Gobots Scooter

My love for Gobots is no secret, and I think the arguments against them are hilarious. There's no argument against them that can't equally be lobbed right back at Transformers. It's like Marvel fans dogging DC, or Rose Petal Place fans bashing Strawberry Shortcake. Or the Amish bashing Quakers.

Can't we all just get along?

Gobots were one of my top favorite toylines of my youth, and Scooter is one of my favorite Gobots of all time. Sure, a riderless Vespa rolling down the highway and getting shot at by a riderless motorcycle makes about as much sense as a driverless F-1 racer going down the highway being shot at by a personless handgun...while a walkman watches on, ejecting cassettes that turn into birds... (come to think of it, perhaps Gobots were even LESS ridiculous than Transfomers. At least they had the decency to only turn into vehicles!), but to my kid mind the toy Scooter fulfilled all the requirements of a great transforming (or should I say 'going and botting') toy:

'If I had an Autobot symbol you'd love me.'

He had a good looking robot mode, he had a good looking vehicle mode, his transformatio...err..ahem...going to bot-hood...wasn't overly complicated, and he required no extra parts.

From an engineering perspective, this really is a clever 'simple' transformation. It would also be pretty easy to cosplay.

Sadly none of my original Gobots survived in my collection as I marched my way towards adulthood. Honestly, I don't think any of them even made it to my teen years. I got rid of them and my MOTU before Jr. High. A time I was more into 'serious' stuff like Batman and yes, the aforementioned Transformers. Which is also why, at the time, I ignored TMNT. Hahaha oh how naive and stupid I was.

Alas, I have also made little to no effort to reclaim the Gobots, owing to mere chance and the flea market to gather together the ones I have now. Ok, so I did pick up Leader-1 off eBay many years ago, but for the most part I have trusted to chance and cheapness and somehow have amassed a decent collection again, albeit one made up mostly of characters I didn't have as a kid.

There are still characters I really do want to own again, like Pathfinder and Cy-Kill (I do have his Super Gobot version), and characters I need a better specimen of than the rough ones I've chanced upon, like my second favorite Gobot of all time: Turbo.

And of course there's the Gobot Command Center, which I will probably never find in decent condition for as cheap as I am willing to spend on it. But for the most part my Gobot collection has come back together nice and quiet like, and I'm surprised it's as robust as it is today. I really should get them all together for a photo shoot!

As for finding Scooter; that's a whole story unto itself!

We were at the Goodwill Bargain Barn on Valentine's Day, cuz that's how we roll around here. If you don't know what the Goodwill Bargain Barn is...imagine if you took your local Goodwill, removed the good stuff, ran it over with a bulldozer, then let folks dig through the rubble and charged them by the bagful.

Or imagine a bomb went off at a hoarder's house, and the bomb also blew up the neighbor's garage and the junk yard on the other side of the block; and then someone took a snow shovel and scooped everything into large industrial bins and said you could have a bag of whatever you wanted for five bucks, you merely had to brave the bins and tetanus and the homeless people digging through the bins next to you and probably some living in them too.

Yeah, it's a little bit like that.

So I'm digging through a bin with toys, what were once toys, what should never have been toys, broken glassware, and lots of unsafe levels of lead when I came across some Gobots. Broken Gobots. I mean REALLY broken Gobots. Like, die-cast metal split into pieces, arms broken (not missing or removed, but literally sheared off), multiple missing pieces...it was a massacre. I want to believe that someone's 'parts bin' had ended up at the Goodwill but I just couldn't imagine anyone keeping anything in the condition many of these guys were in. It was heartbreaking.

Then I found half of Scooter. Literally, his top half. No legs. But also...no 'breakage', just...legs missing. I had a glimmer of hope that I might dig some more and find the legs and that I could simply unscrew the lower torso and re-assemble him. This was after seeing the Cy-Kill with two sheared arms and the Leadrer-1 missing an arm, a leg and his fuselage.

What can I say, I'm an optimist in my prime. GET IT?!?! HAW HAW HAW!

Anyhoo, as you have probably surmised by now, I did find his legs, and it was a simple matter of two separate parts having become disengaged, and not an instance of actual breakage. So along with a bunch of other stuff in my bag of trash, I tossed both halves of Scooter. And upon returning home I got a small screwdriver and voila! HE'S BAAAACK

I also found this rider, who ironically is in perfect scale with Scooter!

I'm not sure exactly, the guy seems very familiar to me, but I think he originally came with a motorcycle that had a zip-pull feature. You could zip the line and shoot the motorcycle across the floor while this rider clung on for dear life (or more likely flung off to your sheer delight.)

He rolls at a different speed now.

Shigcon Tank GO!

I had no idea what this thing was when I pulled it from a box of random kid stuff at my intern's school rummage sale. I could tell it's Japanese, and probably from a show like Ultraman or Kamen Rider. Maybe from the early eighties?

All that notwithstanding, it was only a quarter. So I bought it. I don't usually buy broken toys because I have enough unbroken toys to choke a horse, a very very large horse. A whole cavalry of horses. The Royal Mounted Police's entire cadre of mounts, in fact. The last thing I need is piles and piles of broken toys too. But it's unique. And it was only a quarter. So what the hell.

Using my super sleuth skills and Google, (mostly Google) I was able to discover that this drill tank is a Shigcon Tank from the tv show Daitetsujin 17. It was made by Popy in 1978.

The missiles and tank treads, as well as an antenna up top are all missing. There was also a set of 'headlights' attached below the front cab that have been broken off.

The drill-head pops out with the push of a button. Apparently the turret tilts and rotates too, which I didn't realize until I Googled this silly thing.

For it's age this thing has held up pretty well. It's as solid as a rock, and will probably last another four decades easily. I'll probably toss it in with the Intern's toy cars so she can add a few more years of playtime history to it.

Loco en la cabeza

This is the GoBot Loco, also knows as Machine Robo Steam Robo designation MR-05.

He's pretty Christmasy, with his vintage steam engine look and shiny red trim, and is currently on display with our Christmas decorations.

I'm way too busy to transform him myself however, so I'll go grab an egg-nog and let the Toyriffic Intern take over for a minute...

"I got this, Daddy."

"Okay folks, follow along closely. First, you grip the train like so..."

"...then you unfold his legs like this..."

"...then you turn him over in this fashion..."

"...then you make sure his legs are straight..."

"...you might have to wipe some dust off his face before you pop his arms out...and voila..."

"...you have a nifty robot!"

Thanks intern! Now go eat your oatmeal.

Loco is as simple as GoBots get, but is very effective in both robot and train form. His body is die-cast and his joints are pretty tight for such an old toy, in fact he's in unbelievable condition considering the fact that I found him at the flea market in a pile of Hotwheels and only paid a buck for him.

Helpful hint: look for GoBots in piles of Hotwheels/Matchbox when at flea markets/garage sales etc. They often get piled in by the uninitiated.