Quote from: thedungeondelver;450515The MotU toys were originally to be a line of Conan the Barbarian toys.

Then someone at Mattel actually watched Conan the Barbarian and that was that.  Stuck with all the molds and tooling they came up with their own stuff.

I've read that as well.

Tangentially, this is an interview with the writer who was hired to work up the early narrative behind those characters.

Quote from: Phillip;450493There was the "Mothers from Heck" editorial in The Dragon (which I only vaguely remember). The big, obvious point I see is that TSR in particular had come to see its audience as significantly made up of minors.

This reminds me of a point made by the incomparable Jeff Freeman way back in 1997:

QuoteTSR, Inc. adopted a different strategy to get gamers out of the hobby that was even more spectacularly successful: They wrote the game for twelve-year-olds. This is sheer brilliance, because even twelve-year-olds aren't interested in anything written for twelve-year-olds. For example, 1st edition AD&D was written for adults, the vocabulary alone insisted on a college reading level. Game modules, the monster manuals and so on, contained adult themes and pictures of bare breasts, sans suckling infants. Naturally, lots of twelve-year-olds were attracted to it.

As illustrations of this principle, take `teen' magazines. Who reads them? Not teenagers. Pre-teens read them, because they deal with issues that are inappropriate for pre-teens. For example, sex. The surest way to get youngsters disinterested in anything is to write-down to them. TSR, Inc. realized it, did just that, and young boys, along with everyone else, stayed away from the game. School game clubs followed chain-mail bikinis right out of the hobby. TSR's strategy was so successful that they nearly went out of business and had to sell-out to a card-game company.

And that's right: even as impressionable twelve-year-olds, we realised TSR was talking down to us in 2nd edition and its associated products. What we longed for was what some of the older gamers had - anti-paladins, evil wizards, assassins, half-orcs, half-orc assassins (the ultimate combo), demon-summoning spells and so on. Thus, we treasured every bit of that when we could find it, read Jack Vance, Howard and John Caldwell, while laughing at the sanitised Forgotten Realms/Dragonlance fantasy we were being offered. Of course, we were not "mature" at all. But we wanted to be.

The Angry Mothers From Heck editorial was one of TSR's dumbest moves, and they had had a few.

Quote from: Peregrin;450492According to wiki, they removed the passages dealing with Lyra's early pubertal sexuality in The Amber Spyglass.

There's a reference to her having a smoochy session with the male protagonist at the end of the last book, in the UK version.  Very non-offensive.  Some other stuff in Pullman offends me hugely, eg it turns out it was fine for her dad to commit a literal ritual human sacrifice (of Lyra's best friend!) at the end of the first book, because it was all in a 'good cause' - Satanic rebellion against the decrepit Catholic God.  Or how he preaches the virtue of rebellion for 3 long books, then at the end his protagonists unthinkingly do whatever Satan tells them to, simply because authorial fiat has declared that Satan, Asriel & co are the 'good guys' (compare Moorcock:  "Screw all you gods, we're doing it our own way").  Pullman's POV reminded me of the crowd in Life of Brian yelling "We're All Individuals!" in unison.  Compared to Pullman's sick Maoist worldview I find CS Lewis a paragon of healthy moral outlook.

Quote from: S'mon;450555... it turns out it was fine for her dad to commit a literal ritual human sacrifice (of Lyra's best friend!) at the end of the first book, because it was all in a 'good cause' - Satanic rebellion against the decrepit Catholic God.  Or how he preaches the virtue of rebellion for 3 long books, then at the end his protagonists unthinkingly do whatever Satan tells them to, simply because authorial fiat has declared that Satan, Asriel & co are the 'good guys' (compare Moorcock:  "Screw all you gods, we're doing it our own way").  Pullman's POV reminded me of the crowd in Life of Brian yelling "We're All Individuals!" in unison.  Compared to Pullman's sick Maoist worldview I find CS Lewis a paragon of healthy moral outlook.

Current reading schedule be damned! On the strength of this review I am going out to pick up His Dark Materials today.

Quote from: Cole;450519Tangentially, this is an interview with the writer who was hired to work up the early narrative behind those characters.

I find this interview vaguely depressing.

Quote from: two_fishes;450606I find this interview vaguely depressing.

You shouldn't check out interviews with the writers for GI Joe then. Pure hate.

Edit: Here's Buzz Dixon explaining the stupid shit Hasbro put him through: http://www.joeheadquarters.com/interviews_dixon.shtml

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;450608You shouldn't check out interviews with the lead writer for GI Joe then. Pure hate.

I found the simpering, obsessive fan-boy desperate for any scrap of detail about his cherished childhood toy way more depressing than the writer. The writer, he seems like, you know, just a guy who had a job. I feel like I wanna slap the fan-boy and tell him, goddammit, grow the fuck up, y'know?

