Episode 27: Won't you be my apeman?

Cambridge Rashon is a weird way media podcast. Wells about Franklin. Let's make the most of this beautiful day. Since we're together, we might as well say. Would you be mine?

Could you be mine? Won't you be my neighbor? Won't you please? Won't you please please? Won't you be my damn dirty eight?

Hello and welcome to Cambridge and with shon episode twenty seven. This is Mark Bigley, one of your two co hosts, and joining me is the other two co hosts. This is Ronnie otherwise known as Skelevator over on YouTube and Instagram those worlds. I'm real excited about today, Mark, We've got a lot to talk about. You say that every time.

That's my script I haven't written down right here. I'm really excited about today, Mark, we have a lot to talk about. Says it right there. So Cambergeon with Sean is a show by two very normal guys about them very normal things that they like. And if you think it's weird, I don't know what's wrong with you.

That's a good way of putting it. I thought i'd flip the script on our descriptions since I started to feel a little bit down about being viewed as a weirdo. Well, what the fuck is weird? Anyways? It's self induced though, so that's okay.

We can call ourselves weird. But if you guys call us weird, something's wrong with you. Oh them's fighting words. Now call me whatever you want. I couldn't care less.

I should probably take Mark's stance on this too. It is kind of weird that, by the. Way, Mark, that's kind of like my life motto is. I should probably take Mark's stance on this. Ah, not on everything, maybe on a few things.

Not caring about what other people think about you is a good stance. That's a good place to think that. I have a lot of other stances that are a bit wobbly, unintended, as we all do. Yes, as a personal aside for me right now, I'm a little wobbly. Yeah, all right, Well, what do you want to do?

First? Talk about what we've gotten since the last episode. Get into our main items for today. Let's talk about that stuff first, because I'm really excited about I gave you two options. What you got sent me a picture of a box I did.

It was smashed. Smashed. Listen, folks, Mark doesn't tell me what's in some of these things? You know one of them? Yeah right, I know one of them, and you know one of mine.

Too, right, because they're the same thing. We get excited, we hide things from each other, and then we reveal things to each other. It's unpredictable. I figured, since it's the day before, you might as well get a surprise. I don't know everything you have either, so it's always nice to keep a little bit back.

But also generally when we get something more excited about it and share it with the other person, there's that right too. So why don't you give us your first item? Well, I'm going to go in chronological order of the things I got since no last talked it's chronological chronological order. Now are we gonna do this in chronological order? I'm going to chrogeological order or whatever that word is, condological.

That's a little throwback for you regular listeners. That's right. A couple of things. I've already talked about it a little bit. I got the Bert and Ernie Mecca figures, which are really amazing.

Similarly, I got the Burton Ernie Mekka two E TV figures which those are amazing. As last time, I'm gonna just briefly mention those because I'm still riding that wave of excitement with those. If you watch my YouTube channel, I did a review recently of the little two and a half inch figures from Jack Specific of Abe Simpson, Grandpa Simpson, and Millhouse, and they are amazing. I have a huge toy crush on these little Jack specific Simpsons figures right now. They're kind of everything that people in our age bracket might want from some thing new.

And then I follow a lot of Disney Parks stuff on Instagram and I got this message from them that during this Star Star Wars season coming up, they're going to be They're not Stars Wars Star Wars Star Wars Alice Hope. They're putting out these popcorn buckets, and the popcornd buckets are always like really cool, Well, it depends on what you like. They posted that they're putting out a ton Ton popcorn bucket. That got me really excited. It reminded me that something I look at every once in a while on eBay is the vintage ton Ton.

I still had never bitten the bullet on getting one for myself. I'm very particular in the kind of ton Ton I want to get I want to make sure I get the kind with the stomach that you can slide Luke Skywalker into the stomach, and finding those at a reasonable price is a little bit difficult on eBay, and I picked one up. I got a really good discount because he's missing his I don't know if I've shown you this yet, Mark, but you sent me the picture on me that's right. Yeah, he's missing his reins and that's okay. He's got his saddle on everything else and he's got the little openable stomach and that made me really happy.

And then quickly following that, I was contemplating what should I get Mark for his birthday? So, folks, if you're listening to this, Mark's birthday has just passed, because it's at the end of March and you're listening to this. At the beginning of April, I was trying to get him a little something. I'm gonna I'm gonna let him know what this is, because it's just a it's like an addition to what I'm planning on getting him. My pal over there at Mortarheads, Mark Enright made these amazing stickers.

Oh and it's the Hamburglar. I don't even think I've seen. Those, just like the Batman emblem from the nineteen sixty six television series, and instead of Batman in his cape, it says burn. And So, Mark, you got a hamburglar, mark Enwright mortar Heads sticker coming your way for your birthday. I ordered two of these and he sent me six.

So I think I'm going to give you two something that you're about to talk about. I know both Mark and I got the itch for Roosevelt Franklin when, at least for me, when Super seven announced that they were going to do a reaction figure. That's about Franklin, That's about Franklin. That is why I got this, exactly Roosevelt Franklin. And this is a character that I haven't thought about in a long time because he's basically absent from Sesame Street now for probably a variety of reasons.

But he was always a favorite of mine as a kid, and he's just been sort of on the edge of my consciousness for a while. And then Super seven announced that they're doing a Roosevelt Franklin reaction figure, and that's very, very very exciting. Actually, of that wave that's the only one that I really want to get. That's the only one I'm getting, and I'm going to get him on the car. I'm not going to wait for a blind box thing to cheap out, because we want to take a chance on getting somebody I don't like.

This guy's worth it. This guy's worth it. And the figure, the reaction figure looks amazing. But I did find him at a reasonable price on eBay, so I got my little Fisher Price Little People Roosevelt Franklin. Now, surprisingly these guys are really hard to find in good shape.

Oh yeah, you can find others in fairly good shape almost I'm going to say in abundance, but I'm over exaggerating. But Roosevelt Franklin, it's hard to get him with his face paint intact. Anyways, got him, and he came with a little sticker. No bad vibes from the person I ordered it. That's nice, perfect for this era we're living in right now.

Yeah, Roosevelt Franklin. Although I always malappropriate his name as Franklin Roosevelt because of our stupid president yep, or just Franklin like because yeah, yeah, he's always been on my mind because that was of those hand puppets that we briefly talked about on when you talked about Sesame Street way back when. Yeah, that hand puppet of him was the one that I actually really wanted as a kid. Oh yeah, that's what I think about when I think of Sesame Street. Are those hand puppets, the finger puppets, the Fisher Price little people, and so that hand puppet.

If we're talking Sesame Street or I see Sesame Street stuff, I always go to that and think, why isn't there more of him out there? And so, yeah, I did exactly the same thing. And the one that you ended up buying, I was watching and this one. They were very similar. The eyes are both a little scratched up.

I got offers from both of those sellers, but this one was a couple dollars cheaper, and I felt like and maybe a little bit more messed up in the face, but I felt like he went perfectly with the ones that you gave me as far as oh yeah, paint rubs on his face. And I thought it worked for me because they looked like they belonged together. Plus it was cheaper, and I was like, yeah, I'm always forgetting something cheaper. You and I have this. We share the same feeling about this, and I don't mind having toys that look like they'd been played with.

I actually kind of prefer it to a certain extent. If you hadn't given me those, I probably would have been like a little bit more nitpicky, because it was more these look like a set, and to have a really mint Roosevelt Franklin wouldn't kind of work with the set. So that was how my mind worked on that and accepted, like, this is actually the cheaper of the two offers that I got, And when I got him, everything else was perfectly clean. His bodies clean, the hair is in perfect shape. So I was like, actually ended up being a really good deal.

Roosevelt Franklin, what you'd say, you know, the very first letter is a a. What more can you tell me? You know? The baron next letter is a bead. And then the only other thing that I got I saw as I scroll through my explore section on Instagram.

You know, all this kind of stuff that we're into pops up. So McDonald's stuff, pops up, Sesame Street stuff hips up. This is something that I've looked at before while looking at vintage Happy Meal toys, vintage since they're from when we were kids. We are vintage mark oh yeah, and I'm like, oh yeah, I remember seeing those when I would do those searches. So I ended up getting a little Officer, big math dang, that's so great helicopter and a color that I really like for these plastic toys, this kind of Dodger blue.

