X-Entertainment's Christmas Season & Advent Calendar, 2008.

07/05/2008: X-E’s ‘08 Summer Megaparty: The Robo Force Command Patroller.

My mother moonlights as an eBayer, which is likely a byproduct of watching me support myself that way when I still lived at home. Her walk-in closet is perpetually littered with garage sale finds, and has that familiar, dank aroma that can only be caused by the trash of seventy families conglomerating into a small, enclosed space.

I haven’t had much time lately to go garage sailing myself, so I kinda live vicariously through her. I got fed up with garage sales once everyone became vaguely familiarized with eBay and marked their used salt shakers up into the double digits. Still, if her purchases are any indication, there’s still plenty of good, cheap crap just waiting to be plucked for couch change.

On my most recent visit, I couldn’t believe my eyes. Somehow, someone held onto and sold a boxed Robo Force “Command Patroller,” apparently unused, and it only cost my mother fifty cents. Back when I was still hunting, these were the kind of finds I dreamed about.

She said she bought it a few weekends ago, and the fact that I didn’t even bother asking for permission before loading it into my car probably explains why she didn’t mention this to me sooner. Her fifty-cent investment bought me a blog entry, and for this I am eternally grateful.

If you don’t remember Robo Force, it was a mid-’80s series of robot action figures with Pop-Oid style arms and suction cup bottoms. Though obviously created as a direct result of Optimus Prime’s popularity, Robo Force toys were nothing like Transformers. The series wasn’t exactly a huge hit, but despite its obscurity, everyone who ever had a Robo Force toy remembers it. Robots with Pop-Oid arms and suction cup asses…not easily forgotten. There are some things you just cannot unsee.

I’ve already reviewed the largest toy in the series, the impenetrable Fortress of Steele. This Command Patroller was the second largest, and actually, it was the only vehicle in the entire Robo Force line. Why don’t we see what it does?

Right off the bat, the toy comes with the plus of being ridiculously gigantic. It’s bigger than it needs to be, sure, but that doesn’t falsify its size. Even shitty toys seem wonderful when they’re big enough, so if this thing has any cool features at all, I may have to ask it out and buy it lilies.

I just realized that this particular Command Patroller is missing several of its originally included plastic guns. That’s odd, considering that all of the cardboard was still in the box and the stickers weren’t even applied. Why would someone ransack the box for a few cheap guns? This is clearly the end result of a drunken dorm-wide scavenger hunt. I hate kids.

The weird shovel thing in the front…I’m not really sure what it’s for, and the description on the box nor the included instruction manual is helping to clue me in. I would assume that it’s intended to “scoop up” another Robo Force figure, but that seems like a pretty weak central offense for a vehicle large enough for me to hide inside.

There are two “revolving airlock bay doors,” which allow you to alternatively hide and reveal random Robo Force figures. The bay doors don’t lead anywhere, so all the robots can really do in there is wait for the right time to push the door open and yell PEEK-A-BOO at unsuspecting comrades. If that line didn’t read funny enough, remember to use your robot voice when you get to “peek-a-boo.”

Also of note is the “telescoping robot lift arm,” which is a longer way of saying, “claw.” The “claw” narrowly succeeds in holding single figures above ground, and I guess that was the robots’ way to imprison spies until they could be properly set on fire while their enemies engaged in ritualistic dances around them. If these guys would go through the trouble of building two gigantic, revolving doors that lead nowhere, voodoo sacrifice could not have been beyond their scope of interest.

Finally, there’s a big door that opens to reveal a fairly large compartment in the back. It isn’t big enough for the figures to fit inside (well, not without smacking them in sideways with some kind of metallic gavel), so I suppose that the robots use the hatch for weapons storage.

When I first popped down the big door, I found a neat Robo Force mini-comic hiding inside. It said PEEK-A-BOO. I haven’t gotten around to reading its substantial eight pages yet, because I’ve had enough fun this Fourth of July weekend and really don’t deserve to have more.

