Random As Rhyme

It’s been awhile since I have written one of these since I decided to do a few reviews what not on Thursdays. So as a treat I decided to bring it back Things I always wanted “T” days with what is probably the stupidest thing I ever wanted. The most embarrassing thing was I wanted it at an age where I should have figured out that it was ridiculous.

In 1997-1998 there was a Canadian Comedy series filmed in Burnaby British Columbia that ran on YTV. The show had a bunch of nobodies in it for the most part, aside from this guy.

It was your typical ridiculous teenage drama tv show that dealt with the “issues” in an unorthodox fashion. Now that I think of it the show was basically a bootleg Saved By The Bell on water. You see my friends this show was:

Breaker High.

Admitting to watching such a stupid show at the age of 12-13 is one thing (hey there were attractive girls on it so you can’t fault my logic) but thinking that it might be possible, and actually wanting to, go to high school on a boat is admittedly very stupid.

There was a certain amount of low budget TV magic that made it seem as though this idea were feasible. The idea was instead of your standard booze cruise vacation the open bar was replaced with classrooms where your basic highschool courses were taught to a handful of lucky (and probably rich) teenagers.

I can’t seem to remember any tests happening on the show so that would be a big bonus over traditional high schools and the girls were often bikinis or skimpy clothes (never really rained) so that was another bonus. Finally you were away from your parents so really no one could tell you to clean your room.

It all seemed glamorous then, since my pre-teen mind never really thought considered the fact that the never seemed to show any sort of lessons in boat safety on the show, or addres the fact that the food was probably not so good and the living quarters cramped and damp.

Also since such a small amount of privileged kids could go on the boat if you hated someone you were stuck with them in your class for however long it took you to return home. If you were one of those awkward kids with no friends in high school this would be torture.

They also never touched on the fact that the class size, and boat size, was actually pretty small or the fact that the ships crew consisted of a Captain and some whistle blowing, possibly gay, assistant. If that boat were ever to hit an iceberg everyone would have been doomed. Which should have worried me since rocks and I share the same amount of buoyancy. Let’s also not forget the very real life threat of pirates!

I also never factored in that in high school I was late for basically everything. I would have missed getting back on the boat first stop over. Getting stranded in Panama is probably only cool for the first five minutes, until you get robbed, shot, and thrown in jail a la prison break.

Yes going to high school on a boat with other students was an incredibly flawed, impractical idea but that didn’t stop it from being something I always wanted.

It has been awhile since I have written about  something I always wanted,  one could say I was going through a drought of neediness. However after being reminded how selfish and greedy I am I thought of a new thing I always wanted and surprise, surprise, it is once again Transformers related.  But hear me out since this one does not exist yet.

As soon as I watched the first Transformers episode I have always wanted to experience being a giant robot that could change into a car and engage in  epic battles with enemy forces while creating millions of dollars worth of property damage and not be held accountable.

However not being a child of Cybertron that was never going to happen without some serious cash and scientific time invested.

Once running around in the backyard making ‘pew-pew’ noises and using my imagination got boring I did what every kid of my generation does when they can’t think of ways to amuse themselves anymore, turn to video games.  I knew what I wanted, a good Generation 1 Transformers video game that would allow me to live out my fantasizes without looking like a odd child.

Problem is that Transformers games seem to have a great track record of being less than satisfactory.

The first, Japan release only, NES version below is somewhat excusable as a lot of NES games were of questionable quality.

One of the biggest issues with this one was the fact that you could only play as Ultra Magnus, who a lot of people don’t even know existed (you have to have seen the original movie) and those of us who did know of his existence simply knew him as the guy who screwed up until Hot Rod took the Matrix and rocked out to You’ve got the touch.

In 1998 Hasbro Interactive put out a follow up effort with the Beast Wars franchise for the PC and PlayStation. This game was also not very good the graphics, controls,and general game play was all sub par. I never really got into it and went back to playing War craft 2 in no time.

There was also a Transformers, Trans Metals which was a fighting game and is not really worth mentioning in my opinion beyond the fact that yest it did exist.

As they years went by I eventually gave up expecting a good, North American*, Generation 1 video game.

I beat the movie game and got the skins that allowed you to play as recolors of original characters and decided that would have to do.

That was until I saw game trailers for some other franchises I really enjoy:

Upcoming Ghostubsters game trailer

Wolverine Origins game footage

Upcoming Batman Arkham Asylum Game footage

With amazing looking Batman, Ghostbusters, and Wolverine games about to drop its about time a game developer stepped up to the plate and made a GREAT Generation 1 Transformers game.

