Generation Toys Jazz

     I have said before on this blog I am not a toy reviewer. Turns out I was incorrect. I just needed the right spark to start me off.

     When I opened the package from the Chosen Prime, and touched the box I knew someone had taken it to another level. Unlike the printed boxes with varying thicknesses and qualities of cardboard, this is a heavy black full box, similar to a photo box, with the company logo printed on it in metallic letters. It has a fitted sleeve that is printed that slides off. Inside the box is a fitted foam rubber insert to hold the car form secure and safe.

      Some of his transformation is based upon this toy. Special Ops Jazz from the Reveal the Shield line. An excellent piece in it's own right, it is one of my favorites. with a solid, intricate transformation, the only place it suffers is in a shortage of paint applications, What I show here is my custom painted version where I worked to fix that. He spends his days on one of my classics shelves between my Takara Tracks and my GDO Cliffjumper. That is, unless he is helping me at my desk for the day.

     Jazz has long been Optimus Prime's right hand 'bot. As head of special operations, he is in charge of the most dangerous covert missions. Jazz is also a true earthophile, more than most other autobots, effortless immersing himself into and grasping Earth's culture.

     Jazz was played on the G1 series by the late great Scatman Crothers, also famous for voicing Hong Kong Phooey. I remember listening to him, one of the three most distinctive voice actors on the show( along with Peter Cullen and Casey Kasem)and truly enjoying his way of bringing life to the role. While many have tried to fill his shoes in the role, in the opinion of this blogger, no one ever has.

     Generation Toys J4ZZ(Jazz) is solid in the hand, without being full of oddly placed Die-Cast parts. His transformation is intricate without being headache-inducing. He looks great in robot mode and in alt-mode as what most resembles a modern Porsche. The Plastic they used for his car parts is a pearlescent white with a stylized version of his original deco, with red and blue racing stripes. I added an Autobot emblem to him as soon as he hit robot mode. His joints are smooth, not so tight as to make you listen for breaking plastic, not so loose that they flop around. His blaster fits securely in his hand.

     And then we get to the odd little details. the flaps that open up to fill in gaps, to cover the hollows. These are the little extra touches of pride that elevate this above even most third party companies. These are the things that make it a pleasure and a treasure of engineering.

     Would I recommend this? It depends on what your collection has room for, or what you are looking for. If you are looking for scrupulously G1 exact detail, this isn't it. He bounces back and forth between Classics toy, G1 toy and IDW Comics. He becomes a new thing. My collection demands only that the aesthetic fit my tastes, because above all else, I embrace the fluid nature of Cybertronian transformers. They are always changing. He may or may not be your masterpiece Jazz. He will do nicely for mine.

   

Pop Culture League: Here comes Halloween!

  It’s the most wonderful time of the year...

   

     What does Halloween mean to me? Halloween was always my time to be someone else, to shed my skin and become someone else for a night. As I grew older, different outlets opened up, like conventions, D&D, the renaissance festival...But Halloween memories and the feelings this time of year evoke for me have stayed through all those changes. 

     I remember looking for an appropriately sized Ben Cooper costume at Woolco. The costume was folded in a box, with the mask on top. 

     I remember the Batman Costume... Silver age, 1960s/70s era Batman that I wore one year. That synthetic(probably flammable) costume and the stiff plastic mask with the little mouth slit. I found this online with what I remember it being like.

Credit to whoever Erick is for sharing this. If I tried to find my Moms old Halloween pictures...
let's just say there is a closet or two of photo albums.

     I remember one year jumping out to spook someone and spilling...my...entire bag of candy. I remember the person I spooked patiently helping me pick up my candy, and I remember feeling like an absolute tool. 

     I remember putting on a black turtleneck and draping a piece of cloth over my neck and thinking I had achieved this effect:

I remember later wrapping that cloth around my head to be a ninja.(same night)

     I remember never dressing as the monster or the villain, always the hero. There was one year I had a clown costume, but they really only got super-creepy later on. 

     These days, I prowl the costume aisle and shops to see the trends, usually based on whatever movie was popular this year. I watch spooky movies to set the mood, and I observe All Hallows eve as the traditional last night of the year. I say farewell to the ones lost and bid them good journey to their next place. 

     The last two Halloween parties I went to were at my neighbors, one was a B-movie theme(tuck a katana inside a trench coat and you are the Highlander!) and the other was a superhero party. I dressed as Green Arrow(longbow hunters timeframe) and was mistaken for Robin Hood all night. 

     Some people ain't got no culture, you'know? And I couldn't even tell them they had failed the city...