Yes, and so I believe it was from nineteen eighty two. And there are other vehicles like this. So you can see the little sprew marks on the top of his head where it was joined together, you know, as a flat love thing and a package and then put together. And it's in great shape. There is nothing wrong with the rotor blade on top.

It's not like cracked or getting ready to fall off. That's incredible. Again, put it on my watch list. This is my go to. Now, put something on a watch list.

Wait for that offer to come in and believe. This was a pretty good offer. Might have been thirty percent or twenty five percent off. Yeah, that's awesome. Put it under ten dollars, I believe, and snatched it up.

That's a good deal. Showed up yesterday. I opened the box, got it out, and then I looked at the box and I was like, oh, that is smashed to hell on the act And luckily he was in enough bubble wrap to where nothing happened, because that would have been not cool. When that plastic bends, you get that white crease and it's never the same. Yeah.

Yeah, there's no stress marks. His rudder is a little bit crooked, and that's just from I could easily blow dry that and straighten it out, but I don't even care. It doesn't take away from the figure or whatever whatever you want to call that. It's not really a figure. But anthropomorphic vehicle.

Yeah, an officer big Mac helicopter, because he's rolling over your neighborhood looking for bad guys. This is crazy. I never thought about this. He's already an anthropomorphic burger and now he's also an anthropomorphic burger slash helicopter. That's kind of brilliant, so real quick.

In nineteen eighty two, my dad and my stepmom and my step siblings were on a road trip. I believe it was summer. That was the summer of those particular vehicles in the Happy Meals, and I was that kid pasted to the window looking for the golden arches while we were driving around. I believe it was like Colorado and Arizona. The one that I got from that trip was the airplane.

Was that Hamburgler or Ronald McDonald? I can't remember which character it was. When I looked it up on eBay. A couple of the other pieces came up, and I don't recall. I was gonna look before we recorded, and then I totally forgot because I was doing work stuff.

This is something we can catch up on next month, because now we memory unlocked and I'm going to be diving deep into that now. And I think, like the changeables, they're usually not too much. Yeah, yeah, that's good. I think it was Hamburger who was the airplane, but I'm probably remembering that incorrectly, so I don't want to stick to that. But yeah, very fond memories of just holding that thing in the backseat of that We were driving around in a vw US.

It was hot, the bus probably smelled like McDonald's Hamburgers after stopping air and just holding that airplane the whole time. Nothing wrong with that exactly. These things were out of my view because I was a big mac kid and I happy meals came too late for me. I was already eating big kid stuff or a grown up stuff at McDonald's, so I never really I never had happy Meals as a kid and never really paid attention to the toys or anything until years and years and years later. I had no concept that these were a thing.

Even after I was supposed to be a big Mac kid, I was still trying to get the happy Meals through the entirety of the eighties and deep into the early nineties, I was still hanging onto that and still today. I just sent you an image. I know stuff that's coming. Like still today, whenever I go to McDonald's, I'm usually getting a happy meal just because Yeah. So, yeah, there's Minecraft style Grimace Hamburglar, Ertie, I think, Curtie, and a Big Mac.

Like I'm really crushing on the rectangular Big Mac. Just a box painted as a Big Mac, Like, that's super. Cool to me. Yeah, and they're not the adult collector Happy Meals, so you should have a chance at getting some, And I would make sure because I think there are also Minecraft figures from the film. Yeah, make sure if you go say I want the McDonald exactly.

Hopefully they'll be kind in that regard. It's April Fool's Day. I saw that. I think that they're launching. So yeah, Big Mac come to Furland.

When you buy a McDonald's Airport Happy Meal, you get one of five different planes to put together and play with. Watch Mannald McDonald's taking. Off Airport Happy Meal boxes that participating McDonald's. All right, well, let's get into your main I have no idea what your main feature is for this episode. Talk about being secretive.

You know what we're talking about. I don't know what you're talking about, but let's hear it. Here's the reality. I was really struggling with what I would be talking about today. For some reason, I was I had a couple of things that I was juggling, and I just hadn't made a decision.

Since yesterday was mister Rogers' birthday, I thought, oh my god, I've not talked about mister Rogers' neighborhood, which was something that I was completely obsessed with as a kiddo. There's a variety of reasons why, but I know that by talking about mister rogers neighborhood, I'm fairly certain that everybody listens to this show will know what I'm talking about. So there's no need to educate people. But I am going to talk a little bit about the elements of mister rogers neighborhood that I was deeply fascinated with as a kid and still am fascinated by today. It all boils down to the set design and the artificiality of those very simple sets, the idea that behind a wall was this world of imagination that mister Rogers could show you how to access.

As a kid, I had a friend who so I grew up partially in the foothills, and i'd say higher foothills, right where oak trees meet pine trees, if you know what I'm talking about. This one friend of mine, Matt, and he and his parents lived in a little, tiny barn shaped house up on this hill. Not that this matters, but I believe they had power generated by a generator. I went to school with Matt, but they were living off the road and didn't have any neighbors, and it's really a cool place. His brother and he shared the upstairs, and they had a train that would go from one room to the other, this model train thing.

They'd set the track up so it would lead from one room to the other. And when I visited him. That was the coolest thing in the world. I know why too, and that is because this idea of being transported from one place to another through a secret passageway was just incredible to me, partly because of mister Rogers' neighborhood. That little trolley that he shows you that he's piloting, he has a little switch.

There's no hiding the little switch. He can get the trolley to go into his living room and then back out into the make believe land. The neighborhood of make Believe was just so cool. I know that it's partially mister Rogers, and I think mainly mister Rogers' neighborhood. Ready for the neighborhood of make Believe?

Ready currently, all right. Hi, drawing. I have this ongoing obsession with Diorama making. If you listen to the show, you know that, if you watch my YouTube channel, you know that the opening sequence where it shows the miniature houses in the neighborhood and the little trees and all that stuff is really fucking cool in my opinion, And I knew that it was cool as a kid. I just thought, my god, that's amazing that somebody built that.

Even as a kid, I knew that there was something substantial about building a tiny set and filming that instead of going out into the world and filming a neighborhood out there. Just like it was amazing to see the sets for Sesame Street, which was supposed to be Brownstones in New York City. You're taking immediately into a completely artificial, ultra clean living room where mister Rogers is coming home from work getting changed out of his clothes, out of his work clothes into a cardigan and his cute little keds. You walk into the living room, you see this perfectly organized living space. For me as a kid, that's something that I really coveted was good organization.

It's still something that it's no secret in my household that if something is out of place, I'm going to straighten it out. Boy, I know that feeling. I'm that person. I am that guy too. I figured out a way to be balanced with this, so I'm not an asshole.

But it is certainly something that is part of it gives me visceral joy. Organization and as you can see behind me, like there's a lot of stuff back here, but everything is in its particular place. One thing that I noticed as a kid, and I didn't really start thinking about this until yesterday, but it was sort of revelatory to me. Mister Rogers's birthday pops up into my Instagram feed. I'm like, oh, that's great.

I'll talk about that then, and this is one of those memories unlocked situations. Then I'm looking online at pictures of the sets, because I do that every once in a while, and that's part of what I do. I hadn't looked at the kitchen set in a while. Every once in a while he'll walk over to the kitchen. He'll go over there to feed the fish.

The fish tank is like right in between the living room and the kitchen. There's that painting that switches images, and then there's the fish tank, and then in the kitchen he's got a little shelf where there I've forgotten about this, where there are miniatures of the buildings in Make Believe Land, and so you've got the miniature museum. Go around and you've got the miniature tree where X lives, the owl in Henrietta's house, and Daniel's clock, and they're all miniature on a display shelf in the kitchen. Interesting. That reminded me of loving that as a kid.

I hadn't thought about that in ages. And then I thought about my channel, my YouTube channel, and I'm like, I'm trying to do mister Rogers. I'm trying to live this life now, which is super crazy to me. But now I'm at the stage where I can totally accept this. Hopefully, if the channel sticks around for a while, we'll be able to watch it evolve to a place where I can take people into a space where there's dioramas and anyways.