If for no reason other than the fact that its something I always wanted!

*Yes I know about this game and if you are reading this from Japan and have a copy you want to send it to me feel free!

It’s March 12th and the clocks went forward last Saturday, normally this would mean that spring and good weather is soon around the corner. However it snowed today and I think I am coming down with (or never got rid of my last) cold.  What a bummer. However, apparently, the mind is a powerful thing so lets work with mind of matter and think towards summer with this thing I have always wanted.

Growing up I only had one object I would call a ‘communal’ toy, a basketball net, it was a great tool to get the gang together before figuring out what kind of mischief to get into for the day.

People actually came over to my house fairly often to shoot hoops and we always had a good time. However one thing that sucked about coming to my place to play ball was that when hot and humid summer days rolled around other unleashing those hose or super soakers on each other, we just had to deal with it. This kind of sucked and meant on really hot days no one would come over they would either be inside avoiding the house or a few houses down at Corey’s house (same Corey with the General Lee Pedal car).

Corey, that lucky bastard, had a pool.  Having at a young age is like being a crack dealer in the ghetto, a great way to be really popular regardless of personality. Instead of slanging rocks though Corey slung pool invitations. You never wanted to get on his bad side or you wouldn’t get invited to swim and for a young kid he had a good memory.

During one of my periods of no invitations I leaned on my parents to get a pool but since neither of them could swim (and my dad didn’t particularily like the idea of random kids at the house all the time) I didn’t do anything other than wasted my breath.

Evenutally, after spending many days sitting in my backyard on the sprinkler a new kid, Evan, moved in down  the road and since everyone was too busy getting swimmers ear at Corey’s we became good friends. Evan loved coming over to my place so much so that I didn’t know for awhile that not only did he have a better pool than Corey he also had a bigger house/yard, a cool dog and a very big comic book collection.

Evan also had an older sister, with (if memory serves) hot friends, Corey didn’t have girls inbikini’s, so eventually Corey lost his fair weather friends (90%)  and we would all play ball at my house and head down to Evan’s to swim.

Order was restored to the block. Sure I didn’t have a pool of my own, but I guess this was the next best thing.

Oh and a family of  ducks came to Evan’s pool every spring to hang out, and ducks are pretty awesome. All Corey got was algae, ha!

This one is an adult want, actually probably the first adult want I have written about thus far.

Yes, on rare occasions, I want things that people over the age of 13 don’t also want. Most of them should come as no surprise, as they are just big kid toys. They ones that parents won’t or can’t really buy you and you need a license to operate.

This particular one want was is a pretty simple; bad ass mini truck.

Back in the good ol days of no responsibility, before I had my license, I saw my first lowered Blazer and fell  in love. It was early to mid 90s at this point so the truck probably looked something similar to this:

A mild drop probably about 3 inches in the front 2 in the rear, no real body mods outside of a roll pan, reasonable sized billet rims with a decent amount of rubber on them, and a phantom grill. These were all pretty much staples of the mini truck scene around that time.

Blazers/Jimmys, were never particularly expensive, especially ones that were not Typhoons so that meant the likely hood of me getting one one day was way more realestic than me getting say oh I dunno this:

So I decided to do some research on them. Thanks to my 56k internet connection I was able to find an enthusiast site called “Blazin Low” that basically taught me everything I needed to know.

I learned 2 great, great things.

The first was that you could put relatively inexpensive small block 350 motors in them which turned them from a decent run about to a powerful hot rod. Heck, with enough money thrown at them stand on end and scream down the track when you stomped on the loud pedal.

The second thing I learned was that the suspension on these trucks was fairly simple and easy to work with. And with a few “light” modifications they could be made to go up and down via air ride. Then came something beautiful (to me) dragging!

I always had a thing for low riders, 64 impalas mainly, but for whatever reason the idea of a super slammed truck that could throw sparks at anytime was overwhelmingly appealing.

I think the main reason I liked it so much was that it was wrong, it was the complete opposite of what any sane person would want to do with a truck.

I had to have one.

I looked at them for awhile for my first vehicle until my uncle gave me my e30 instead.

Lucky for me I could keep myself busy modding that car for some time to keep the want for a mini truck at bay. Everything was going well until a friend of a friend took me for a ride in this sweet little number he picked up in Florida.

Now someone I knew, my age, had a sweet truck. Suddenly it was all achievable, and within reach. So I set forth to make it happen.

Little did I know it would be one of the worst, most expensive, and ill fated projects I have ever embarked on in my life.

