Shiny Plastic Disk: Ultraman

Some time last year, I had heard that Mill Creek Entertainment was releasing a complete collection of Ultraman episodes on DVD. Now... this gets complicated, because it was apparently a repackaged version of another Ultraman set that they'd put out a few years earlier. I couldn't care less really, because I just want Ultraman on something other than VHS, and I'm not all that picky about how I get it. Considering that I haven't seen more than one or two complete episodes since the '70s, I'd be ready to give anything a try.



And then I wander through Target the other day, and find "series one - volume one" on the shelf. It has the first twenty of thirty-nine episodes on two disks, and the weird thing is, this seems to be a reissue of that earlier version. But again, I don't care, because it's only five dollars, and it means that I'll soon be watching a show that I practically worshiped as a kid.



The best thing about this set, aside from the fact that it gives me a chance to share a part of my childhood with my son, is that I can now finally watch these episodes in the original Japanese with English subtitles.





The overall quality is decent, and though it's pretty obvious that they didn't always have the best source material to work with, I can't help but be genuinely thrilled. I love that I can choose to watch the weird American dubbed versions, or I can switch over to a subtitled version that makes about a million times more sense.





And like I said, I haven't seen most of this since the '70s, when I'd crouch in front of an old black and white TV (I may not have seen some of these episodes in color at all), and tune into the San Francisco Bay Area's finest UHF channels.

Bigger, Better and a Whole Lot Primal-er

Getting back to the topic of Transformers from about a month ago, here's my final look at something from the Beast Machines line...





Air Attack Optimus Primal is a heavy, electronics burdened, 12-inch tall hunk of plastic. He's a bit less awkward than many of the other large figures from this line, and he's actually pretty easy to transform.

On the plus side, it's a reasonably well made toy with some fun light and sound gimmicks that don't confuse the basic play value. On the minus side, Hasbro (or Takara) once again decided that an already decent toy could be greatly improved by giving it a disk shooting feature. Why a big golden monkey robot needs to shoot disks from its stomach I'll never know.

Here's to a Super New Year

Seeing as how this is entirely recreational for me, I generally like to keep this blog and just about everything that I've ever done using the name "plasticfetish" on the light and fluffy side, but I'm going to freely admit that 2009 was a tough year.

In fact, I think a lot of people are looking back at the entire last decade, and are more than happy to finally see it end. I've a really great feeling about the year to come though, as for some reason the number 2010 has a good ring to it. I dunno, maybe it's the rhythm of how it's said (twenty-ten), or maybe it's just the nerdy Arthur C. Clarke reference... which probably doesn't count for much, seeing as how 2001 sucked so badly.




At any rate, one thing that I will bring happily into the next decade, is my nearly obsessive new love for Ben Cooper jigglers. Seen above is the intensely ugly Superman jiggler. From the weirdly deformed hands to the oddly sculpted chest, there's nothing about this rubberized man of steel that I don't adore.

Up, Up and Away!