You put on a cardigan, I'll be wearing cardigans starting. That's gonna be my twenty twenty six plant. Start wearing a cardigan. You just need to start one episode, just unannounced, coming in from outside, change your clothes, get some little blue kids, I swear, and then just start your show and don't mention it. Just ease people into it.

Yeah, I think that's what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna do it my way and see if people catch on. So I realized, like yesterday when I was doing my deep dive, that this guy has basically Mister Rogers and Sesame Street and the Muppet Show had basically created my brain. And you know, Star Wars and Masters of the Universe reinforced that. Before I got deep into Star Wars and Masters of the Universe, I was already watching these shows and just loving the exaltation of artificial objects built by people to look like something else, And that just gives me such amazing feelings.

Every aspect of mister Rogers' home has transferred into my adult life. Our home right now is organized in a particular way where you turn a corner and it's a scene Thank goodness. My wife is a minimalist and I'm a maximalist, so we've got this interesting balance of scene making happening between us, and it's kind of cool. Then we go through the little tunnel enter into make Believe Land. It's like everything that I've ever wanted to do.

Build trees that can house things, build mountains, the little tiny mountain where the family of platypuses platy pie, I don't know where they live, Anna and the family of platy Pie. It's probably platypuses. Probably platypuses. The plural of platypus can be either platypus or platypuses. That little mountain or that mountain face with the little caves where they Live.

Oh my god, just amazing to me. I keep waiting. You know, we just got an announcement that Super seven got the license for Maurice Sendak and Where the Wild Things Are reaction figures. I keep waiting for someone to get the license, whether it be Diamonds Select or Neca or Super seven to get the license from mister Rogers's neighborhood. I'll talk about the characters in a little but I'm going to save that to the second half of this.

If any of these toy companies ever get the license for this stuff, I hope that they treat it like McDonald Land should be treated, create the little components that we can build at home. I've seen a couple of other toy channels talk about this. Some folks out there like me and I think you would get on board with this too, are hoping that the McDonaldland characters at some point will be available to be made by toy companies. The ideal scenario is for the playland structures similar to what we're seeing and Dustin Crops Boys Sugarcoated is making these little replicas something like that. I think that creating the make believe Land, the little Castle, the little tree, the little mound of dirt where the platypuses live, and Henrietta's house and Corny's little factory.

That little factory is so cool, and especially the museum go round, Lady Elaine, not Lady Elaine, Yeah, Lady Elaine Fairchild, that grumpy lady. That little museum go around. God. I just I always wanted to know what it looked like to be on the other side of those sets, to be inside that castle, or to be inside that little museum go around, just to see what that looks like. I think there are documentaries that you can watch that show some of that.

There are, and I'm not being facetious this time, I. Know, but certainly documentaries in many docs on YouTube and stuff, but I don't think anyone's ever gone behind the set and shown I've seen behind the scenes photos, though, so I'm kind of thinking that. Let me interrupt you real quickly just about the McDonald Lamb thing, because I know you know this. The only characters that will be available will be Ronald, Grimace, Birdie, and Hamburglar. You're never going to see Officer Big Mac.

You're never going to see Mayor mccheese come out. That's why they didn't have those cactus, plant, flower tree. Those guys are done for because of that whole hr puffin stuff side Marty Kroft thing. You're saying this, but we've seen them come out in Funko pop form. That is true.

That is true. The catch, what's the catch? Where's the loophole? And catch other companies gets a good point. Actually, you know, I was going to say in other countries, though, they continue to make stuff with those characters, So maybe I'm wrong.

I don't know, but they don't ever seem to promote those They're never in commercials, they're never in any of their promotional material. It's almost as if McDonald's the company cannot use them. That's probably the rule. For some reason or another, Funko got the license to do it. Yeah, maybe that's it.

Maybe it's they are not allowed due to that lawsuit. And yeah, I think they settled out of court, so that may have been part of the settlement anyway. And I have more to say about this, but I'm gonna pause here and hand it over to you because this could go on forever. I'm just gonna say this. This may disappoint you.

You're referencing all these things from the show. I was not a mister Rogers fan. Oh. That doesn't surprise me, because even as a kid, I knew there were some kids that just were like, no, that's not my thing. We really didn't watch it.

It came on every once in a while, and I think I saw mainly at other people's houses. M h And I'm kind of surprised that my parents didn't push it on us more because he was a minister. Yeah yeah, though he was maybe also a little too liberal for their taste. Oh, to be honest with you, I can see that. It didn't get pushed on us, and I never really caught onto it.

And I'm going to be honest here, I thought he was kind of a Mamby Pamby even as a little kid. Mm hmm. I can see that. His personality didn't jive with me. Yeah.

I have the greatest respect for that man these days, and I think he did wonderful things. I mean, there are some problematic things because of his faith. He confronted a lot of that and spoke to a lot of it too during his lifetime, but I think he did an enormous amount of good in his lifetime. It just never gelled with me. So you're saying all that, you know, you're pointing out these things.

I'm like, I don't know what you're talking about. Yea, you know, some of it's familiar, like the lady Elizabeth or whoever. I remember her face, and I remember the little trolley and the opening, and you know what he did and stuff. But I never really sat and watched his show. Every time I'd sit down and watch an episode, First of all, I just loved it.

There was something about that. I never encountered people like mister Rogers in my real life. I mean, my dad's a very sweet man, but no one in my life was like mister Rogers. Yeah, and didn't encounter anyone liked that. It was interesting to me that somebody could be so willing to be sensitive in the public eye.

That was very very cool to me as a kid. I don't know why. So that stuck with me, and so Jim Henson, mister Rogers, people like that became over the years positive influences in my life, and I kind of always battled that a little bit. But also as I've gotten older, been more willing and interested in being that or representing that as much as possible that kind of willingness to be excited about things. And I mean, I've always kind of been that way, but I've always kind of fought that in myself.

I understand that. Yeah, I did kind of know people like that, and it was mainly through church and stuff, and it was always a little bit off putting to me because it didn't seem genuine. That's the thing. I may have placed that on him, where yeah, no one's really that nice unless there's something weird going. On or exactly, so, I don't know.

As part of the fascination I think I have with him is that in a world where most of the time people are after something in a sketchy way, and they're behaving that way in a sketchy way, you know, I keep waiting for something to come out about him. There's a couple of weird things, but there's no p Diddy situation with mister Rogers. Jim Henson, he was kind of a ladies man, if you know what I mean, And there's that side of Jim Henson, but there's nothing like that for mister Rogers that we know of. And that's fascinating to me. And I wouldn't say that it's because of religion, because we've seen religious people make horrible mistakes, and I just think maybe it was just the way he was and that makes it very special and interesting to me.

But aside from the namby Pamby, the world building of mister Rogers neighborhood in the Land of Make Believe just blew my mind as a kid, blew my mind. But I want all the gold, gold, gold, good, good. Well, all I can say is anybody can draw a big drawing, but not everybody can make one. That moves, that moves too too. See you sometime else.

Hello, this is Mark Bigley, the host of Wake Up Heavy, and I'd like to invite you to listen to my show over on Weirdingwaymedia dot com. Wake Up Heavy is a show about my horror movie obsessions from childhood, as well as new to me discoveries from the past and present. My guests have included fellow weirding Way Media hosts Mike White from the Projection Booth podcast, Chris Tashu from the Culture Cast, Heather Drained from Noise Chunkies, as well as Sam Degan, Sam Panico, and Simon FitzJohn. Every once in a while, my daughter Cleo even joins me, Hey, that's me find Wake Up Heavy and my other show Cambridge and with Shawn on Weirdinwaymedia dot com or wherever you listen to podcasts and don't. Forget anything can happen when you wake Up Heavy.

Migo presents the Planet of the Apes action figures. Doctor Osias are right scientists? Oh nearly, it's the archaeologists. There are the woman's scientists. I'd ad a lot all Planet of the Age action figures sold separately by'm Migo.

What's on your list? Mark? Well, I am getting back to what I promised a couple of episodes ago, which we bypassed last time, and something that I have mentioned numerous times over these last two years in passing saying that I'd get to it. So I'm going to be talking about Mego finally, particular series from them. They had multiple series that were quite popular and did very well for them, and this is one of them.