Okay, so it isn’t the most amazing toy in history, but as a fifty-cent garage sale find, it’s a roof-raiser. I would’ve paid more than quadruple that for the box alone, which would’ve then been cut up into tiny pieces and reformed into a beach-scene mosaic. I’d start doing that now, but even I know that I’d be pushing into a dangerous territory if I made a mosaic out of a Robo Force box on a Saturday night.

Snatch more Robo Forcey goodness in this X-E oldie. This one, too.

Happy SNT, the first of several for the Summer Megaparty!

Why don’t we try a totally unrelated survey? I honor of my recent cruise, discuss some of the worst vacations you’ve ever taken. I’ll post a few of mine in the comments later tonight.

Correction: I said that this was the only Robo-Force vehicle in the series. That was a huge lie. There were two. I was testing you.

Man I loved Robo Force as a kid. Had none of the figures, but had the evil vehicle (yes there was more than one vehicle!), Fortress of Steele (Hoth for the win!) and a licensed Erector set.

I also have fond memories of befriending some kid in an outlet mall in Tulsa who had two of these he let me play with. We discussed Robo Force while Mom got me Superman pajamas with a cape. Good times.

Awesome find, I didnt really get into Robo-force when I was a kid actually I think the first time I read one of the old articles I was wondering why the hell I didnt have the phone.

Worst vacation, uhh, Ok, it wasn’t really a vacation, it was a camping trip and I got stung right beneath my eye by a bee and my eye was swollen shut the entire time.

For some reason, there weren’t any RoboForce figures where I lived. Probably distributor problems. I remember we had those weird-ass ManaTech (or whatever) figs that you could take apart and reform with other figs.
I also suddenly remember the Clash of the Titans figs today. I remember a kid down the block had the Kraken figure, which was this huge awesome thing I still would pay to own. I just had multiple Perseus figures and the Pegasus (again, pretty awesome, and I would still pay own it). Probably the only chance to own a non-female-toyline winged stallion (She-Ra toys were a deathwish: own one as a boy, and you were pretty much pegged as a panty-wearer).

That looks WAY cheesy Matt. Never heard of Robo Force. Anyhoo…worst vacation….never went on too many Vay-Cays. Does my one month trip to FLorida count? Me and the hubby tried to live there in 2006, and man oh man was it a mistake! ughhhh awful humid weather…and this was February!!! got the flu severly with a 103.5 fever, and dehydrated, and had to wait 12 hours in the E.R. to get seen. I loved the driving down TO FL. and the drive BACK to Jersey…all the awesome restaurants and rest stops and weirdos. The food was fab, but like I said, ughhhh the weather was not.

Honestly, I’ve never had a really bad vacation. The closest thing I can think of would be the time we lost my mom at the zoo. That’s not a joke, we thought she got killed or something.

Never heard of this toy line, which is strange since I frequent toy conventions.

One of my worst vacations was a hellish trip to Vegas where I lost my luggage and the airline fucked up my hotel since the flight was delayed and I had to spend the night on a the Vegas airport floor.

Anyways, I spent much of the past couple days in a drunken stupor, a swollen, sore stomach, and zero energy.

Grizzly?
I’m thinking more along the lines of “distinguished”.
Or are mustaches the distinguished ones?
I can never remember.

…aaaand someone made a better one .
What next, remakes of the old mego Black Hole toys?

Speaking of holidays, I remember one year (1984, I believe), going to the Boston Children’s Museum. That was the awesomemost!

Worst vacation was to Tanglewood, MA with my folks as a kid. I had food poisoning the whole time and the highly rated hotel we stayed in turned out to be a roadside motel with decor leftover from the 60s. On the plus side though, I got too see John Williams conduct the Boston Pops and Darth Vader and Chewie showed up!

I bought Final Fantasy Tactics A2 today, it is bombastic.
Kids still say bombastic right??
what am I saying, of course they do, I mean theres NO way Im out of touch with the youth of today, right?
……Right???

Worst vacation, hmmm…might have been when I was about 10 and we spent New Year’s at Sequoia National Park in California’s Sierra mountains. Unfortunately I got a nasty case of the flu and spent most of time lying in bed feeling like I was gonna die. Sick vacations are always pretty awful.

