrong, because there are later versions of him, just never got one.

But I think it was based on price. I did a little bit of searching for image, just for images to have for our promotional stuff. I found some old ads and it was between like nine and twelve dollars. Twelve dollars back in the late seventies for a single toy was a considerable amount when you think about it. Megoes ran anywhere, depending on the license, from two to five dollars for a figure.

I think this is probably also why I never had Showgun Warriors when I was a kid, the Jumbo figures. At some point, to assuage me, my parents made a deal. I was playing soccer at the time. My dad was the coach or one of the coaches. I pretty much just stood on the field and didn't do much.

They struck a deal with me, if you really go out there, if you get a goal, we'll get you a Stretch Armstrong. Like I like to do with my memories. I'm probably adding a little bit of tension here that may not have existed, but I believe it was the last game of the season. I scored a goal. In my mind, I'm already elated, like, oh God, thank you God, I finally get Mitch Armstrong.

And then I was called offside. Oh so the goal didn't count and I was just absolutely deflated and oh no, no, I don't get stretched. My dad was like, disagree, I don't think you were offside. That goal counted. You still get your Stretch Armstrong.

Oh that's awesome to elation. Yes. So I don't know if he went to a store or if I just waited for my mom to get it or something. I feel like I wasn't there because I probably would have said no to this. But I didn't get a Stretch Armstrong.

I got a stretch Monster. Oh yeah, it's Kenner's new stretch Monster, Scratch Monster new from Kenner Scratch Armstrong so old separately. At the time, this was incredibly disappointing to me. So he came out in seventy eight from what I've read, so I would have been nine. This was like, I guess, third grade.

And I don't know why they couldn't find that, or if my mom thought I would like this one more or what happened. My son's gonna love a monster more? Right, I don't know. I don't know what the deal was. I have a feeling she said they didn't have any so I got this one.

Yeah. For me, I'd almost rather not have the thing that I really want than to get a substitute. And I've always been that way, and I'm It's still something that I work on because if I get something that isn't the particular thing I wanted, it is extremely hard for me to mask my disappointment. Even as a fifty three year old man, it's still really hard for me. I'd just almost rather couldn't find it.

Let's go get something else. And I was able to pick something, and maybe I would have picked Stretch Monster. I don't know. Never liked that toy, played with it maybe a handful of times. O man.

It ended up and the trunk, which is actually sitting right behind me here. I still have this trunk. It stored some of my toys and our board games, so it ended up on the bottom of the trunk at some point, and I don't know if it was when my parents actually moved, which would have been in the early nineties. I don't think it was sat in there that long, but I guess it's possible. But whenever I went and found it again, it had split at the neck because it was an un awkward position at the bottom of the trunk, and some of its purplish ooze had spilled out, and I believe that stain is still in the bottom of this trunk.

So anybody who doesn't know what a stretch Armstrong is, they were these large figures that were filled with corn syrup basically, and back then at least the monster's corn syrup was colored, not red, because that would have been hideous to have blood oozing out a Stretch Armstrong or the stretch Monster. But it was kind of a purple color, translucent, and they did not weather well. They did not last long. It's not a case of built in obsolescence, but it might as well have been. Could pull them pretty far, but at some point they would break, and I'm sure that kids intentionally broke them, intentionally cut them to get that ooze out, and then you've destroyed your toy.

That latex that the body is made out of, unless you stored it really well, wouldn't survive for a long These are not toys like Migos that could be put in a box, stored away, and pulled out virtually in the same condition. It's going to split, it's going to crack, it's going to ooze, it's gonna get hard in some cases. But again, this is something that I would search for on eBay and quickly realized, Oh, if you can find one that's in decent shape, they are hundreds, if not thousands of dollars. Wow. If you look on there and someone I think there's one up there right now that's in its styrofoam box with the packaging, and I think they say they even have the instructions and the patch up kit which came with it because they knew that people would split them.

I think it's nine nine nine dollars, but I know that I've seen them go for more that is not happening, and Stretch Monster is basically the same. Of course, now I'd appreciate the esthetics of the stretch Monster, and I believe that it is more coveted in collecting circles than the Stretch Armstrong, and there were other figures. There was an octopus, which makes a lot of sense, and Mego ripped off the idea and had a bunch of elastic superhero figures at the time. There was a hole, there was a plastic man, which makes a lot of sense. There was a Batman, I think, the Spider Man.

Even I never remember even seeing those when I was a kid. That's something that I discovered because of the Mego Museum website. I would just keep looking. You could buy the heads, but even those would be like fifty dollars. I just thought, well, it's just something unlike some of the Megos that I never had, Unlike this Tomlin cyclops.

It's just something I'm never gonna Oh. You just have to deal with that disappointment in life, but it's fun to look. That's how I discovered the Japanese version that I sent you yesterday, Oh yeah, which is really cool and made me think, boy, they sure missed the boat on this by not having varying skin tones and hair colors for the figure even back in the seventies, different colored trunks. Again, if you're not familiar with Stretch Armstrong, he's this big muscular figure, kind of crouched like the he Man figures. Now that I think about it, it actually looks a lot like he Man, That's true.

That's very same, strong jaw and face, blonde hair. Yep. So the Japanese version has a darker skin tone and it has brown hair, and I think the eyes are brown. And I'm thinking, why didn't they ever do that? Why didn't they mix it up and make not only different skin tones but even just different hair colors.

Yeah, missed Upper tun day, I think for Kenner back in the day. The Japanese version is presented more as a lucha libre wrestler, and it came with a mask, or you could buy a mask. You could also buy robes for it. That's cool, kind of like how Gi Joe would have clothing sets that you could buy once you had the Gi Joe. So there's at least one version of a robe that I've seen on the internet.

The package is very similar, but it's a little bit more detailed. I mean, Japanese and their toys is just a whole other whole other things. Yeah, I mean they really go all out for their stuff and always have. I'm sure you remember this because these commercials also feature something that you were obsessed with. Back in twenty fourteen, Honda started this ad campaign for Happy Honda Days.

