Episode 15: Beast Man vs. Dr. Steel

Cambridge I'm Shawn is a weirding Way media podcast. You lead fair Brain, It's Big Jim's World of Adventure. Hello, and welcome to episode fifteen of Cambridge and With Shawn, a podcast by two weird guys about the weird things that they like. And that's it. Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

The next time, I was trying to think if I had any updates, Ornie, what did we talk about last time? I don't even remember. Now I have updates for when we talked, when I talked about the toxic avenger. Okay, let's hear it actually a correction. James Gunn wrote the movie that came up in conversation, Oh my gosh, what is the name of it?

Tromeo and Juliet. He wrote that movie and his wife at the time, Jenna Gunn now known as Jenna Fisher from the Office, was not in that movie, but he wrote another movie called LOLLI Love, which was another trauma film that she was actually in. So yes, there was a James gun connection to trauma, and yes, Tromeo and Juliet was a movie that he wrote, but Jenna Fisher from the Office was in LOLLI Love, which is another trauma film that he wrote, which was actually a little more like kind of a normal comedy for trauma. So yeah, that's my amendment to my trauma excursion. Yeah, I'm glad you caught it because I never have.

I haven't seen any of those movies. Yeah, I didn't realize that they were a couple. I wanted to get it right. Yeah, she was formerly Jenna Gunn. People on IMDb and look at look it up.

Look it up, people, look it up. Do your research or do your research. Ronnie, You're the one act said it. And I know I'm trying to see what we talked about, what I talked about last time. I thought I had something Planet of the Apes that was you.

I don't have a correction, but I do want to say that I did get to see Charlton Heston in person at who's the actor who's in the Illustrated Man. Oh, it doesn't matter, Rod Steiger, Rod Steiger. Yeah, Rod Steiger's Hollywood Star that was awarded to him that event. I just happened to be in Hollywood at the time and and Charlton Heston was there. I got to stand next to the guy which is pretty cool.

I stood right next to Charlton Heston tried to I was too nervous to shake his hand. But this other guy who who approached Charlton Heston right away and tried to get his autograph, had a giant tumor coming out of the back of his head with a band aid on it. And oh my gosh, I will never never forget that. Did you whisper to Chuck as I like to call him, Did you whisper fuck the NRA? Yeah, I said I did.

I slipped a note in his pocket, said ask and asked him to think about a few things. I don't think that made any impact at all, and we've lost a few listeners. That's how it goes. That's how it goes, folks, from my cold dead hand. Well, since I'm hosting, that means Europe first, Right, what are we talking about today?

I guess we'll sort of roll out the connection here a little bit later on, but I'll go ahead and mention it slightly. There is an association between what I picked to talk today to talk about and what you've chosen to talk about, Todavid. It's quite a significant relationship, mainly because of Mattel, we're going to return to Masters of the Universe territory. This particular character has been on my mind. I mean he's been on my mind since I was a kid, but he's slowly becoming a large part of my toy collection.

In other words, I have several versions of him, and that seems to be expanding. So this guy is Mattel's Masters of the Universe beast Man. You freey fleebit before I'll come on my throne with your mind savage henchman of Skeletor. Is that how he's discret on the packaging on the card back? Yeah?

Cool. So there were two action figures as a kid that I really really really wanted that I never found in the stores, never got as a gift or anything like that, and that was of the Masters of the Universe line. These two really made an impact on me because I never got to actually have my own for my little toy shelf when I was a kid, and that was Skeletor and beast Man. My appreciation for beast Man extends beyond Skeletor. I liked Skeletor, but I was really strangely obsessed with beast Man, partially the color choices he has sort of almost like kiss makeup.

It's like white makeup with blue kind of slightly Gene Simmons eyeliner going on, and blue lipstick and the orange fur, the red armor, the blue, the blue, the orange, the red, the white. All of that just did something to me as a kid. And this is very revealing, but I would I would just lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling and imagine dressing up as or having the toy, or just being beast Man. That's weird, that's super crazy. Yeah, put it all out, Ronnie.

Yeah, say your place. Thank you, thank you. I'm wiping the tears away as we speak, the safe space, Ronnie, thank you. He made a really strange and powerful impact on me as a kid. And like I said, I didn't have him as a toy.

My friends did. A couple of my friends had beast Man. I remember playing with him quite a bit whenever I'd go to visit or the after school, hanging out with them and stuff. And it wasn't until later on that I figured out what beast Man, where he came from, and kind of what he's all about. And I never my appreciation for Beastman, just to be clear, began in nineteen eighty two, right around nineteen eighty two eighty three.

I can't remember exactly if it was eighty two or eighty three. My first impression of him was the card back art, the cross sell art, before I even held the toy in my hand, and I think it was when I first got that trap jaw and I saw beast Man on the back of that card, and this is before I started watching the cartoon. So when I watched the cartoon, I remember the little critic in me was like, why is beast Man such a bumbling idiot? He should be badass, he should be there should be a brutal aspect to him, because that's what he looked like on the back of the card, and that's what his toy looked like, big arms, crazy face. It wasn't until later on that I figured out that he was directly inspired, or I guess indirectly inspired.

But the face sculpt is very, very similar to the nineteen seventy nine Flash Gordon action figure beast Man, which was a blue beast Man, which is now on my eBay wish list. I'm always constantly I don't know why I'm hesitant to spend forty nine dollars on him, but he's a little guy, and it seems like he's never really priced less than forty bucks. But I guess I'm just waiting for the best looking version of him and at a reasonable price, and that's maybe asking too much because he's hard to find and he's and he's gorgeous. Did you ever see those Flash Gordon actually familiar with the beast Man from Flash Corn. I'll have to look it up after now I've seen the target that I go to has some of the repro Flashcorn characters.

They've had him for, like I think they've been on the pigs for a couple of years. Yeah, I mean the card art's beautiful. I have no interest whatsoever in Flash Gordon or that scale that they're in. I don't particularly care for. But I think it's just I'm not sure which figures they have.

But every time I go and look at the quote unquote pop culture section, yeah they're sitting there. Now. It could be that they've sold them and they're restocking, but I have a feeling it's the same two figures the time, which is a little disappointing for me. Because I really wanted them to put out the beast Man. He would look great amongst my other beast men.

There is you can see because they use the vintage card back art for those Flash Gordon figures, those reproductions, those large scale reproductions that you can see the beast Man face on the card back. It's just the blue alte screaming ape like beast face. When they started developing the Masters of the Universe line, Mattel looked back at the previously produced stuff that they had made, the Flash Gordon figures, the oh those were Mattel, that's right, Okay. The Big Gym line, in particular the Jungle Adventure Gorilla, they tried to they wanted to create like a big ape like gorilla Guy that was inspired by that seemed like it was inspired by the Flash Gordon beast Man, but at a larger, bulkier scale, because that's what they were trying to go for with Masters of the Universe.

And there was a character that Mark Taylor had created called Guy Gore that was based on the Gorilla from the Big Gym line. I'm not sure who came first, but there was also this red beast design that was kind of like a bear like beast and so they they eventually that the sketches merged into a kind of gorilla like beast Man that had red fur. At first that was similar in scale two or similar to a gorilla size, like larger than the other figures, and then that evolved into just reusing the parts of all the other, you know, of the other characters that they were developing, and beast Man became just sort of a normal henchmen that matched the scale as the rest of the Masters of the Universe figures.