Quote from: two_fishes;450612I found the simpering, obsessive fan-boy desperate for any scrap of detail about his cherished childhood toy way more depressing than the writer. The writer, he seems like, you know, just a guy who had a job. I feel like I wanna slap the fan-boy and tell him, goddammit, grow the fuck up, y'know?

LOL, I had the same thought.  

It's like, "How many times does the guy have to tell you he just slapped stuff together and came up with names that sounded good so he could eat that month?"

The fanboy seems to think that somewhere out there, there is a hidden tome of the secret lost stories of Eternia that are deeply inspired works of art.  Instead of, you know, some guy being paid $50 to slap something together over the weekend so a big corporation could sell more toys.

The writer's description sounds pretty much how I expected it would (being a very cynical person, I am rarely surprised at how businesses work).

I find the fetish for the cartoons of the 80s generally sad, and indicative of a generation reaching it's mid life crisis.

GI Joe, Transformers, He-Mandate, and on and on, worshipped like fucking classics, when what they really were was cheap garbage to sell toys to clearly easily impressionable kids.

Quote from: jgants;450623

Quote from: two_fishes;450612I found the simpering, obsessive fan-boy desperate for any scrap of detail about his cherished childhood toy way more depressing than the writer. The writer, he seems like, you know, just a guy who had a job. I feel like I wanna slap the fan-boy and tell him, goddammit, grow the fuck up, y'know?

LOL, I had the same thought.  

It's like, "How many times does the guy have to tell you he just slapped stuff together and came up with names that sounded good so he could eat that month?"

The fanboy seems to think that somewhere out there, there is a hidden tome of the secret lost stories of Eternia that are deeply inspired works of art.  Instead of, you know, some guy being paid $50 to slap something together over the weekend so a big corporation could sell more toys.

The writer's description sounds pretty much how I expected it would (being a very cynical person, I am rarely surprised at how businesses work).

Quote from: J Arcane;450625I find the fetish for the cartoons of the 80s generally sad, and indicative of a generation reaching it's mid life crisis.

GI Joe, Transformers, He-Mandate, and on and on, worshipped like fucking classics, when what they really were was cheap garbage to sell toys to clearly easily impressionable kids.

This sort of reminds me of guys around my age, who still look for greater "meaning" in movie scripts, tv shows, and in lyrics of heavy metal songs.

(I don't know whether I should feel pity or scorn for such individuals).

Quote from: two_fishes;450612I found the simpering, obsessive fan-boy desperate for any scrap of detail about his cherished childhood toy way more depressing than the writer. The writer, he seems like, you know, just a guy who had a job. I feel like I wanna slap the fan-boy and tell him, goddammit, grow the fuck up, y'know?

I found it funny but I'm pretty cynical.

My own feeling is that while those eighties cartoons are dumb, badly written, and goofy they were head and shoulders above what came before.  Scooby Doo and the Archies anyone?

And where and when they could, the writers did the best they could with what they were given.  Taken as a whole, and forgetting the crappy 90% leads to the 10% pure distilled awesome that the fanboys are sure they remember.

And there is good stuff in there if you squint and hold your nose long enough.  It's really not much different than the comics of the sixties in that regard.  The art was poor, the storytelling was chopping but some great and enduring legends like Spiderman's failure to save Gwen Stacy arose from it.

Quote from: Cole;450519I've read that as well.

Tangentially, this is an interview with the writer who was hired to work up the early narrative behind those characters.

That interview is like the extended dance version of Orson Welles' comment when he was asked about his work in the Transformers movie (the last thing he did): "You know what I did this morning? I played the voice of a toy." [...] "I play a planet. I menace somebody called Something-or-other. Then I'm destroyed. My plan to destroy Whoever-it-is is thwarted and I tear myself apart on the screen."

Quote from: J Arcane;450625I find the fetish for the cartoons of the 80s generally sad, and indicative of a generation reaching it's mid life crisis.

GI Joe, Transformers, He-Mandate, and on and on, worshipped like fucking classics, when what they really were was cheap garbage to sell toys to clearly easily impressionable kids.

Hehehe... I have fond memories of watching Speed Racer when I was kid (along with Giant Robot and Kimba the White Lion).  It's been years ago now, but my friend bought the Speed Racer DVD with all the shows and we sat down to watch it with great anticipation.  I was sorely disappointed because watching it as an adult shattered the fond memories I had of watching the show when I was a child.  Some things are better left in the past, and it is better to cherish fond memories rather than trying to recapture that fondness later in life.

Quote from: Drohem;450641Hehehe... I have fond memories of watching Speed Racer when I was kid (along with Giant Robot and Kimba the White Lion).  It's been years ago now, but my friend bought the Speed Racer DVD with all the shows and we sat down to watch it with great anticipation.  I was sorely disappointed because watching it as an adult shattered the fond memories I had of watching the show when I was a child.  Some things are better left in the past, and it is better to cherish fond memories rather than trying to recapture that fondness later in life.

I attempted to rewatch Robotech recently.

That lasted all of half an episode before even my much more tolerant companion decided this was a bunch of hacky garbage.