Episode 32: Giant Robots vs. Super Spies

Cambridge. I'm m Shawn is a weird Way media podcast. Josh I'm gonna have to tell him about my weirdness. I'm sorry, Joshua, Hello. And welcome to Cambridge And with Sean, a podcast by two weird guys about the weird things they like.

No more air quotes. I'm just gonna say it like it is. It's fucking weird. Man, I always say, two grown men talking about toys. That's right.

It is what it is, Take it or leave. It, and most people are leaving it these days. What is it even matter? The people that are listening are the ones that matter. As long as we're enjoying ourselves.

I do have to say that it's been a long time coming that we're about to talk about the things we're talking about today. I'm really excited to finally get around to this very true How you doing okay? How were you okay? Voice? You don't sound like Demimore.

I know it's gotten a lot better. Good. Yesterday was really bad, folks. I'm Ronnie otherwise known as e Elevator over on the YouTube. Yesterday I was texting Mark telling him that I had thought I had laryngitis because I was losing my voice, and sure enough today I sound a lot better.

Sound normal to me. I am Mark, I'm the other host of this stupid show. It's a Friday. It's uh. I don't know what I was going to say.

It's important to remember that when the world feels like it's really crumbling and a multitude of ways around you to treasure the moments you have with your friends and talk to them about the things you like and enjoy those moments, because otherwise, what else is there? Friends and family, folks, friends and family. Yep, yep, yep. All right, let's get into this, bro. What is your subject for today's episode.

Well, as we've stated, these are both things that we've talked about in the past. I know that last year I promised to do this item or these items or this thing this year, and I'm finally getting to it. It was brought up by Jules Martin on his episode in relation to large scale toys, and so I am going to be talking about Showgun Warriors today. Imagine you enter the world of the Showgun Warriors. There there's Rating with Devil wing missiles, Dragoon with a star shooter, and Mazingo with a rocket launcher the showgun.

Imagine you command them to defend freedom, to putect justice and challenge Edo the showguns. They're ready to strike like you are. Showgun warriors. My singa Dragoon, Reggie E could put their own gear, each sold separately from. A tel This is like micronots and like transformers, one of those you know.

We took this from somebody else and tried to make it work for an American audience, which it did. It was very popular for a brief period of time in the late seventies and very early eighties. I did a little bit of research and the genesis is, of course in Japan, started in nineteen seventy three by Pope, which is a division was a division of Bandai, which is still a huge toy company. And from what I understand, Pope was like their licensed character branch. They took inspiration from a lot of these shows and comic books that featured giant robots that were popular in Japan.

So in seventy three they started with mazinger Z, which was a go and a guy character Pacific rim Maybe people aren't familiar with those giant robots that are piloted by people, so he was one of those poopies. Version of these lasted for at least a decade, from seventy three when they started until eighty two ish eighty three. They were very very popular in Japan, so like micronots and transformers, later on, somebody caught wind of these pieces in Japan and decided to import the idea over here. So Mattel got the license to create Shogun Warriors in nineteen seventy seven, which for me, I would have been eight years old, and that's like perfect age for robot sci fi stuff. I mean, Star Wars was around and robots were a big thing.

And I don't have any clue as to when I actually tuned in to these things, like if it was a commercial or if somebody had one, or the comic book ads that became so ubiquitous during that time. And I don't know if it was the small scale or the large jumbo machinders, which is what they're called in Japan. I don't know what caught my attention first, but they definitely caught my attention, especially the jumbo figures, even to this day when I watched the Shogun Warriors ads or even the Japanese ads for their toys. It's just amazing how massive they are. The Japanese commercials especially use really young kids in the ads, and the Jumbo figures are like practically their eyes or maybe a foot shorter.

Yeah, and it's amazing. So I was really obsessed with the big, large scale figures. They were as we mentioned on the episode with jewels and mentioned in the past, they were made out of the material that shampoo bottles are made out of, or other kind of disposable bottles that we're all familiar with. It's called pet I think polyethyleneaf flate or something. Look it up.

I don't know, basically like a polyester plastic mix of some sort, and it's cheap. You know. The figures are hollow. Many of them have a little weighted bag of sand at the bottom of their legs so that they don't fall over. It's durable.

I mean, I have some now that are still in absolutely beautiful condition. I meant, of course, plastic it's never going to really degenerate unless you leave it out in the elements all day or whatever. Or unless it's a Neca figure from the yeah, early two thousands. I'd never had the jumbos, but I did have some of the die casts, so there were die cast lines. And again this was all started in Japan.