So was that geygoor thing supposed to be one of the Masters of the Universe figures? Yes, okay, and if it wasn't a standalone thing from another line. He was kind of cool on a yellow fur with black armor, and it was the gorilla basically just a repaint of the gorilla. We'll get into repaints later on when you bring up your your your subject for today. Repurposing is the word the is Peewee's word for today.

That's right, might be the name of this episode. You know, if you look at the flash Gordon beast Man Blue beast Man action figure face and you look at the Mattel beast Man, the original beast Man face. They're very, very very similar. They're kind of it kind of looks like an ape in the middle of experiencing something painful or screaming out of some sort of anguish. It's a very expressive face, downturn mouth, open mouth, fangs, wide eyes, and really did something to me as a kid.

And so I got my hands on my first vintage version of beast Man about five years ago on eBay. It was a long time coming. There was the Classics version of beast Man that came out in the early twenty teens, and then there was the two thousand and two beast Man that came out in the early two thousands. After that the I'm blinking out here, No, I think that was Those are the two that were available. Oh yeah, the filmation version of beast Man that came out from Mattel right before Super seven took over the line.

I had those previous versions as they came out before I got the vintage one. And when I finally got my hands on the vintage one, I think I got them for fifteen bucks. It's a really good deal back when you know just five years ago the action figures on eBay were pretty reasonable. Oh, the good old days, the good old days five years ago. Now.

Masters of the Universe figures are quite expensive. I think all action figures are right now. Yeah, it's because of us, it's because of people our age. Well yeah, and it's that. It's like when you go to a thrift store to an antique store now and everybody, because of eBay, you know, thinks that they have gold and so oh yeah, you know, instead of price to sell.

It's like I'm trying to get as much as I possibly cambell. It's going to sit there forever. I mean, you go to the Clovis antique stores and I don't go as often as I used to, but you would see the same stuff there over and over again because it's overpriced. Yeah, it's not antique store priced, or I mean, I guess antique stores are. It's not like a thrift store where right, you're selling stuff to help people out or whatever, but still it's still junk that somebody had that they're trying to get rid of.

And it's like, well, the same thing happens on eBay. I'm following an item right now that I know has been on there for three years at least. Yeah, same item, it's listed at the same price. It's been listed out for at least three years, and I'm thinking, dude, you need to I mean, really, you're going to hold out for that price, why not drop at fifty bucks and unload it. I'm with you on that.

Every time I go there's this one Clovis antique store that has a really fan you know which one has a really fantastic toy section. It's like in the back corner, and they've got old Disneyland stuff. They've got toys from the eighties and the seventies, some toys from the sixties, a lot of nineteen fifties comic books and sixties comic books, and it's a really cool corner. Every time I go in there, I'll find something that's a that's reasonably priced, but everything else that I really want, like the something that I get that's reasonably priced is usually just to satisfy that itch. Like I got Cookie Monster for three dollars the other day.

But you know, right next to that was is this Disneyland lunch pail from I believe the late sixties or early seventies. It's absolutely beautiful but has not changed from its one hundred and fifty dollars price ten. Yeah, for years, just sitting there, just hungry for Ronnie to take it home. Once it gets down to a different price. Yeah, if you're going to put something in an antique store where just Joe Schmo is going in, you need to lower it or put it for that price on eBay.

Yeah, yeah, I agree. And so you know, I keep waiting to find a nineteen seventy nine flash Gordon beast Man out there in the wild to add him to my Beastman's shelf. Those of you who are listening can't see, but right behind me, I've got a whole glass pod dedicated to beast Man right next to the glass pod dedicated to the Skeletors, and there's a variety of versions of beast Man in there. And just to bring this conversation current, there's a company called Mondo that makes these really deluxe, large scale Masters of the Universe action figures, and for me, for the price, I've never really felt like a distinct commitment to that line. But they'd send me a Skeletor not too long ago to review on my YouTube channel, which was really really cool of them.

That's right before Funko totally took over Mondo, So toy nerds out there you may have known that that was that was around the corner. And so the remaining folks that were there they sent it to me, and then I've emailed them since for other things, and it's it's now a different situation over there. Not no critique, it's just as a different situation. And so they right around that time, they right around the time when everything switched, they announced a beast Man, a Mondo beast Man. I just fell head over heels for this thing, but it was it's way out of my price range.

I simply can't afford to spend over two hundred dollars on oh heyo, I can't. It's not it's just not an either. It's not in my it's not in the realm of consideration for me. On Thursday nights on my on the e Sclevator channel, on my YouTube channel, we've got a show called Toy Frenzy, which has just changed to being called the Frenzy, so we could talk about more things. You know, there are four sometimes five hosts over there, and we all kind of all of our patreons sort of share in discussions and share interests and chat about stuff, and they all got together without letting me know and contributed funds to get me that Mondo beast Man, and wow, I just I one of these days, I'll really I made a little video to thank them.

I'll put that out on my YouTube channel. But I was like seriously choked up and shocked by the generosity. And it just so happens that it's probably the toy of all toys. It almost feels like to collect anything after owning something like that is a waste of time and effort. You're done collecting.

Yeah, you're now what you're announcing today. I'd like to say that, but that's just simply not true. As last weekend, I bought a cookie monster from the antique store. Uh what kind of cookie monster? I'll show you.

He's actually I thought he was older, but he's two thousand and he's two thousand and six, two thousand and sixteen. But he has a very vintage Oh I remember those, Yeah, I remember those saw them in maybe when we still had toys r US. Okay, yeah, yeah, because Toys with Us did close around then. Yeah, they they This guy was really it was really cool to find him He's really a great sculpt and he's solid PVC. I thought maybe it was either a Fisher Price Little Person or the Finger Puppet, but I either one of those.

I would just I'm head over heels for those like those are on my on my list to get eventually. Yeah there's a set, or there's maybe not a set. But at one of those close antique stores the last time we went, I saw a bunch of Fisher Price Little People and there were some they were all in just beat up condition. Yeah, and I think it was going as a set. But ye man, I love those little guys me too.

They They're perfect. The Fisher Price Little People count is on top top of my list to get eventually. I'll write that down seriously. Yeah there it's him and I. You know Sesame Street.

Well, one of these days we're going to go deep. You and I are going to go deep with Sesame Street on here. We've got to do that. I showed I was actually looking at them the other day on eBay and I showed Cleo and Carlita the snuffle epicus. Yea for the goofy.

Why would you do it? As I kind of figure out, like what I do it it doesn't make sense. Just do it right, Just paint the shape and he is. Yeah, I'm taking a tangent here, folks, if you haven't realized, it's time for another tangent. And that's good.

That's good. So I have not only do I have that Mondo beast Man, now, I also got for my birthday a beast Man latex mask, which was made by the guy Mortarheads. We've talked about Mortarheads on here before, and I've got pretty much every version of beast Man that's been released so far behind me. And he's just there's something real special about that guy. He's it's not the sharpest tool in the shed, of course, you wet it's un He's not the prettiest thing to look at, but there's something.

He's probably the reason why, I mean, he made such an impression on me as a kid. He's probably the reason why I just really prefer the weirdest characters. I mean, Masters of the Universe, the Star Wars, Canteen characters, like, like, all those weirdos just just do it for me, and beast Man's at the top of the list. Do you have the Mega Constructs beast Man? Because I have one sitting on my desk right here.

I do in a box in the closet. Yeah, Now I don't have my I've got that prototype set of reaction figures from Super seven that they did it send to you Comic Con or whatever, oh Man, And I can't remember if beast Man was one of the four characters in that. I think so, I think so, I'll have to pull that out. It's it's hidden away somewhere. That's actually gone up in price quite a bit.