At some point I will go into complete detail about the horror story that was my blazer. But until then just let me assure you pretty much anything short of it catching fire or getting washed away in a river happened.

Here are just a few of the shitty things I had to deal with:

Running after it while it was being towed? Check.
Rad explode on the way to work? Check.
Alternator Die on the way to work? Check.
Stolen? Check
Brakes fail? Check
Broken into? Check

I dumped a decent amount of coin into this project, not wanting to give up until it was taken away from me (some would say for the best).

I learned a few things, and when (not if!) I start my second mini truck project I am going to start with something a little newer, and a lot cleaner (probably from the south) until then a sick mini truck is just something I have always wanted.

Blah!

Good riddance?

When I originally got the idea to start the “Thing I always Wanted”  feature here on Random As Rhyme, one of the items I knew I would write about was this one. I wanted still want this item so bad it hurts, I almost more have a vendetta with it. One Christmas I asked for it, and after I opened all my gifts there was one surprise gift from Santa. I was over  joyed I knew this would be what I really wanted. I shredded the wrapping paper as quick as I could and was greeted by a globe. A friggen globe.

If the fat guy in the red suit was real he would have known that I didn’t care where Turkey was all I wanted was the Tyco Typhoon R/C Hover craft.

Thanks to X-Entertainment (which is an awesome site and one of the reasons I started this blog) I am able to  share with those of you that may have forgot, or have never seen the commercial that made me want this thing  more than pretty much anything else I can remember.

Ya I know, the volume is really low, but you don’t need volume to appreciate the action shots. What sane person would not be interested in driving this thing for five minutes let alone owning one?

None of my current remote control cars worked to well on sand, snow, or wet pavement, while the Typhoon could do all of this with ease, and look cool in the process.

I never encountered one of these hovercrafts on my block as a kid, which is good because I would have stole it from whoever had it no matter how dangerous and stupid.

Thanks to the internet though I have been able to track down a little bit of information on it. Like most things advertised back then it wasn’t quite as  amazing as it seemed. While it did actually work on all surfaces the battery didn’t last much longer than 10 minutes, and if the battery died over water it sunk.

Charging R/C vehicles in the early 90s was always a huge bummer,  especially when patience and attention spans were low. I bet a lot of R/C vehicles ended up in the backs of closets due to the inhumane 4 hour charge time of the battery packs.

Seriously think about that, four hours of charge time for ten minutes of use. How did we send people to the moon again?

Anyway lucky for  my wallet the  only one currently on ebay has a ripped skirt (so pretty useless) otherwise I would have already bid on it and mapped out a course in the pool at Lyndsey’s condo.

I have noticed though that there sure are a bunch of different remote control hover crafts out these days that I could probably pick up for not too much… hmmm maybe this something I have always wanted will turn into something I have.

This one actually kind of interests me, I have never seen a remote that works via twisting.

Until next time.

Take a minute and think back to when you were young. Remember summer holidays? Two months with no school and no set plans on what to do? As a kid nothing beat  those 2 months. Especially the meaty part in the middle when you were as far away from school as possible.

Summers were hot and the only downside was figuring out the best way to cool down. Sometimes old Popsicle Pete simply was not up to the task. He just melted and left you with sticky orange hands.

Freezies? Nothing sucked more then ripping them open with your teeth  (scissors meant waiting) and swallowing a little bit of plastic with your first bite.

No there had to be another way. The more fortunate of us had pools, the less had water guns.

No water gun brand was held with higher regard than Super Soaker, and no gun was more sought after than the XP 300.

Before I get too ahead of myself and start gushing over the behemoth that was the XP 300. Let me share with you the soakers I did have.

My first Super Soaker was everyone’s first. The classic neon yellow/green SS 50:

It was a trusty gun that was way better than those little semi transparent uzis. It didn’t hold a lot of water but neither did its predecessor. The light water load meant that it was light and easy to run around with.

It also didn’t take long to fill at one of the filling stations (hoses). Long fill times meant your friends just soaked your pants right off.

Ya the ss 50 was a pretty rad gun boasting claims of shooting 50 feet. I don’t recall if it actually did, but that was not really a problem since we never had water fights 50 feet apart.

The problem with them was everyone had one. Someone had to step it up on the block and luckily (for a short period anyway) it was me… well by way the money tree aka my parents.

Not sure how many presents (birthdays, Christmas, good grades) this cost me but I got it and it was on.

Though I would never admit it at the time this gun was just alright. It wasn’t a huge step up over the trusty 50. Really it was just bigger, shot a little farther, and was not as  bright.