But during the holidays, what do we think of when we think of the holidays? We think of toys and being a kid. This actually goes back to your point. I'm going to take a little tangent here. It's time for another tangent thinking of these things and then they come to fruition, that weird zeitgeist thing that happens.

And I think a lot of it boils down to the people that are in these jobs. Like ad companies, there are aids, so they're thinking of the same things. They're thinking, Hey, I saw Popeye when I was five years old and it really blew my mind. I want to do Popeye figures for this company I work for, whatever I worked for. This ad company Honda has asked us to use toys in these ads.

Well, what toys do they use? They're all toys from gen X. I remember those then, all of them, because I found a compilation on YouTube of them and there were about ten of them, and there may be more, but they're all gen X toys. The ones that they had on this particular compilation video were six million dollar Man Voltron, Stretch Armstrong, Strawberry Shortcake, Care Bears, Gumby and Pokey Right, Jim Gi Joe together and an ad teenage mutant Ninja Turtles and Skeletor and Skeletor and he Man were in a couple different ones. So I remember seeing that Stretch Armstrong ad and just go on, ah, man, hey, I'm stretched arms drown Remember how pumped you were when you got me for the holidays?

You tried to pull my arms off. It didn't happen. We'll feel that excited again with a new Honda Accord during half behind the Days. I think that and the original Skeletor and he Man ads came out in twenty fourteen. I believe that was the first and it ran up until twenty nineteen with different toys each year.

They probably replayed the old ones. So I was watching the video the other day and they're promoting the fact that you can get Pandora for their cars. This capability was a big and they show Stretch Armstrong stretching his arm from the back seat to the front seat to change the channel and they pull out to a wide shot of the car with his arm extending out of the back seat, and it looks Just go watch it, you'll understand what I'm talking about. It does not look like an arm stretching from the back of the seat. I'll just say that.

And I got a big kick out of that. It really caught my attention. Sometime during that point, Curlita was buying a new Honda, so we went when they had stands and all the stuff in the storeroom for those commercials. So as We're sitting there looking at the skeletor one on this gal's desk and I'm like, I really like this ad campaign that's going on, and she's like, oh, yeah, this are great. She was young, so she probably had no idea what any of them were.

She's like, you can have this if you like. I think we're getting rid of them soon. And I'm like yeah, I said, do you have any of the stretch armstrong ones? And she's like, well, let me look. So she went and looked and they didn't.

So I actually have the skeletor standy that was on their desks, and I don't know if I've ever shown that to you. No, it's in my toy area back in the other room. I don't know what I'm ever gonna do with it. Maybe I'll give it to you, or maybe I'll just keep it. So of course that got my juices flowing.

Probably looked up Stretch Armstrong on Hebay a million times just trying to find even ahead. I would have been happy with for like twenty bucks, but they're all like fifty dollars or more. No way, then Lo and Behold. So not too long after that, yeah, at I don't know if it was the two fifteen Toy Fair or the two thousand and sixteen Toy Fair. I think toy Fair happens pretty early in the year, so it might have been the two sixteen fortieth anniversary of the release of Stretch Armstrong.

Hasbro now because I think they've absorbed orbed Kinner for the most part. Don't they release the Star Wars they do? Yeah, yes, so they pretty much have. I think Kinner's old catalog of toys. Yeah, announced that they were re releasing Stretch arms Strong.

I couldn't have been more excited. It sounded like or seemed like it was going to be unveiled or rolled out in the UK first. Probably because of licensing issues. I don't know. I don't know why.

I know. I posted about it on Facebook, probably said something to the effect I've been waiting forty years for this, always wanted one of these, never had it. Of course, all these people pop. I didn't say, oh I had one, blah blah blah. You had one Facebook friend of mine who was a customer of Letter Pressed.

She bought nearly everything that I produced. Said well, I'll pick one up for you if I find it in the store and send it to you. And I said, man, I am so happy to pay for shipping on this. That sounds wonderful. Sometime in there, it was announced that they would release in the States around the same time.

So I just kept my eyes peeled ye on Amazon, kept my eyes peeled at Target, and they finally popped up. I'm sure they've announced the date or something. And I, like I said, I was keeping my eye on this, probably on Hasbro's website. Ordered one on Amazon they were going for twenty four ninety nine. Ordered one on Amazon pre order, I believe, so had to wait until I got the shipping announcement, got the shipping announcement.

This was when Cleo was still in elementary school, so I would go and pick her up at the end of the day, and I thought, you know what, let's take a trip over to the River Park Target. On the way home, I see on my phone that it's been delivered. I'm like, oh, we need to hurry because I don't want somebody stealing out off my porch. Going to Target, they've already got them. I'd buy one they're at Target, take that home, pick up the one from outside, open them both.

Realize that the one from Target's got a funky or one of them had a funky neck. Oh yeah thing going on. It wasn't put together correctly on the assembly line. So I had my receipt. I don't know.

I didn't go back that day, but very short later after I went took it back. Said you know what, my wife got me one of these already or no, I think I just exchanged it straight. I ended up with three of them to make up for those years of disappointment, and I had one out for a long time to sort of had it out. You can't really display them unless you get some kind of fancy plexiglass thing, so two of them are in the box. I had one out so that I can enjoy the esthetics of it.

The only real difference is it's a lighter, even a lighter skin tone than the original, and the trunks are painted on instead of a separate cloth piece. Really considered trying to track down an original cloth trunk set for him. Haven't found one. If you try to buy them on eBay. Now you'll see a lot of really funky versions of him out there because a lot of people trunks have war and off, or they've probably taken them off with acetone, so you'll see a lot of naked stretch armstrong with deflated legs and all this other weird stuff.

But having him out for as long as I did, he did start to weather and crack. I eventually for that one, I removed the head and got rid of the body, so I haven't looked at the other two. They could be leaking in their container right now for all I know. In the meantime, all these other versions have come out, the world's smallest, which I got. They did some eight inch versions of which I got.