That's a that's worth a chunk of change. Now, it's it's a really great set. I'm glad you have it. Mine's meant too. So maybe I'll sell it.

Maybe, yeah, I might buy it from you. I've got three. I got three reaction beast Men behind me. There was there was one that I that I really wanted. So when Beastman came out in the mini comics, when he first appeared in the mini comics in nineteen eighty two, these are small little comic books that came with the action figures.

He was all read, and he had like he had some gold accessories, minor gold elements, and he was mainly just a deep, deep red And so the classics I don't have this version of Beastpan, but when Classics came out, they released I think it may have been a con exclusive. They released a mini comic version of beast Man, so he's he's just all read with some gold accessories. And then when Super seven took over the license and they released those reaction figures. One of the this is funny, one of the reaction figures that they put out a beast Man was the all red mini comic coloration and it was something that immediately once it was released, immediately went up in price. It was difficult to get.

When the family and I and I took our very first trip to San Francisco to go to the Super seven store. It was New Year's Day, it was about it was right after the pandemic. We drove to San Francisco. We actually called the store just to make sure they'd be open, and we got misinformation. Someone said, or the recording said that they were going to be open on New Year's Day.

We got there and it was closed. Maybe somebody was sick and it couldn't be there or something. It was closed, and right in the window was they I could see it through the window. They carded red mini comic beast Man reaction figure, and which at the store would be at normal price at the time, would have been about seventeen bucks, I think. And then I just chalked it up to something I'd probably never get after a while.

And then I did a trade with somebody online and he threw one in and I was just stoked. Sent him some toys. He sent me some toys and that was one of them, so I finally got my hands on him. But yeah, east Man is fantastic, a really special character. I have a lot of affection for him, and he almost stopped me from collecting toys a few weeks back.

He used to dream about him, and I used to dream. I used to stare at the ceiling and dream about him. I mean, it gets it gets a little weird. I was like, I was planning for Halloween. I could dress up like beast Man.

I had it planned out. I could do the makeup and then I could wear orange orange sweatsuit. I was just trying to figure it out. It was like it was a high concern for me. I get it.

Yeah, like blue under rus orange sweats you know, a red furry vest and white makeup and there you go your You're beast Man. Nice. It can still happen, Ronnie. It might, it might, it might not that I have a mask, Yeah, yeah, now that you have a mask, throw the rest of that outfit together. My family's already worried about me.

Then if I do that, they're gonna be like, yep, he's lost it. That's weird. All right. We'll take a quick commercial break and be right back. What do we have here?

It's Castle Graisgo and it's mine, so fat beast Man, he Man, you can pity man against beast Man, playing for the power of Castle grays Good. You have to put the castle together. Beast Man's escaping the throne. Daddad. You gave the castle, Castle Graysgow from the Masters of the Universe collection.

He Man and beast Man eat Soul separately from Mattel. We're back from our ad break today. For me, this is a minor this is a side quest obsession. I never had any of these figures when I was a kid. Mike, you you never had beast Man.

I never had any Big Gems. It's Big Jim's world of adventure, and it's not a line that held a lot of space in my head as a kid. I don't really recall seeing them at the store. I know, I didn't really actively look for them, and it could be that the line was pretty much already discontinued by the time that the one that did become an obsession for me was already gone from the stores, and so I don't really have like distinct timelines and everything like that like I do for some of this stuff. It came up.

I'm not sure what I saw after the last episode, because I was going to talk about something else today. Something triggered this in my head, and I thought, oh, I'm going to start looking for this figure again, and then off to the races with the whole idea. So Big Jim was started in nineteen seventy two by Mattel. It was kind of their answer to Gi Joe, made in the strange scale of ten inch action figures, which wasn't a thing before then. Gi Jo was twelve Barbie, which Mattel had was twelve Migos, which had started I believe in seventy two as well, or of course eight inch figures.

So it's just an odd scale and that may be part of the reason also why I didn't have any as a kid because I was beholden to that eight inch Medo scale for some reason. And so started in seventy two their answer to Hasbro's Gi Joe basically, and since war toys or army toys were already on the way out and Gijo was already making changes or Hasro was already making changes to the Gi Joe line to go away from that, these were just presented as all American sports dudes. So you had Big Jim, Big Jeff, Big Josh, Big Jack, who was an early African American action figure, Doctor Steve, and Chief Tankua. I always want to say Tanuka, but it's Tankuah. So you had all American dudes.

Some of them had beards, they've all got that Kirby esque or stretch arm strongy yeah, strong, you know, wide face, strong jaw kone yeah yeah, and they've all got that look solid, had a hair, and none of the big gym guys were balding. No, well, well no, that's not entirely true. So they had the there was like a basic line and that was just a figure and it came with trunks, and then they had an adventure line and a sports line, plus tons of accessories, clothing packets you could buy like Barbie or g I Joe, and then vehicles, play sets, animals, all this extra stuff you could get, and it was a very popular or lined for a number of years. We've mentioned repurposing already and a connection between this line and the line and Masters of the Universe, But the Big Gym line repurposed a lot of stuff from Barbie.

It's a case where it makes a whole lot of sense because anybody who's collected Barbie or had barbiees when they were a kid, or are familiar even nowadays. All the accessories, all the vehicles, all the playsets that come are slightly underscaled, just because Barbie's so tall. All the Barbie figures are twelve inches and so to make vehicles and things like that, they'd be gigantic, so they're always a little bit underscaled, and the figures you barely fitting things. Since Big Gym was ten inches two inches shorter, all the vehicles and stuff that they've repurposed sort of fit him better. Yeah, her corvette becomes his late vet, Yes, a camper.

I think she had an RV that became his RV. A plane that was a Barbie plane becomes a spy plane for Big Gym. I love this, you know, and it's all companies do this, right, I mean, Hasbro does it, Kinner did it, And it's a great way to save money repaint something. You've got the molds, you might as well use them. I don't look at it super cynically.

For the most part, I totally understand why they would do stuff like that. Plus there's always a little change. I mean, the Corvette becomes the Laser Vet and it's got these things that pop up now and you know, supposedly shoot lasers and all this stuff. So it's not like a direct one to one copyright. But I kind of love that ingenuity.

I think to go, what do we have that we can use, yes, and make it work for this line, Yes, definitely. And they're also like Barbie or I think Barbie's at the time where they had those rubber covered limbs that were jointed and would kind of click when you moved them, so her arms and legs, and I remember these from the ones that my sister had when she was a kid. So the joints are basically hidden by this layer of rubber. And at some point they had to stop doing that because of the chemicals that were in that rubber, because of kids like chewing on stuff. So for Big Jim, his arms were produced that way where there's plastic jointed arms with a latex thick latex or PBC rubber over them, so that when you bend his arm, his biceps pop up.

Oh man. So all the figures came with this little really super thin metallic band that you could put around his biceps and then flex his arms and it would pop the band. It's hilarious. You know. They hit the kung fu thing hard.

He had like a dojo set, like a karat kung fu set, and it would come with all these things that you could chop because he had chopping action. There was a button on the back of all of them and you could make their arms chop up and down. So there was wooden boards, pipes, all this stuff that they could hit. And one of those lines kind of like six million Dollar Man that has a lot of playability to it. I love that it's not just a which I think Mego could be faulted for.

Although they tried to do this kind of thing later on, you know, they didn't have anything like that it was just they were superposable, fourteen points of articulation more so than these even. The only thing that bugs me about that is that's the kind of stuff that ends up breaking. And so when you're trying to collect stuff now, it's like, oh, does his arm still chop? And does it still do this? And does it still do that?