However the pressure was pretty weak and took some effort to build up. And it’s size made it pretty fragile.  I slipped and broke mine one day running away from a fight with my tail tucked between my legs.

Breaking the item that held your status on the cool kid totem pole while running away its pretty devastating. However so was the the gun I was running away from.

The SS 300

This thing was a monster of a water gun. I wouldn’t even call it a water gun it was a water cannon that changed front lawn warfare forever.

The backpack could hold 8 liters of water which mean that I was not man enough at the time to be able to wear the thing and run around, but my friend Andrew’s older brother Jason sure was.

It took awhile for Jason to pump this thing up, but once he did and pulled that lever back the SS 300 let forth a blast of tremendous pressure. Enough to leave red marks down any one’s back, even mine.

It was a magnificent, Jason didn’t really have to move around all that much with this gun (though he could being stronger) all he had to do was wait for us to try and ambush him then blast our eyelids inside out.

I don’t know how popular water fights are today, but you can bet if I found myself in one I would try and get my hands on an SS 300 cause, hey, its something I always wanted.

As I look back into my past I am starting to realize that I was a pretty envious kid, I might have even had green skin, because this is another thing that one of my friends had that I wanted.

It should come as no surprise to anyone who reads this blog even half the time that I big Transformers fan. Most of my wants were firmly planted on the Autobot side though. Not really so much because they were the good guys but more so because they were cars, and I like cars quite a bit.

However a few Decepticons stuck out as being pretty bad ass. Soundwave was one, but Trypticon was most def another.

Trypticon was the Decepticons answer to an equally awesome (and want worthy toy) sentient city Metroplex.

I never had the privilege of seeing a Metroplex toy in person, so I convinced myself that they didn’t actually exist, however my older friend Chris had Trypticon (cant imagine how much that must have cost his parents) and it was pretty gosh darn amazing. It was basically a giant Grimlock, and as we know .

Trypticon took Grimlock’s badassarey and multiplied it by however much bigger he was. Two major things stuck out (other than having rockets where his tongue should be) the first being was that Tryp transformed from giant awesome T Rex into a giant awesome city play set.

Only a handful of Transformers shared this ability, but Trypticon was not content with having one awesome ability, oh no he was ready to shove his size 100000 foot of awesome up your ass and break it off by being able to walk.

He was actually the ONLY Transformer I ever saw as a kid that could walk as illustrated below:

A walking Trypticon was clumsy and loud, and looked really funny if he fell over but was defiantly an awe inspiring site to behold.

Oddly enough I seem to remember this as being the only Transformer Chris had, as he was a big Lego guy. This meant in my mind he didn’t deserve it and I plotted to remove it from his grasps.

However he was at least 3 years older than me so I never dared put my plots into action lest he send me down a flight of steps head first.

Too bad they probably fetch a large number on ebay as otherwise I would have one today. But I reserve my big ticket Transformer purchases to Autobots pretty exclusively.

The video below proves that Trypticon was also the mightiest of all walking Transformers, and that the guy below has lots of disposable income and is kind of my hero.

I want one.

This week I thought I would write about something I always wanted that my best friend growing up had. These situations where always pretty tough to deal with, I mean on the one hand you loved your best friend.

He was the one who convinced you throwing tennis balls at your neighbors IROC-Z to set off the alarm was a good idea, then ran and hid while you got in trouble.

He was also the one who said your endo sucked so you went faster and went over the bars and knocked out half your tooth.

He was the one who helped you throw snowballs at local neighbor hood girls ruining their self esteem forever.

Ya Andrew was awesome.

However when it came to this one thing, he had it I didn’t, I secretly hated him for it.

What was it?

Behold!

Voltron!

At the time, I don’t think I actually watched the original Voltron on tv, or knew much about it. [Note: The person talking in the intro is Optimus Prime or Peter Cullen]

Actually this might have been a hand me down from his older brother. Regardless, it was an awesome toy.

Apart it was 5 lions like below

But together it was the fantastic robot you see above, so really it was six toys in one.

It’s combined physical size of it meant that in our action figure wars waged in VHS tape built battle fields, my Ninja Turtles where easily slain, and even my beloved (and later stolen) Power Master Optimus Prime was no match for the might of Voltron.

So he pretty much always won I might have even created a no Voltron rule at some point just to save face.

While I pretty much needed Voltron in my army, I don’t actually recall asking my parents to buy me one,or trying to buy one myself. For some reason I had it in my head that Andrew would grow bored of it one day and give it to me for being a loyal friend, and then glory would be mine.