The smallest one ended up just turn into rock not too long after we got it, so we popped the head off that and it's sitting on top of a Lego minifigure. Nice body right now, eight inch figure I've kept in the packaging. It seems fine. So they were supposed to do the Stretch Monster as well, and I was like, oh, yeah, well now I appreciate it. I'll go get one.

I haven't they released it. It's fust They have, but only in the eight inch size and with a completely different head skull to that do not like at all, And the body isn't textured like his body was kind of scaly. This one's just a smooth green body. If you go on Amazon, you can look it up there fifteen bucks. I may get one eventually.

Yeah. I was like, why did they do that? Why did they ask? With his head sculpt? It was so perfect.

It's disappointing. I mean it's the same thing with the Origins version of Skeletor. There still hasn't been a head sculpt that looks just like the vintage version. I don't know why they make those decisions. They've gotten closer to he Man in the Origins version, but they have not done a I don't know why a company makes a decision like that.

Also, why haven't they released the Octopus I wanted to. They've released a couple of the other ones. The X Ray Guy, I think they've redone. I'm not sure about the Octopus. There was a snap.

They're again Japanese toymakers. The head sculpt is different on their Stretch Monster, the old version I'm talking about, and I actually don't like it as much as the American or whatever, the Hasbro version, I mean the Kinner version. Sorry, but there are these vinyl toy companies who have used the head sculps of these figures to make vinyl toys, which is another thing that I collect, but definitely not as aggressively as I used to because they're just way too expensive and they're very hard to track down. They did a version of that Mister X figure. I can't remember what the company is.

I think I have another toy or two from them, so I believe he's about five inches tall, has a cape that has Mister X on it, but the head sculpt is just like perfect much small scale, so they've shrunk it down, and I believe they used the Stretch Monster head for a figure as well. And then a different company that I know of that I have bought some figures from has done a version of the snake, so the head sculpe is perfect, but it's just like a little coiled vinyl snake. They're all very cool, but extremely hard to track down. I'd love to have one of those. I think those I stumbled across those before the actual stretch Armstrong was released in twenty sixteen.

They're fascinating again. It's that esthetic that really captured me and still really does when I see it. Yeah, that had an extended happy ending forty years later where yeh was finally able to get three of them to make up for my childhoo. That is probably the reason we do a lot of the things we do for those forty year old disappointments. Absolutely, thank goodness.

These companies want make money. They're like, you know, there's got to be somebody out there that didn't get this. They didn't get this for their birthday, they didn't get it for you know, it's on their list, they circled it in the Sears catalog and they never got it. And some companies are like, let's give it to them now, and they're in their forties and fifties and they'll probably be able to afford it now. It could just be schlubs like us that are going, you know what, I never had this as a kid.

We own the license. Yeah, let's remake these. This is a pretty cheap figure to make. Yeah, And it's really interesting how they're made, how that latex, And there is a website that's devoted to Stretch Armstrong Lower and the sculps that they use. I think they're a luminium or some there's some kind of metal, and so they would get dipped in the latex and they should have been turned inside out because the details would have been much stronger.

So like with Stretch, you know, he has little sort of nipples and abs and stuff. Yeah, but I think generally they didn't actually flip an inside out. They just filled it and so the detailer it was fine. You can really tell when one was flipped inside out though, if you find them online our feet those were probably the pictures that they used for their promotional material and stuff. They must have flipped them inside out though, for at least the Stretch monsters, because I don't think those scales would show up as much as they did if they hadn't.

Right, right, my cousins had the octopus and I was there when it burst. That was a really significant memory for me because I'd seen the stretch armstrongs out there. Ed friends had had stretch armstrong I had felt them before, and I always wanted to know what was in there, and sure enough I was. I got lucky enough to be there when we were all stretching those octopus legs and one of the you know, I hate to think this, but maybe it was me got to see it burst open and got to see the us come out. That to me was fascinating too.

And I remember there was kind of a an urban legend about that stuff being toxic and poisonous and probably started with parents saying don't eat it right, don't cut his arm open and eat that. It was just it really was just carup. But the dye, if the dyes they use was oh, that's true, because the red number whatever that comes panic back then, I definitely would pick up the octopus if it was ever rereleased, because I had a fascination with aquatic creatures. Take a look. Yeah, maybe it might be one of the ones that was released.

They didn't look it. I think I may have seen one of the stretch monsters in a target at some point, but they didn't get a wide release like this stretch armstrong itself. And you can still maybe find them on those in caps that have all of the retro toys. I've seen them there a few times. Yeah, yeah, get them on Amazon for I think it's up to thirty bucks now, but that's just our state of inflation and recession at this time.

Yeah. Still, I think is a decent price, to be honest with you, for it. Yeah. It's not going to last forever unless you take really good care of it. And I know some of the people that have the vintage figures apply oil to that latex to keep it.

You know, they were stretchy, but in its solid form, if you hit somebody on the head with that thing, you would knock them the f out because it is a constrained in that latex, a solid piece of hard solution and ways. I'm not sure how much they weigh, maybe close to three or four pounds, Yeah, yeah, so be careful they Yeah, you can't throw them around. You can't throw them at your friends thinking that they'll flop around. It's not going to go around your head like a balloon filled with water. It's going to knock you out.

Coal I'm glad you talked about that because I've always wanted to know your story of your history with the Stretch Armstrong and when you and I first started watching movies together when I first moved back to the Central Valley. It came up in conversation a lot, and I have a picture that I'll use that I believe in my head this is the same day, and you can kind of see the disappointment on my face. That's awesome. It was goal you're thinking just of that Stretch Armstrong. It is this season of soccer though, because I really know that damn read uniforms.

So is a picture that I have scanned in the past that because I have it in my head, this is the day of my elation and disappointment and elation and then disappointment a few days later when Mom brought the Stretch Monster home instead. I think we're so similar in that way. Like when I participated in sports as a kid, never was I interested in making the goal or being part of the team to accomplish something great within the arena of the sport itself. It was mainly just like, Oh, I'm gonna get McDonald's after this or something like that. Right, And when that didn't happen, it's like, well, why am I even doing this?

