Episode 13: Better, Stronger, Faster, More Toxic

Cambridge MSHON is a weirding Way media podcast. He's them catch him, if you can eat him. If you can them you can. Hello and welcome to episode thirteen of Cambridge and Mashon, a podcast by two weird guys about the weird things that they like. And after an extended break, we are back with season two of the show.

And my name is Mark Bigley and I am Ronnie Zerigin. I'm excited about today. Yeah, we've got some interesting stuff. But before we do that, we ended season one with our holiday special, which I'm kind of assuming will become an annual tradition, I hope. So that was fun, and we squeezed in even though we took a break in September.

I believe we squeezed in twelve episodes. Not that I'm going to be anal about that, but we got twelve episodes for the year, plus the bonus rock Ball episodes. We actually got thirteen people. We'll see what happens this year, but I do believe we'll probably stick with the holiday special. But since that time, we recorded that obviously before Christmas, What if anything did you get for Christmas this year?

Ronald? I got some fun things. The two items that like really stood out and are relevant to previous discussions that we've had here on this show. I got the Masterverse Trap Jaw Master Verse New Eternia Trap Jaw from my daughter. It's really cool.

You can see a review of that on my Sclevator YouTube channel. I got a CD from my other daughter from this band called Idols, and Idols has swiftly become one of my favorite newer bands. I believe they're new as of about five or six years ago, and they're really fantastic. I'm thinking maybe I'll do a segment on them in the future episode of this show, especially since we're planning on going to see them perform live in May, which will be cool. The other thing that I got for Christmas I've also reviewed on my YouTube channel.

If I reveal him now, that reveals what I'm gonna be talking about later on today, so I'll just keep him on the down though. I have one of those should I reveal it or not things as well. Well, nobody got me anything. I got myself some Presence, and I think I did this either last year or the year before. A couple of years ago.

I got some Migo Planet of the Apes figures, and since it was close to Christmas, I just when I got him from Amazon or wherever I got them from. I think I got one at Target actually, so it was actually already unopened, but I wrapped them up and gave them to myself on Christmas. That's awesome. So I continue that tradition this year. And I had mentioned on our Star Wars discussion that I really liked the little retro collection chopper from Ahsoka, so I ordered that, and I thought, well, I should order it.

I mean, I don't want to just order one, because I had to get it from Hasbro directly, and so I got his partner on the show, Hara Sindula or however you pronounce her name. I'm a fan of Mary Elizabeth Winstead and she plays that character on the Ahsoka show. And I kept seeing people I think it was definitely the Black Series figure, but also maybe the Vintage Collection figure, which becomes confusing when you look these things up, like on Amazon, because I look for retro collections specifically that are done in the old Kinner style, but they have the Vintage collection which are same scale but more modern y, you know, they have way more points of articulation. The little sculpts. Yeah, and everybody kept showing pictures of her.

But because that was a big thing about the show, was her in those orange pants. So I was like kind of hoping that the retro collection would have a nice sculpt back there as well. It's not very detailed. Well that's the thing about the vintage Star Wars figures. They never really had defined butt cheeks, so yeah, I guess they got to stick with that tradition.

There's a little bit of a behind on the retro figure. I had ordered Cleo. She asked for Black series Ahsoka from Clone Wars, so there's all these different versions of her. So I ordered it on Amazon. It's an old figure, so it's like forty bucks or something.

It's Christmas. That's fine, get it Christmas Day. She opens it, opens the box and it's a figure wrapped in tissue, just laid in the box. Oh yeah, and it wasn't even the right version what I had to return it. And luckily you can take stuff to hold foods here.

Yeah, yeah, that helps, and drop it off in a bag and put it in there and on you go. You get your refund. And I said, well, let's look for something else. For you. So got her some other things and got her the Harrison Dula Black series figure.

Cool and it does have a very defined butt sculpt, so you know, that's that's funny. I think there that butts are important to nerds. The newest version of Tila that's coming out through the Origins Cartoon collection, they made sure to give her a behind sculpt as well, because if you watch the Vintage Filmation cartoon, there's just a ton of heiny shots in that cartoon, and so that really really weighed heavily on our collective boy brains watching that cartoon, and so they they made sure to do that for this new toy. I mean, it's not obscene, but it's uh, it's pretty clear that they're listening to the fan base. Lord.

Yeah, well, you know, it is what it is. It is what it is. So I got those two, gave them to myself. Gave myself something that's relevant to my discuss today. So a vintage item that I got on eBay that arrived like a week or so before Christmas, and I was like, you know what, I'm gonna give it to myself.

Yay. Kind of harder with an eBay purchase because I want to make sure that it's okay. Yeah, that's difficult. It was fine when I opened it, and then shortly thereafter the Book of Boba Fete retro collection. I don't think it's the first series from them, but it's got the I want to say, the Chewbacca character that was in that show, the Wookie character.

Yeah, Chris Santon. Yeah, so him, a couple other people, and they had a Tuscan Warrior. Oh yeah. I was like, ooh, that's kind of cool. I ordered that and it came pretty quickly.

It's the same figure as the one that they're using for that set that we talked about last time. Yes, just a different paint scheme. Yeah, the darker brown underneath the lighter ground. Yeah. It comes with an interesting cloth cape.

It has the same what are the little weapons called? I always forget kind of stick, but it's basically the same thing as the there's a name for that one. Yeah, there is a name for them, and I never remember it, but he's pretty cool. You can use the wake up Heavy Robot voice to insert the stick. I will probably do that.

The gatta fee or gaffe stick was the traditional melee weapon of the Tuscan Raiders of Tattooin, but he's pretty cool or she. I guess I sent you some images because I stopped by game stop the other day when I was in this neighboring town, Selma running some errands. I stopped in there and I saw black Crysantin and I saw the Tuscan Raider. I sent you the images. I avoided buying them.

I'm kind of regretting Chrysantin a little bit. But as I was driving away, and I think I communicated this with you in my text messages. As I was driving away, it was really getting me to think about the vintage Tuscan Raider, the sand person. I've been monitoring eBay pretty heavily laid Lee to get myself one of those vintage ones. I'm being pretty picky because I want I don't want there to be too much wear and tear on the figure, because I just love the paint applications on the vintage sand people.

I saw them in the store seeing them in person. The reason I keep thinking about Chrysantin is those eyes. They're hilarious, Like they're just like super wide. He looks like he's surprised, and I kind of love that about this figure. I'll be getting him eventually, I think for this for me, since I see it as a variant and as opposed to getting that set and splitting it up and all that gobbledy gook, I thought, well, this is kind of a nice in between the thing to satisfy that it's basically the same figure.

You can tell that they've three D scanned it because everything's just a little bit smaller, a little bit softer edges, the head is a little bit smaller. It's the same figure that they're using for the other stuff, and which makes sense. I'm just painted and got in a little extra different cape and that's fine. It works for me as a companion piece. Yeah, that's cool.

Since you also mentioned things that you got yourself, I did get myself a couple of things with some gift cards and stuff, and so I got myself the creature from the Black Lagoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Leonardo mash up figure from NECA. I'm not a huge Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle fan. I have appreciation for them, and I'm going to talk about that a little bit later on today as well. I'm a huge fan of the creature from the Black Lagoon and this particular figure is just absolutely gorgeous. I mean, it's an amazing action figure.

Whether you like TMNT or you Creature from the Black Lagoon or not, it's just immaculately detailed and very very cool. There's a video of that on my channel as well. I saw that and it apparently has a connection to a classic yeah where they did that. That's interesting. The vintage figures.

Hard to think of it that way since it was the nineties, thirty years ago. Dude, I know it's I still struggle with that. The Universal Monsters TMNT mashup figures from then, from back then are really beautiful. They're very expensive these days, but they're very cool. I watched with Cleo their recent iteration or one of the recent ones, Mutant Mayhem, No No, No No, this show.

It was on oh yeah whatever channel and got hear a few things back then because of that, and they were all over Toys r US when we still had a Toys r US, so we got some stuff. But for me, it doesn't hit a nostalgia thing. We did enjoy that show. Its kind of like the Teen Titans Go. Yeah, for sure, the same sort of formula.

They were smart and fun and well drawn shows. So mm hmm. I enjoyed watching those of her. Alrighty, let's get into the meat of the program. Oh yeah, today with your obsession from childhood?