Since this is my first time talking about them, I do a little brief history of the company, just minor, minor stuff, and a little bit about this franchise that they made figures for and my personal experience with it. So Migo like a lot of companies, started as a distributor. So in nineteen fifty four they started and they were distributing toys from Japan and China and other countries as cheap rack toys here in the States. So that's how they got their start. And then in the sixties they started making their own toys that were basically knockoffs of more popular toys such as Barbie and Gi Joe, and they made a Gi Joe esque figure called Fighting Yank.

Very quickly got sued by Hasbro because they were actually using the Gi Joe body or copying it. And I think this is one of those things that most toy people have heard about in some way or another. The original Gi Joe figures had a mark that would show that they were being reproduced illegally, and that was that the thumb on one of the hands, the thumbnail was on the opposite side. It was on the wrong side, so it was on the bottom, and the Fighting Yank had that, so they knew that they were using their figure, and so that disappeared very quickly. Migo took that and said, okay, well we'll make something that's completely our own.

They shrunk the figure down to eight inches this one ninth scale, which is mainly an oddity today but was very popular during especially during the seventies, and they created the figure called Action Jackson. He was sort of like the prototype big Gym figure, which I've talked about on the show, where he's just this everyday adventure guy that you could buy outfits for and have him be whatever. Be a spy, be a military guy, be a sports hero. Hey, real quick, is the Carl Weathers movie Action Jackson? No, no, no, no, nothing to do with it.

That was I think their first big seller. And they had their Barbie knockoff. I believe they did sort of the same thing where they shrunk her down and had a lot of playability and accessories for that girl quote unquote toy. So that was them. Producing their own things and those were very popular and did well.

And then of course the World's Greatest Superheroes line comes out in nineteen seventy two, massive success for them. It's the World's Greatest Superhero collection featuring Batman and the other half of the dynamic duo, Robinho that green and superhero. He's fully posable. Welcome the winged black superhero, says I am and iron Man, the world's greatest superheroes. Each superhero action figure as old separately from.

Migo, went for roughly ten years in some way or another, and then of course they collapsed and went bankrupt. But one of their other big successes happened in nineteen seventy four. And this goes back to one of the topics that you discussed early on in the show, and that is with Planet of the Apes. Oh yeah, twenty a century Fox Wants You to Go Eight. Now the triumphant return of a revolution in the art of science fiction filmmaking, the classic Saga of the Apes.

Twenty a century Fox Wants. You to Go Eight. In seventy four, that franchise, that series of films had come to an end. Actually the year prior was what was the last film? That I write it down, because Battle for the Planet of the Apes I can't remember.

I should have written it down. But that series ended in seventy three. Shortly thereafter they start showing the first two films on TV. Then in nineteen seventy four, the TV show comes out, which I believe only lasted a season, if I'm not mistaken. Around that same time they started showing all of the films in theaters as a marathon, so you could go watch all five Planet of the Apes.

Can you imagine that like close to eight or nine hours? Probably probably eight hours. I think that's going to be a future episode for us. What's that watching all the movies and talking about them in real time while they do the nine hours? Oh yeah, sure.

So the apocryphal story. And I have to say this, I think anytime I'm relaying a story that's coming from Marty Abrams, the current and then CEO of the company, just because I don't know, I'm a little That guy's a little sketchy to me. Yeah, although there's nothing sketchy about this story in particular. But the story is that he took his son to one of these marathons and noticed that the audience was filled with fathers and sons. They went to twentieth Century Fox to get the license.

A company called Ahi was already bidding on it. Migo outbid them and got the license to make these eight inch figures, much like the superhero figures that they were already making. Now, Ahi was not deterred by this. They did get the license for a number of toys. These are the toys like the parachute.

Oh yeah, Planet of the Apes figures or Planet of the Apes figures on little vehicles, cheap rack toys. AHI was known for cheap rack toys, so they did get licensing for it, and they also knocked off the eight inch Planet of the Apes figures. These I think they were called Action Ape Man. They are very similar to the Planet of the Apes figures from Migo. You know, tit for tat, I guess h I did this for a lot.

They had Universal Monster figures and all kinds of other Migo esque eight inch cloth figures. So the first wave of the Mego figures comes out in seventy four and it included Cornelius Zerra, Doctor Zais, a Soldier ape and a generic astronaut because they never did get the license to create a Charlton Heston figure. So it's just a dude in a blue yea you know astronaut suit. Well it's an astronauts suit, but it's just you know, like a zip basu. Yeah, things that doesn't what doesn't.

Look yeah, it doesn't look like a there's a I can't you know the things that Devo wears like that. Yeah, it's blue and a. Little helmet was, along with the world's greatest superheroes, a massive, massive success for Mego. They quickly added playsets, which were basically retoolings of a lot of Action Jackson playsets. We know companies did this stuff.

Mattel did it with Big Jim borrowed from Barbie and all that, and they did it with Masters of the Universe, borrowing from Big Gym, et cetera, et cetera. So Migo took a treehouse playset that Action Jackson had and turned it into a Planet of the Ape, sayings. They had horses for the figures, they had little jail cells, you know, like the Charlton Heston gets tottered around, all kinds of stuff for them. It went for a number of years. I believe.

The next wave was centered around the TV show, So you got the figures from that, the human figures from that, and then instead of Cornelius, it was Galen on that show, and there was a different gymneral. There's general Ursus in General Erco, and that gets all very confusing and convoluted. I won't get into all that today, but the things that I encountered as a kid just stuck with me. Forever. Yeah, So I don't remember when I first saw the movies.

I know that seeing the toys, I was aware of the characters from the films. I don't know if I saw them that young, if they started playing them in seventy three, seventy four, I'm little, I'm four or five. I don't know that I watched them that young, but obviously I saw images of them. Yes, was always struck, and we talked about this on that episode. Always struck by the I don't want to say masks because they're not masks, but the faces of the ape characters just fascinated me from the films.

Absolutely, there's a characterization of apes happening in that makeup that strikes a particular chord, like we've talked about before, or the image of the ape in the comic book advertisements. For me, this is before I saw the movies, before I saw the toys. Something about it just clicked, and it's just amazing. Doesn't look like an ape costume by don Post. It doesn't look like an ape from real life.

It's unlike anything that I had ever seen. And you were probably stricken by that too. It's the human eyes behind that latex and just so cool something about it. It's perfectly accurate yet completely inaccurate, and the combination is fascinating. Yeah, and really put the whammy on me as a kid.

Part of this involves a particular location, because my only real distinct memory of seeing these figures was in a particular store. I don't know if it happened just this one time and it struck me so hard that it lived there forever, or if it was multiple times. I don't know. I don't know the particulars of this fascination. But there was a shopping center on the corner, the northeast corner of Chestnut and Olive, which we lived pretty close to when I was a kid, and it had a number of different kinds of stores.

There was a little diner esque restaurant in there called the Red Freezer Restaurant, and I don't recall ever eating there with my family, but I remember walking by it all the time, and I want to say it had like a red and white themed interior that always struck me. There was a bakery in there called the Swiss Chalet Bakery, a lady's clothing store, a country Boy market you remember country Boy, Oh yeah, which I believe we shopped that occasionally. It wasn't one of the regulars that my mom went to. We did go in there every so often. I remember looking at comic books in there.

Where we would usually go, or what we would go to when we went there was Along's Drugs, and much like today in CBS and Walgreens and those chain pharmacy catch all stores, they always had a little toy section, absolutely generally smaller item and cheap rack toys like cheap rack toys were the thing in drug stores, but they also had Mego figures. And I remember seeing Doctor Zais and Cornelius figures in the Long's Drugs in the Cno shopping center and being just absolutely fascinated, enamored and obsessed with the face sculps of the toys. I don't know, this is one of those the ones that got away stories. I never had these as a kid, and I don't know why. And this will come up repeatedly for Mego, but for the other ones that I'll talk about at some point, I know why because they were never available in this area.

I saw these. I probably held those carded figures in my hand and thought, I absolutely need this thing, and I have no idea why I never had. At least one of them. They were a little more expensive than even the Superhero figures. I think they were like a dollar more because of the licensing, So a Mego eight inch Spider Man might be one ninety nine and these were like two ninety nine, So I don't know if it was the price.

I don't know if it was the fact that they were ape men. And I've kind of hinted at this in the past on episodes. Evolution, you know, was sort of a bugaboo or my household, So I don't know if it was that. I don't know if it was I don't know what it was. I feel like I would have asked for these.