I eventually told my dad I do not want to play soccer anymore. I stuck with baseball because I was a bit better at that, but soccer, yeah, I just never felt comfortable out there. And right, he coached, so what are you gonna do? But yeah, I finally advocated for myself and said I really don't think I want to play anymore. And then I try it again in high school and didn't really do much for me then either.

You know, there wasn't a stretch Armstrong at steak. Yeah, at the end of the game, no one's gonna buy me a stretch armstrong if I score a goal, that's right. So what's your second item for today? I got to throw in McDonald so that that's said. Do you like that?

Yeah? So my next I noticed I noticed that I caught on my next item is it's actually two and they're less items, more characters, though there are items attached to these. As a kid, I was really fascinated by the McDonald land phenomenon. So it's early eighties, the McDonald land commercials had changed to less of the surreal landscapes too, which was of the seventies commercials to the eighties commercials, which was just more of like, here are these wonky characters promoting the food and happy meals and stuff. At McDonald's.

They still had the characters Grimace Hamburgler, Ronald McDonald, Birdie and Guy Fry, Guys and Captain Crook, Mayor mccheese and Officer Bigmac. Officer Big Mac. Did we named them all? I think we did. There's one of the guy that I'm never sure of.

He's a professor professor. I think he was just called the professor at Hamburgloo, which is everything he touches. We turned to McDonald's cheeseburger. I went through a very powerful McDonald's phase. If my parents were feeling generous, that's all I really needed during that time early eighties, like let's get them at McDonald's.

And it wasn't the food. The food is not fantastic. It was certainly the characters. It was going there and what new little do dad associated with the characters who be available in a happy meal or as just being part of being there. There were like little vinyl hand puppets that were just like sheets of plastic yep had those.

Yeah, the play area, you could go climb up inside of may Or mccheese's head or whatever and ride the fry guy eyes and go up into the there were you know those trees. Yeah, right, they guys, right, the fry guys. And every once in a while you'd see somebody in costume, and you would think that I would be more obsessed with Ronald McDonald because we share a name, but it was really all about the Hamburgler and Grimace. For me, those two characters really pushed my buttons. There was something really remarkable.

Probably the reason why I love purple so much began with Grimace, probably but also was extended because of Masters of the Universe. There's a lot of purple there, but Grimace being this goofy big dollar of purple whatever, thank you, and the Hamburgler being sneaky and being a little bit of a batty you. And those villains. Yeah, me and the villains. I love the villains.

And then what was a remarkable discovery for me later on was I realized, when the Internet comes along, I'm able to look up the lore of these characters and lo and behold. Grimace started out as a forearmed villain of hamburger thief or milkshake thief, I mean out And then there's also this sort of mythology behind him that he's maybe a taste bud, which is super weird. Yeah, that's what I've heard. That's what i've heard. Though in doing my research a little bit last night, I was like, you're saying that he's a taste But if you go to the McDonald's, Mick, Wikipedia, whatever it is, they don't really talk about that.

They do say he's an indiscernible creature and he has a lot of there are other versions of him, there are other characters. We all feel that way sometimes, don't we, And that's maybe why I liked him so much. It's like, I'm an indiscernible creature too. And because the McDonald land toys were more of your generation, I missed the boat on those original figures. Later on, in the early or yeah, early two thousands, the McDonald land figures were re released.

One of my greatest regrets. One of the problems of being a poor twenty something is that you get something cool and then you realize you can't pay the bills, and so then you have to sell it and get rid of it. You don't have your Grimace. I got rid of my four Armed Grimace reissue and now every once in a while ago, look on, we should just do a show on eBay one of these days, because we end up talking about eBay every time. But oh, that'll be exciting for people.

Yeah for that, there's yeah exactly. We should do a YouTube show where we shop on eBay and share the screen. I've sold it to a local comic book shop. When I was living in Los Angeles. I bought it from a little independent toy shop down there that no longer exists, and I got it for like something crazy, like twenty bucks.

Sold it for like fifteen or something, and that hurts. Yeah, and now you know, you go looking that up online. It's very pricey. I love the design of the early Hamburgler. I love the design of the early Grimace.

As they became a little more kid friendly later on, with more rounded and appealing features, I became less and less interested in those characters. The version of the Hamburgler that appeals to me the most is the scraggly, big nosed, gray haired, weird, super creepy version of the Hamburgler. He's a bit pervy looking in some early and well, what's really funny is that he started out as a character called the Lone Jogger in the early days of I know this makes it really weird. He even had a T shirt that so he would jog through a scene and steal a Hamburger. And then they thought, well, you know what, the Lone Jogger is super creepy.

Sounds like he's stucking women exactly, he's stalking Hamburgers, but he's jogging through. And they probably made the decision to change that because in the seventies, early seventies and all the way through the eighties you got the whole exercise thing and the jogging and creepy white guys out there jogging in places where ladies are exercising. I'm sure they're like, maybe we shouldn't do this. They changed into a burglar, gave him the stripes, and that they kept the same sort of look, which I prefer, and that's the look that I have. Some of these.

My wife and I found some of the glasses, the drinkware designs, those are like the ideal designs of the Hamburgler and Grimace that I really love. Every time the Hamburgler returns to Happy Meals or Grimace returns in some capacity, I get interested, and you and I had a lot of fun. Well was it fun? It was fun at first and it ended up turning into torture. It started off as fun.

The idea was fun. The adult meals came out of the adult Happy Meals, and the design company, the design company came out with the four eyed versions of those characters. It was exciting. I feel like I got very lucky because I found my Grimace. And then I went out and ate way too many of these things, which was two.

I got lucky because the second one I got was your Hamburglert right, because I got shanked on my first try. That's right, you did, And that was a real disappointment. I discovered this, if you don't eat McDonald's on a regular basis, your body is not adapted to it. That was really terrifying eating that food and being like, oh, I feel worse hungry, and now I feel much worse after eating it. I hear that if you eat it on a regular basis, your body adjusts to that.