Yeah, more like early tweens. Were you between when out? Yeah? So this particular movie came out in eighty four, but I didn't watch it until I was like fifteen. I'm surprised that my dad let me rent it because it's pretty raunchy, but you know, that was that's the era, I guess.

As I've mentioned before, by the time I was fifteen, I was already deep in my reading of Fangoria magazine and Starlog and sine Fantastic and really interested in special effects makeup, just really deep in this stuff. And also paralleling that, as I've mentioned in previous episodes, I was also interested in b movies and cult movies because my dad had that Midnight Movies book which I would always peruse. We would go to that video rental store down the street called the Movies, and if you wandered into I mean it was the size of a large bathroom, this rental store. I guess he's the best way to describe it. There were these different sections, and you know, you could see National Lampoon's Vacation on the shelf right next to a movie like this one that I'm about to talk about.

This film would always be in my eyeline, my sightline. And what we're talking about is The Toxic Avenger, and it was created out of violence and horror. He exists poorly to de stroy the evil around him. He can't be reasoned with, more bargained with, he can't be stuck. So if you've been bad, look at it's your worst nightmare come true, the Toxic Avenger.

If you've been bad, he'll get you good. Rate it on Under seventeen not admitted would. I thought Friday theaters everywhere. At a fairly early age, I was becoming familiar with this company, Trauma Entertainment that that you know, I never watched the movies until I was fifteen sixteen, Starting with Toxic Avenger when I was fifteen, I'd see that the logo, I'd see the covers Sergeant Kabuki, Man Killer Condom later on Tromeo and Juliet, and I was like, what the what the f a these? You know, Like as a kid, I was like this is what is Toxic Avenger?

I mean the illustration on the I used. I've used National Lampoon's Vacation because the illustration on the cover of Toxic Avenger is beautifully illustrated, reminiscent of airplane of National Lampoon's Vacation. I was just super fascinated by this concept of this mutant. Finally convinced my dad to let me rent it. When I would rent movies like this, sometimes he would watch them with me, but sometimes I think he was not as interested, so I would watch it when he'd be out running errands or something.

So I watched this one by myself. And there's a lot of TNA in this nov I think that's on the Troma checklist. It is much like Roger Korman's checklist. There has to be boobs and butts, and they never left out men either. There had to be partial male nudity as well.

There had to be nudity, there had to be violence. It was rated R, or maybe it was even unrated. I can't remember, but I believe it's been given the R rating since then, and so it was gory. I was super interested in that. Of course, I was like on high alert with the boobs and stuff, so love that.

I watched it with great joy. I knew from the moment it started with that really cheap o Trauma logo that comes on with the city scape at the very beginning, just bad video animation, that it was going to be a low budget experience. One thing that I admire about Trauma is that there's no lie. The b movie aspect, the low budget aspect of these films is upfront and center. No shame, no qualms, no hiding the budgetary limitations.

The head of the company, Lloyd Kaufman, I've grown to have a lot of respect for his philosophy and his approach because he's I've watched lots of interviews with this guy, and he's very well educated, like Roger Gorman was, with good filmmaking and quality movies from the past, and understands what it means, but also understands what it means to make art the way you see it and make it with what you have. And I just love that. And make a book, don't forget that. Yeah, that's a big part of those guys are about making a book. Oh yeah, for sure.

Let's not tease ourselves and say that they're in it for the art. They're not. They're in it for the art, but they're mainly in it for the money, which for the Toxic Avenger, for Lloyd Kaufman, and for Trauma. That worked out well. It made them a lot of money.

I believe it made most of its money in video cassette form. Yeah, you know, we'll talked about this a little bit later on. It Eventually he sold the rights to turn it into a cartoon for kids, which was right around the same era that Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles was hitting the airwaves as well. So this whole concept of pollution being bad, corruption in our governments being a part of that. People are becoming, you know, in the late eighties and early nineties, becoming really earth conscious and anti pollution and anti corruption, and Toxic Avenger, similar to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, is talking about what happens if someone is affected by toxic pollutants.

It just really really played to a lot of my teen angst and frustrations, whether it be like feeling like an outsider, you know, that's really what happens in the movie is Melvin is essentially a nerd who is cleaning up to gym and is bullied, and so that played to my sensibilities. He gets tossed into a vat of toxic chemicals and becomes a hero. Growing up on Superman and Batman and Masters of the Universe. That played to a lot of a lot of stuff that I really really struck a chord with me. The kind of humor that's in this movie is something also that sticks with me.

It's sort of borderline corny. I mean, it's not borderline corny. It's definitely corny, but it's you can tell the trying to achieve a kind of humor that's in Airplane or in Young Frankenstein. In fact, Young Frankenstein, I feel is there's a Nazi cop in Toxic Adventure is a German cop who keeps accidentally raising his hand to say in the Hitler salute. He also says nine a lot, and I feel like that's in many ways sort of a reference to the I forget what that actor's name, but in Young Frankenstein, the oh Man, I should have thought of his name beforehand.

But what's you know who I'm talking about? The policeman. No, I know what you're talking about. Anyways, it's sort of a reference to him. And also there are some pretty outdated generalizations of people and lifestyles and races, and you know, it's almost akin to what you might see in again mentioning airplane with effeminate men and playing off of stigmas attached to people of different racial backgrounds.

It's Inspector Kemp, Inspector Kemp. Yes, thing played by Kenneth marrs the one with the wooden arm. With the wooden arm, absolute genius. We had better confirmed effect. Doc Young Cromponstein is indeed following and his grandfather's woodstops what following and his grandfather's woodstops?

Footstops? For Christmas this year, I was heavy handed in making sure I'm asking for this particular thing, but I got the Super seven toxic Avenger. Did you drop hints all around the house a little bit? Yeah, for sure, Open up a magazine to the ad for it and lay it on Ariela's bedside table. What's that your reading?

It was more like, hey, hun, there's a sale right now on Big Bad Toy store, and this particular figure is like half off right now. So let's consider this if you're thinking of Christmas gifts for me, this would be appropriate. Yeah, that's kind of how it goes around the holidays for her as well, and for our daughters too. I'm gonna step back just a little bit because right around the time that I found out that there was going to be a reboot of Toxic Avenger, this is after Super seven had already started making reaction figures of the Toxic Avenger based on the movie figures. And don't they do the what's their kind of fancy line?

I forget them? Yeah, the Ultimate Ultimates Ultimate. Yeah, they did the movie reaction figures I think about almost four years ago, and at this stage it's been a while because I have little I have him. It's a cute, little cartoony looking Kinner style figure. So they did the movie version, then they did the Toxic Crusaders version, and it might be the one that you have, yeah, I think.

So they did a whole run of the cartoon characters and that was a little bit more recent, that run of figures, and then they did even more recently the Ultimates version of Toxic Avenger based on the Toxic Crusaders cartoon, and I got the radioactive red rage glow in the Dark Ultimates Toxic Avenger Toxi from Toxic Crusaders. It's amazing. It's got really powerful glow in the dark feature at night, but then when you put him out in the day in the sunlight, he turns this sort of deep red, which is super fascinating. So he's got these three different options as far as his coloration goes. I'm getting ahead of myself because right after I found out about this reboot that's coming out from Making Blair, who I know you're a fan of it already showed in a couple of festivals in twenty twenty three, But now that we're in twenty twenty four, they still haven't announced the release date.

I saw a Funko pop on the shelf of the Toxic Avenger based on the original film about a month ago, two months, a month and a half ago. I've seen it in Target. Yeah, it's a beautiful funko pop. You know, funko pops are weird. We've talked about that before.

It either works or it doesn't work. It seems to work with him. Going back to that zeitgeist thing, I'm thinking about Toxi again. He's there, He's in my head, sure enough. He's showing up.

I see him on a shelf a target. That's super strange to me, not only that it's a character that's being interpreted as a Funko pop, because Funko pops, for the most part, feel very lighthearted, though I know they do horror film characters and stuff. In my mind, I'd always felt like Toxic Avenger is you either know or you don't know. You either appreciate it or you don't appreciate it. I keep forgetting that there was a cartoon that kids grew up on this guy, whether they watched the movie or they didn't watch the movie.