I was sort of a sheepish kid too, so maybe I didn't for any of those reasons, or maybe my mom said no for any of those reasons, or maybe I put these on my birthday list, maybe I put them on the Christmas list and they were never spotted again, or my parents didn't have any idea what the hell I was talking about. I feel like I was so struck by them that I would have sort of made it my goal to get them, Like with Stretch Armstrong. They knew I wanted a Stretch Armstrong really badly, so I wasn't shy about that. But for some reason I never had one, even though I could have gone home with one that day. Maybe it was a money thing and just don't have enough right now, and then they were gone the next time we went.

I don't know if I ever saw them again at that long drugs. I don't recall seeing them at Toys r Us in the mall or at Arthur's Toys have no recollection of that. It's possible I did, and maybe still had those pangs of wanting, but nope, never had any of the Planet of the Apes figures. I would see them in the ads in the comic books all the time. That's the only place where I ever saw them were in ads and had the same impulse like I need these figures.

Those face sculps are so amazing. That monkey face on a human body just drives me crazy. It's red. That was one of the areas that we would shop at all the time. I always mentioned Sunnyside and that big corner of Clovis and Tillarry or Kings Canyon, Chestnut and all have had a lot of stuff in it, that little shopping center, and then directly west of that, across Chestnut there was a Winchel's Donut there was a Me and EDGs, and there was the health food store that we went to all the time where I would get Cara then their healthy fig Newtons and all that kind of stuff.

It was sort of a hub. There was a very famous restaurant there called The Outpost that oh yeah in our area just absolutely loved. I don't ever recall eating there, but so tons of stuff. That little corner and that shopping center still exists. The freeway kind of cuts right by it now, the one eighty yep, but it's still there.

I think it's got a dollar tree or something in the Longs drugs spot, and the Winchells is probably another donut place or maybe torn down. And I believe that Me and Eds is still there. I'd drive through that area quite often, and it's amazing how much of it has not changed since the early eighties when I would my family would drive through there more frequently. Once my parents moved away over to the Bullard area and stuff, I'd never really and it was getting so run down. Yeah, and this was way before the one eighty was even put in.

But going to the fair, I think we would drive down Chestnut to get to the fair and I pass by that spot and go, oh yeah. And I think there was a school I subbed at that was near there. Anyway, I'd never really make it down there anymore. I'm kind of fascinated by my memory of it, being solely seen them in long Drugs and of course in comic book ads. But I mean personally holding in my hand or looking at just that one time.

But it was so strong that it just stuck with me literally forever. One of those things that when eBay rolled around. You bet that was one of the first things I looked for when. I joined, absolutely and it's still something Planet of the Apes, just Planet of the Apes toys in general or merchandise too. Every two to three months I type it into eBay just to see what's out there.

In fact, I just typed it into Amazon about two months now, about a month ago, just to see if any of the reaction figures were on Amazon, and sure enough, I found one of the Gorilla Soldier reaction figures on there for about twenty bucks, and I put it on my wish list something to think about. It's what they're priced at now, so it's kind of like, ey might as well. Might as well, I've got to get one two of those. I'd be happy with just a Gorilla soldier for that. Yeah, I saw them too, actually, because I did the same thing.

I think I was looking at the Migo stuff in particular, but they did pop up. Yeah, that's awesome. All right, Well that's my first half, so we'll get back to your first half after this brief message. It's the Planet of the Age three House gift set with action figures us some relatus out attended to rates cut for the Astronaut. Place them in the Age net or on the Apes operating table or on the Age Tison.

The Astronauts. One of the Age three House gift set includes everything you see here. Three House of action figures also available separately from. Mego Corny coin Flake, especially wide Lady Emberlyn. You're looking mighty fit.

Oh, I hope so, Corny, Handy Man Negary and I have to build a school in three day. You want to be able to hear, Well, we. Don't know where the best place would be. Well, there's lunch to learn in the factory I could teach the people how to make rock and chairs that would always come in handy. That's true, all right, So what's next in your mister Rogers neighborhood?

That's right, Anza, we're still in that territory. Now's the chance to talk about how interesting these puppets were to me as a kid. There was no facial articulation at all on these puppets except for the owl. The owl's beak, if I remember correctly, could open and close for talking. Oh no, sorry, I'm totally messing up here, because as I'm talking, I'm remembering the platypuses.

Their beaks opened and closed. The owl's beak open and closed. And there was a cow character what was her name, I can't remember her name. Her mouth opened and close too. She kind of looked more like a hippopotamus.

I remember that cow. Actually, yes, the main character. Really. The two main puppet characters were King Friday and Daniel Tiger. They were both voiced by mister Rogers doing silly voices.

When I finally discovered that, I couldn't get it out of my mind the image of him trying to do those voices. Ex The owl, King Friday, Daniel Tiger and Lady Elaine Fairchild were my favorites from those puppets. And wasn't the King just a hand puppet? The King, Daniel Tiger and Lady Elaine Fairchild were just hand puppets. Yeah, the thumb and pinky in the arms.

Like those things you would get at McDonald's, so zach exactly. And then like a paper mache head is what I think that they were made out of. That's what they love now. Daniel Tiger had fur all over the head. But Lady Elaine Fairchild and King Friday, who's a little props to mister Rogers, to Fred Rogers for this a little sly move on his part.

King Friday's full name is King Friday the thirteen, which I think is pretty cool. But Lady Elaine Fairchild really stands out in my memory as being such an interesting and relatable character. She was always a little grumpy, She had attitude, she was very particular in what she thought was right or wrong, and she also had kind of a WC. Fields nos going on. So was she a drinker?

Like what was their deal? Short messy hair? I mean, what an interesting female character for the seventies sixties seventies and eighties. I mean it started in sixty eight. I thought, this woman is strong, she's strained, she's eccentric, she's unique, she doesn't look like other women.

She was one of my favorites. She was kind of like the Oscar the grouch of Mister Rogers neighborhood. You've got to have a grouch. You gotta have a grouch. Life without a grouch is a life I'm not interested in.

I need a grouch. You got one. I got a couple of them. I think that's why we got along so well, Mark, right from the beginning, is that I saw distinct aspects in your personality that I definitely needed in my life. The best possible version of that.

Anyways, the Platypus family. These puppets looked handmade. I made puppets that were inspired by them as a young guy. I liked that they were basic. Like you said, they're just hand puppets with the thumb and pinky in the arms.

And if there was articulation is just mouth movement. So simple in design and so perfect and a little bit creepy. She was definitely creepy. Lady Elaine Fairchild was creepy. The Platypus family were creepy.

I don't remember them at all. They looked like the best way to describe them is slightly mangy. Oh great duck build creatures. Not the prettiest, although there was a little baby platypus that was super cute. Daniel Tiger looked like he was somebody's pet, stuffy tiger that had been played with for twenty years prior to being used as a puppet.

Just so cool. And now he's got his own show. He's got his own computer animated, right or something like that. Now. I don't know if it's computer animated, but it's animated.

Yeah, very simple. It's cool that that is still going on. That makes me happy. And we've already talked about it a little bit. But this guy, mister Rogers, he actually started off as a producer and puppeteer and organist for this show called The Children's Corner that started in nineteen fifty four, and he didn't really start to be on camera until what he did was he was studying seminary like during his lunch breaks.

He and his wife moved to Canada for a bit. He participated in some performances up there where he became more of a presence, and then he brought it back to Pittsburgh, the same TV station that was doing the Children's Corner, and in nineteen sixty six started filming episodes for mister Rogers neighborhood. This is a guy that does not seem like he has any interest in being on camera or being famous. He does not act like an actor the person he is in front of the camera as the person he is behind the camera. There's a really interesting movie where Tom Hanks plays him.

I watched it not too long ago, and it's essentially about this troubled guy. He's a journalist who's struggling with alcohol abuse and difficulties in his personal life. He'd befriends mister Rogers kind of not really wanting to. The way mister Rogers is portrayed in that film is this like entity that's the exact same person on TV. And as you mentioned, this is a guy with background being a minister and living in that territory, but also willing to accept people who are homosexual and ex criminals and accepting of like people who were just accepting of the world for what it is.