And the two figures I have do work back to my personal experience with the line. The I think the first time I ran into one of these figures was at my cousin Brian's. They lived down in Orange County and we were there it must have been mid to late seventies, and he had one of the big gym gold medal Olympic sports lines that came out in seventy four, a couple of years after the seventy two Olympics, so they didn't come out right around the Olympics. Just took them a little while to get this going. But I just remember he had it was just a figure, nothing on and his pelvis, you know, which is generally either whitter orange trunks for him were in this case they were they had like stars and stripes on them, and I always assumed that it was a mark Spitz figure because he had, you know, swept the seventy two Olympics and swimming and gotten eight gold medal, you know, a record that stood for years until my Felps came around.

There was a very famous poster of Mark Spits in nineteen seventy two with his swim trunks on, and they were almost exactly the same thing. So just in my head, I just thought that was a Mark Spitz. Oh that makes sense. Figure, That makes sense. And I remember this was one of those instances where my little brain got kind of naughty and was like, I wonder if I could, if anyone would notice this went missing when we went back, I would covet things man and like try to like this could easily slip into my bag.

Oh my gosh, I didn't do that. So I remember having those feelings when I'd go to friends' houses and they had all the things, you know, like right, I felt that way about the Superpowers Batman action figure my friend had, and I'd be like, oh my gosh, yeah, I know that. I know that feeling. I did it a couple of times, small items, but we'll get to those someday. I'm sure one of them sort of relates to an obsession of mine that I've mentioned before on the show.

So I didn't do that, thankfully, probably kind of forgot about him after that. Yeah, that was though when the line was still out in stores, and it's possible that I saw them. I really just don't have any memories like that, and I feel like I would have bene like, Oh, I maybe kind of want one of those, but they won't really work with my negos so too tall. I think those basic sports types of figures didn't really work for me. And it may have been a popularity thing too, because this line transitioned, much like Gi Joe and some other lines from All American Sports Dude to the Pack, and that's I think where I kind of picked up on it.

And so we'll get to that in a little bit, take another quick break, and then return with more on beast Man Big Gym's back in commando gear. With the first Pack Adventures comic book, you'll see the Whip, Warpath and Doctor Steel challenging their arch enemy. Zora sized up the pack's top secret weapons, and we see all the explosive actions. Big Jim's Pack strikes again in their own comic book, Adventures, Big Gym and Commando Gear comes with sixteen page Pack Adventures comic book new from Adel. All right, so we are back and let's hear some more about beast Man.

This is where I'm going to start to transition a little bit from beast Man to associations with the Big Gym line a little bit more since you're talking about the Big Gym line. But I did want to mention like there were that re emphasize the varieties of Beastmen over the years. There was the nineteen eighty seven movie, and for those of you who are are fans of Masters of the Universe, you're well aware, but there was a version of Beastman that was in that film with Dolph Langren and Courtney Cox. That was the best way I could possibly explain this severely disappointing for me as a fan of the orange, white faced, blue eyeliner beast Man. This guy looked more like another character from the Masters of the Universe line called Grizzlore, which I thought was cool because he came with real fur and giant fangs, and he was super brutal looking and interesting in that way, brown in color.

But when you have a certain expectation for a film version of a character you really kind. I mean, I don't know about everybody, but for me at least, I want to see what I know. I want to see what I know, and I want to see what's familiar to me. Some of you listening might even know this too, something that this is a little thing that bothers me about another hairy creature that we all love, chew Bacca. In the prequels, I believe it's the attack of the Clones.

Chew Bacca makes an appearance in the background when they go to the planet of Wookies. He looks significantly older than the Chewbacca that's in A New Hope or the original Star Wars movie. It's like, stuff like that just bugs the heck out of me, Like, how hard is it to design a character that lines up with the original concept for the original version of it? He really didn't need to look any older or younger, because he's really old anyway. Exactly that's become Cannon now is that he's hundreds of years old or something so.

Like Yoda or Grogu, there doesn't need to be a significant change in adherence over a fairly short amount of time. Thank you, and so stick with what works and what we you know, the original version of a thing that the fans fall in love with, are are you? It's usually what people are going to want to see. Then you get accused of fan service, you know, if you don't do something different, then you just get accused of doing the same old things. So I sort of understand the conundrum that filmmakers in that are exploring these ips to the nth degree, like how different do we make it?

We can't make it too different? Well, you got to throw this in so people go, I remember that. Yeah, it's true. It's true. But if you watch the Massive of the Universe movie that got that beast Man does not look like this man.

Now I've grown to appreciate him as being his own version of beast Man. It just didn't quite do it for me, and I've grown, I've grown to have a love for that version of the character as I've gotten older and actually grown to appreciate that movie, which is not a very good movie, but I do like it. Now they really need to do a good live action version of that. They do and apparently it's in the works. I mean it's been in the works off and on for like twenty years for the company and whoever's you know, obviously the movie companies are listening to us, and Mattel's listening to us definitely, you know, put some time and effort into this so to transition a little bit to the reused parts.

Beast Man's basic sculpt became moss Man, who's also one of my favorite action figures. They all they did was cast him in green pine scented plastic and then flock him with green moss and he was beast Man. I mean, he was moss Man after that. What I love about the face sculpt. They didn't bother to change the face sculpt, but because moss Man as a hero, they simply painted over the tips of his fangs so it looked like he had straight teeth rather than fanged teeth.

And you just gotta love that. I love that that thinking it's just easier this way, Let's just do it this way. Why do a new head sculpt. Yeah, And I did have a moss Man and as a kid, and moss Man was definitely one of my favorites, and I know it was because of the beast Man sculpt. He's also kind of looking off to the side too, which is they just painted his eyes, which kind of looks like he has a lazy eye.

You gotta love moss Man for being that. So that kind of reused parts is nothing new and toys and you and I both have an appreciation for that. And for those of you who to transition a little bit from beast Man over to Big Jim a little bit. There are multiple things from the Big Gym line that made it into Masters of the Universe. We've got the Hawk which became Screech and became Zor, the Bad and Good Hawk creatures from Masters of the Universe.

Zor is the orange, white and blue again great color scheme hawk that becomes or Eagle that becomes the Sorceress. They transitioned from one to the other and then Screeches the Battie. It's purple, pink, and blue. I think I believe there was a hunting Big Gym set that came with a bear, and that was one thing that inspired the Red Beast, which became beast Man. But then there's also, as I mentioned before, the Jungle Adventure Gorilla, which was also an inspiration for beast Man, which became eventually the physical prototype for that character Geygre that we mentioned earlier, and then there was the I can't remember his name.

I should have looked it up before today, but he's the trap Jaw character from the Big Gym line who was a villain who had a mechanical arm with a hook hand and a jaw, a mechanical jaw. Iron Jaw was his name. Iron Jaw. Yes. As a side note, that was a part of one of the foreign lines, which i'll kind of get into.

Yes, on my part, I'm pretty sure I could be wrong. If you're a Big Gym expert, feel free to contact us. But there were a number of figures that were not produced for America. They were produced in other countries. Now it is very similar to trap Jaw, though he is the biggest difference is that he's ten inches tall, right, he's not beefy, he's not what is it, he's not swole as the kids say he and he's wearing like clothes, you know, he's very cool.