They did both versions there first, and there were three and a half inch or three and three quarter inch die cast figures and five inch die cast figures, and I believe I had all. I know I had a five inch figure because I have a picture of me, probably Christmas of seventy seven. I look about eight years old, still look pretty young. I don't think I'm any older than that holding my die cast Dragoon, who was my favorite character. I loved the head sculpt of him, the spiky head and m hm, robotic but also like a dragon.

I might have had one other. I kind of vaguely remember having a blue figure when I was a kid, but it could have been a friend's I don't know. I don't think many of my friends had these. I don't even think my friend Jason, who had every toy on the planet, had them or not. I only ever really remember seeing the big ones at kids' houses who I wasn't necessarily really friends with.

And I think I mentioned on the Jewels episode there was a kid around the block for me, and I think my mom knew his mom or something I didn't really know. The kid, he was a year or two younger than me, he had something. He had one of them, and that was really the only time I ever saw them or played with them in person. So other than the die cast, the only other thing that I had was the Dragoon model kit for Monogram. I think this was sort of a concession of my mom's like, oh, he's way into these, but they're just too darn expensive.

I believe the jumbos were fifteen ninety nine in retail, which is a lot in nineteen seventy seven dollars. Yep, And I am pretty positive that's why I had never had any. So the model kits. The model kits were cool because they still had action features. They came with springs and you could load firing missiles on their chests and fists and stuff.

But I put that Dragoon together. I believe his base color, I want to say, was yellow, and I never painted it or anything because models were not my thing and never have been, and I still don't do models. So it was just a big yellow chunk of plastic with a couple firing missiles and I think they were maybe a foot or so tall. The point of that is that the big thing with these Jumbo figures was that they came with just tons of accessories. They all came with firing missiles.

They all are, not all, but many of them came with firing fists or other accessories that you could attach to them that fired off. Dragoon had the star shooter, which was this clunky kind of clip that you would put on his arm that shot out these stars, and he also could fling these tiny, little not in scale axes. And then I know that at least three of them had firing fists, so the fists would shoot off. The Godzilla that they made for the line that Mattel did for the Lion had a firing fist and the tongue that would stick out. The first one Mattel called Great Mazinga came with a rocket launcher.

He didn't have a firing fist, but you could shoot rockets out of the attachment on his arm. So yeah, I've always had a thing for them and never had the jumbos as a kid. But when you grow up and start having your own money, things can change. Jam back in, I had to look through my Facebook memories because that's where I posted so much of this stuff back then. I don't do it anymore, but I'm like, God, when did I start getting these again?

It was one of the first things I looked at when eBay rolled around, but I didn't have enough wherewithal and there wasn't at the time, or at least I couldn't find the resources to know whether something was complete, and there weren't people making replacement parts early on. By the time I actually actively was looking for these on eBay, there were these guys making replacement missiles and all these other things you know that would get lost or break. I started actively looking for Shokun Warrior stuff in twenty twelve, thirteen years ago, and the first thing I bought was a five inch dragoon, the die cast metal figure, and it was in decent shape. I believed that it worked. His fist fired, and then I bought a second one.

I think I found a little bit nicer version, I mean, very quickly thereafter, and bought that one too. A month later I bought my first Jumbo Guy King. He's the yellow one, the only one really with like a lot of yellow on him. His face is supposed to be a lieon I. Guess mark mitchest not face.

The Mattel version is very funky. That Japanese version is really cool. It's got a very highly detailed chest piece face to him, but they kind of chinzed out for Mattel. I think that same month I ended up with a dragoon, and at the time, in twenty twelve, I don't think I spent pretty positive, I didn't spend over one hundred dollars on any of the ones I bought. I was patient enough and knew that if things were missing, I could get replacement parts now, and I just kept it low, like a seventy five eighty five, maybe even less than that on occasion.

So the dragoon that I got did not come or no. I think he come with this Star Shooter, but it was broken, and that's one of the things that the shooter forgot. I think he just goes by. As he go by, well, there's a guy. I'll insert that later.

He makes all this stuff. They're called shogun plastics. The clip would break on the Star Shooter, so he made the clip. So I got that, and so I had a complete dragoon. And then of course that clip because it was a cheap resin reproduction, eventually broke and I'll probably buy one again later, but I think within I mean before the end of the next year.