Well, I mean, sure, stuff to anything. That's why you need more cocaine if you're an addict. I guess that's very, very true. I'm really glad we were able to find those. Well you found them for me, and I appreciate it because my little story is I think it was the second day of the release and I downloaded the McDonald's apps to make this easier.

They were supposedly available at a store that was pretty close to me out by the Zoo, and when there had ordered them online, they came out said we don't have them right, And I really was flustered and didn't know what to do. I should have gotten a rain check, like I mentioned, and I just said, you know what, I still need to eat dinner, so bring me the damn food. At least you know I ordered it on the app. I don't want to go through this whole rigamar role of refund and reordering. Bring me the food.

And they brought me a super sized oh no, two super sized meals because I had ordered two for me and Cleo, hoping they get two of the figures in one fell swoop and so we had Big Max, which I love, that is a childhood favorite of mine. Yeah, but a huge drink, which I don't ever drink that much soda in one sitting and a large fry. I was like, I'm not going to be able to eat all this. Yeah, I think I did. I think we both did.

I mean I can handle a big mac and a fry now and again, but the sheer volume of the food was just ridiculous and I never went again. I looked a few times on the apps to see if any of the stores show them. There are about five McDonald's in pretty close proximity to my house, and I thought, if one of these has them, I'm actually going to go to the store make sure they have them, not going to order on the app, and it just never came back up anyone's nearby. I was not going to to drive out to Herndon or something in Clovis and get one. I cannot do that anymore.

Yeah, Oh, I'm very satisfied with my Hamburgler. Probably could have snagged a few on eBay as well, because they were about as much as the meal itself, and that's why you're buying the meal. So I just haven't done it. I'm not sure how much fun that really was. It was stressful, and I kept asking myself why it is important yeah, and it was.

I feel like I got lucky being able to find those two characters because I wasn't interested in Birdie and I wasn't interested in the design company's character. Yeah, I can't remember. Cactus. What was it? Cactus, Cactus plant something.

Further project the design company is called Cactus Plant Flea Market. I do hope that they do more adult Happy Meals, that it's handled a little better, that they really overproduce them yea, and make it so that you can buy one. I understand why they didn't do that, but you can do that with the regular Happy Meal toys. You can go into McDonald's buy the toy separate for your kid. I would be happy with just vintage style little things based on the original designs in this format, though, would be perfect, because a lot of times they don't just have figures in a natural pose.

They put them in a car or kicking a soccer ball, shit like that. Just a standalone figure is really what is great about themes minus to four eyes and the funky design. They almost feel like blow molds, right, that's kind of the feeling to them. They're very light, stay hard plastic. They're cool.

They're cool as you were talking about that. I was thinking about the lone Jogger and in my mind, I was like, why did I say creepy white guy jogging? And I know why because Jeffrey Dahmer became a big problem and he was stalking people at the beginning, right while he would be jogging. Maybe that's why they change Although he was that wasn't that was way later. That was way later.

I'm glad they changed the Hamburgler from a lone jogger to the Hamburgler. I'm glad we found those figures. I'm glad that they abandoned. Did you ever see that version of the Hamburgler that they came out with in the early two thousands, That was just an adult man with scruff, like a kind of almost handsome guy with just scruff, which was like the creepiest version of the Hamburger I think. And now it's a cartoonish which I don't like at all.

I don't either. He looks more like a Fisher Price figuring Hamburger. McDonald's was always a treat, like you mentioned, and I did like the food. I mentioned. Big Max wasn't so much an after sports thing, but we probably did after soccer because that's usually pretty early in the day.

For me, it was always after yard work on the weekend. My dad would go over to that shopping center on Clovis and Kings Canyon and pick us up a couple of Big Macs, and that's pretty much all we would get. I don't think we usually got fries. Maybe we split a fry. We didn't get drinks there or anything, but still from time to time I crave a big Mac.

That's where it all started. Actually, it started probably with Bob's Big Boy with their double decker earlier on. I think the Happy Meals came out in nineteen seventy nine, so I was ten. I would have been the right age, but I don't recall us really getting those because it didn't come with a big Mac. It just came tuny little hamburgers, which I never really ate.

I love them now, and I love the quarter pounder because it's basically a big one of the hamburgers. The things though, that really resonated with me, and I've posted a couple of these in my stories recently because I'm following that Instagram account filming in McDonald got to love it is and realized last night that he was a part of the design team that created the figures and the commercials, so he drew a lot of what ended up becoming those weird commercials. If you scroll through his posts and read the descriptions, he says, I drew these blah blah blah, and they got with this. The things that resonated with me were the little hamburgers. Oh yeah, anthropomorphic hamburgers always, and they would have stools in there that were shaped like them sitting on their heads.

Basically, that's something that I always wanted, Like, I love anthropomorphic burgers. I like speaking of Popeye Wimpi's hamburgers always cartoons definitely absolutely looked like the most amazing things you could put in your mouth. Oh yeah, those little, perfectly designed hamburgers like a listening bun and that piece of meat in the middle have always appealed to me. So it's why I got Cranston figures. I think it's named after the person that inspired them.

Cranston is made by Science Patrol, who you can find on Instagram. Yeah, that's cool. It is basically a McDonald's McDonald land hamburger in vinyl form, and he releases them pretty regularly and I think they're like fifteen bucks. That's not bad. They're coming from Japan, so right now, the shipping is absolutely ridiculous.

Right. I finally got in on one, and of course, with my luck and this is part of my life. There's Murphy's law and there's Bagley's law. Something can up an order or a delivery, it'll happen to me. Yeah.

So I was tracking this with Japan Post and the USPS. I was supposed to be out on delivery. I checked my porch, nothing's left. I see the delivery truck and my tracking is showing some weird thing like it's being sent back. I'm like, whoa, whoa.

So I chased down the truck to deliver. Hey, you were supposed to deliver something for me today. Yeah, it's a box. It's from Japan. It says it's out for delivery, but like it's now being returned.