Then there was also the time we almost drowned. We used to go river rafting, and back when I was about 13, we went on one river up near Lake Tahoe. However, there’d been a lot of snow that winter, hence a lot of snowmelt, and rivers can get dangerous in those conditions. But we set out anyway-with a really overloaded boat. You can probably guess what happened next; it got caught on a dead tree that had grown on a flooded sandbar. It was literally pressed against it on the side, and frigid water was rushing in. But we eventually managed to push it off and get to shore. Fortunately there was a trail along the river, which just happened to lead back to where we parked. And as soon as we got back to the parking lot, this huge thunderstorm began. We later heard that there were some extremely rough sections further along, and being overloaded, we’d likely have flipped somewhere.

There were some nice moments later on in that vacation, but yeah, it may have been the closest we’ve all come to meetin’ the reaper.

Happy SNT ya’ll !=) I said it in the last thread because I thought that would be it, but turns out I was wrong. Anyway, that’s an awesome find Matt. Getting something that you could sell for a very high price, at that cheap a price is very rare indeed. My worst vacation? I’ll have to think about that one. Iv’e never been on that many vacation in my life and from what I can remember, they were all pretty good. Then again, I MIGHT be blocking out some bad memories. lol. I’ll give it some thought tonight. I must Brawl tonight. Matt get Pikachu ready.

My worst vacation? The time the pilot drove us around the tarmac for half an hour before notifying us that the plane’s windshield was cracked and we really shouldn’t be flying with it.(?) We evacuated the plane and were rescheduled for a flight an 1 1/2 hours later. Than who should turn up but my insane, creepy, and horribly shrill ex-girlfriend. My current girlfriend and I had a very, very uncomfortable one-and-a-half hours.

Ahhh for the days when Matt put his picture in his articles.
That would be a good scavenger hunt for somebody out there: When was the last time Matt put his pic in an article? My guess is sometime in 2005.

Worst vacation: Trip to N.Carolina when Mom got car sick and yaked out the car window due to the mountain roads. My brother and I had to huddle up in the corner to make sure we didn’t touch any of the splash back. It was still there the next day, frozen to the car. Disgusting but true. I am not sure but I think that vacation was cut short.

The other bad one also deals with N.C. (we used to go there every summer). It rained the whole week we were there so we had to watch movies. My dad said, “Hey, let’s watch that new movie BEETLEJUICE. It’s rated PG, I’m sure it will be okay.” Well, it was one of those “I know I am not supposed to see this and my dad is embarassed so let me pretend that I don’t like the movie” kind of things. Due to the F word and whorehouse, it was an awkward vacation moment.

Oh as for the roboforce toys, i’m not positive but I THINK I had some of them. I remember seeing them in stores, but i’m not entirely sure about owning them. Iv’e been thinking about bad vacations I might have had, but nothing comes to mind. Like I said iv’e only went on a small number of vacations and I don’t remember any of them being bad. Some of them could have been a little better, but that doesn’t mean they were bad.

Not really a vacation, but one of the times we went to Busch Gardens, I refused to ride the rides. Now, this wouldn’t have been an issue if I had just said “I don’t want to ride them.” But after the first one I was convinced I wanted to ride a different one. Got to the front of the line…and I lost my nerve.

This happened ALL DAY, people. We were a wreck by the end of that day. It was bad times. I’m such a weird kid, mang.

I think I wrote about this in the Summer ‘92 article, but one of my worst vacation was when my parents and extended family rented a beachhouse in Long Beach Island for what was supposed to be a week-long vacation. My parents tried to quit smoking during this trip and went completely out of their minds, and we had to cut the trip in half after the house was revealed as a two-story nest for drowsy, giant termites.

Nice, I just read about Robo Force in this month’s TOYFARE magazine. Their price guide says the Command Patroller is worth $15 new, or only $4 opened. I figured it would be worth more, but you still got a hell of a deal! I remember having one of the figures as a kid, but didn’t even know what it was at the time.

I honestly can’t think of a Terrible vacation as a whole. There have been moments.