I had five Shogun Warriors and also the LJN Voltron Jumbo, which came with a little bas little electronic bass that you could motorize him on, and I tossed that out, and that one was in really rough shape. But the same guy made replacement sticker sheets, like every sticker was redone, and so I totally cleaned it up. I actually even put him in the dishwasher to get all the extra stuff off. And I look at the pictures now and the process that I did, and I thought, man, I should have just not even replaced the stickers, because just the bear plastic is really fucking cool looking, especially for him because he is four different colors, black, red, green, blue, and yellow. They look really cool, just plain plastic, and I should have left it.

But I don't know. Maybe someday I'll strip them all off. They're starting to peel anyway. Accessories they all came with little I like to call him roller skates, so yeah, move them around. And of course the accessories caused problems back then and people shooting each other in the eye or swallowing the missiles.

So changes were made to a lot of that stuff, and I think some of the springs were probably weakened and they didn't get rid of any of the accessories or stop the missiles from firing. I know that the tips were changed, like to be less pointy and the other thing. Around the same time, Mattel kind of re released Sugun Warriors. They did both versions of Voltron. So there's the Lion version, which was based on Go Lion, a Japanese show, and then there was the car version.

I can't remember the name of that one, but they did both and I ended up with the Lion one again, but it was just a big, giant vinyl figure. It didn't have any missiles, it didn't have rolling wheels or anything like that. It's kind of cool, but it's not even up with my other ones. I just have it in another room somewhere. Of course, Super Seven's dipped into the jumbo figure arena with some Star Wars figures.

They did a Boba fette, they did a Stormtrooper, they did Skeletor. They went into the mo Tu world with that, and then just recently within the last I don't know three years maybe Bandai has been re releasing versions of their original and they're not badly priced. I haven't bitten on any of them. I don't really feel like I need ones that I already have. Maybe one of them will roll around that'll try and get and you can find them on Amazon for a couple hundred bucks or something, which, like I say, for a twenty four inch figure really isn't all that bad.

But as I was buying all this stuff and going through eBay, I stumbled on something I had no idea existed. Well, I shouldn't say that, because the Mattel figures did come with accessories, but there was a whole line of accessories that Pope made for these figures, and they are absolutely insane. At the time I got two of them, I think they were maybe twenty bucks. And now if you're looking, you're not going to find anything for under a couple hundred dollars. The figures arms are detachable, and so these accessories were mainly to stick on the arms.

I got the let me see if I have it out. I got the XX ten, which is I don't know what that looks crazy a fire extinguisher, so you put this white part on the figure's back. Fill it up with water. And then this goes in where you take his arm off. Got a button here and it sprays water.

That is so cool. And then the other one I got is I guess it's a elevator that goes down into a little car port where there is a little plastic car that you can shoot out of it. You know, these things were piloted by people, right, So the guy climbs down the arm of the figure, gets into the elevator and gets in his car and takes off. That's amazing. We'll put a website up that has a list of these because I could just sit here for fifteen minutes and go through there.

Just crazy. But Mattel, what they did was they included one of these accessories with their figures. The figures in Japan did not come with these accessories. Some of them came with firing fists and stuff. But so like Ray Dean has this thing called the iron cutter that's got these blades on it and it fires off.

Guy King has one of the firing fists, Mazinga has the rocket launcher, and normally it would have just been two fists. And then you replace it later. But Mattel's like, well, we'll grab some of those accessories include them with the thing. And that's why they always look kind of weird, because they're not symmetrical at all. The one hand's always different on the figures, like one's longer or one's bigger, one's got these iron blades on it and all that stuff.

When I was buying them back thirteen years ago, I was reminded of how goofy that looked. But then I thought, well, that was actually really smart of Mattel. They gave kids these things that they never would have had, or they could have sold separately and tried to make more money, but kind of did the cool thing and included them in there. I have looked at a couple there's a crane that has a magnet where you can pick up a tiny little die cast car made by Tonka for some reason. All kinds of accessories, so all these things that shoot out balls.

You can have a thing that shoots out like golf ball size rocks and it's just nuts. Man. But like I said, now, they're all two hundred dollars or seventy five for a loose one that's broken, and I want to say I got mine for twenty ten to twenty. I mean they were really and they're boxed. I have the boxes for them as well.

Nice. Before I hurt myself, I was moving stuff into this office and I cleaned all of them up, and as I sat there cleaning them, I was like, oh man, these things are so cool. And that's when you really kind of get the idea of the scale when you're holding one. Right when I had gotten the fire extinguisher accessory, the little blue tube that connects the pack to the spray had been in the package this whole time, so it was bent, like irreversibly bent. I tried to heat it, I tried to boil it back into shape, and it just wouldn't go.