But no one knocked on my door. If I needed a sign for it. He's like, I don't have it. So I went to the Post. I went through this whole rigamarole.

I found out they had put my address in incorrectly, so it got sent back to Japan. I contacted the company said this is what happened. I would just appreciate when you get it back that you resend it and here it's my address again. When you order them, they usually send a little mini one too. And got this little pink one which is Cleo's, but she's gave it back to me, so I did end up getting one.

They also make the cup you know that has a straw sticking out of its head and the little eyes. So those Happy Meal puppets that they made. I don't think they've done the fries. But now Funco of course, yeah, who did some McDonald and figures now have something called Meal Squad Funco pops huh. So they have all the Happy Meal figures.

They've got the little burger with the dollar and bow tie, fries and the cup, and I will probably get the burger along with that. Of course, my Bob Burgers Burgers Burgers. Give me all the plastic burgers you can, I get it. So check this out. Not too long ago on Toy Frenzy, which is my toy talk show on the Skelevator channel, we had a guest.

We had Mark Enright, who is a rubber mask maker. He's known for making action figure rubber masks, so he did the Star Wars, the walrust Head, and the hammer Head. And he also has recently been commissioned by NECA to produce Masters of the Universe action figure masks, which are really amazing. A little bit out of my price, but they are really phenomenal. His work is amazing.

But what he did has been very popular. Is this one mask he calls Vegan Nightmare. I have seen it. I think I know where you're going with this. It is the little Hamburger head and the collar is like the paper wrapping that you would have the Hamburger wrapped in the yellow wrapping yep.

And it's got the golden arches little design, but it says Mortar Heads, which is the name of his company, Mortar Heads, And it's the exact Hamburger with the bulging eyes. And it's a rubber mask and it fits over your head. It's huge and pricy. It's pricey, but it's worth it because he makes them all by hand. They're individually painted, they're individually molded.

They are gorgeous pieces. I thought at it and immediately wanted one. Yeah, they're phenomenal price The prices are again, it's like I get it, but yeah, it's like no, I'll have to wait. I like the small plastic things because I know I can curate those in a space that is livable. If I were to collect all of his masks, which I would want to if I was in a different life, they're all amazing.

I'd have to just adjust my collecting to those masks because they pushed that nostalgia button because they are these life sized versions of Kenner Action figures, life size versions and tell Action figures. They are latex rubber masks, which is something that I've been obsessed with since Hingoria magazine comic book ads in the seventies and eighties. And he's bringing in McDonald's iconography. It's just school stuff. He's those of you who are listening that one person.

It's mortar heads. You can find them on Instagram, on YouTube and on Facebook. He does great stuff. If you also like anthropomorphic hamburgers, exactly those and I was immediately struck by them and went to his page and looked at them. Yeah.

The one mask that I always have in my head is the Boogie Boy mask from Devo, and there is a guy that makes them. Same deal handmade and painted. They're too much. I can't I can't do it. I look at that stuff like it's buying art.

If you're willing to invest in art, buying a mask like that is kind of the same thing. The only problem also with these things is and I'm sure they use better materials than the masks that you would buy costume store as a kid, but Latex is one of those things that does not last forever. Yeah, you have to really maintain them, is what I'm getting at. And spending one hundred and something dollars on a thing that you're probably never going to actually wear, although I might wear that for Halloween definitely would. What do you do with it?

You've got to store it or you have to really maintain it. Well. Yeah, very cool stuff. Definitely not something that I'm going to get into collecting wise, but they do strike a nostalgia chord, Yeah for sure. The one thing I did have as a kid was the Ronald McDonald plush.

Oh yeah, they were pretty big, and I believe it was a hand me down from a neighbor. I got a lot of weird stuff from the neighbors as the aged out of things which will come up later on with comic books and action figures. I don't recall ever particularly wanting that or asking for it. I just remember it being in my closet for most of my life. And you can still buy those online can and they're cool.

Was it the one with the plastic head? No, it's all plush, kind of flat, more like a gig. I just looked at up. It's this one. Oh yeah, for sure, Yeah, definitely.

I had a friend a neighbor also that had that. I had a big bird like this as well as I had never seen one of those around until after I had seen Poultergeist. So when I saw that my neighbor having a Ronald McDonald in the corner like that, I just immediately thought of that scene in poulter Geist. I saw that one of the poulter Geist clowns in Seaside Village near San Diego. My rearents lived in Escondido and we would go to Seaside when we would visit them.

I don't know if it was a toy store or a candy store. They had one of the clowns in a chair, terrifying. I was like, what, I have an affinity for Ronald McDonald too, but now it's all about Grimace and Hamburgler for me. Later Ronald McDonald tows that creepy line as well. Yeah for sure, for sure when they kind of tried to make him look handsome too.

It's so weird. Just make things weird. Just let things be weird, guys. Yeah, let things be as they were originally designed. And you need to edit out the lone jogger.

I totally understand that needs to be edited out. Scroll through that guy stuff on Instagram because he has a lot of the They were changed pretty quickly, Like the figures all came out in seventy one, and then they were changed two years later or everything. The head's got a little bit smaller, their cheeks got a little bit bigger. Most of them have kind of those bubble cheats yea, and those got a little bit bigger, and that the outfit's got a little more elaborate. Yeah, and then in I think in eighty three they were changed again.

And then after that is when the next change was, Yeah, these aren't appealing anymore. Ye Do we want to talk about our local locations now? Yeah? I wanted to add a little I don't know why I thought of this, but it's a random memory that popped up for some reason the other day, was not in an obsession of mine, but it goes back to these childhood days. Something to do with Jesus Christ Superstar came across my vision.

I was thinking, you know, there was a show on TV that used this song as it's theme. I had it in my head that it was Battle of the Network Stars, which I used to watch. I don't know, that's probably before your time. So ABC, CBS, and NBC would get their stars together to compete, and so you'd have you know, Lee Majors competing against Welcome. Yeah, And I thought it was that because of the stars in there, But it was actually a show called The Superstars, which was the same idea, but actual sports people competing against each other in things that weren't their sport.