I think we're about to enter a new toxic era. And there have been sequels, right, And there were lots of sequels, Yeah, tons of sequels which I haven't actually seen. Well, I'm going to tell you right now, I've never seen the Toxic Avenger. I am not a Trauma fan for the most part, and a lot of the stuff that I've seen, I have seen their logo pop up on things and I'm like, oh, I didn't realize this was a trauma movie. And I think in a lot of those respects, it's kind of like a twenty four these days to compare two very different studios or production companies.

A twenty four also distributes films. Yes, you know, they buy up films, and Trauma did the same thing. And what I'm thinking of in particular, I believe this is the case, although it may have just been a trauma film. Is Franken Hooker to day, because I don't think Henn and Lotter started out with basket Case and that stuff as trauma films, But I do believe that Franken Hooker was distributed by them. It's been a long time since I've seen that film, but the last time I watched it, I want to say, I was like, oh, Trauma, Okay.

I like Franken Hooker quite a bit, but it has that same kind of speaking of t and A. There's tons of it in that movie, for sure, and Gore and I think I saw Franken Hooker before I saw Toxic Avenger and make Action. So yeah, Well it was I call it the cable era. And my mom had married a gentleman and we moved to a different town and he had cable and his son had Nintendo. It was like we entered into this realm of opulence.

I caught on cable late at night. Of course, being about thirteen or fourteen, I was like, of course I'm going to watch this. I loved it. I mean it was awesome, you know, aside from all the typical stuff that boys like about movies like that, it was just fun. It's a great movie.

It's a great movie. And so I want to just quickly talk about Trauma. I have a deep respect for what they do, though they go a little too far sometimes, especially with some of their newer projects. For me, as a twenty something, I was like, if I was going to work for a film company or get into the film business, that's where I'd want to start. I think I told you about this before maybe, But when I was about twenty five, I was driving past what used to be the warehouse, the CD and DVD or CD and movie place at a record store warehouse, the one that was on the corner of Blackstone and Barstow.

That used to be Chuck E Cheese and it became a warehouse. It was right near where Trader Joe's was for a while. I was about twenty five years old. The warehouse was still there, and it must have been This must have occurred because it was the warehouse there there was one of the Trauma tour buses parked there. I think I was going to Fresnes State at the time.

I was driving west on Barstow. I saw the Trauma tour van and I went so far as to pull into the parking lot just to get a closer look. And the Trauma tour van or tour bus back then was a old school bus. It just looked a mess. It looked a mess, but I had Troma on the side.

I was super excited. I pulled up next to it, and I didn't have the courage to step out of the car and knock on the door. To this day, it's one of my greatest regrets that I didn't knock on the door and say, hey, what's up, Like, what are you guys doing here? I love your movies, I admire your philosophy. What are you doing in Fresno?

Yeah, that's my question. Why were they here? Why were they here? Well, and so I thought they must have been here promoting something. Now, around that time, Tromeo and Juliet had come out.

James Gunn was the director of that. Another layer of regret is that I probably could have met James Gunn. He was probably promoting Tromeo and Juliet. That was kind of their big hit at that time. And if I remember correctly, the actress who played Pam in the Office was a part of that production.

Maybe a small role, just like kicking myself. Yeah, you blew it, dude, that would have been a really cool experience, and I just I gotten nervous. The lesson is, take that chance, take that chance, knock on that weird bus store. It's also possible that you wouldn't be here doing this right now. If you had done that and gotten kidnapped by the trauma people.

I could have been Yeah, yeah, I could have gotten a job as a dressing up as Toxi and showing up at events type of thing never be seen again. It could be like your style, come join our tour. Yeah, you got to take those chances. Yeah, there's more to say. We'll talk more about this in a little bit, but what's on your list today?

I am diving back into action figure territory and back into the Kinner archives. So this is actually the third Kinner property that I I've talked about on the show already, which is kind of strange to me. In a way, So I did Stretch Armstrong early on. We've obviously talked about Star Wars, and like Stretch Armstrong, this is one of their pre Star Wars massive hits. And so today I am talking about their thirteen inch Just imagine that action figure of Steve Austin aka the six million Dollar Man.

We have the capability to make the world's first bionic man. Steve Austin will be that man better than he was before, better, stronger, faster or the uninitiated. There was a show on I believe it was CBS back in nineteen seventy four called The six Million Dollar Man starring Lee Majors as Colonel Steve Austen, an astronaut and pilot who as a horrific crash and they're working on this new bionic system this government agency called the OSI, and they basically, without his consent, use him as a guinea pig and he gets bionic robotic parts put into his body. The show itself was preceded by three TV movies, which I kind of vaguely remember hearing about over the years. All three of them came out in seventy three.

In nineteen seventy three, I was four and I highly doubt that I saw those, but I do remember watching as a family the six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman, which came a couple years later, and loving both of them. They really hit. I mean, I think I'm not alone in this for kids growing up during that time. That idea of a cyborg, which is what they were based on a series of novels by this author whose name I forgot to write down. The author was Martin Kaiden, called Cyborg.

So those first couple of TV movies were based on at least one of them was based on one of his actual books, and then the concept kind of got fiddled with and rearranged and changed a little bit through the series. But it's a very compelling idea for a kid, and just the opening itself with the operation and you see kind of like in Star Wars with Luke's hand. There's a flipped open part of his arm that they're operating on, and they show all these interesting early computer graphics of the bionic thing and his eye. And I remember watching the show and I remember having the figure, but I'm not sure which came first. Five is still pretty young for me to have solid memories of things.

I know I had things at certain times. It's just did we start watching the show, because you know, this was back when it was three channels and your PBS channel and that was pretty much it. Or did the figure come around and I'd go, Hey, this is associated with a TV show. Let's I want to start watching it. I have no idea the figure itself, and I have pictures of this Christmas, and I believe that it was Christmas of seventy five that I got the original Steve Austin action figure.

And I think I know that because a lot of times, back in the old days, in early seventies and prior to that, there would be dates on the backs of your pictures when they were processed. So when I see it on Facebook or whatever, I always have commented, Christmas of seventy five I got this figure, which means it came out a year after the show premiered, which makes sense. Kinder got the license sometime in that year and then released it early in seventy five. I got it later that year. It's kind of like my Star Wars thing, where I know I had them, and I know I loved them, but I don't remember playing with it all that much.

For this figure in particular, it has a lot to do with the scale. Thirteen is really big, that's what she said. He's bigger than g I Joe's And I just never really got into that large scale as a kid. Migos fit in my hand much easier, and we're easier to play with. And I'm sure my sister probably had a Barbie Dreamhouse and Barbie's he would have worked well with that stuff.

I just really have no memories of that. But the figure, it's was really cool. And this is something that came up in that Plastic Galaxy documentary about the Star Wars figures, and Kinner's big thing was what's the playability aspect? And so they took quite a bit from the show and added it to this figure. So he came with a bionic eye, so there his left eye on the show was bionic, So on the figure there's a little hole where his left eye should be.

Now in the show, he's supposed to be able to see great distances and kind of zoom in the eye on the figure actually makes things appear far away. But it was a cool little feature where you could look through and I guess it kind of makes sense because if you look at something and it's way up close, it sort of ruins the fun of it, but it does sort of make for an odd head sculpt. The head sculpt is great actually for this figure, and because they could work and that larger size, it looks very much like Lee Major's. So other than the eye, they also had his bionic parts on his right arm, and the way they achieve this is there are two little notches cut out of his arms and they put these little plexiglass pieces in there that are backed with image that they put on there of computerized robotic looking parts, and they covered that with a layer of latex.

You could mimic what they do on the show and roll up this sleeve of skin and expose those bionic parts. And then the other thing they did with that arm is with that first figure, they included an engine block, a little plastic engine block, which is true to the show. He does lift an engine block at some point by activating his right arm. You could press a button on his back and make him lift it with his bionic strength. So it's got all the school interactive playability, toyetic things going on.

And if you have one and you think it's broken, just turn his head to the right facing that right bionic arm. It'll click and you'll be able to lift his arm. Oh, I know when I got mine, and I'll get to that a minute. Here. Having these figures, it worked when I first got it, and then I've moved stuff out of a certain area of the house into this room and I was like, oh, no, he's broken.

In the meantime, because I've been watching all those toy ploy videos, he mentioned that it's probably not broken. You just have to remember to activate it. So I'm letting those of you out there know the same thing. I guess the issue with the figure like this, and I'm trying to think of a comparison, and I had one in my head, and I don't know why I didn't write it down. There's not a whole lot you can do with a standalone figure like this other than create different outfits.