So I bought some clear pla tub being at Low's to replace it, which wasn't ideal. It fit perfectly, but you know, it wasn't blue like the original. So as I was cleaning all these up and doing that stuff and reattaching stickers that were starting to peel, I was like, I got to be able to find a blue plastic tubing on Amazon, and so I bought a pack of something and it was the right size, but It wasn't flexible at all, and so I couldn't get it on the ends to connect the two parts. It just it wouldn't budge. And I heated it and heated it and heated it, and so I found a different one.

It was better. It's still not as flexible as the original, but so I now have blue tubing that's a little more accurate. And then the straps on it are that kind of ribbony than that fancy Christmas packages are wrapped up in Oh yeah, like that elastic that's got ye silver on it or whatever. So I was searching for that and I'm measuring it. I've got my little millimeter thing out.

I'm like, what's the width on it? So I found a big old pack of that on Amazon and need to replace the straps. They're super super loose. I mean, it fits on a figure, but it kind of hangs down its back. I haven't attached that yet, but I will here eventually.

That's it for me, I mean, as a person who doesn't like large scale figures. As a kid, these were definitely fascinating and for me now it's more that they're sculptural really, I mean, they just sit on top of my Ikia bookcase. I get to look at them all day long. I love how quickly. I mean really, when you think about the span of years from Shogun Warriors showing up for American kids to the early eighties with Voltron, and then how that evolved into Transformers, and then that evolved into the Transformer dinosaurs and beasts that they did, and the other toys that were like insects that could transform, and back to Pacific rim with the giant robots and that coming back and that interesting to people and never going away.

I love that progression. I was a Vultron fan, kind of. I didn't. I had like two of the components as a kid, but I didn't. I wasn't super invested in it, but I was part of the whole the trend.

I got involved with the trend a little bit because I was of the age. But I love the idea of these I forgot about Power Rangers because Power Rangers does kind of the same thing. Yeah, you know, by the time Power Rangers rolls around, I'm not interested at all. I'm more interested in the things that I'm about to talk about at that stage. But I love the idea of little people getting into these giant machines, you know, the components coming together and creating this bigger machine.

The gadget of that is exciting to me. Cleon and I the Go Lion Vultron was on the old one was on Netflix, yeah for a while, and we watched that pretty intently. There was a matel version, but I missed when it came out, but I tracked down all the They came in separate pieces, all the lions, and with little figure like little three and three quarter inch figures, and once you got them all you could combine them. So we have that as well, and I have him all split up up there, and I got a couple other Vultron. There was a news show too around that same time, and so he kind of took off again.

I was too old for that as a kid, but I remember it and I remember going, well, are they lions or are they cars? Because there were two versions, you know, and they weren't really Vulture. I mean, we made them Vultron here in the States, but they weren't both Voltrons in Japan, right, you know, stuff like Battle of the Planets when I was a kid, was one of the few Japanese shows that we got that was restructured for American audiences. I know in San Francisco and Hawaii, they had a lot more access to this stuff, the shows and the toys even before Mattel got hold of them, because of the imports and stuff and having large Japanese populations, people would import those things in there, and so kids in those areas like im port cities in California and Hawaii probably maybe even saw these accessories and stuff.

I mean they had accessories. They had a spaceship for one of the Jumbo figures, so it was like a kid could sit on it. It was so huge. I mean, some of this stuff was ginormous. A couple of years down the road, they're going, well, we can't do that big stuff anymore.

We got to shrink it down a Micronauts size. Some of those die cast Pope figures and the Shagun Warriors actually did transform You could change them into things, so pre dating the actual Transformers part, which of course Micronauts sort of had already started merging into as well. So all that stuff just crisscrosses and yeah, then we try to make it happen over here, and sometimes it hits and sometimes it doesn't and sometimes it hits really hard, but only for a short period of time. Yeah, the I think us young ki kids from the United States get into Japanese stuff like in this cyclical pattern, like it's you know, it comes, it goes and comes, and it goes and it comes, and we're in it again, you know, with eight years ago manga coming back strong, and now with these movies that are hitting the theaters, what is it Demons Layer or something like that that are just like blowing our our movies out of the water as far as making money, and and then it goes away for a while and then it comes back, and I think it's I think it's interesting.

Japanese are always they they always seem a little bit ahead of the game when it comes to toy trends and pop culture trends. It's kind of amazing. I'm not I've never really been huge into it. In fact, I think I don't know what it is about anime style. But even with the older cartoons that were basically used or recycled for American audiences, and we were when I was a kid, like vulture on cartoons and speed Racer and even ThunderCats, I feel like ThunderCats was very anime style.