Baseball players competing against football players in I don't know, Tug of War. They used Jesus Christ Superstar as their opening theme. So I grew up hearing this music and really always liking it. When you've seen Peter Redston, he's been at the wheel of a racing car and mob and not realizing that it was from Jesus Christ, Superstar until I finally saw that movie in my late teens early twenties on TV. Right, and so they start singing Jesus Christ Superstar, and I'm like, what the hell?

Why did they use just because of the word superstar, this melody from that weird musical that I've set a lot of people back in the tap But I just it came up, and I was like, this is a weird thought of mine that when I found that out, just for some reason, really struck me as odd. Yeah, I guess it makes sense a little bit. Superstar Superstar, that's right, Christ Superstar, Athletic Superstars. Why not. I've never seen the movie Jesus Christ Superstar, It's all right, but I have heard the soundtrack.

Yeah, that sounds pretty cool. Yeah, that's a good Songs aren't really my thing. I'm not a big fan of musicals either, so it's always perplexing to me when I will rewatch a Disney movie like what you like Popeye? Yeah, Disney movie like Pinocchio, which is one of my favorites, or those old ones, or of course Popeye. We definitely have exceptions to the rules sometimes.

One thing I did want to bring up is there's this remarkable place, and it does align with McDonald Land in some way, and that storyland here in Fresno, which is right near the zoo, and it still exists. I believe you can still go there. They did renovate like about fifteen twenty years ago. It was a while ago. I remember that.

I think Milligan had something to do or she helped with it or something. Oh, that's cool that she did. That's great. I have it in my head that she was involved somehow. It's kind of like Fresno's Disneyland in a way though.

It's like it's the side as of a city block and it has these sort of ramshackle fiber glass fairy tales sculptures throughout. And we would go on, did you ever go there on a field trip? Because we did. Yeah. That was so My place was going to be the zoo, which is right next door.

Yea, and well we'll get into that, but yeah, the zoo. We went on field trips. Yeah. Two and my big thing. And this is all I'll say about the zoo at the time, at least in my memory, there were spider monkeys there.

Oh yeah, And that is what I didn't care about anything else at the zoo. I just wanted to see the spider Monkey. So anytime we went, that is the display that I went to. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. But yeah, storyline I think was more.

Some kids had birthday parties there and you would get a little key. Yeah, you get a little plastic key and you can turn it. You put it into the fiberglass sculptures and turn it and there would be this crackley old recording of somebody reading a snippet from a fairytale. Never the whole thing. You basically walk these paths throughout this place and you go through the different fairytale locations.

And as a kid who was naturally already obsessed with artificial constructions by people driven by the imagination, I loved going to Storyland and there was a castle you could climb up into and there was a jack in the beanstock thing which they closed off because I think the kid fell and hurt himself or herself. Oh, there was a pirate ship there too. Went back, I think we went back, took the girls there quite a few years ago, maybe ten years ago. It was still fun. It's an interesting place, but it definitely has a pieced together weirdness.

It's not quite immersive. Roding Park has gone downhill in a lot of ways. The zoo is certainly the best part of Roding Park right now, but the sort of playland area that's off to the side between both the zoo and Storyland, it's kind of fallen apart, and Storyland is a little bit in disrepair still. It's kind of like a big McDonald's land because all the sculptures are fiberglass. You can climb up in them and as a kid get lost.

I'm glad that it still exists. It's a place I think about quite often. Yeah, we haven't gone there whenever we've taken Cleo to the zoo. I hadn't been to the zoo since yeah, elementary school, probably until Cleo is old enough to go, which was pretty early on. I mean we went when she was still on infant Yeah.

I still haven't really gone all that much over the years, but I know she's been with the school. Yeah, it was pretty a field trip experience. The only thing I remember distinctly. I feel like it's been moved around. It doesn't feel like the stuff is in the same place to me, Like Storyland and the zoo exists in the same area, and I remember rolling down a hill after we go and be waiting for the bus.

We would roll down the hill, but I don't know where that hill is anymore anytime we've gone. I'm like, there is no hilly area here. Did they move everything? I know exactly what you're talking about. It is.

It's on the other side of the zoo. So on the east side of the zoo. That hill is now part of the African exhibit. How funny it's been bulldozed, I think, but that's where that was. I remember that distinctly.

That makes sense that it was incorporated into the part. Yeah, I'm lucky that I went to the zoo once previous to the new extension, and I had the same exact feeling. Where would I rolled down the hill? And I remember going on that side because I was looking for and you know, I'm in my twenties at this point. I'm looking for the army tank and I'm looking for that hill, and I found both of them.

The army tank, I think, is still there, but that hill has been swallowed up by the African Interesting. Well, I'm glad I didn't that was not a false memory, because yeah, don't trust myself. This might be a false memory, though. I remember getting something out of one of the capsule toy containers in the gift store. That is something that I have not gotten out of my head since then.

It was I believe it was a ring, but it was like a squishy monster head, so you could actually fill it with water, oh and spray water out of it. Whether it was actually a ring or not, whether it was actually a monster head and it was just a generic like round monster head, or that it could score. I don't even know if all that combination is real. That's just how I have it in my head. I follow a couple of sites on Instagram that deal with old capsule toys.

Yeah, and I'm just sort of waiting. This is one of those things that I'm still waiting on rediscovering the fact real and if I will remember it if I see it. Yeah, our memories. Sometimes I know that there are monster rings, but they're usually hard or to have all that combination of stuff just seems kind of odd to me, But that's how I remember it. It's funny how we remember something.

Those little monster finger puppets I remember, you know, those are also something you get from the capsule machines. I remember them looking a certain way. Yeah, and that's a cool one. I remember them looking a certain way. And then when I went on eBay looking at him, I was like, that's kind of what I remember, but maybe not so the older weekend.