And now for some folks who did not fail the city:

• Retro Ramblings gave us Night Gallery, Elvira, Music videos and the origin of Ouija
• Collectors Universe showed us her adventures in decorating
• Cassie's Library got to the roots of Halloween but prefers Christmas
• Toy Break tells the tale of a trick-or-treat hack gone awry
• The Toy Box shows us a  nightmare before Christmas in Re-Action
• 20 Years Before 2000 spins a sad tale of double dragons and the Halloween that wasn't
• Whatever I Think of showed us her Halloween costuming plan
• Another F Blog gave us the Halloween playlist
• Green Plastic Squirt Gun gave us what is to him, the essence of Halloween

And anyone I might have missed can be found with the league logo at the top

The Night of the Accident

     Tonight was a weird night. It may have been the man in the next checkout at Wal-Mart who was a face painting victim and knew it.

     It may have been the discussion with my roommate, where she equated my writing style to that of a grandma, talking about the vacation she took with her grandkids at motel six where she liked how clean the room was, and the pool was warm.

     Sam asked if my writing persona was male, female or neutral, and said most of my posts were good " trunk pieces". I told her that evidently my writing persona was that of an elephant, then, or possibly a mammoth, because I am woolier.

      But I think really, that it was the accident with the kid on the hoverboard that set the tone.

     For the record, he hit me.

     We were heading down Garrison, making decent time, when traffic slowed as it tends to around 6 pm. Next to us, along the road were three kids, two afoot and one on what I would have to describe as an iridescent chrome green hoverboard. We passed them, traffic slowed, and they drew alongside.

     And then he seemed to fall backwards, and we heard the thunk! of impact, and felt the passenger side of my car actually lift slightly. He shot his hoverboard out from under him and literally wedged it under my civic. So we had three kids, apologizing and trying to extricate this fancy device from under my Honda.

    Now I feel like my car should be spitting pieces of green chrome for a couple of weeks, but the reality it that the kid was unharmed, and his hoverboard was surprisingly tough, didn't appear to have a scratch on it.

    

It looked like this, but with a lot more Honda on it.

Pop Culture League Challenge: Are You Scared?

     A Chilling and Horrifying question from

     What scares me? the traditional standbys, from the classic universal monsters to the modern slasher give me a moments pause and nothing more. The only one that disturbed me for more than a moment was Freddy, because he can get into your dreams. Jason, Michael, etc. are just abnormally strong whack-jobs with masks, and they are neither sword nor arrow proof. The original Alien shocked me badly, but mostly the face-hugger scene. It just came RIGHT OUTTA THERE, so that was more camera work than the inherently scary nature of the face-hugger. The chest-burster was just gross and alarmingly fast after that.

     There are things that unnerve me-faces or creatures whose intent you can't read- stray dogs, unexpected clowns (yep, clowns) for example, but they don't terrify, me, they make me justly wary. A creepy clown with a stray dog has a good shot of making me cross the street and go around. But that is millions of years of human survival instinct functioning as designed. If something feels unsafe to us, there is probably a reason that it is.

     These are the things that terrify me, that paralyze me during the day and wake me from a sound sleep at night. The creeping fear that the cough I have is going to go from asthma to worse. The fear that my "Diabeetus" is going to start advancing and incapacitate me. The fear that people are going to abandon me. The fear that some illness I don't know I have is going to snuff my spark in the middle of the night. The fear that my birds and family are going to be left without my care, and the worry of who will care for them. Neil Gaiman said "Every hour wounds, the last one kills." and the Reaper is slow but certain to everyone. Nobody avoids him.

     And then there is the paper. Bills. Medical bills. Medical bills from doctors I have seen, and bills from doctors I have yet to see. the bills that are slowly collapsing into a black hole on my desk, pulling me toward their event horizon and my eventual doom.

     So my fears are... Adulting. Aspects of it at least. This is why I have the plastic bubble. Looks like I bypassed the funny on this one.

Welcome to Adulthood. Sleep with the lights on.

And this made me think of a Song by Jethro Tull

Here are my cohorts and their boogie-men

• Green Plastic Squirt Gun has some very reasonable ones
• as does Collectors Universe
• Toy Break makes like Alice Cooper and welcomes us to his nightmare
• Cassie's Library fears what people do to other people and the Donald with his tiny fingers on the button
• D.I. Treasures brought us a childhood tale
• The Toy Box brought us the ruler of his fears with the King of Pop
• 20 Years Before 2000 has some very 80's fears of monsters and aliens
• G.I. Jigsaw doesn't really fear the snake-women, but has a problem with spiders
• Rebel with Causes fears heights and depths
• Haxbee covers fear for fun

And you can always access any others from the pop culture league logo above