I just for some reason as a kid, I wasn't into that as much as I was like the wonky American stuff like Looney Tunes and Hannah Barbera and filmation. I remember really liking Battle of the Planets. That was tail end of childhood for me. I just barely caught that. I feel like I was starting to kind of age out of stuff.

I remember liking a lot of it wasn't aired a lot, though, And there was another thing. I want to say it was called FORST five or something like that, but it was only in limited markets. I want to say in the East. They took a bunch of different shows, a bunch of the Japanese shows, and just smushed them all together, presented them as this one cohesive thing, and they weren't. They were all separate shows, separate characters.

You know, a lot of them were these giant robots. We never got that here. It was pretty popular for a while, but short lived. A lot of this stuff. It hit hard and then people lost interest and they would just disappear.

Well that's it for me. In Shogun warriars, well that's awesome. Every time I'm over at your house. I'm always need to get a glimpse of those guys standing up there because they're huge. They're amazing.

I love blow mold plastic holiday decor, and I love shampoo bottles and bubble bath bottles and all that stuff. And these push those buttons for me, they're amazing. It's a really cool material. It's fascinating. It's, like I said, sturdy and durable.

And of course I can't say that they haven't lost color, but I mean they're all still very bright. The red is very red. The blue that they use is almost a light teal. It's got a little bit of green in it's not like a straight blue, and it just looks gorgeous. They're fascinating designs and Kanji lettering on them and stuff.

Fun. Man, Yeah they're fun. To look at, and yeah they're cool. Like I say, when I was cleaner the mut man, I was just getting a kick out of touching them. And that blow mold plastic is fascinating.

It's thin, it's hollow, but it's durable, and there's no like stress marks anywhere on any of them. And I got lucky. I got lucky that none of these were more than one hundred dollars. Yeah, that's awesome, Mark, and I've been wanting to hear you talk about Chogun wears. Love it, love that stuff.

We'll be back in a second. Man, I hit Ronnie's topic for the day. Who are you? My name is Pussy Colore. I must be dreaming.

What are you talking about, dude? I'm talking about something I've been meaning to get around to for a while. Now. They keep popping up this this theme has been popping up lately, Like you know, it's weird. I guess it's part of the zeitgeist dilemma that we're always talking about here.

The moment you start to get reinterested in something, the world seems to react. So like right now, I feel like there's a lot of rumblings for the new James Bond, potential new James Bond movies that are coming our way now that MGM has been purchased by Amazon and the Broccoli family is no longer in charge of the James Bond franchise. There's a lot of folks that are nervous about it. Kind of me included. I'm interested to see what they do, especially since it's they've attached director Deni Phileneuve.

They've attached him to direct the next Bond movie. So that's cool because that guy's pretty darn talented. As I've been frequenting the antique stores over in Clovis a little bit more regularly now that I'm a little bit more motivated to do so, and I get to, you know, have coffee with Jules and otherwise known as HP, have coffee with him, peruse the stuff, and and remembering. It started with me remembering how I had gotten rid of my signet paperbacks that I collected when I was transitioning out of my youthful interests moving into puberty town. I really got excited about the Ian Fleming books because they there were there were provocative moments, and then amongst many other things too, like just being a young boy and sort of fascinated by the cool Bond thing.

I'm going to get into that in a little bit. Yeah, I as a when I was in junior high, you know, maybe you know, seventh eighth grade, probably more like eighth grade, because that's when I was reading a lot of Stephen King and starting to go to used bookstores more frequently and really started to collect James Bond paperbacks. Specifically the Signet Classics paperbacks. Those were the things that the pocket books, those are the versions of the books I was more interested in for some reason. You know, I was interested in first editions when it came to other types of literature.

But there's an aesthetic to the Signet paperbacks that I'll get to in a moment that really appeals to me. So I started collecting those, and I was actually reading them. I immediately transitioned from you know, what I understood Bond movies to be, which was my dad showed me some of the early Sean Conry Bond movies when I was little, and then A View to a Kill when that hit the theaters and I saw that that was like a big moment for me. There was something about that movie that was really cool. The Duran Durand song.

Maybe the Christopher walking is the villain which would be interested primarily in stamina or speed, Grace Jones like, I don't know, there's just something about that Roger Moore movie that really appealed to me. I watched that movie on repeat. I VHS taped it off of television when it aired one day, and then when I started reading the books, I realized, oh, this is this is a bigger thing than what the movies make it out to be. There are problems in the books. Ian Fleming was unabashedly racist and misogynistic in his books, and that is something that I struggle with right now.