I guess the year I went to San Antonio two week in a row was pretty crappy, at least the second week. First week was choir. Second was band. Or vice versa, I don’t remember. I guess the reason that one sucked is because San Antonio was the fall-back trip. We were supposed to go to California but the administration backed out because of fear of Earthquakes. Or some shit like that.

Hmm…other than that…well, there was the one time in Yellowstone when I had to go to the Bathroom. Bad. So we found a port-a-potty. But there was no running water. And I had to do number 2. So yeah, after going to the bathroom we had to drive for nearly 45 minutes to find a place where I could wash my hands. That was pretty crappy (no pun intended).

I’m sure my parents could tell you lots of stories from when I was 3-6 years old and acted like an asshole on Vacation…

I too have a Busch Gardens tale to tell,
In 89 we went there, and my brother and father we’re on one of the roller coasters when there was a power outage, it happened just after a loop so half the cars were up in the air and half were not.
They we’re in the front so it was cool but they weren’t allowed off until about 20 minutes later, ok for them but really bad for the people stuck vertically.

seel: I bet you had the blue guy with the helicopter spinner on his head. Everyone did.

Never heard of “Robo-Force,” but I commend your mother’s garage sale find. I love yard and garage sales. I ride around my neighborhood every Saturday in the summer on the way back from the local farm market, looking for cool deals. There didn’t appear to be any this weekend (I guess everyone went to the Shore), but last weekend, I found an adorable stuffed, talking Pichu (Pikachu’s “baby” version) that turned out to be fairly rare and pricy online but only cost a dollar at the yard sale.

My worst vacation, hands down, was the time my stepfather took my family to Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, New Jersey. First of all, this was in mid-late August, prime hurricane season, and Hurricane Hugo was supposed to be heading our way. Second, one of my sisters was working and couldn’t come at all. Third, Dad assumed we could just walk into any hotel in the area in the middle of the summer and get rooms. No, we never found any rooms, turning our overnight trip into a day trip. Fourth, when we finally did make it to Great Adventure, Dad left all the maps and information in the car, which meant we had no idea where we were going in the park or what my little brother could ride. Fifth, it was hot as hell, and my other sister and I did nothing but bicker all day long.

That was the last time my mother ever let my stepfather plan a family vacation. When she, Dad, and my brother went to Hershey Park in 2004 and 2005, she planned both trips, from the reservations to what they’d see while they were there. As far as I know, both trips went fine, and I even got fresh chocolate souvenirs.

Well, Matt, you did mention the beach house full of termites, but not the thing about your parents’ trying to quit smoking. Who does that while they’re on vacation? You’re trying to have a good time, but you’re undercutting yourself by making yourself miserable. Anyway, I’ve never had a bad vacation. True, the most I’ve taken are weekend trips, and I haven’t been on a real vacation since 1994. And now that I think about it, that might not be a real vacation either, it was just to visit my grandparents in the Midwest (him in Nebraska, her in Missouri; divorced, of course). If trips to grandparents’ houses don’t count as “real” vacations, then I can’t honestly say that I’ve ever been on vacation, and I’m 23.

I’m a headin to smashyland myself in just a few. Just gotta finish up on MarioKart here.

The worst vacation of my life happened when I was six. For some reason my whole family decided to rent a motel room and stay at Grand Isle for the weekend. Grand Isle is this “beach” right on the gulf. It’s only about 40 minutes away from my house, so I’m not sure why we went there on vacation. Spending time on the sand wasn’t bad, it was mainly the hell hole of a motel we stayed in. We get into the room (which is more like a tiny cabin) and someone immediately tracks dog shit in. Even though the crap was cleaned up, the smell stayed for days. The whole room looked liked it hadn’t been touched since the mid-1960’s, and there was dust on everything to prove it. There was a black and white television set with coat hangers and tin foil on it that caught one channel. Most of the beds pulled down from the wall in the living room/kitchen area. There was a raccoon in the kitchen cabinet.

I really thought I was in the clear when we went to take a dip in the pool late in the evening. I was having fun splashing around until I swam up to the side. Then I noticed what seemed like HUNDREDS of tiny crabs swimming in the pool water. I remember screaming so hysterically that the man who runs the place came out of the main office to see if someone was drowning.