There's a lot of variations of those. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's true. I had like one purple one that was just the coolest and their arms up. Yeah, Cleo has of them. Actually, I think they would Target has those packs of things and Halloween you can get the squishy eyes or the bag of bugs or the eyeballs or whatever.

And I believe finger puppets were available for a while through them. Certainly get those. And when she was younger, we would get a capsule toy if there was something interesting that toys r us or when I would leave the supermarket, if I had some change in my pocket and I see something that was worthwhile, I'd get them for her curse. They were like seventy five since now as opposed to a quarter or a kid, but I remember there were some of those machines. Are just the nickel What a cool thing that was.

Yeah, that'll come up at some point as well. For sure, there were a lot of really cool toys that came from those machines, yep. And I had a bunch of them. And I still to this day whenever I go to a grocery store and I see those machines, guys who's still looking to see what kind of stuff they have in them? Saying, now, I always got to check it out.

Maybe someday they'll be uh. Oh, you know what I did see the other day is that there's one of those coin machines that have been making their ways around Japan that are Gremlin's two toys, and you can put piece Spider Gremlin like that. Why can't we get things like that? Why can't we get things like that over here? They have whole stores of those machines.

Oh man, it's whole buildings just filled with hundreds of those machines with all different kinds of beard things in them. That's fantastic. Come on, America. And I forget what they're called. It's an automotopia word gap, gapshure or cap.

It's not capture. That's the thing on the internet, gash upon, g h A p O N And I'm probably mispronouncing it. Those are what they're called because of the turning of the dial. And yeah, that's this anomotopiac sound they make in Japanese. Currently.

That's cool. Yeah all over that is them and toys. It's just a whole nother level. Yeah, it really is. And I don't I've never really looked into that part of Japanese culture too much, but I know that if I were, I'd probably be dangerous because there's so much cool stuff.

You could probably find those capsule toys on eBay pretty quickly just with capsule Toy Kremlin's search. I know that I have seen them online as well. Yeah, it might have even been one of the companies that I follow, like my Plastic Heart or Roto Fuji who get those things from Japan. A lot of cool capsule toys. Just do search.

Maybe you'll find that right after we're done talking. Well, so that was fun episode, cool stuff, cool beans, mark, Yeah, good stuff. Where can people find you? They can find me at Fresne count you can find me on wake Up Heavy. Recollections of or from the files of Police Squad in color, both from Weird Newaymedia dot com or my website wake Up Heavy dot com.

And the shows you should be able to find wherever you listen to podcasts. If it's not available on your preferred podcast platform, then let me know and I'll get it on there. Same thing with the show. Yeah, how about you? Where can folks find your silliness?

Well, I predominantly hang out in the YouTube area with my Sclevator channel, but you can also find Skelevator on Instagram or Ronald Zurigian Underscore projects on Instagram. You see some of my art stuff over there. Every Thursday evening, we try and do an episode of Toy Frenzy. So if you like what we're talking about with toys or when I'm talking about Masters of the Universe, talk a lot about that stuff over there on Thursday evenings on my YouTube channel. You know, it's real exciting because I think the most popular videos on my channel are my build videos from what I've made those Masters of the Universe play sets.

And I just got a commission to make a new Snake Mountain, another big one, So the first video from that series of videos just post. It usually takes me a few months to complete these things because I work on them on the weekends. So you can check out the newest video over there for that. It's exciting and that's it. I love these conversations with you, Mark.

I'm glad that weirdingwaymedia dot com is posting these on their site, and I hope we get more than one listener down the line, and I'm sure we will because these conversations are interesting even if you're not from the Fresno area. I think that most people would understand our attachment to things but also to places, so material things, material things. It's just it's we're going to talk about it's lovely. Well, well we start talking about theories and philosophies and sure, so I was really obsessed with kik guard In right when I was in colleges of the Friedrich Nietzsche and yeah, existentialism. Man, we won't go Yeah no, I yes, I enjoy them as well.

And I remember reading at some point you know, if you like something, there's at least a thousand other people in the world that like the same things, right, So I guess we just need to find those thousand people. They'll come to us. Oh. Also, yes, you can find me on social media at wikipipi is my handle on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and link tree. Yeah, or that's just link Tree, slash Wickapeppi, but and Patreon if you're interested.

I don't think I've promoted that we both oh yeah share these early, since we have a good amount of time between recording and release to get this all edited and available on our patreons. If the ad breaks annoy you, and I totally understand that you can help either one of us out with a little bit of cash every month and listen to these ad free and early. Generally, I think I goofed on the second episode, but generally these are done well before the release date, and that is the first Tuesday of each month. I think we have settled on yeah, so prior to that, at least a week before, you can listen to them early in ad free over on either one of our patreons, which you can find I'm sure Ronnie's on his YouTube channel and you can find my patreon on pink Tree or on my website.

Every little bit counts, and it goes back to our creative endeavors. We understand what it's. You know that spending a few bucks here and there might be outside of some people's realms realm of possibility. But if you're interested in supporting our craziness and our obsessions, then feel free to do so. If you're the early bird gets the worm type of person, you'd like to hear those things without commercials.

That's the best way to do it. Like I used, I didn't realize I had Patreon money, but I had a little bit. That's how I was able to get those Saturday and out Life last episode. I had enough money. I think I ended up spending out of my own pocket a couple of bucks for the two books.

So it's perfect cool and that is related directly to the show. For those of you that do already contribute to Mark and my Patreons, thank you because you're helping to fuel the fire. And what a lovely thing that is. All right, So I guess until next time. That's right.

Thanks everybody for listening, and to have a great week, month, day yere, We'll see you again in May see you later. M H. Writing in each other times and time again again my window the joy they want again, the medal, the the the b the the medal, bo the medal, by telling body I liked it in my windows to the ring arm Joy time fighting in each other's had time and time again again my wardingtory Iradu Bardy rectory, tale, credatory tale, bide behind heading the head, time, behind the game, but working at my windows overdrive, wanting you a lot of a lot of how a lot of hound how he alone, all Aloun alone. Cambridge am Sean is a weirding Way media podcast