He's kind of a pirate looking character. There's a show on on Netflix that I feel like did not garner a lot of success, and I forget what it's called, but there's a character in there that looks very much like the Iron Jaw from the Big Gym line, and it's got it's about modern pirates. I wish I could remember in the name of it. I'm just thinking of it now, So I didn't think they look it up, but I did see the trailer and I was like, that is either Iron Jaw or Trap Jaw inspired. Interesting, Yeah, it looks like a super cheesy show, so I haven't bothered to try and watch it.

And then there's also the Tigers. The Tiger from the Big Gym line which became the iconic battlecat slash cringer of the Masters of the Universe line and the panther Or of the Masters of the Universe line. I just love this story. They they're like, heman, he's a he's a barbarian, he needs a steed of some and one of the guys from intelligence like, here, let's just put him on a cat, And they jokingly said, well, he could be painted anything green and orange, and so the people who the people took it in the back and painted it green with orange stripes and it just happened to work. And so that's how we got a giant cat in the Masters of the Universe line.

They just reused the Big Gym cat, and I do think and I'm not an expert on this, we talked about it on toy Frenzy once. I believe the cat goes back to a previous line before it goes back to Tartizan, which was sort of a prototype a Big Gym. It's the same body, it's a Big Gym figure before, right before Big Gym happened, and it came with a black that's all black. And then for Big Gym, and again I believe this was for foreign markets. I don't know that the cat actually came in an American set.

It might have, and then it was painted up like a tiger for the Big Gym line, and then, as you've mentioned, reused again. And it's kind of great that for that six inch squatty line of action figures, it kind of works to where he can write on him. Obviously they weren't writing on him in the Big Gym line. It was a more two scale figure for them, you know. They just they created these organic looking sort of hr Geiger inspired saddles and a helmet for battle Cat, and you paint them odd colors green and orange, and you flock the other one with purple flocking, and before you know it, you have this super weird looking cat Steve that's just perfect for this.

Yeah, it's a fantasy line, so it makes sense. It makes so much sense. And you know, going back to the reusing of the parts, it's just sometimes the answer to what you're trying to create is right in front of you. Just grab that thing off the desk and change it a bit and there it is. Yeah, So I love that.

I love that about the Big Gym line. And always whenever I go to the antique stores, I always have my eyes peeled for something from the Big Gym line. I would love to eventually find like a one of the pieces that was reused in the Mess line. Yeah, I can't say it's possible that I've seen Big Gym figures over the years, but I'm not sure. Yeah, I don't think there iss common as you know, going and seeing a Gi Joe or yeah, Star Wars Action.

Also, they've never to my knowledge, they've never re released the Big Gym line. So there's never been a that I know of, a reissue that would be more common defined in the store like that, not in that scale. I think they were going to in a smaller scale at some point, and I don't believe that ever panned out. But there were some figures like Prototype released in a maybe five inch scale or something maybe three and three quarter inch, and I don't even think that they were posable, and they all really odd looking slim Gym. Yeah, Toy Poloy actually did an episode on the reissue figures.

Oh yeah, I think they were a Comic Con exclusive or a con exclusive somewhere. That's cool. That repurposing, Yes, as you've mentioned, is an interesting It's not quite as interesting as the jump from g I. Joe to hinchin Cyborg to Microman to micro Nots, but it's got that same kind of vibe where they are cannibalizing their own stuff for a new line. It's strange though that And they go over this on that Netflix The Toys That Made Us on their Masters of the Universe episode, they talk about the evolution of Big Gym into Masters of the Universe, where much like Kinner taking adventure people Fisher Price adventure people to use as their prototypes.

I mean, they're taking figures from a completely different company and toy line. Ye mattel Kit bashed a big gym figure into the prototype of he Man, which I'm sure Masters of the Universe people know all about this, the lore that it was supposed to basically be a conan the Barbarian toy line, and we won't get into all that, but yeah, it's I haven't watched. I watched most of that first season of that show, and then I just couldn't deal with it anymore. It just seemed like they were being too smug and it just had an odd tone to it where it felt like they were making fun of the people involved in not only making the toys but the people that collect them, yet they're fans. I don't know.

It struck a weird, snide kind of tone for me. It's time for another tangent. Let's do a little sidebar here. So the guy's name is what Brian Volkweiss, the guy behind those So it took me a little while to understand the snark. And I hated the narrator.

I don't know if it's him, but I hated the narrator. Yeah, it took me. It took me aback as well, because I was like, are they not taking this seriously? And then you realize that it's kind of just like a It's like a snarky, hipstery way to share your knowledge. I don't like it, but I definitely tolerate it because because there's some Unfortunately, there's not a lot of this kind of information out there, so it's just like you take what you can get.

That company recently signed on to do these thirty minute episodes for the Disney Plus channel that explore the It's called Behind the Attraction explores the history of significant rides and attractions at the Disneyland parks. It's the same snarky approach, but I don't get that. My thing is is I can't not watch it because I can't find those documentaries elsewhere. They they just don't exist, and so I'm thankful that that company and that person is doing it. I just feel like, as a person who takes these things super seriously, I would rather have sort of a straightforward documentary approach than using editing as a comedic tool or a lighthearted approach.

But to me, it's like it feels like they're trying to distance their own love of this stuff so that they don't seem uncool. I don't know, there was just this weird vibe to them. That, yeah, really put me off. So I never watched anything past that season and I never watched the series The Movies That Made Us because of that. And I was like, I'm just not interested in feeling like I'm being looked down upon for watching a thing that you produced about stuff that I like.

That's a weird that's a weird tactic to take. And maybe it's just me, but that's how I felt watching those that first season of The Toys That Made Us. I'm with you on that. The only difference between you and me is that I will fucking tolerate it because I want that. I want that information and I want that feeling, so I don't I will tolerate the abuse, the hipster abuse, we'll call it, just so I can get that get those images into my brain and get that information in my brain.

I'm of an age now where I and I probably said this on the show at some point, life is too short to listen to bad music, watch bad movies, and do things that you don't like to do. So that's of my take on the world in general, like why would I do that if it's not fun? I will say this really quick. If you're if Folks listening to this are like, well, then where do I get that information? Well, there's a really great YouTube channel called Keeping Walt in Disney.

If you're interested in like old Disney films or or or documentary style information, that YouTube channel Keeping Walt and Disney does it without the hipster commentary and it's just straightforward information. So so there you go, you away. Big Gym's pack members are in trouble. So, as I mentioned before the last break, they switched gears for Big Jim, turn them into a spy like character leader of the pack, and hack stands for I love this. Come up with the stupidest acronyms for things for toy lines, professional agents, dash, crime killers, that's so good, killers as bad as modox.

Yeah acronym. And then they introduced a new feature for not all of the characters, but many of the characters, the double Trouble features, so they would come with an extra action dynamic Big Gym, Zorak and Torpedo Fist double Trouble features each so separately f from a tell. So they still most of them still have the chopping arm thing, but there was a version of Big Gem and a new character, an enemy called zorak that came with a face changing not accessory. What do you call that? Action feature?

Yeah, action feature, gimmick. I have a zorak that I bought. I had to look at my Instagram to see when I bought this six years ago and two months so January of twenty eighteen. So you lift his arm up and you press the button on his back, and his face changes from just like a dude with a mustache to this green monstery Yes, very incredible Hulk esque type face, the bared teeth and everything. Yeah.

Yeah, he's got a fancy burgundy cape with a gold chain, black pants and black boots. So he's now the enemy of this pack group. And the big Gym one does the same thing, but you know, he's just big Jim. So it's like this helmet hair of head. Yes, and you do the same thing where he's big Gym and then he's angry, big gem that.