Nice that we got to see an old-school toy article again. I don’t have much to add on the subject of Robo Force.

And I haven’t had too many bad vacations. One was cut short due to mom getting sick, and a trip to florida where my mom, then my dad, and finally myself got sick somehow. The plane ride home sucked for me.

Sorry, Ultraman, I had to go….You’ll have to get your ass kicked by Sugar all by yourself!

(Damn, I guess I need to play more Brawl so I don’t get beaten by that damnable mouse!)

Cameron: The last battle was my favorite. Fear the multi-bullet laser pellet Super Scope.

I can hardly keep up with all of the new blog entries! I love it…My worst vacation had to be when I went to Missouri or Arkansas (can’t remember which state it was THAT BAD) and my uncle thought it’d be a good idea to stay at a KOA cabin. My family is not outdoorsy (is that a word?) so it was awful that we were “camping” and then the fire alarm went off the whole night. Needless to say we found the closest motel and stayed there the rest of the time.

i never had a really bad vacation. Except this one time on a really good one my grandmother passed away. It was kinda weird and we ended up going home a few days early.
I don’t rem,ember this toy at all. but my mother does the ebay thing as well. she goes through phases though. For awhile it was books, then she sold dollar store crap. Now it’s sterling silverware. And the stuff she doesn’t sell, she mails to me.
SNT?!

I remember all of us at summer camp being sent home early during the famous “Floods of 93″ in Iowa.

This wasn’t a vacation per se, but one time on a school field trip I twisted my ankle badly and had to stay home for a few days. At the same time one of my aunts who lived in Minnesota at the time got in a bad car wreck and broke her leg, so she had to be taken care of. So my mom, another aunt and her son, and me had to make an emergency trip there. I’m pretty sure the car broke down along the way. Anyway, I basically sat on my aunt’s couch for a week. It wasn’t totally bad because I missed school, watched alot of old school Comedy Central, and actually saw on “Attack of the Killer Tomatoes” on my uncle’s Laserdisc.

Another thing that happened wasn’t a vacation, but simply an outing last year. It was my aunt’s birthday (another one completely different from the ones mentioned above). We celebrated by having lunch and doing some gambling at a casino. I even doubled my money (20 dollars to 40 dollars, woohoo). Anyway, on the way home we had a flat tire but no way to fix it so we hung out at my aunt’s house until my uncle came home from work and fixed it for us, which took a couple hours. When I finally came home I saw down to surf the web and watch “WWE RAW.” It was the day they did the Chris Benoit “tribute” but we would later find out the truth. Needless to say I was shocked. All of the wrestling websites were temporarilly down, of course. So a great day turned into a crappy one.

Also, one time we were invited to my grandfather’s rented campsite for the day. It just so happened that the night before Princess Diana died. They had no tv there so we had to tell them.

This is way off topic, but does anyone have Final Fantasy III for the DS? I want to do the Wifi side quests and need someone to trade friend codes with.

I don’t know about that Cameron T. I recall being the victor in my battles with Matt last time.

Most of them anyway.

Just finished fighting Juli and Toni in brawl a minute ago. Anybody else up for a fight. Come on Matt surely your willing to battle. =)

Bad vacations? Well there was that time in India when I had to spend about 24 hours straight in the bathroom due to certain digestive imperatives, which you can all imagine perfectly well. If you can’t then maybe this word will help you out: amoebas. I did at least get to drink all the Fanta I wanted. They have green apple Fanta in India, and it is good.

worst vaykay ever? When I took my whole family, by car, to Wally World - oh the misadventures we found ourselves on… The worst part was when we finally got there, it was closed.

When I was in the military, I took a long weekend and met the girl I was dating in Paduka, KY. Turns out Paduka had a quilt museum and Billy Ray Cyruss was playing at the Holiday Inn. We did both. It looked a lot better on the brochure.

When I firt saw this post I thought it was Robo Tech and I got really excited. I don’t know much about Robo Force…..until now!

Glad to see I’m not the only one that can’t recall Robo Force. I’m not sure I ever even saw these in stores back in the day - then again, if it wasn’t stamped with GI Joe, Transformers, or He-Man on the front (or looked similar to one of the above) then it probably got overlooked. Any chance we could get a Captain Power post?