Obviously that never actually happened, and sounds idiotic today, but I was young and dumb, as opposed to being old and dumb now.

One day I will probably purhcase a Voltron figure off ebay and and it to my collection of 80s toys that is currently made up of mostly Transformers, but until then. It’s something I have always wanted.

These posts have kind of evolved from just things I always wanted, to things I always wanted and what I really got. However that’s a mouthful so I will still call them Things I always wanted just somethings I will also talk about things I really got as well. This is one of those times.

I have mentioned before that as a kid I loved remote control devices. Cars were my main vice but I also  always wanted a remote control plane. They were so alluring, being able to something from a kit that you could one day fly. and fly them.

I was really into the big ones like this one:

That thing looks pretty real and is big enough that you could probably send a small child, or maybe a cat up for its maiden voyage.

Living near a Hobby Store also meant that this want was pretty much unstoppable. I built a lot of model cars so I was in the shop quite a bit. I quickly realized that the planes were way our of my price range. 249.95 USD in today’s prices gets you an (electric) kit, but you still have to buy the radio, motor, charger, batteries, damn.

All I had at this point was an allowance no job no hope.

So I looked at the ghetto version, the control line plane. These were basically the first controlled model plane. Strings attached to a handle that adjust pulleys which effect the height and pitch of the plane as you walk in a circle. This video is a good example if you don’t really understand.

They were pretty cheap, I think my dad bought me one for $100 bucks or so all said and done. Rad. So I put this thing together and took it to my local soccer field (probably not allowed) and set off to learn to fly it.

This was actually the exact one I had:

I think their may have been instructions on how to learn but I either didn’t read them or they didn’t exist. Whatever how hard could it be right? Famous last words.

The day I decided to learn to fly it was particularly windy I remember, and I crashed the plane with the quickness.

Since the plane was held together with rubber bands, it exploded on impact. I fixed it fairly easily though, but I could never get the motor to run again. I tried for a year solid but no luck.

So I put it away and it was never really seen again.

Until a few years later when I did get the motor running I took the prop off attached a gear and tried to put it into a radio shack remote control car to make it gas powered.

It started up and the gear box exploded with similar quickness as when the plane hit the ground.

I then figured the whole shit was cursed and gave it to a friend who I believe made a fan boat out of it or something.

Even after all this I still want a remote control plane. However after writing this I am curious about whether I could fly a control line again.  If I do get a new one expect a blog about it.

Here is some poor schmuck doing something similar to what I did.

I feel your pain man.

This weeks object of perpetual desire is more a class of device than something brand specific. It was the child size vehicle. Sure bicycles were cool, and much faster, but everyone had one. Not everyone had a child size vehicle.

The hierarchy of child sized vehicle went like so:

Home made deathtrap, know known as a Box Cart
Pedal car
Power Wheels
Go Cart (not bloody likely and will be omitted for this blog)

I made a few skateboard or wagon based Box carts as a youngster and every time they were used someone got hurt. Picking rocks out of your knees sucked but none of us had anything better at the time so we kept making them.

That was until some kid’s (I think his name was Corey) dad bought him this:

Corey was instantly pedaling driving around in the damn holy grail. Every kid on the block, including myself, was super jealous at this point. However when anyone asked to try the pedal car, Corey responded with he child equivalent of fuck off and get your own.

I forget exactly what he said in response but the long and short of it was unless you killed him, pried his cold dead fingers from the wheel, and drove this thing off some sweet jumps before getting hauled off to jail you were not getting a turn.

As karma goes, Corey swiftly got his popularity jacked when Brandon from round the way rolled up with his girlfriend on one of these bad boys:

You see, Brandon had his cooties shot, room for a passenger, and didn’t need to pedal. This meant he got all the women little girls and the pedal car General seemed silly in comparison. I mean, scroll back up and look at the wing on the back of it the real general didn’t have that, stupid in accurate human powered pedal car.

No matter how slow and loud power wheels were as they were rumbling down the sidewalk I wanted one. Actually I would have taken the Barbie Countach and called it “salmon” and rocked that.

Sadly though I never got one and once I got my license I never really thought about it again. I figured, sure, I missed out on a little bit but all and all I didn’t miss that much.

Until….

Wait a minute here… you can modify power wheels?

Nobody told me!

Now I defiantly feel like I missed out. I am sure if I had one my dad would have modified it for me.

Actually he most defiantly would not have.

But a guy can dream right?

Anyone reading this, if you have a kid and they have power wheels I would like to borrow them for an afternoon. I promise the power wheels will return in better shape then when you gave it to me.

The child is your problem.