You look that one up because it's just so funny, this big kind of plastic head of hair around his face. That's what my hair looks like when I try to grow it out. It's basically a helmet of hair. And so that again was repurposed in the mo TWU line with Manny faces. That was I think a little simpler.

It's just like a twisty thing on his head. If I'm not mistaken, it's a little knob. This is kind of cool, and I'm not going to do it now because I'm getting a little wary of cranking up his arm and doing that. As Zurich as a figure, I remember seeing and liking a lot, and obviously enough to get him. I don't think I spent too much on him, and he's complete and in very good shape.

I just cleaned his outfit the other day, and in cleaning his pants it messed up the elastic a little bit. No, not as snug as they were before I cleaned. It kind of ticks me off a little bit. Yeah, definitely, that's frustrating, but he is in great shape. That wasn't the figure though, that I was obsessed with as a kid.

That was a fit gear who was around since the beginning of line. This wasn't He wasn't introduced with the pack, but his backstory kind of changed, and that was doctor Steele. Oh yeah, the incredible Doctor Steele. You've got Big Jim and Big Jeff hacking across the land and stopped cold by a gleaming hand of the Incredible Doctor Steel with rugged face and strange tattoo. You make him break a bar in two, make Big Jim and Big Jeff strike a blow.

Is he friend or is he cold? The Incredible Doctor Steele, Big Jim Safari outfit, Big Jim, Big Jeff, and the Incredible Doctor Steele eats so separately from Mattel my friend Jason Jason. Of course, we all know Jason had this big gear and I remember really really digging this guy. So we talked about balding. He is bald, and I guess he's supposed to be a, you know, part of that whole kung fu stuff that was going on in the early to mid seventies.

He's got a kick ass dragon tattoo on his chairs and all of the figures had a little wolf pack tattoo on their hands. When the line was originally produced and he was a part of it, it was he was more ambiguous as to whether he was friend or foe, and they even say that in the ads. But when they sort of switched to pack, he was. He was part of Big Gym's pack, and he's got this great chromed right hand. I'm not sure where he got his doctorate, but are what it's in.

But he's doctor Steele for what reason? And I remember playing with him at Jason's house and really really like I feel like this was after seventy eight or so, when the Big Gym was basically discontinued here in the States, and because I I feel like I probably would have gotten him regardless of the scale, because I really really did like him. So this ac I got a while ago at a decent price. This was what kind of got me on this kick for this episode. I occasionally look up Big Gym stuff and the prices for these are ridiculous, Yes, and the ones that are decently priced are pretty beat up.

And I don't really have a problem with sort of beat up figures, but because of this different rubber on the arms, a lot of times their armpits and stuff have plastic melt. Oh yeah, that's too bad. This one does not. Neither of these figures too, but a lot of the figures I would see on there would have that. And I'm assuming it's from the arms.

It could just be from other stuff that was put on them or laid across them. Yes, that has that reaction and melts into the harder plastic of the bodies. Most of them, you know, the tattoos are gone, because what do you grab when you're a kid and you're playing with them. I had one on my watch list. It was in the forty dollars range, but the ship it was from the Netherlands, so the shipping was like around the same price.

So I just kind of half asked looking at these, and then one night I hit that search again and this one popped up for considerably less and for way less shipping. Six dollars shipping instead of thirty five or something. That's amazing. And I was like, oh, his chrome looks good. From what I can tell in the pictures, he actually has the tattoo on his hand.

The tattoo on his chest is barely rubbed. Pants look good. It didn't come with shoes or anything. It's just these sort of three quarter pants, kind of like Incredible Hulk again, And I was like, oh, that looks great. They're called capris, yes, and they're shredded on the ends.

Though like Hulk's pants from Migo. They're basically the same pants as Zorax, are just cut shorter, yep, and I was like, oh, you know, bought it. My snow showed up, and I'm like, okay, I'm going to clean. I'm not going to clean his pants like I did Zora, because I don't want the elastic to go out again, but his arms were really dirty, so I was going to clean those and clean the body. So I'm taking off the pants.

I'm like, oh, he doesn't move, And I get him off and his left leg had apparently been repaired. Oh yeah, and it looks to me like hot glue was used, and so it's basically shoved into his pelvis and it makes his leg and his body not move. Oh that's too bad. And I was a little bit disappointed in that. I don't blame you.

And so I'm going to go on a little tangent here about eBay. And I don't know if you've encountered this, but I was looking at something else a couple other things, and I've noticed that descriptions for items are starting to sound a little weird. People are using AI to generate their item description listings for eBay. I believe it. So for this figure, most of the information is correct, kind of vague, but oddly it says this figure is made of steel, was made of steel in Hong Kong.

So this is the part where the AI thing is not getting the information right. He's named doctor Steele. He's not made of steel. I obviously know that. But people are going to get themselves in trouble when an item listing doesn't match what the person gets because they've used AI and they haven't edited it.

Because he could have easily cut that line out of the description. I think it went on to say his name is Chop Chop, which is they have chopping action. So people, if you're going to use AI to generate eBay listing descriptions, you really need to at least look at it and weed out the misinformation. So I messaged the guy and I said, hey, look, I can't leave you feedback because for one thing, it looks like your description was created using AI, and another thing is his leg has been repaired and that's not mentioned in your description at all, nor do you have any photos of that. So it's either negative feedback or neutral.

I guess I'm not going to look for a return. It displays very nicely and it is generally in very good condition. Other than the leg, I think at some point I could possibly swap out a pair of legs for it for my purposes, for display or whatever. It's fine. He didn't offer like a refund of any amount or anything, but whatever.

He did reply and say, oh, I did notice that I'll do better in the future with my descriptions or some bullshit like that. I'm like, fine, I mean, I hope you do, but don't use AI. If you're not going to at least look at what it's spitting out, would at least offer you a partial refund because that's just not cool. It wasn't like a wallet buster type of purchasness, and otherwise it is in very good shape and I don't feel like going down a whole thing of like putting in a complaint or whatever. Yeah, it's fine.

Back on to the figures. There was another one in the line called Torpedo Fist, which had his feature was you know, you got to pump up the arm or whatever and press the back and his metallic fist shoots out. That's cool. And there is I believe though, yeah, which is a horrible name, figure Fisto. And then there's also Extendar too, who had extendable limbs, it wasn't a oh and spike or if you swung him, if you, if you, if you pulled him to one side.

They all had the punch feature. He man figures and his was a trident that was up inside of his arm, and so when you twisted his waist and then he swung him out, his trident would shoot out. The kind of punching or fisting action was was reused too. Yeah, yeah, yeah, great term to use, right, Yeah, that's great. Yeah, now with fisting action, that's right.

Oh, that was one of the things too that really pissed a lot of people off. In the Masters of the Universe Revelation the first the first season, Uh, this is produced by Kevin Smith. You know, Kevin Smith has that tendency toward potty humor and Fisto. The character shows up in it, and I forget what he says, but it's it's like definitely tongue in cheek pertaining to his talent as Fisto. So many fans were like, oh my god, you don't have to we all know, like, you don't have to say it.

That's lowest common denominator stuff. Yeah, thank goodness. The new season is awesome. It totally makes up for it. Yeah, so Torpedo Fist, you left out the main connection between your figure today and Big Jim.

What's beast Man's weapon? Oh the whip, that's right. Oh my gosh, you're right. The whip is reused from Big Gem Thank you, from a character called the Whip. He was part of the pack.