Bad vacation - none that I can think of off hand. However, I do remember one summer camp in Idaho. As soon as we got there a huge hail storm (some golf ball sized or larger) hit the camp. Since we didn’t have anything set up at the time, most of the troop had to hide out in the latrine station - which smelled out the wazoo. Suffice it to say that 10 - 12 people camped out in the latrine waiting for the hail to stop is not a good way to start out a week of camping. After that though, everything went really well. Heck, I even found the Batman issue where Bane breaks his back on the trip home from camp at one of the gas stations we stopped at. At the time, that was very big stuff in the comic world and I was elated to be able to add the issue to my collection.

Happy SNT. We went out for Barry’s Pizza because we had a coupon. Money’s tight. Then we cruised around for a bit, but not too long becuase gas is $4 a gallon. I can’t wait to be out of school cause being broke sucks.

“I’m suing you because my precious snowflake licked the suction cup of his Robo Force 3000 robot, which had been lying outside in the sand box for 6 months, and he got horribly sick and we had to take him to the hospital. HOW can you market such a toy to INNOCENT CHILDREN!!! Blah Blah Blah”

Worst vacation: 1986, age 13, Disneyworld.
The adults present refused to do anything or go anwhere that didn’t involve alcohol.
Example-
Me: Hey dad, can we ride Space Mountain?
Dad: No, they don’t serve alcohol in there.

I spent most of the vacation sitting in bars, restaurants, or shows, staring wistfully at guidebooks and brochures of the parks while everyone got drunk. Fun.

AWESOME brawlin with ya’ll as usual! ESPECIALLY with you Matt ! =D My two favs were the one that went forever with you as luigi and I FINALLY got ya at the bottom, and the one where I finished you off with Samus ULTRA beam. As always yur a VERY FUN opponent !

To find it Matt just look in the address book of the main menu. Just incase you didn’t know. =)

I survived the night without a fight; for those that saw my frustrated post from the last entry (wasn’t trying to upset you Ultraman, but thanks for feeling my pain) I had to leave soon after I posted here because I was gonna have to say something if I didn’t. And the funny thing is where I went turned out to be an awesome time where I met a few cool people, made a new friend, and hung out with old ones.

As for bad vacations: Trip to Panama City, FL one summer where I took a friend and he ran off to hang out with these trashy looking girls instead of me. I was a dorky kid - go figure - but he was a ‘player’ if I ever knew one, and it pissed me off (we were also still young at the time). It got so bad we had a fist fight on the beach and my dad brought us home early.

And my San Diego trip in a few weeks is starting off rough: the airline screwed up my flight, so I had to pay a service fee to get another one and prove that I booked the flight correctly and they made the mistake. They said they would reinburse me once I can prove their mistake; kiss that money goodbye….

Bad vacations hmm…I guess the one that comes to mind first was a trip with a few friends down Route 66. Seems like a good idea right? Have some road trip giggles while cruising the historic highway, makes for a solid life experience. Well, if by “solid” you mean terrible and disgusting, then you’re dead on. Route 66 is essentially a collection of run-down shitholes that have been bypassed for good reason.
The only hotel we booked in advance was the Best Western “Pony Soldier”. Bitch had an indoor pool, good rates, AND a game room. Scratch that, the brochure led us to believe it had an indoor pool and a game room. Turned out the price per night wasn’t good, it was just downright fair. The indoor “pool” looked like it would have been a blast 20 years ago, now housing garbage and old furniture behind its impossibly yellowed windows. The “game room” was a more accurate description that we’d guessed. It had 1 game, an air hockey table that would’ve saved the whole place had there been a puck. Damn. This shit sucked. Our beds weren’t even made.
This single hotel is a good representation of the western Route 66 experience. It’s like farting in an elevator. Seems fun until you’re there.