I'm actually audiobooking them. I just finished Casino Royale, which is the first in Fleming paperback. I'm at a stage of maturity where I can hear it and bypass it, but that doesn't go unnoticed. It's it's difficult. So they're not the edited They were talking about, yeah, getting rid of all that up in the James Bond books, And I don't know if they've actually gone through with that or not.

If they did, I've not paid enough attention to the details as far as language goes to know the difference from the versions that I have right here, the Signet paperbacks and the one I'm listening to in the audiobook. But I will say this, there are things in the in the even just Casino Royale, and I just started listening to Live and Let Die. I'm like, oh, okay, that's the kind that's the word he's going to use to describe this person. Okay. Then they probably haven't.

Yeah, so I'm not listening to the ones that they have. Yeah, I'm I think that they are. I don't know if they and if they have that even if the language that they are using could be worse, I will say that there are worst words, worse words to use. I do remember in when I read Doctor No when I was when I was in eighth grade. I remember some language in there that that's still exists in the newer versions that I was like, yikes, that's that's pretty rough language.

There's something about the paper back, the signet paperbacks that really appeals to me. I'd talked to Jewels from one of our trips to the antique stores in Clovis about, you know, I'm looking for these because I'd be really cool to get these back in the collection. And I think he got the bug too, So he got some for himself, and then he sent me some as well, And so I posted a video on my YouTube channel for things that I got for my birthday, and I did get a nice stack of James Bond signet paperbacks from Jewles Who. It should be noted that Jeff has recently legally changed his name to Jewles, So Jewles is officially his legal name. Now I'm going to try and appropriately call him.

I've been calling him Jeff my whole you know, ever since i've known him, so every once in a while it is my slipody. Know, you're welcome. Yeah, he just made that change legally, So that's pretty cool. I'll go back and we'll record a couple versions of Jewels at the end of here, and I'll try to edit them in. It'll sound like a really bad adr.

Jules Martin exactly Jewles Henry. Martin's my voice actually, for both of us to correct it. There you go. That's awesome. Anyways, Yeah, he sent me these books and so I now what I'm doing is I've been rewatching the movies, which I finally have a chance to do because they're When Amazon bought MGM or acquired MGM and bought the James Bond Wrights, I thought, well, for sure it's going to be on Amazon Prime, and they weren't.

They weren't up until last month. Yeah, whoever had the license streaming license before that. They don't. They're not going to just automatically give it up. It needs to run its course before they would get them back.

That's or of any I or anything. Disney buys Fox, it doesn't need everything all of a sudden ends up on Disney Plus. That's very true. Although I was having a hard time finding James Bond movie streaming anywhere except for Skyfall. The newer ones.

Yeah, they hop around monthly from service to service. They were always on something that just might not be one of the things that you're subscribed to. But now most likely they will stay on Prime, although Amazon, now as the rights holder, can license them out. That's very true streaming service. That's how they continue to make money.

Yeah, And so I was looking and looking and looking, and they were never streaming on one of the services that we owned or we are members of. Finally Amazon got them, and I think that probably my prediction is they're going to hold on to them for a while just because of the potential new movie and stuff. But yeah, you can now watch every Bond movie on Amazon Prime. Thank goodness, because I've been, you know, looking and looking and looking for about two years now, primarily wanting to watch the older ones and especially the Roger Moore ones. So I haven't gotten to the Roger Moore ones yet.

I'm following. There's a great podcast that I discovered called James Bonding and it started in twenty twenty two and it's co hosted by Matt Gorley, who is one of the I think he is a co host, but he's a producer for Conan O'Brien Needs a Friend podcast and he's on there with with Sonum Obsession and Conan O'Brien and he and his friend Matt another Matt have a podcast called James Bonding. I think they're done. I haven't. I've been listening to the earliest episode, so I'm following their pattern that they established.

What they do is they'll they'll review, or they'll talk about an early movie and in order in chronological order, the early movies, and then they'll go to the most recent movies and they'll go They're going from the front and from the back and meeting in the middle at the end. Of course, at the end. I'm pretty sure that because they started this in twenty twenty two, Specter and No Time to Die hadn't come out yet, so I'm sure they'll grow those in as I get to that point. But I've been following their pattern. My wife is a big fan of the Daniel Craig Bond for obvious reasons.

I understand a lot of I don't get the appeal of him. I understand that a lot of people do. I don't know. He's got a strange face to me, no shade to your wife. Yeah, he's he's got an interesting face.