With Star Wars, you've got this multitude of characters. We all know that they dove deep. If a character was on scene for one second, that can become a toy. Sure, this kind of thing. With the show, it's like it's mostly normal people and then you've got him and as the show progressed.

You get some more interesting figures that maybe you can use, but for the most part, you've sold the toy. Now what unless you break it, which is a distinct possibility with all of these toys. Kids aren't going to keep buying Steve Austin, so they've got to do something. So they released a couple different versions of the figure. One came in a different suit and instead of the engine block, it came with a still beam steel beam.

The figure was altered a little bit too, where now he had bionic grip, so there was a little pressure point on his wrist you could press and it would grip the steel beam be able to carry that. I'm assuming that one didn't also have the lift function, but I could be wrong. Then they did have outfit sets, you know those little like Barbie like Gi Joe where you could just buy him his groovy clothes. They had like a denim suit thing that is very true to the show, an astronaut suit with a helmet and things like that that you could get. That's cool.

They did finally introduce some other characters, which that'll kind of be my second part of my discussion. I was trying to think of when I got this figure again, and I was thinking it was sort of roughly around the same time as the Stretch Armstrong, which, if I remember quicktly was twenty thirteen. Part of that had to do with those happy Honda Day commercials which I mentioned on that episode. Hey, it't your pal six million dollar man, well thirty five million if you adjusted for inflation. Remember how you were getting me as a kid, which came out prior to that Stretch Armstrong being re released, but around the same time.

So I'm thinking I was probably, yeah, twenty thirteen. Like a lot of this stuff that I ended up getting from childhood, either things that I had then and wanted to get again or things that I never had, all happened around the same time. And it just so happens the other day as I was looking through my Facebook memories. It's about the only thing I do on Facebook anymore is look at what I wrote, what I wrote in the past. I had the picture of me in Christmas of seventy five holding up my Steve Austin figure, and my sister commented something like, what is that figure in the picture?

And I told her what it was, and I said, and I've just ordered one on eBay, So it was twelve years ago around this time of year that it would have shown up, could have been on this exact day that we're recording. I don't know. It's so cool. So I got I got. I don't know if it was a bundle or if I bought these separately, but I got the Steve Austin that I had, and an Oscar Goldman which I never had.

And I think all I can think about whenever I look at that figure or think about this line is what I think has made Oscar Goldman more famous today than the show ever did. Was the forty year old Virgin? Is that the six million dollar Man's boss? It's Oscar Goldman. Why do you have that?

That's worth a lot of money, That's much more valuable than Steve Austin. Well that may be the case, which I don't know if you've seen, but oh yeah, talk about a collection always bugs me. When I'm watching that movie and he sells off all his times an epic, it hurts gen X. I mean, Migo's all over the place, yep. The six million Dollar Man and Oscar Goldman.

Everybody knows that line from the movie. And so I got those two, and then I got one of the other figures, and that'll be sort of on my second half as well when I talk about him. They did create some playsets and some vehicles like Gi Joe. You know, with this really large figure, it's kind of prohibitive on what they can do. So one of these sets for him was basically a blow up toy.

You had to blow it up like a bath toy or like a pool toy, and then it had, you know, some cardboard stuff, so it was all vinyl and kind of silly, and there were some vehicles, and then there was the transport and repair system that when it was closed up, looked a little bit like a rocket, and then when you opened it up it was like an operating table so you could fix his bionics. And there we had things that would fit into the little holes that are in his bionic chips and all that stuff. Never had any of that stuff as a kid, just the figure. But I obsessed over one of the other figures, and that'll be in my second half here, along with some of the other stuff I have found out over the years. But the thing that I got myself for Christmas related to this was his engine block well, oh, there goes along with the version of the figure I have, which is him and his red jogging suit, which is featured very heavily on the show.

And so I will get to more about the show, the other figures that were released, and my particular obsession with one of those figures in my second half. So let's take a quick break and we'll get back to both of our second halves right after that. All right, we are back after the breaks, and we are going to continue with our discussion. So Ronnie, let's do the second part of your Toxi topic. Well, it's the anticipation of a new movie, the Toxic Avenger.

That's what the kids are calling him. I think it's swell. You and I have talked about this before a little bit. When people decide to make a reboot, they're walking on thin ice. How are you going to do this?

What can you bring that's new to the storyline so that it's not just someone's obscure way of quote unquote bettering something. When the movie was announced, I was excited, initially, super excited, and then I saw the trailer. I thought, thank god, they're honoring trauma, They're honoring the tongue in cheek aspect, they're honoring the original dilemmas of the first film, which is, as I mentioned before, corruption, pollution, and also humans behaving badly, being shitty to one another, and so the trailer shows all of that. The other thing that piquked my interest was that they had cast Peter Dinklage as Melvin. Essentially, he's not a young nerd working in a gym mopping up people's messes.

He's a struggling misfit of sorts. In this movie, something happens and he becomes the Toxic Avenger. That's all that we know really, because they haven't released any information. By the way, if you try and look up images of the Toxic Avenger Peter Dinklage, you're going to get just fan made images. You're going to get the silhouette from the trailer, right, fan made images.

Some people struggling to give that image higher exposure so you can see details. It's not working. The director Making Blair, has really done a great job of keeping a lid on things, even though it's premiered at a couple of festivals. It also has Elijah Wood in it. Those of us who like horror movies or films that are subversive.

Elijah Wood seems to be popping up in a lot of these, and then also Kevin Bacon is in it, so I'm excited about that, the feeling he plays the bad guy. I don't think I've watched the trailer. I'm kind of keeping away from it. You can watch the trailer. It won't show too much.

It just gives you an idea of the world in which this film is taking place. I'm not one of those guys. Don't watch the trailer if you want, you know, I watch the trailers, and we've talked about spoilers before. I'll read a Wikipedia entry on him. Yeah, I'm fine with that.

For some reason, I think it has to do with making Blair. I'm kind of keeping away from everything regarding this. I don't know why actually, but because you like him, I mean, you admire this guy. And yeah, he's been involved in some pretty cool things. He's an actor also, which I'm just learning, and he was in green Room and a few other cool things, and he co wrote green Room as well.

I think so he and the director of green Room, Jeremy Solnier. I believe they might just be Solnier. I don't know if it's got a French accent to it or not. They have worked on three films together, Blue Ruin, which is just an absolutely amazing revenge film, Green Room, and I forget the third one, but it's a Netflix film with Jeffrey Wright and Riley Keo. That film is called Hold the Dark.

Not my favorite of the three, but I do want to say that they have co written all three of those together, and they have an early film called Murder Party, which is a lot of fun. He's not the lead in that they have worked together on for movies now, I guess, and I really hope they work on something else soon. Ronnie and Mark are both wrong. Mac and Blair did not cowrite Blue Ruin or Green Room, but he did write the script for Hold the Dark, and like we mentioned prior to recording, he wrote and directed one of my favorite films, I Don't Belong. I sho, what's the title?

I don't feel at home in this World? Yes I can in this world with Elijah Wood and Jane Levy, who are both in Toxic Avenger. It's another Netflix film and it is absolutely wonderful. Melanie Lynsky is in it as a lead, and she's just freaking brilliant at it. It's a great, great I love it.

I love it to pieces. Yeah, you've been recommending that to me for quite a while and I haven't yet gotten around to watching it, and it's now just moved up on my list. It was trepidacious about this film because you can't really remake the talk Toxic Avenger without screwing it up. Part of this charm is that it is not a good movie. One of these things that really bugs the shit out of me is when people try to make a bad movie.

If you're a fan of ed Wood, if you're a fan of B movies, if you're a fan of Trauma films, B movies work or they don't work. What makes a B movie really have lasting quality? Because not all of Trauma's movies have a lasting quality to them. What makes some of their movies special is they have to have heart. James Gunn comes to mind because he comes from the trauma school.

He knows that in order for a movie to resonate with audience, it has to have heart. It can be rife with tongue in cheek jokes, it can be super cheesy, it can be over the top. I mean, look at Guardians of the Galaxies movies. What makes them work, I think better than most of the other Avengers movies is that there's a certain kind of heart and soul and love embedded in them. And you get those trauma touches in them too.