That's so true, And I'm surprised I forgot about it because it's a really humorous thing. Beast Man's hand is smaller, obviously than the hands of the ten inch figures from Big Jim, so beast Man holds onto the finger guard instead of the handle. And it's actually it's so funny because they actually show his whip that way in the cartoon, just to sort of justify this, this placement of the whip in this figure. That makes sense, hand yep. Yeah, And I don't even know if the big gym one came with that, that might have been added to the if it had the hand the finger guards made, it might have.

I don't know that. It's a pretty cool character though, he's a He's got a strap with like four or five metallic boomerangs strapped in his chest. Yeah, very cool. Yeah, they were interesting, interesting figures. It's it's a cool line that, like I mentioned, stopped here but continued in foreign countries until like the early eighties.

They really liked Big Gem and it got morphed into more like a double O seven thing, and they added those weird characters like iron Jaw. There was one called Vector that has armor kind of like manny faces, and Zorak becomes a pirate. So when you do the double trouble action instead of the green hulk like face, it's a skull. That's so cool. Yeah, they did all kinds of neat stuff with it.

The accessories are cool to be, calls are cool. I'm kind of trying to look for some karate boards and maybe the pipe that doctor Steele came with that he karate chopped in half and see if I can find those for cheap on eBay. Yeah. I think the karate boards come up quite a bit, definitely. But yeah, repurposing, repurpose those molds still happens today.

Yeah, it's I'm glad this is This is sort of a side note too, but you know, based on talking about repurposing the Masters of the Universe origins line and the Masters of the Universe masterverse line, maintain that concept of repurposing, so you have you have that tradition living on in Masters of the Universe as as we enter into modern modern toy territory. Use those molds, that's what I say. That's right, Use them ingeniously, though ingeniously, think creatively about what's in front of you. Yeah, that's it, all right, We'll take another quick break and then we'll come back with a shared local locale. Yes, it gets a big gym and torpedo fish on a big Gym's pack mission against double trouble Zaurac.

Okay, we are back, and we were going to talk about a long standing local locale that has I know, been present in my life since I was a little kid. How about you, Ronnie, what's your experience with this? Well, this is like a big deal Fresno place, I think. Yeah, if you're from in fact, if you're from the central Valley of California, there's a very good chance you've encountered this or eaten here numerous times. And when I was living in Los Angeles, there was one in Lake Would I think was the name of the town outside of LA that had one, and it was exciting that they had one.

But this is me and excited to you. At least it was exciting to me. Yeah. So yeah, we should preface it by saying that this is not run of the mill pizza as you expect pizza to be. It's a very unique version of pizza.

I'm saying that, and people are going to be thinking, oh, what is it? Is it? I'm trying to think of something creative. It's very It's pizza. It is pizza.

But it's just we'll get into that. We'll get into why it's different. Say the name again because I talked over you. Yeah, me and Eds pizza and Me and It's pizza parlors me in and so Me and Eds Yes, because when you say, it's kind of like element O p you know, like me and DS, Me and Eds. So some dude and Ed decided to make pizza.

Yeah, and been around least since the fifties. I think, Yeah, I didn't do any history, but I know it's been around for a good long while and no need to it's met. The parlors have not changed. So if you want to go to if you go to Most, sorry, Most, me and Ed's parlors. One that we that our family goes to, which is out in Sanger.

Looks just like the Me and Ed's parlor in the Tower district that my family used to go to. It hasn't changed. That one's changed though, because it's now one of those. Yeah, the Tower one. It changed a long time ago.

Oh I missed that. I missed that. They've got that wall of beer where you can just walk up to the spigots and get your beer. That's too bad. I want to go into them anymore.

Yeah, almost every Friday we get our family gets a Me and Ed's pizza from the one in Sanger. It is it's an acquired taste. It is not Chicago style pizza. It is not New York style pizza. It is not deep dish.

It is definitely a thin crust. It is definitely not like Round Table, is definitely not like Domino's. Part of what distinguishes Me and Ed's from other pizzas is they've got a corn meal, crumbly and almost over baked pizza crust. It's always crispy. It's cracker like.

It's a cracker like. It's almost like since your Armenian you know about this, it makes me think of lavache. Yeah, definitely. Yeah, it's not as thin, not as that. A lot of places use corn meal as the sort of ball bearings to get the pizzas in and out.

But it seems to stick to this crust a lot more than most other places you go to. Right, It's a very different crust from the ones that you mentioned. I have encountered cracker like crust like this elsewhere. It's not the like Billowy, you know Italian Sicilian style crust where the edge is super poofed up and sometimes there was hardly any edge to them. You know.

We just got one a week or so ago, and it was like the sauce was all the way to the end, which I liked because I really liked their sauce. That is another difference, yes, the sauce. Yeah. So we had one in Sunnyside where the public library branch was that we went to, where Christensen's Market was that I went to and looked at comics, where the optometry or the glasses store was, where I my first array bands was. All that stuff was in this strip mall, and that was where we would go either.

I mean we would just go and eat there, but a lot it was many times It was after our night games at Bakeman Field for Little League. So if we didn't get a burger at the snack bar, which were fucking amazing, by the way, that's nice, we would go get pizza at Me and Ed's. I think, like many people, it was always pepperoni to start with, and as we got more adventurous, we started getting linguisa on our pizza. And I have to mention something about this. It was very different than the linguisa that they use now, which is basically cut up like pepperoni, cut up in little spheres and put on there like you know, a sausage.

From what I remember as a kid, when we got linguisa and pepperoni pizza, it was more like almost like bacon that's been cut up and fried, or like how preshudo turns out when you bake it, where it was very thin and crispy, but like crumbled. So I don't know if they were using like fresh like chre you know, you can get chriesa that smoked and cured, or you can get Mexican style triesa that's just you have to cook as a you know, you have to break it up and cook it. Yea It's almost like it was that kind of linguisa, like it was a fresh linguisa that hadn't been cured or just smoked in any way. And my god, that was that was once we discovered that that was what we got, it was always on the absolutely loved it.

The pizza that I just mentioned that we got a week or so ago had pepperoni and linguisa and black olives on it. Yeah, so good. Not the same linguisa, but it's still I loved the flavor of it. So yeah, that was that was where we would go or order from. I don't know if they did delivery back then, but the pizza parlor, I you know, just like everybody else, red brick, wooden tables and booths, arcade games, arcade games yep, and a jukebox that's right.

Yeah. And it smelled like heaven in there. It really did. And it's and it does. I will say that the one out and sanger that I go to is it's got a like a trash collection area behind it and hot summer days.

Boy does it stink. So you rush in Russian to get inside the pizza parloerg you so you have the pizza smell what my memory of the of of Me and Eds goes. I mean, I don't recall a time in my life where I where Me and Eds wasn't part of my childhood, So it's almost as if it may even have been the first pizza I ever tasted. I could probably say the same thing when I moved to New York for a brief period of time and when I lived in LA for a brief period of time, I missed two things about the Central Valley food, and that was authentic Mexican food and Me and Ed's pizza. Because no matter how much you know, if you grow up on Me and Ed's pizza and you're you're you're told, and you're taught that New York pizza, you know, a slice of New York pizza is just going to blow your mind or what have you.

Sure it's good, but nothing quite matches the expectation you have a pizza once you've had Me and Eds. I mean, here's an example, and I remember being in my teens and early teens, we moved to Oakhurst, which is above fred the Fresno area. They have a pizza place up there called Pizza Factory, which is also common Central Valley Pizza Organization and we got their pizza. It had mushrooms on it. I like on it, mushrooms.