I mean, that is what Jesus did exactly. It's like that's you know, how he utilized religion as it should be is something that I'm afraid will forget. Oh it's been forgotten. He still exists, so I feel like there's I mean, he's gone, but his show still exists, his way of being still exists, and it gives me. You know, this is me being me, but his existence gives me hope that there are people out there still practicing religion in a way that it should be, rather than this edited or altered version that greedy people utilize.

They're out there, but it's few and far between, I'll tell you that. And I'm not a religious person. I think the best word for me is agnostic. I'm unsure of this stuff. One thing I do know is that, having spent a lot of time looking critically at religion, it's our fault, the human beings who adopt these belief systems.

Our fault for changing the system of belief that had been established in the written texts. We read something, we interpreted our way, then we dislike others because of it. We use that as a tool to be judgmental. I used to quote a couple episodes ago from Angel Heart that perfectly summarizes this, and I'm going to insert it right here. They say, that's just enough religion in the world to make men hate one another, but not enough to make them love.

Oh is that what they say? Let's go on before we get too heavy into that stuff. So anyways, this is a fascinating thing. I still to this day enjoy watching Mister Rogers neighborhood episodes. I will seek them out on YouTube or watch clips.

I get such joy out of it. It's an acquired taste for sure, in a world where everything is polished. And what's that amazing kids show that is of our children's generation, the guy with the big glasses who's the host? And then there's Yo Gabba Gabba. There's so much heart in Yo Gabba Gabba, and yet it's so well done that it's so clean and well made, and the budget is certainly evident when you're watching Yo Gabba Gabba, and when you're watching Mister Rogers, it's like, even though the sets are clean and well made, it's very clear that they're made by hand.

It's very clear that they were working on a shoe string budget, and it's very clear that it was made with heart and I'm a big fan of Yo Gabba Gabba. By the way, it's an awesome show. I loved watching it with Cleo. My mother's bow was. On it all the time, so I know, I know it's amazing.

That's a great joke. But you know, that's a little get a little worried that shows like Mister Rogers in Sesame Street and Yo Gabba Gabba, what do they become for future generations? What do they ev all into for future generations? The Daniel Tiger Show. I've tried to watch a couple of clips of that, and it's there's something missing.

I'll tell you what it becomes. It becomes Teletubbies, That's what it becomes. Well, this is going to be a heated conversation, and because I feel like Tellatubbies was kind of amazing too, let's not get started. Keep your focus on oh man, oh well, future episode then go ahead. That's all the stuff that I had for Mister Rogers Neighborhood, all right, God love it though, toy makers get on it.

Yeah, that'd be pretty interesting. I wonder if that's a thing though. If it's like that's not whoever's got the rights to all of his stuff. It's just like not interested. Some people aren't interested in doing stuff like that.

Yeah, I see that, Yeah for sure, not. For any particular reason, just some people don't see the necessity and making money off of what they did. Hey, and yeah, you gotta respect it because that's coming from the owners of the licensing. That's right. Absolutely.

Do you have any suggestions as to the best place to have the. School, Well, maybe some other place than right around here. Children often like to go off to school. It makes them much more like they're they're going off to work like their parents do. You're a wise person, doctor.

Bill, Well, I just try my best to understand children. Elsie, Jean and I are so pleased with the way that Anna is growing. So yeah, my story takes a pause until I'm an adult. Like I said, the ones that got away always stick in my craw and stick in my brain. Yeah, And I would.

Think about Migo Planet of the Apes figures all the time as a teen, as a twenty something, thirty and forty something, So that's when well thirty something, when eBay rolls around, what am I going to look for? Looked for a lot of Migo stuff, and just never I'd look and not really know what I'm looking at, you know, are these things complete and stuff like that, And probably could have gotten stuff for way cheap back then. God, if i'd just been a little less crazed about it or like, you know, oh, I got to have something perfect or whatever. I don't know what I was thinking, but I know I looked for them, but it wasn't until gosh, and I always think that I'm living in the apartment on Andrew's with Carlita, but none of this happens until we are in this house.

So in twenty ten, after months of being on the site and looking at all the stuff and the forums and the messages and the pictures and everything, I joined the Mego Museum forums and started getting my information there, which was very helpful. I bought figures from people on that site. There's a you know, say and trade section on there. Started learning more and really looking for stuff on eBay, and that's when I found out about the reproductions, the retro versions of these made by a company called EMCEE or m C. I knew there was well, there's an obvious connection, but I knew that that name meant something, and so I actually last night went on mego museum forums I haven't posted there in ages, and asked what does EMCEE stand for?

I know, I used to know it, and I know it's an acronym. Luckily, this morning I had a reply, and it's mc mego corp. Oh that's awesome, felled out phonetically emcee. That was doc mego, a guy named Paul Clark, who I think basically started years ago making reproduction parts for Migo figures. So if you found a Batman that didn't have its cape or its gloves or its belt or any of the accessories that fall off the sticker always comes off, you could buy them from him.

He was making reproductions, you know, using I think, original pieces and making molds of them and getting them factory made. And I utilized his site a lot, completed some robins and some Batman's and other things. He actually got into the production side of this stuff, I believe, first with Star Trek figures, which that I ended up getting as well. He produced some Planet of the Apes figures. I'm not sure how many, but I was really only interested in Cornelius and Doctor Zaiss.

Doctor says right around this time of year, and I know this because of my Facebook memories and my pictures. Fifteen years ago, in Mark of two thousand and ten, I bought Doctor Zais the EMCEE reproduction retro style figure, which is basically the same thing. Yep, the face molds. I think what they did, and I could be wrong, so I don't take this literally, but I believe they just used figures. They may have three D scanned it, but I feel like they just made molds of original heads and then had them resculpted and remakee because there's a little loss in detail if you compare them to an original.

Based on the timeline, I would be more likely to believe that they'd made molds from them, because I remember when three D scanning really started becoming available to people that could afford It wasn't really until the last ten years. Really, I'm hoping that that's the case, because I love the idea of somebody making molds of these and then reproducing in that way. Yeah, it's either that or I doubt that this is the case that they found the original oh yeah, molds, which is a possibility, but I don't think that's the case because there is, like I say, some detail loss on these. He was at the time working with Marty Abrams on these things. Okay, his face was always on the back of the cards, and he works for Mego now he is a big part of Migo, so there's obviously been a connection between he and Marty Abrams for a while.

But anyway, so I bought doctors Ais, I believe first because that was the face that really got me. And then I got Cornelius. I couldn't remember if I had ever gotten an original Cornelius, but it was just those two for a while, and then I got it in my head at some point being on the Mego museum site and seeing people make custom figures, and along with Doc Migo, there's a company called Classic TV Toys and Figures Toy Company I believe is it, And at some point in the nineties they were also making reproduction Walton's and Happy Days. I would actually see in Tower records, so that was Classic TV toys and I love Lucy and stuff like that. They were producing eight inch figures like.

That, Oh yeah, I remember those. Yeah. A sister side of theirs would sell reproduction parts and pieces for these toys as well. So I decided to buy a beater Cornelius and Doctor Zais off of eBay didn't care about I don't even know if they had their outfits. I was only looking for decent heads, and I had bodies and stuff that I swap them out on whatever.

It didn't matter. So what I did was for whatever reason, I had it in my head that I wanted to make taxi driver figures. Oh, with Cornelius and Doctor Zais. I bought heads. They may have had bodies.

I think it just bought heads and then cheap o bodies from Figure's toy company, and they have all these eight inch clothing items you can buy. So I made a Travis bickle Zer. Cornelius, you got some bad ideas in my head. I just did nice and got like a bomber jacket, you know, basically him when he's got the mohawk, but it's Cornelius's head on there, so jeans, boots, a bomber jacket, even like a yellow shirt like he wears in the movie pretty close. And then Doctor Zais ended up being the Senator Palantine character, so he's just in a suit.

Nice. They're in my box stuff somewhere waiting to get displayed. Other than that, I don't have any of the original figure still to this day. I have a Cornelius that you yeah, you have a Cornelius that I got you, and I you know, they didn't come with stuff. The Soldier Ape came with all kinds of accessories, and I would look at those on eBay as well and just kind of be like, oh, well, they don't have any of their stuff, and I really should have gotten one of those, just in their outfit, because the outfits are really cool for cheap.