Oh exactly, That's what I mean. Like, you can if your cake is good, you can put anything on the frosting to make it crazy and weird. If the cake is good, it's going to be good. This idea that is, you know, might be very difficult to replicate if somebody else were to take on the Toxic Avenger. Now, if James Gunn were to say, yes, I'm making the Toxic Adventure, I would feel contented.

I'd be like, yeah, that's probably going to be good. It might have a higher budget than the one that Making Blair is making, but it would be I know it would be good. I was hesitant. Then I watched some interviews. I don't care.

I will watch all the spoilers. I really don't care about that stuff. I'm very happy to indulge. That's why I was looking up images of Peter Dinkwich as Toxic. Two things stood out to me.

When Making Blair was interviewed about The Toxic His Toxic Adventure, he said, when Let's Gendery Pictures came to him for the project, because they came to him, he said, I will do it as long as it needs to be rated R and the makeup effects have to be prosthetic for Toxy And they said, okay, okay, that's already we're in good territory. What makes Toxy great is his bubbly, weird skin and his malformations and the techtile quality. Now is he going to wear it? Tou? Tou?

Is my question. So if you look at the silhouette, it looks like there's something going on there. It's hard to identify, I hope. So probably a take on that in some way, I'm assuming. I'm assuming that too.

Spoilers for those of you who have not watched the original film. Melvin is seduced by the bully's girlfriend and she says, meet me by the pool at seven pm, but you have to wear this pink outfit. So he's like, Okay, I'll do it. And it's this leotard with polka dots and the tutu. I don't think it's really a spoiler because it's the main image of anything that has to do with the Toxic Avenger.

The TWU two that he's wearing in the leotard that he's wearing always part of his costume is tattered and gross looking because of the burns and such. It's sort of like Mickey Mouse wears red shorts with yellow buttons. Toxic Avenger wears A two two. But as you can see, i'll show you Mark, I'll show an image when we promote this. The cartoon version of Toxic and the Toxic Crusaders downplayed the tutu to the point where it eventually just became sort of a paint application, yeah, or just an alteration of the bottom part of his shirt.

If you watch the first episode of Toxic Crusaders, he is wearing the tutu. It's the same exact premise, not same exact premise because there's no TNA, but the cartoon sort of follows a very close retelling of his origin. I'm excited. I'm also excited because it was co written by Lloyd Kaufman. It also was co written by Joe Ritter.

Now have you mentioned Joe Ritter before? I don't know who that is. I didn't look him up to see if he was related to John Ritter or part of the Ritter lineage. His name sort of rang a bell with me, and he looked like he had be involved with the original Toxic Avenger as well. Watching the trailer, it's tongue in cheek.

It's gory. It's gonna be gory, and I'm really excited. I'm hoping that Macon Blair does it good. Some people have reviewed the film. I just looked him up.

Sorry to interrupt you, not, Okay, I believe his writing credit on this is because the original was written by him, Okay, from characters by Joe Ritter and Lloyd Kaufman. Looks like he has worked mainly as a steady cam operator on films. Yeah, okay, Yeah, I think it's just the last name sounds familiar because we all know John Ritter. Yeah, and I think I got that mixed up with you talked about Anthony Perkins as his son is a director. Now he's got a new movie coming out that looks creepy as fuck, all right, bring it.

And he's in Legally Blonde, which we just watched as a family last week. So oh, he did some acting too. That's awesome. He's also in the Gary Busey movie where Gary Busey swaps bodies with a dog. So oh geez.

Yeah, I haven't seen that one, but that's on my list now too. No, don't put it on your list. I'll watch Gary Busey and anything. Mmm, that's probably a mistake. Holy jumped a ball ahead of Jesus put of me.

I have to say I've given in the excitement now. I'm less nervous when I throw a name out to Mark and Mark says, yeah, I like that guy. I know that I'll be in for a treat of some sort toxic avenger. There's no release dates set yet, but it's probably my most highly anticipated film of twenty twenty four, which says a lot about me. But I'm very excited about it makes sense.

My wife and I were just talking about how there's a lot of movies coming out this year that exhibit a kind of disenchantment with the world. Right now, there's that movie Civil War to here, I wonder why, and then there's just a bunch of movies about creepy guys on date sites and things like that, And I feel like We're entering a new era of disenchantment in cinema, kind of like the nineteen seventies. That's gonna make for some interesting films, but it might be a depressing year with the toxic Avenger on the horizon, addressing probably toxic masculinity, addressing our ongoing problem of climate change and pollution and political corruption. I'm hoping that's the role that Kevin Bacon is going to play.

It will be a probably, I'm predicting it might be this year's Barbie. I'm hoping it's going to be as smart as that movie and as hard hitting as that movie, while also being a delight to watch and give us all the good stuff that we like to see. I'm going to predict right now it doesn't make as much money as Barbie. It's definitely not going to make as much money as Barbie. But there will be toys.

Probably, I'm hoping there will be some toys. True, the idea of reboots and stuff, I think this is for me. You mentioned in on the when you talked about ed would this is the kind of stuff that they should be mining, not endless retreads of big ips. Things made a lot of money that don't need to be remade. Now you can argue maybe the Toxic AVENGERD doesn't need to be remade, but I'm sure it's got its flaws and beyond just the budget limitations.

And this is the kind of stuff that I have a new audience, check this out and get him out of the old one. And when I found out that he was making this, I was like, well, that's weird. A lot of the stuff that he's done in the past has been very grounded, other than the I don't feel at home in this world anymore, which has a lot of humor and is kind of ridiculous in ways, but it's still down to earth in a way. Blue Ruin and Green Room are definitely down to earth and hard to watch. Yeah, I was surprised.

He is actually one of the quote unquote famous people that has followed me back on Twitter, and I have had numerous interactions with over films and TV shows, and he wouldn't know me from Adam if a gun was held to his head. But it's been kind of fun, and he pops up from time to time in a movie unexpectedly for me, and I always love it. I'm like, oh, there's my guy just with those three movies Blue Ruined, Green Room, and I don't feel at home in this world anymore. He's like top tier for me, and so I have complete trust that this will not be a train wreck because he's involved. He also said, you know, of course that it's legendary pictures, so there's going to be a higher budget than trauma films could have provided for a project like this.

He's mentioned I'm paraphrasing him here, but he did mention that there's a kind of grounded quality to this. The characters are less. There are caricatures in this movie, but the protagonist is a very real character. He's facing very real dilemmas he says stepfather, He's facing real life issues and problems. He also said that the camera work, they were really conscientious of keeping the scenes simple.

I thought that's great, because that's if you're keeping the camera stationary, you're keeping to that idea that we probably don't have the permit to be filming in this on the street, so just set up the camera, let's get this go in, let's do it fast. He has worked with the cinematographer on this film to make sure that there's a kind of low budget quality, but with a high budget approach, if that makes any sense. He said. There are moments where the high budget shows and that's to be expected. For the most part, they work to really create a kind of aesthetic that honors the original sort of handheld and stationary camera equality of those B movies.

You'll have to give us an update when it comes out. Yeah, I'm thinking we might need to do a Cambridge and with Sean Field chip to go watch it if it comes to the theater, possible. Get me out of that. I haven't seen a movie since. Speaking of Oz Good Perkins his last film that was in the theaters, and that was back in February of twenty twenty.

Wow, that's a long time, coming up on four years. I've got to blow out in favor three pitch. What's your second part? Well, I mentioned that I watched The Six Million Dollar Man and The Bionic Woman when I was a kid. Loved both those shows much like SNL.

The Six Million Dollar Man is on Peacock streaming in full. They have and I think this happened prior to Peacock running it, But those three initial TV movies have been split into episodes, so those are tacked on to the first season of the show, and it's kind of fun because I think they were an hour and a half fish when they first aired, So to split them into two episodes means they have to pad them on the second half of the TV movie. It's padded at the beginning with a lot of the footage from the first episode, but they're kind of interesting. They lean more towards him being James Bondish and he's going off to exotic places. There's a lot of stock footage on this show.

It's very limited in its special effects, but a lot of them are pulled off really well. There's one scene of him running. They employed the slow motion, which I think everybody is familiar with if you know anything from being exposed to it at some point. They use slow motion for when he's running because he's supposed to be able to run at sixty miles per hour. But there is one little bit, and I believe it's in the intro, where he's running next to a picket fence and it's fast, but it doesn't look like when you normally speed things up.