If you say it like that, rooms on it, mushrooms, that's great. Yeah. Well I think I have to say it mushrooms because I discovered that mushrooms on a pizza, if they're not canned, it's not as good. Because all the mushrooms that I can't I can't do the canned. All the mushrooms I ever had on a pizza from Me and Ed's right now, we're all canned.

I grew up with that and I just love it. There's something about it. And now now, of course, that was when I was tall for thirteen, so I have a very dep and complicated, delightful relationship to mushrooms now. But when I was a kid, it was just not the same. I was very disappointed that I wasn't getting that cheap o canned mushrooms on my Me and Ed's pizza.

I'm not a fan. But they're tricky though, too, because they're imported. Yeah. So yeah, you think that when you order the imported ones, you're actually getting fresh, and you have to learn fresh if you don't want the slimy little canned ones. Yeah, and so I love the slimy little canned ones because of Me and Eds.

But I don't think I would ever eat the salimy little canned mushrooms if it wasn't on a Me and Ed's pizza, because I don't recall ever eating it elsewhere. So yeah, my sister when we order over at her house, there's one right down the street that my nephew actually works at, and you get a combo or something and it's got those cann mushrooms and we're all kind of like mm, but you know, I'll call eat them. Yeah, the combo, which I'm not a huge fan of, to be honest with you. But this sauce, though, is the other thing that crackery crust and then it's a very pasty yeah Nato paste sauce and I love it. Yeah, it's awesome.

Too much can be too much because we've done that before on accident, order like extra sauce and it's like, you know, this is so rich, but if there isn't enough sauce on it, man, I can it can be a bummer. Yeah, So placed by us, we have one just down the street from us, just about anywhere you live in town, you've got one pretty close by and they do a good job of sauce to cheese to toppy ratio. Yeah, at some point we decided as a family that we were tired of it, and so we kind of stopped going for a long time. And there was a round table near I think it was on Butler and something, so it was out, you know, real Sunnyside area, kind of even past the I R. S which is way way south.

Yeah, and so we started getting that and you know, it was fine. It's like that's normal style pizza with a kind of floppy crust and hoofy edges. And or we would go out to Aldos in Clovis for sit down meals and we kind of kind of snubbed ME and DS for a long time. But I don't know, at some point came back and it was like, why did I ever leave you? We did the same thing because we have a pizza factory here in Fowler, and for a while we were like should we just it's right around the corner, let's just eat there now.

And we were kind of like okay with letting go of me and pizza for a while. Then just like in the Godfather, you try to leave and call you back in. We just one day my own wife was like, no, let's do me and DS again because I miss it. And then we were right back in the fold with me and EDS and their cheese blend. Their cheese blend too, So those three things, whatever magic combo is going on in there, which has been the same since absolutely.

I mean they've changed a little and Guisa a little bit, but yeah, it's you know, with Karlita not being from here. So for a while there we were getting Da Vinciese because they would have that. They were what like nine ninety nine for a three items pizza or something for a good long while, and they're fine, and I don't mind different pizzas, but there's just something about that combo. Man, it's magical, and it probably, like you may have mentioned early on, probably wouldn't work for a lot of people. They'd be like, what is the deal with this crust?

This sauce is too pasty. Yeah, it smells different than regular pizza parlors, like you walk in and it's a very distinct. It's cheese. It's the cheese cheese. The smell crust.

I did hear that they part of what makes the crust so good is that they the ovens are rife with the crusts from the past. So they apparently they that corn meal. It's like just cooking in there and cooking in there and cooking in there, and so you get that, you get that sort of flavor that continues throughout all the pizzas. Starting to get hungry, got it? Yeah, mean it's if you're driving through the Central Valley and you want to try a pizza that might be different from any pizza that you've had before, yet somehow the same, then definitely pull over and find a ME and DS.

Now, I do want to mention that there's a fancier There are a few fancier me and eds that specialize in like specialty pizzas. I guess they tried to. They tried this on to see if it would be if it would make them more popular, and those those few restaurants have stuck around. I believe there's one in Clovis, and I believe there's one at River Park. Don't bother folks, don't bother with that.

Just go with the traditional pizza parlor me and eds and you'll be pleased. Yeah, we've hit the River Park one in the past, and yeah, it's fine. It's fine. It's not the same, it's not. Also, you can't mess up pizza too bad.

I've only had like a handful of just like awful pizzas in my life. But yeah, it's very true. There's something distinct about me and Eds. Also disclaimer, you know, Mark and I are coming from a place of nostalgia with me and Eds. Our viewpoint is definitely biased on this, So I mean, I wouldn't still be eating it if it didn't taste good or if the quality was shit.

So oh, that's very true. That's very true. I'm not beholden to anything for my childhood just because I liked it back then. That's true. Alrighty, well, let's wrap this baby up.

And why don't you let folks know where they can find you out in the ether webs. Yeah, so you can find me on Instagram as either Scala Vader s k E l e v A d e R, where I post a lot of toy photos and links to my YouTube channel. So there's a Sclevator YouTube channel where I usually show off my builds that I've been working on. Right now I'm working on another Snake Mountain build and you can also find my art and other projects on my other Instagram account are underscore Zoriggian d z E R I G I A N. That's where I post for my other projects.

Right now, you're we're still hosting episodes every Thursday night of what used to be called Toy Frenzy. Just recently we switched Toy Frenzy to The Frenzy and that's on Thursday nights. And if you're interested in becoming a Patreon of Skelevator, you can find it either through my YouTube channel or through my Instagram and we do post early episodes of Cambridge and with Shawn about a week early and they're commercial free on there. If you're interested in becoming a Patreon, how about you mark? You can find me on social media at wake Up Heavy, Instagram, Facebook, although I don't post on Facebook, Twitter, letterbox if you want to see what I'm watching, which is done all that much these days, and that's that and Wake Up Heavy haven't done anything since November.

The Chasing Chevy Chase podcast will be out this month. I think we decided on third Wednesday of the month or third I don't know. It's the third week, so look for it where where you get your podcasts. And there is an option on spreaker now for podcasts to have subscribers, so I may sign Cambridge. I'm a sean up for that.

I don't know the details exactly, but since I'm not really actively doing Patreon, I may see what that is all about. And I don't know if if it's where I could release the episodes early there for people that want to pay for it and listen to without ads, or if it's just you know, extra stuff. I don't do the extra stuff thing, so I'll look into it, so that may be an option. You don't honestly have that many Spreaker only listeners, so that may not even be worth the trouble, but at some point that may be an option, and if it does happen, I will let people know that's cool when it does. Right, So until next time, Ronnie, take it away with the outro, because I still have yet to put it on.

Come all right, I just thought of one extra thing to mention too. You can also follow Cambridge with Michean on Instagram, so find us there as well. All right, Remember, until we meet again, have fun, stay weird and keep collecting. Bye bye, and thanks for listening, and thanks for listening. And don't be a dick.

Amen. Don't create a show and be snarky about toy collectors. Yeah yeah, don't make people feel dumb about their interests. Leaving all this in by the way, yeah good good. I'll show you all the true power of least man.

You haven't seen the last You turn big gym fierce and make torpedo fists punch out victory until next time. Way greet people go for the pace for you to stop wait. Hung great people, go for Pia is the taste for you to drop in its place where pixons and it's very best. Me and Edge Pizza is the satisfying Stu of the pizza Me and excers and you really know its pizza catheres are were hungry people, No Cambridge h M Shawn is a weirding Way Media podcast. Yeah,