Never did, and I never got a General Ursus or Erco from back then either. But then, of course, back in what two thousand and it's thirteen now, that Migo came back. Oh gosh, that makes sense. As a company started reproducing stuff again and eventually got to Planet of the Apes. I thought about getting Cornelius and Zayas again but just decided not to.

I had the ones from EMCE or our EMC are perfectly fine reproductions. Well, I will say the head sculpts for the newer Migo Planet of the Apes figures are not as good as the vintage ones, and I probably I haven't been able to compare them to the EMC ones, but i'd be willing to say that maybe the MC ones are better too. They're not great, and I don't know if by that time, because I haven't opened the ones that I have, which you'll get to in a second here. If there were already making the hard plastic heads as opposed to vinyl heads, seems like the hard plastic heads should have more detailed right. Yeah, I can't compare them either, because all of mine are basically boxed up.

But I did at one point through Amazon, I got not Cornelius, but Caesar, who is basically Cornelius Galen. Caesar, and Cornelius were all played by Roddy McDowell, so they're all the same face. So I got the Caesar I made. It looks fine to me. I've kept him in his box, but again I haven't actually held up the e MCEE Cornelius that I have to compare it.

The outfit is a little bit different. I think that's why I got him instead of Cornelius. I believe he comes with a rifle. And then I did get the general Ursus that they released, because it was very different from the Ursus Erco that they had originally produced. The outfit's completely different because one of them didn't have a helmet, but one of them did.

And this one has a helmet, but it's an all black outfit, and I thought he was kind of cool as a sort of outlier figure that's not directly reproduced from the originals but harkens back to it. Those two I have of the modern Ego company, and they're cool. I still have them in their boxes. I'm sure at some point I'll finally get rid of those. Yeah, So I have I guess six total Planet of the Apes Migo style figures these days, and that satisfies my obsession.

Just fine, that's good. I feel like there's going to be for me at least another era of Planet of the Apes collecting down the road at some point, but I think I would be mainly focusing on the Reaction line. Trying to get that playset would be is definitely something on my agenda. It's just something magical about those faces and about the clothing. The clothing of the Mego figures.

There's something magical about that. It's one of those like the Star Trek line, where there's huge inaccuracies, particularly in that line with the aliens, Like none of the Aliens looked like what was on the show too great liberties, and the clothes on these guys don't make a whole heck of a lot of sense. I mean, Cornelius is fine, the green jumper type suit, you know, they're just The prototypes are interesting because they were a little bit more detailed and you get some more hieroglyphics they had on their clothes, those kind of leather things in the front and their boots, but they simplified a lot of it. The prototypes used. There were some popular models of the Planet of the X figures that were the right scale, so they took the heads off those popped them on some bodies made close out of denim and for the prototypes, and there are actually pictures that ended up in ads, promotional ads with those prototype figures before the actual ones were made, kind of like the Star Wars stuff, using the adventure people for their very early ads.

I always love stuff like that. It's all about those head sculpts, man, they just put the wammie on the hardcore. Yeah, I get it. Even when I think about it now, Even though I can go look at figures, those memories are so much more interesting to me to think about how struck I was by their visages. The strangeness of the Planet of the Apes characters in the movies, and also an action figure form never enters it.

It's interesting. I was just thinking about this that they never entered the territory of uncanny Valley. They remain accepted. The only time I've ever seen something that creeped me out is when I saw Edward g. Robinson's makeup for his original version of Doctor Zais.

Yeah, that's fucked up. Don't ever look that up. I will give you nightmares. There's an artificiality to the epe faces from these movies and in action figure form that never feels uncanny valued. I accept it.

It's awesome. Like I said, they're perfectly imperfect. Yes, they got what they needed out of that. I'm sure. Using that Edward g Robinson thing as an example that they went through multiple variations and tested them, took test shots and like they do with makeup and hair in movies, on regular human characters, until they got something that wasn't hideous and or uncanny.

Yeah, that works. That gives the feel of what we're going for, even though it might not be very accurate. I still feel like they are accurate enough. Obviously, not the orangutan faces in the grip, but the chip I mean chip faces look like that. Yeah, exactly, so very gritty.

Well, we'll take another quick break and then we'll come back with our finishing topics. Planet of the Ape Fortress with sun reflector figures sold separately by me Go. Planet of the Ape Forbiddle's own drave figures sold separately by me Go. All right, so, Ronnie, you said you had a local locale this time. Let's hear about it.

Well, this one is less nostalgic and more exciting. I'll be the judge of that. Exciting comes with a caveat. I guess, like, where does the excitement come from? There's a reason why.

So this local locale has somehow become a place where when we hang out with extended family for birthday, or most of the time it's just birthday, we go to this place for breakfast. The most recent time we had met up for breakfast here was for I believe it was September or October. It is either my birthday or our daughter Fiate's birthday. When I was sitting in there that last time, I had made a note to myself I have since forgotten and then reremembered recently. This is a place that does all the things I'm talking about.

Fresno Breakfast House on Bullard and what is it Bullard in Marx. It's got like a fountain out front. You can sit out there if you want and listen to water. And it's in one of these most like one of the most boring and mundane shopping centers that Fresno has to offer. Strip Mall.

That's a strip mall. Strip mall based on really half asked Spanish mission style architecture and it's nestled into the corner of that place. This place has been around for a while. I used to go there for family events, even before I moved to New York. We're eating there and I'm looking around, and it's usually early in the morning when we meet up early for a family gathering, which is probably around nine, and there's always some old pals hanging out talking.

Well I'll get to that in a moment. But inside there's a big mural of like a central valley scene. There's a lot of light pinks and light greens, and there's a tree on the inside that's alive with lights on it, and there's a whole row of plants and stuff around the perimeter that are all real, none of them are fake. Kind of amazing actually, and sometimes there's a guy in there playing the piano. It's kind of an amazing location.

And Mark, I thought that when you and I are retired and we're still doing this podcast, which we will be, we we need to figure out a way to host some episodes over breakfast while we're sitting in this place. Because you and I used to go to the Chicken Pie Shop. We've talked about this. The Chicken Pie Shop had a kind of character. I've not been able to find a breakfast place with a kind of character like this until I opened my eyes this last time realized that the Fresene Breakfast House is is special.

Have you been there before? I have been there, and I've been to the one. I don't think is there anymore on Cedar and Ashland? Uh huh? Actually been to that one more?

I don't think I've been to that one. I don't think it's around anymore. But it was on the north side of Ashland, just west of Cedar and a strip mall. But I remember Carly and I going there a good handful of times, and we did go to the one on Borden West and I didn't like it as much as the other one. I don't have any perspective on the other one on Cedar in Ashland.

It's funny because I had eaten there so many times but had never really noticed the special qualities of this place until the most recent time when there weren't as many people. Maybe that was part of it, like there weren't as many people eating that day, and then I sort of marked it in my brain as something to come back to have since thought like, that's a Cambridge and Wash wishon location for us for the future, whether we're recording or not. I think that would be the place to go for the unique breakfast experience. It's something that Mark and I have not had in our lives for a while, at least since the Chicken Pie Shop's been gone. Yeah.

I'm trying to think right now of some good breakfast places that we've gone to. There was one downtown on which I don't think is there anymore, that we went to once and really enjoyed. They had some great biscuits and gravy mm hmmm. Cleo is a fan of biscuits and gravy and almost always gets it. Where we go get breakfast as am I, which I love.

You know the place that we went to on our downtown Clovis mm hmmm, which I've now completely forgotten the name of Sandy's Country Junction. Yeah. Now that's a fun little diner esque place. Yeah. I don't know.

A breakfast place needs to mark check two boxes from me. Like Sandy's is cool. It's got the diner feeling, but there's got to be a little it's got to have the diner feeling with a little bit of something else. It's got to be an atmosphere there that you can't find anywhere else. Like that's for me.

Like what elevates a breakfast place is like this uniqueness. This place has it? Okay, Yeah, well I really hate that shopping center. I never go there unless I absolutely have to. Just got to go in with blinders.

I go across the street all the time to the beer ock shop. Oh, I hate across the streets so things. Don't don't even go there. It's already on my list. Don't it's so good.