You know, you film it at a slow rate and then you speed it up and it looks like fast motion. It doesn't look like that. It looks really well done, and I at one point had read how they did it. Since then, I haven't been able to find that, but it's a really cool effect. And that's when he's in his red jogging suit and there's these little monitors all strapped around his chest, which is what they kind of replicated on his suit by having these sewn in white lines on it.

So anyway, I'm going through the show right now and I'm into the second season. It's a lot of fun. There is a lot of padding. There is a lot of stock footage, especially of pilots and anything that has to do with the astronaut aspect of his character. They're out in space at some point early in the first season, and it's done really effectively where it's just pitch black behind them, there's nothing behind them, and they kind of use that little slow filming where it looks like they're floating.

And fair Faucet's been on the show, and of course they were an item for a number of years. Other faces have popped up. Britt Eckland was in one of the TV movies, I think the second one, Mister X from Eraserhead is in one of the episodes. Nice so Mary's dad. So it's a lot of fun.

It's pretty cheesy. There's a lot of double entendres about his abilities and keeping things up. What is it rising to the occasion. It's implied at the end of almost every episode that he's going to bed whoever the female guest is on that episode, and very much a seventies thing. One of the other lines, I think he says to britt Ekland because they're on a boat.

He says, I'm sorry I had to violate your portole or something like that. So lots of cheesy stuff like that. I love that, and kind of humors in the Toxic Avenger, Yeah, what were they going to do for the line as a line unlike Star Wars where you can just have one hundred and something characters throughout the run. There is a very notable episode with John Saxon loved genre star John Saxon, Black Christmas nightmar and Elm Street for those of you that are horror fans lots of Italian movies. He plays a buddy of Steve's who gets kidnapped and replaced by a robot and at the end of the episode, during this fight that they have, Steve knocks his face off and it's all robotic underneath.

So they use that to create a figure called Maskatron. It's Masskatron, the robot at last we meet. Look out, the Maskatron will conquer You. Take that Maskatron and that he will beat him every time. Disky Maskatron knew from Kenner six Million Dollar Man sold separately.

This is the one that I was obsessed with. And my friend who had all the toys that I wanted that I never got, had this, or I remember maybe taking my Steve Austin over. He probably had that too, probably had Oscar Goldman and his exploding briefcase as well, and just being completely taken with that figure. Wow. They amped it up a little bit for the figure.

It's the same size as Steve Austin. He has a removable face, but they didn't just use his face, which does look a lot like John Sackson. It's not exact, but pretty close. And it also comes with an Oscar Goldman face and a Steve Austin face. So it's kind of cool because the Steve Austin one doesn't have the bored out left eye, so you actually have a really nice skull of his face on that, so you could swap out his face so he could impersonate people.

He comes with arm attachments. One is a gripping cloth thing that you can press and activate, and the other one is this sucker attachment. You could stick him on a window or whatever. Cool and all that stuff pops off, So there are levers on his shoulder, on his arms, and on his legs, and you slide him up and down, kind of like that switchblade comb I gave you where you have to release it so that you can activate it. You slide those of it down and then you hit the other button and all this stuff will shoot off, so you can pop his head off, You can pop both of his arms off, and you can pop his legs off.

You know, if he and Steve Austner are fighting, Steve can hit him and those things will fly off. Talk about playability. And then he also has bionic pieces on his chest. He comes in a groovy turtleneck black slacks, so if you take the turtleneck off, which comes with snaps, Steve's suit is impossible to get off unless you take his arms off. Just as an aside, but this one snaps off, so you could expose all that and he's got a little hole in his back that you can lift up and store the extra faces in, which is a great idea.

So I ended up getting a Maskatron shortly after I got Steve an Oscar and it was complete, a great figure that I wish I'd had as a kid. Cool. They were displayed for a long time in the spare office area, but the cats kept knocking him over and I was like, man, if one of these broke, I would just crap my pants. I know that feeling. And they also released One of the other big mimices of Steve Austin was the Bionic Bigfoot.

Yes, it's Bionic Bigfoot. Knew from Kenner, So this was a creature that was created by aliens to look like a Bigfoot because it's the seventies and Bigfoot was a huge thing back then. First played by Andre the Giant in a two parter and then later played by Ted Cassidy, who people will know as Lurch from the original Adams Family, played a creepy character on Star Trek, did a lot of voice work and other things. Anytime you needed a big guy, it was either him or I can't remember the other actor's name. Now this AI is surprised that Mark forgot the name of Richard Keel, who was a famous local celebrity and who Mark met when he was in seventh grade.

So he played him later on in a two parter that was split between six Million Dollar Man a Bionic Woman, and then came back, I think towards the end of the series for another show. So they created a bionic big Foot that had a chess plate that would pop out when it was hit to expose those robotic parts. These things go, He's always been rare goes for hundreds and hundreds of dollars. If you find any of these figures boxed on eBay, they're like anywhere from three point fifty to two thousand dollars. Wow, I got these, I know.

I got these twelve years ago at decent prices for all of them. My Steve Boston suit is a little worse for wear. I don't want to wash his top because it came with the original sticker. I'm washing all of Maskatron stuff. I washed Steve's pants and his socks.

All the figures come of socks and Oscar Goldman is up next, and he's got his suit with this great checkered jacket. Kind of an odd choice for a figure, but the other ones make sense. And then of course Bionic Woman was turned into a figure as well, and she had the Finbots as her nimices. They made a figure of that that was much like Maskatron, except it just had swappable faces, since it was more of a Barbie style figure that couldn't really do the arm attachments and stuff. And of course all her extras were fashion or beauty related.

She has the same inflatable structure that the six million Dollar Man has, but it's like a beauty salon or something. And then you could buy all the sets of clothes for her, and to get girls to buy it. I'm sure boys wanted to buy them too. So the other thing that I'm looking into is getting a replacement skin, because like Stretch Armstrong, whose body is pretty much made out of latex, that skin on his arm was just a latex cover that you could roll back. And they sell them on eBay, of course for stupid prices.

And again thanks to toy ploy who went through all this and repairing and restoring some of these Steve Austin dolls, he bought some off eBay, and they worked just fine. And then I think somebody clued him into they're just balloons. They are the kind of balloons that you use to make animal shapes. Oh yeah, he has on one of his videos the specific kind that you need to get. So I noted that as I was watching through them, and have ordered a bag of one hundred of them, because that's the only way you can get them.

And instead of paying someone ten bucks, you know, with shipping to get one, I spent twenty dollars on a bag of one hundred balloons that I don't need so that I can put it on his arm. They're really long, They're way longer than they need to be, but you just you know, measure the length of the arm, cut them and roll them on there. So he actually came with his skin still attached. I had never messed with it. I'd never really even looked at it, because you basically have to take his arm off or take his shirt off.

And to take a shirt off, he had to take his arm off. There's no other way to get it off. And so I pulled his arm off the other day and it's in relatively good shape and still rolled up to expose the first chip at least, but it was starting to split. And I mean it's fifty years old as of next year. I'm surprised it was in such good shape.

And I'm also surprised that it hadn't melted to his arm, because plastic melt is a real thing, and two different kinds of plastics can affect each other. This happens with legos a lot. If they have a piece that is made out of rubber and you leave it on a lego, it will burn into it after a while. So I kind of assumed that the latex would do the same thing to his body. But it doesn't.

And I actually pulled it off before we started recording and it came off just fine, and it's mostly intact. Still, that's crazy, yeah, because latex is usually the first thing to degrade. Yeah. I think it's been under his shirt the whole time, so it stayed relatively safe if it had been exposed. Maskatron definitely has some Sunday damage to him.

His shirt has yellowed quite a bit and the front part of his body has yellowed. The back is fine, but somebody probably had displayed him open near a window or something could have been from a shop I don't know, but yeah, so I'm gonna if anybody needs skin replacement, I'm serious, hit up my link tree, send me a buck and I'll send you five of them. That's awesome. Mark has skin sleeves for everybody. I'll have enough to replace him for the next fifty years.

So I do not need one hundred animals sculpting balloons. He just can't buy a bag that's smaller than that. So I've got extras. That's great. I bet people are going to be reaching out.