I think what I think what she likes about him, And something that I can appreciate about him too, is that he's there's nothing sleek about him. Yeah, you know, he's not a smooth Bond. He is smooth. He's good at like, he's good at fighting, and he's he's good with espionage and all that stuff. His character is, but he's still a sort of and to use language from the Bond books and from the Bond movies, he's a blunt object.

He is kind of exactly how Bond is described in the Ian Fleming books, aside from the color of the hair, because he has black hair in the books, and that's about it. Though, Like he he is sort of a described as a rough hewn, ruggedly handsome, and Sean Conry has a little bit of that, but not really. I mean, I feel like that when it comes to the Bond from the books, Sean Conry and Daniel Craig are basically the most accurate to the ways described in the Ian Fleming books. And so, yeah, my wife and I've been watching the Daniel Craig movies and then I'm watching the earlier films on my own because she's you know, there are times where it's like, holy shit, are you serious, like which she'll pop in and she'll be watching it wouldn't be for a few minutes.

She's like, this is this is insane. Right now, I'm on on Her Majesty's Secret Service, which is a different bond. He only did one movie, and I'm realizing now that's the only thing I didn't I should have written down his name. It's not not coming to me, but George Lazenby, George Lazenbye, thank you. I thought I had seen this movie, but I'm realizing I have not seen it.

I haven't seen it. It's pretty lame. George Lazenby is a little hard to watch. It was only in one. There are a lot of fans out there that do respect this movie because it is it is a more complicated It does involve a more complicated love story, kind of like what's happening in Casino Royale, which is where you know, Bond shows certain sensitivities that we don't normally see.

But there's a it's almost a parody. There are there's a lot of references to the fact that are there are not a lot. There are a few references to the fact that this is a different actor than Sean Connery, so it's a self conscious that's interesting. There are moments where it's almost breaking the fourth wall in the first fifteen minutes of the movie or first ten minutes of the movie, you know those opening action sequences that transition to the sexy intros and then it goes into the real movie. At the end of that first action sequence, he almost looks at the camera and says, this never happened to the other guy.

This never happened to the other fella, Like it's like, are you serious? And then his outfits are very much what Austin Powers is inspired by. Interesting, So there's a lot going on, and there's some really surreal situations where he's man splaining to a group of women something and they're really into it and you can hear them sort of moaning in their seat. It's nice, super weird movie. And it might be Lazanbie.

I've heard it both ways, but I've always pronounced that Lazenbe. Just for clarification, I've always heard it Laysan b as well. But yeah, it might be Lazinbie. I respect the guy. I mean, he's put into a situation that's super awkward.

I imagine the hate must have been tangible, people being pissed off that Sean Connry is no longer part of it. Sean Conry does come back and do Diamonds R Forever before it transitions formally to Roger Moore movies. So they did convince Sean Conry to come back, and then it switches over to Roger Moore movies and then Never Say Never Again. I believe it's Never Say Never Again. Yeah, Sean Conry along with one of the co producers, they independently decided to make a Bond movie while Roger Moore was still making his movie.

In fact, that came out the same year as another Roger Moore movie. I remember all that. I think it was Octopusy was the same year as Never Say Never Again. Bom James Bond, Bond, James Bond, my Name's Bond, James Bond. My name is Bond, James Bond.

My name is Bond, James Bond. My name is Bond, James Bond, Bond, James Bond. My name is Bond, James. Yes, my name is bonb James Bond. My name is Bond, James Bond, Bond, James Bond.

My name is Bond, James Bond. The name is Bond, James Bond, Bond, James Bond, Bond. James Bond. The name is Bond, James Bond, Bon Bon, Bon, Bond, Bond. The first book that I listened to on audiobook was Octopusy, and it's a short story.

Along with The Living Daylights and Property of a Lady. Property of a Lady is the only short story title that hasn't been used hadn't been used by the Broccoli family to make a movie out of. I was really surprised. Octopusy, the short story is kind of amazing. It's about this guy who's an X spy who's made some decisions that put him in a situation where he has to be in hiding, and he's in hiding in the tropics, and it was a really well written short story that doesn't align with the movie octopusy at all.

That was kind of an interesting discovery. That being said, the part of the reasons why I wanted been wanting to talk about Bond this whole time is because of the appeal of the signet paperbacks. The name of the artist who does the little illustrations that are sort of in the center of the paperbacks is ba Ree Phillips spilled b A R y E. Those illustrations are amazing. There are certain things esthetically that happen in the Bond novels and in the Bond movies that are incredibly interesting, and it's no wonder that the popularity maintains despite the misogyny and the racism that the whole franchise is sort of resting on.