Don't, don't don't do it. Don't steal my shit. Son, steal my good ideas. I'm gonna come over there to Fowler, Fowler, wherever the hell you live and knock in the job. It's called sharing, Mark, it's called sharing.

No, no, don't take my stuff. Well that's my special little thing there. I had to bring that up. How about you? Well, I himmed in hodd last episode about what I was going to do, and I had a childhood treat I could have done.

I had my weird personal lower story that I went with. I had another personal lower story I could have gone with, and I have to admit I sort of got hyperbolic on that like nothing ever happened to me as a kid, and quickly realized, well, I've already talked about almost losing the tip of my pink on an episode when we compared Richard Keel's stories. And I also got my head cracked open when I was a kid too, which is also on my list of stories to tell. But I guess those things didn't garner the attention I was craving, so I don't count them. But anyway, so this childhood treat was relevant because I had actually received some of these in the care package that I got for my coworkers.

Yes, from a local place, but I'm not talking about this local place right now. But this goes way back to when my mom and sister and I would go shop in Fashion Fair, which was pretty regular during the late seventies to mid eighties. I would go with them. I'd always have to sit in the women's clothing stores while my sister tried on clothes for what felt like an hour, listen to the music being pullked in. Go to Carl's Junior.

Sometimes we'd go to the restaurant in Winstock. Sometimes. Side note, you and I both are still living that life going. No, I don't. I don't know.

I don't do that. I don't go with them. I do not go with them when they're shopping. Like Nope, I don't do it because I hated it as a kid. Oh man, I totally do.

I kind of love it now. I sit there and stare at the wall or shop eBay. There were places that we would hit every time, not at every time, but something you know, Orange Julius was in there. Baskin Robbins was always a nice treat to get right in the middle of the mall where the men's Macy's is now there's like a Starbucks kiosk, and there that kind of big center section in one of the corner spaces. I think it's a jewelry store.

Now, there was a Morose nuthouse, yeah, and we'd always go there. This is one of those early examples of the bulk buying, you know, And there's stuff like this all over the place now where there's just candy, individual candy pieces and a plexiglass container that you get how much you want and go buy it. And there are a number of things like Swedish fish that I would always get when I would go there. Tiger butter is a tiger butter or tiger milk. There's some candy confection that's tiger something.

I can't remember even what it tasted like, but we would get that. It was like striped, like a tiger tiger stripes. But the one thing that I absolutely loved was butter toffee peanuts. So if it wasn't Swedish fish, it was those, or maybe possibly both sometimes if I got lucky and I love butter toffee peanuts as a kid, probably you know, after that place left and them all changed and I grew up, I don't think I had them for years, but I've always loved me. You encounter them sometimes in trail mixes or other kind of mixes and stuff, but this is one of those things that as an adult, I would go, why don't I have that?

I can buy whatever I want right. One of the first places I encountered them was actually at Whole Foods. They have a whole section of nuts and things and grains and whatever. They don't anymore, but they did sell containers of butter toffee peanuts, and they were actually one of the cheaper items you could get in that area, because nuts, as we all know, like especially cashews and pecans and things like that, are rather expensive. Peanuts not so much.

And these were I think like I could get a container of them for four ninety nine or something, which I think was roughly a pounds worth. And this may seem to someone like you and any other local people like a no brainer. But also obviously Sierra Nuthouse sells them. As a kid, I don't ever remember going out there. I passed by it all the time because I had a friend who lived right near that original store which is now gone.

By it the other day and it's empty. So we have a local place called Sierra Nutthouse that produces all kinds of sweets and candies like Moro's Nuthouse does, and did same kind of stuff, but they're local. You know, all their almonds are locally grown, et cetera, et cetera. I don't think peanuts grow here, but they do a lot of local stuff and dried fruits, and Fresno is a big agricultural area, and they sell them too, in one pound bags. And again they're relatively cheap for the stuff that they sell.

When I got hurt, the gals at work had contacted my wife and were like, what should we get Mark. I'm not going to do flowers and that kind of stupid stuff. We're going to do treats, things that he likes. And so they told them some regular candy bars that I like. And then, oh, he really likes butter toffee peanuts and chocolate covered peanuts from Sierra Nuthouse.

So I had a one pound bag of each of those package and I actually I've been home for six or so weeks. I kept that bag of butter toffee peuts for last and I still actually have some, so I snack on them during the day and absolutely love them. I love that stuff too, one of my all. Time favorite treats in the history of the known universe. Butter toffee is amazing.

Almond roca was always in my grandparents' home and that toffee inside those chocolate and a little crumbled almonds. You know. I think toffee by today's candy standards are old people candy. Yeah, and a different kind of toffee. It's not like the toffee and the inside of candies.

It's a hard shell. It's sugar turned into that caramel exactly. And I love buttered toffee peanuts too, and my daughter's into that stuff. And I think they see toffee as like stuff that old people eat, and that's exactly what we are. So it makes sense.

Well, Heath candy bars is an old person candy. Bar, right yep. For toffee like that, or. English toffee that grandma's and my grandpa used to make English toffee. All the time.

Yeah, this is something different though to me, this is not toffee like what's inside of those things at all. So you just need to slip it to them and not tell them what it's called. There are caramel covered peanuts. And the peanuts are always salted too, so you have that salt with the toffee. Oh so good.

There is a trail mix quote unquote trail mix the Walmart cells that my sister tuned me onto. It's like Cajun spice trail mix or something, and it has buttered toffee peanuts in it, and they're really good. Oh man, kind of pick them out and eat. They're very good buttered toffee peanuts, and that mixes. She got me that.

When I got out of the hospital or back home from rehab, she had a bag of that for me, which I immediately or through. That reminds me too of Sea's candy peanut brittle, which is a family staple too. Heavenly, their peanut brittle is amazing. It really is. I mean that's more akin to what this is to me in a way that hard yeah coating.

So if your kid likes peanut brittle, they're gonna like butter toffee peanuts. Yeah, call them brittle peanuts. Another aspect of this, too, that I haven't really mentioned, is that our youngest Faith, she's allergic to peanuts. So it has changed the household relationship to having peanuts around. Yeah, now don't do it then.

Yeah, we don't want to do that. And like my wife and I were just talking about how long it's been since we've gone to have tay food, and so that's on our on our list of things to do when we're empty nesters, tay food and peanut brittle, Yeah, type food. You got to you gotta be careful with a lot of Indian food and a lot of other places. A lot of other Asian foods use peanuts, and you don't think about that unless you need to. That's right, all right?

Well, any final thoughts. No, But of course, as I have written down on my script here, this has been fun. Are you excited? I'm excited. This was a great episode.

It says here I should say that was fun. This is a great episode. You're going a little crazy on the notes now that I've harangued you about it. Well, anytime I get in trouble, I really try to go and I really try to better write that down. I mean I need to write I had fun, because I probably didn't.

But oh man, listen, ever since you harangued me about the note taking out, but you should have seen you want to see my mister Rogers notes think of this. They're pretty good right, I generally type mine, but that works too. Listen, folks, when you get constructive critique, take it to heart and make an effort. Make a damn list. Well.

Another thing, one last thing I want to mention is that Super seven also just announced the Big Bird snuffle up Agus Reaction two pack. I am just fucking like, it's almost like when will the world give me a break? Like I feel so lucky that these companies are making stuff that is exactly what I've always wanted. But at the same time, I'm like, oh my god, how am I going. To do this?

Yeah, my snuffle up Agus Fisher Price Little People figure. Which is about I don't know if you've seen the price of the Little People suffus. I'm sure they're bad. I've looked at him a couple of times. It's very ex he's the most expensive one, and so I'm like, Okay, forty dollars for a really beautiful two pack of brand new Reaction figures that includes a big Bird and snuffle up Agus, or forty dollars or more for a Fisher Price Little People two inches that for two inches.

He's a plastic I'm not sure. I'm not sure he's one of the goofy ones. Anyway, Yeah, he's great. That's the last thought. Remember, folks, until we meet again, have fun, stay weird and keep.

Collecting, or be normal like we are. Yeah, stay normal, folks, because. This is totally normal stuff. You're tongue, Well, that's right, you damn. Dirty eight Cambridgeia.

Sean is a weirding Way media podcast by me Go