We'll see you just got to get that Bigfoot now. No, there's no way, even the loose like incomplete ones are way out of my price range. Three hundred dollars for something no way not even going to But and I figured this happened around the same time and maybe why I got these, But there were Mego like figures released of I think seven or eight of the characters by Bif Bang Pow, and they're the ones that did the Twilight Zone figures. They did a run of Universal Monster figures. You could get them at Toys r US when we still had them easy to order on Amazon.

So at some point on the Mego Museum website they had kind of announced and shown the head sculpt for the Steve Austin figure, and it looked amazing, looked dead on. Being a Mego fan, being a fan of these, I was super hyped. At some point, I believe after I had these already, they released a figure from the New York Toy Fair of a prototype and I was like, Hm, he doesn't look quite right. Something about that face sculpt changed, and so I got him Bigfoot and Oscar Goldman when they came out as eight inch figures, and when I got it, I was like, oh, yeah, something definitely happened. I don't know if it was they made a change, maybe they lost the license or never really actually had it to use Lee Major's face, or if it was just a production thing where it became really narrow and all the details of his face are gone now, so it's not a very good likeness of him at all.

It could be a combination of the things, but that's frustrating. A while back, sometime within this last year, I had gone to grab him and he had fallen apart. His bands had already snapped into and he was just laying on my things. So I actually pulled him out. I'm going to figure out how to restring him.

And I know how to restring him. I just need the equipment to do that. Yeah, they released him, Oscar Bigfoot. I believe the Bionic They might not have done the Bionic Woman, but they did a Finnbot. I don't think they got the rights to do the Bionic Woman.

Could be wrong. And then one of the aspects of the show is that there were three actors who played Doctor Rudy Wells, who was the guy who actually performed the operation and oversaw his bionics. So in one of the I think the very first TV movie was played by Martin Balsom, and then he got replaced by this other guy on like the second movie. But in that second movie they reshow the scenes of his operation as if this newer doctor had done it. But there's Martin Balsom in the operating.

It's really weird. So because of that, and then later on during the show was played by another guy. So because of that, if being Pow released like a Sandio Comic Con exclusive that came in Oscar's briefcase, and it was the figure with three different heads or the same character, which I thought was kind of a brilliant thing. I don't know that they did a maskatron. I'd have to go and look, but I know they did the seven million dollar Man who comes along later and is like another bionic guy, but you know, costs a little bit more.

Yeah, those big Bang pal figures were a brief Oh, this is really cool, and then disappointment at how they came out. The Bigfoot's kind of fun, but he's, you know, just in this big fluffy, padded suit. Yeah, kind of looks like Andre the Giant. I love that you chose six million dollar man hero for your item for discussion today, and I chose basically a six dollar hero for mine. But that's great.

Let's take another break and then we'll do some local locales when we come back. And then we went to Bakersfield, and then we ended up in Fresno. Presno, No one goes to Bresno anymore. Okay, we are back, and Ronnie's going to give us his local locale for this episode. What you got for this episode?

I chose something that's pretty well known if you're from the Fresno area, but probably not so well known if you're not from the Fresno area. It is actually a tourist attraction. If you're driving through the Central Valley on Highway ninety nine. This is something you can just pull off on Shaw Avenue and visit. I know what you're talking about, and I've got a story about this place.

This is great and I didn't know it beforehand. So yeah, and your place is a surprise to me too. I'm anxious to hear what you have to say. This place fits into the category of also being an obsession of mine. Forestier Underground Gardens.

If you've ever heard of the Fresno Underground Gardens, that's what I'm talking about. This place was built by Baldassari Foresty Air in the early nineteen hundreds. He came to the Central Valley, immigrated here in nineteen oh one. Shortly thereafter began this lengthy process, as it's Tottern Hill here. He got here that there's got to be a solution to this insane heat and on top of that cold winters.

He began digging, essentially, and he dug this sort of labyrinth of rooms and grottos and garden courts and has trees growing from the bottom through the top, which is the roof, which is the ground the ground. Essentially, you can still tour it. They'd done very little to change it except for to keep things from along apart, it's just as he left it pretty much. It's ten acres, so if you can imagine this ten acre plot of land, of tunnels, of underground rooms. Also something that needs to be noted about this area is it's an agricultural hub.

But one of the greatest challenges of people tilling the soil is this thing we got called hardpan. The soil has become so hardened, the dirt has become so hard and it's almost like stone. What's particularly phenomenal to me about what this guy did was that he did it himself with very very basic tools shovels, pickaxes, pulleys, and wheelbarrows. Basically carved out this spot underneath the soil, underneath the ground of this area of Fresnow, my obsession with this play began because my dad's a photographer and he would go to this spot and take photographs. I went with him once when I was very very young.

I didn't really quite have an appreciation for it, but something stuck in the back of my mind because I would spend a lot of time out in the vacant areas behind my mom's house, which is in the rural foothills, would spend a lot of time digging these forts or caverns for my action figures. The idea that someone did this for humans is phenomenal to me and paralleling that. Of course, I'm also obsessed with Disneyland, which is essentially this fake environment created by a crazy person, Walt Disney for people. Balda sorry Forrestierre originally built this place to be where he would live, but then, being an obsessive himself, he kept building on so that people could have a place to stay if they came to visit.

He also kept building onto it, or digging and digging and digging, I'd rather say, than building on with the hope that this would also become a kind of resort for people traveling through the Fresno area to Yosemite. Interesting the reason why it became more than just a home and more of a labyrinth of underground rooms is because he wanted to invite people to this place. Ah that would have been cool for a very short period of time. They would have parties and stuff there until he passed, and obviously the construction of this stopped with his passing, but he basically kept digging until the day he died, which is really kind of beautiful to me. Obsession takes many different forms, and if you're obsessed with something that people can also enjoy, I get really excited about that.

Part of the reason why I love Disneyland is that it became this thing that started off with Walt Disney wanting to make a place that his kids could enjoy, but also other families could enjoy, for adults and for kids. And this guy Baldassarre Forrestierre, he needed a place where he could survive the elements, the cold winters, in the hot, hot, hot summers, and then discovered that people might actually enjoy this type of destination besides himself. It is just very very cool to me. When you visit the spot, it just looks like a barn. You start off in this room essentially that was built on so that you enter this tour, and then you go down and you're in this series of catacombs.

I guess the place you can visit. It's protected by the state. It's a National Park landmark. That's the word I'm looking for. It's a National landmark.

It's protected and it's very very cool. Yeah, I have been meaning to get back there, and they have a small window time when they do tours. I don't know if Cleo's ever been, if they went on a school trip or not. I actually have a story about this place because and I don't know if this ever came to be, and I don't know how it happened. I did a photo shoot with another girl who I think was my sister's age friend of my sisters for World Magazine, which was the children's offshoot of National Geographic, and which I believe I had a subscription to as a kid and was always at schools and in doctors' offices, And I don't even know if it's around anymore.

Yeah, we went with a photographer down there and took all these pictures. I believe I had been through with a class before at some point, and it was supposed to be in World Magazine an article on this place. And I don't know if it ever happened. I don't ever remember seeing it. I think it was third or fourth grade, and every once in a while that pops up.

Did that ever happen? Can I find World Magazine online like and look through seventy I don't know, six or seventy seven, or maybe even seventy five, probably seventy six or seventy seven, to see if that ever showed up, because it didn't show up in the when I had a subscription for it. Interesting place, very interesting place. I'm typing it in right now. I'm very anxious to see if we can find this.

If they have an archive, i'd be curious to go look through there. I remember them having a article on a guy who had a robotic house. Everything was robotic in his house, and it just fucking blew my mind. I've always been obsessed, or I was obsessed as a kid of being able to dig a hole big enough that I could play in and had a trap door. That was always a thing for me, me to hide out with a trapdoor.

Absolutely, this definitely hits that note. But I didn't know that about the resort idea that would have been really cool. Part of what drove him after a while. It must have been friends saying, wow, this would be really cool if people could stay here. You know, Yeah, it makes sense.

We went on the tour several years ago, about eight years ago now, and I remember that from that tour being mentioned which explains everything like why would this person build? Yeah, well, other than just having ten acres to screw around with, you might as well keep digging, why not? Yeah, exactly, that's true. I mean, and he liked to dig and so apparently good at it. It basically looks like if anybody's listening to this and you're like, well, what does it look like under there?