I mean that those two things are kind of a foundation for the Bond stories. But there I can see why it's popular. The gadget, it's the espionage, the romance of the situations. If you're a man and you watch these movies, I can see I can see the appeal, But I also in watching them at this stage in my life, I can also see clearly why part of the reason why men are so conflicted in the way that they perceive the world around them. The novels are written in a particular way where you can where there's definitely some the characters are contemplating big issues and dealing with, and James Bond in particular, dealing with particularly challenging situations that the movies rarely even explore, except for the more contemporary ones that Daniel Craig ones that finally get to explore what's really at stake for a character like Bond.

It's good to see that the films now are working harder to for the complicated nature of the situations. But the way Hollywood approached this in all previous Bond films, including the Timothy Dalton ones, including the Pierce Brosen ones, is really kind of gross. When you watch old movies that where men are men, hard. Air quotes for that women are objects. When women are objects and men are men, and the idea that oh, well, you know, boys will be boys and all that bullshit, Like it's no wonder that we're so challenged as men in contemporary society to just sort of be good people.

It's really hard. It's ingrained in the way we perceive things. I'm really enjoyed to make a long story short. I'm really enjoying listening to these Bond books and seeing the flaws from the perspective of as a forty nine year old guy who's dealt with these issues himself, and also keeping the hope that the Bond franchise will maintain but will evolve appropriately. So you know, all these assholes saying, oh, like the Daniel Craig Bond movies when they first started happening, that they were woke or they were it's not the Bond I grew up with.

Like, well, read the books, because I just finished reading Casino Royale, and yes he's a misogynist, and yes he's problematic, but that character is written in a way that he's experiencing real conflict, falling in love with somebody and having his heart broken by the situation. I'm not going to give anything away, but like, it's a very similar plot line in the Daniel Craig Casino Royale. I find that a little bit exciting that the books have a strong enough foundation that the stories can be can transition to the late twenty twenties in a way that allows us to think progressively about the male endeavor. I love having these books on my shelves now that Jewels got them to me. And I'm enjoying watching these old movies and watching the new movies, watching my wife get all flustered when Daniel Craig emerges out of the water and with his shoes, old body.

It's awesome, you know, objectify the man, right, Yeah, sure, why not? That's my subject matter back today. We can put those in the old filing cabinet and never talk about them again. You never bring stuff back up, you know on this show. No, and we never talk about rock balls or masters in the universe.

I'm sure Ian Fleming will rear his head again down the line. Yeah, we'll see what happens with the new whatever show or movies or whatever they end up doing. I hope it's good. I really want them to hire a black actor to be James Bond, so the people's brains can just implow. A black female actor.

Yeah, that would be amazing. I'm all for it. When Moneypenny was black in the new James Bond movies, that was amazing. When M in the Pierce Brosen movies was Judy Dench and she went through and became the m and the Daniel Craig movies as well. I love that, like, why can't M be a female?

And that's not the way it was written? No, I know there's people come on who cares? Who cares what your fictional character looks, her sound? I know exactly. I hope that they take some chances with Bond and they move Bond into the new era so that we don't stop seeing Bond.

It's cool to see if franchise evolve. In my opinion, Yeah, so what if our franchises that we love suffer a little bit, or change a little bit, or evolve a little bit. There's always going to be something cool down the line. Very true. This I thought was fascinating.

I finally looked up the order of the books in which they were written, so I'm trying to listen to them in audiobook form in order that they were published and written, and Moonraker is the third book, which I thought was surprising because it doesn't seem wouldn't. I'm anxious to see how Moonraker was written because by the time the movie was made, Bond was familiar with audiences and the campiness was acceptable at that stage, and be interesting to see how it evolves or how it evolved. All right, thanks for going on this journey with us, folks. Remember until we meet again, have been stay weird and keep collecting. And join us next week for our separate little episode on all the crap we've gotten since August.

It's fucking November. It's surprising. I've got my things here on the table, and it might not be as epic as the last one, but it's still pretty good. Yeah, I don't have a ton. Yeah, and maybe we'll throw in some other chat in there as well, talk about the burger.

Build and mm hmmm, this is a tasty burger. We'll release another episode a week after this one, so come back then. I have no idea when this one's even going to release, because we are way off schedule. I'll just say within a week. That'll give me another week of editing to do.

And yeah, come back then. We're recovering. Josh, I'm gonna have to tell them about my weirdness. I'm sorry, Josh. Cambridge.

I er Sean is a weirding Way Media podcast