Basically they look like large Yoda homes. These little rooms they look like large Yoda homes. Essentially, smooth dirt walls, yep columns, and very cool stuff. Yeah, it's an interesting place. Makes me want to make one every time I think about it.

I want to make one in our backyard. Yeah. Too many pipes and electrical things underground these days to be able to do that in your own backyard. So true, so true? What are you doing?

Why? Meg? For what more? Digan? Well, mine isn't nearly as interesting.

There's a place on my list that I could have chosen that would have matched up with this. Well, but I'll get to that eventually. I had been thinking about this, I don't know why, for a while now. On the southwest corner of Shaw and Fresno Streets here in town, there is a little strip mall area called the Mission Village, which is directly across the street from the westernmost part of Fashion Fair. Yep, so there's restaurants.

There's a ups store in there now. I think there used to be a Kinko's there. The place that I'm thinking of was on the northernmost corner of this strip mall and it was called Mom's and it was an ice cream parlor for I think most of my childhood. We got and robins because there was one in Sunnyside. It was close birthday parties.

You'd have those stupid clown things. It was just a cone upside down that they would paint like a clown. Oh. Yes, the cakes and the pies that they made out of ice cream. I have a lot of those.

This was back I think before they had prepackaged pints and quarts and stuff like that. You know the big tubs that they have in basket robins that they scoop out of. Oh yeah, you could buy a quarter of that and they would just cut it and slap two lids on it. Oh and you could take it home. So we would have I don't know how much that amounted to, like two gallons or five gallons or something.

Yeah, my dad would go and buy those rounds of ice cream from basket Robins and we would have them in the outside freezer. So anyway, that's cool. If we didn't do basket Robins, we would go to Mom's. You know, nowadays we have Coldstone Creamery and those marmal slab places and all that kind of stuff. But this was like a Sunday.

You would go order your ice cream and then they had a little bar in the middle of the shop that had all the fixings. For me, I was never interested in a banana split. Never appealed to me. I don't want bananas with my ice cream. I'm not a fan of Maraschino cherries.

So I would just get probably vanilla, possibly chocolate ice cream and just loaded the fuck up with hot fudge and caramel sauce. And to me, that was heaven. And I still do it today. My sister will have ice cream at her house. Sometimes I'll get a scoop of chocolate ice cream.

I'll put hot fudge and caramel sauce on it. There you go. I'm a simple man with simple tastes and that doesn't remember that being a treat being able to go up and like squirt out as much hot fudge as I could stomach and caramel sauce on it. And they probably went out of business because of that, because people could put their own toppings. Yeah, and behind that used to be where the hop Brow was, which is now a hustler store.

It's so sad. Yeah, don't get me started that depressing. That is right between that and the freeway is a hustler store, which used to be the silver Dollar Hofbrow. Yeah. So Mom's ice cream shop, I don't know.

It popped into my head early on when we were planning this whole thing or planning to do places, and I was like, yeah, we went there quite often. That's cool, enjoyed ice cream, So you said, moms, And immediately a little bell went off in my head. What year do you think that they went out of business, because it sounds very familiar to me. It was probably in the eighties, like mid eighties. I can't think of us going there when I was, you know, an older teenager.

It was more like maybe sixth grade through eighth or ninth grade or something like that, old enough to kind of know and you know, do my own thing. And I knew what I liked, and yeah, stuff like that. I mean, it may have been around, but I don't think by the time I was a senior in high school. I don't think we were making trips to moms. Yeah, that's cool, that's great.

I feel like it rings the bell for me. It rings the bell for me. I don't think we went, but I feel like I had seen it or something. If you went to the mall, there's a good chance you saw it across the street or passed by it if you went down Fresno Street or Shaw. Shaw's a major street in town.

My dad to this day lives in the same place, and it's closer. If it's close to any malls, it's closer to Manchester something. I remember the night we decided to go to Fashion Fair for the first time. Fashion Fair must have just opened up or it was fairly new still. I was very very little driving over there and then getting out of the car and just thinking it looked brighter, it looked bigger that it felt like later, Yeah, I felt like going to this magical, new, modern place and then realizing it was just the same as everywhere else.

Mall culture is very interesting to me one of these days they'll have to spend a good chunk of an episode just talking about Manchester Center. Yeah. I don't have a lot of memories about Manchester. I know that we went there when I was younger, but it's kind of all about fashion fair for me. Yeah, I got a Spider Man onesie pajamas from Sears in Manchester Center, remember that way series is, Well, are they still there?

They're up until Yeah, they were there pretty pretty long though, because yeah, I went looking for something, some piece, some appliance at some point not too long ago, when we still lived here. So yeah, well you want to give any teases for what might happen this year for you on Cambridge and with Sean, Well, kind of thinking about a few bands I want to talk about. We've delved into music territory a little bit on the show, but I feel like I've been thinking a lot about particular bands that have had significant influence on me. I know we'll always be returning to Star Wars in a little bit and a little bit here and there. I've been really excited about potentially talking about Star Wars special effects specials that aired on TV.

Those are just some things I've been thinking about how about you. Yeah, music will probably come up this year for me, finally trying to save I didn't want to blow my wad the first season and do all the big stuff things that have come up in conversation, like Devo, like the Beatles talk about migos all the time, so that may make an appearance. I've got some lesser action figury stuff, some that I didn't have as a kid that my friend Jason did have that were Yeah, I need to get a hold of that guy. Yeah, I may. I actually had a thought the other day and I may cross over into wake up heavy territory because there are some movies that I've explored over there that I was deeply obsessed with for a number of years.

Still kind of am. We haven't really gotten into comic books, and I know that's on both of our lists, particular comics and specifically and things in comic books as well ads stuff like that. Yeah, more of the same. I guess I'm looking forward to you and I potentially doing David Lynch episode. Yeah, David Lynch is a definite possibility.

Stuff just keeps popping up. I still have stuff for my original list that I haven't gotten to hopefully we've got at least a couple more years. I was gonna say, we're talking about you and me here. I don't see an end to this at all. Well, if worst comes to worst, it'll turn into a quarterly show or something like that.

If we start to get to like I don't have anything else to talk about when we become Statler and Waldorf. You want to let people know where to find you or should we bother with that anymore? Well, yeah, so if you like this, you'll probably enjoy my YouTube channel, So head on over to YouTube and look up Skella Vader over there. I just started a new Snake Mountain build over on that channel. So I usually make a series of videos where I walk people through the process of building these things, which is for those of you who don't know.

I occasionally make large place that's oversized sculptures that I place that for action figures. This is going to be my last one for a while. Get it while the getting's good, and on Thursday nights do toy frenzy talk with my friends that are obsessed with toys, mainly Masters of the Universe stuff. So yeah, listen in over there. How about you yeah, you can find me in the usual spots.

I'm not going to go through all of it again. I haven't done anything in wait with Wake Up Heavy for a couple of months. I don't have anything planned. We're recording the Chase and Chevy podcasts, which will probably premiere in March, possibly April. More on that when it gets closer.

And yeah, social media at Wake Up Heavy find me over there? Yeah, good stuff? Oh no, I where's my where's my outro? I left it again? I have it right here?

Would you like me to say it this time? Go ahead, Ryan, until we meet again. Have fun, stay weird, and keep collecting. I need to put that on this computer so I don't have to do this every time. I have a post it here, so we will see you in merch.

Yes, thanks for listening. Bye, hold on enjoy these teasers for the next episode. Did you sticking taj off me? You damn dirty eight? But now it can be told every man, woman and mutant on this planet you don't know the truth about de evolution.

Oh, this world is not my home. I'm just passing through my treas is Harlada somewhere beyond the blue. The Angels back on me from head us open door, and I can see that hole in this anymore. Oh Lord, you know I have no friend like you. If Heaven's not my home, then Lord, what will I do?

The angels back with me from Heaven's cloking door, and I can't be led home in this world anymore. They're all expecting me, and that's one thing I know. I fixed it up with Jesus a long long time ago. I know he'll take me food, though I am weak and poor, and I can't felt home in them anymore. Oh Lord, do you know I have no friend like you?

If Heaven's not my home, then Lord, what will I do? The angels act them me from Heaven's open door, and I can be at home in this world anymore. Cambridge or Seawan is a weirding Way media podcast h