Man I am WIDE awake right now ! I think i’ll put on a flick and hang out with any ya’ll still up for SNT. =)

I had a rough vacation experience back in 2001 when a very close female friend of mine invited me to join in her family’s annual summer getaway to Holden Beach, NC. Normally, a trip to the beach is the bee’s knees in my book, but, unfortunately for me, I found myself — as it applied to this particular female friend — in the infamous and unenviable “tortured platonic male friend who wants to escalate the relationship to a new romantic plateau but fears irrevocably queering the existing friendship” position. I spent that entire week in a beach house with a chick for whom I totally had the hots (who spent the majority of the time in a skimpy blue bikini, no less) while wrestling with the uncertainty of whether or not I should profess my true feelings to her. Mind you, I shared a very solid and enjoyable friendship with this girl, and I couldn’t decide whether or not it was worth risking the continuation of that friendship for the sake of pursuing a potentially more gratifying romantic relationship. The trip was utter hell, and I ultimately chose not to divulge my true feelings while at the beach. I finally did divulge those feelings a few weeks after returning home from vacation, and the girl promptly and unceremoniously dropped me like a bad habit. She chose not to pursue a romantic relationship with me and altogether abandoned our existing friendship. Live and learn, I guess…

Worst vacation… well the year the government shut down, 95 or so, we had planned to go to Washington. The shut down killed those plans, so we turned tail and went to Boston instead.

My worst vacation would have to be the trip to Las Vegas my family and I took during Labor Day weekend 2001. Five people were crammed into a tiny little car which gets pretty uncomfortable about two hours into a ten hour drive. When we finally got there, my aunt had booked us into a motel that was practically in the ghetto; it made the Bates Motel look like a palace. No bus or cab wanted to drive us back from the Strip. Then my mom got a terrible sinus infection probably from breathing in what ever was growing on those rancid pillows. One good thing to come out of it was, I won about $800 playing the slots.

it snowed here yesterday. the best holiday i ever had was one where i got a 7-11 slurpee. (!)

I’m still up! My stimulus check comes this week! ! ! PS3 here I come! Woooah BUNDY!!! Just randomly thought about Married with children. Yeah Matt looks HOT in the Steel Fortress pic.

Never heard of Robo Force, probably not released in NZ.
Worst vacation: staying three days at a resort on the main island of Fiji, heavy heavy rain the entire time we were there. Not doing that again, outer islands all the way!

For all those who haven’t heard/seen of Robo Force, a recent ToyFare (I think the new issue) has a good article on the little known toys. Oddly enough, when I say the article I thought Matt wrote it.

The line never took of because they were released around the same time as the G1 Transformers. Kids looked at both and said “Car that turns into robot far cooler than robot with suction cup ass.” The rest is history of fashion…

You have convinced me to take the wife garage sailing today. It’s huge around here, so we’re bound to find enough crap packed with nostalgia to satisfy the two of us.

Still my favorite garage sale find of all time: a few months ago I snagged an unopened box of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cereal from 1990, still wrapped in cellophane with the bowl attached…for one dollar!

The Roboforce vehichle looks like a gardening tool. As always, great post matt, is it sad that I am already excited for the Christmas 2008 blowout post?!?!

Growing up our family rarely went many places and never more than a day trip thing, so I don’t have many contenders for the “worst vacation.”

However I recall when I was about 7 or 8 (about 1987) we went to King’s Island (before it was Paramount’s King’s Island) near Cincinnati. Since we live near Columbus this 2 hourish drive was a lengthy and grueling journey for my Dad who never drove further than driving to work.

Whichever way you could take to make this drive take longer than it does, he did, and it ended up being about a 3 hour drive. It wasn’t till I grew up and drove to Cincy myself I realized it doesn’t take that long.

Firstly we went on my birthday which is the end of July, and I believe this may have been the hottest day of the year. My parents also decreed I must wear my long hair down and not in a ponytail that day because it was a special day! And those of you with long hair know how fantastic this is on a 100º F day. After having what I imagine was heat exhaustion a few times because my Dad was being too cheap to buy beverages, Mom finally bummed a rubber band off some lady to pull back my sweaty, dark and efficient at heat absorbing hair.

My younger brother (5 at the time) also managed to cry on the majority of rides we went on, so even the ones that were fun were sullied by having to sit next to a sobbing 5 year old. The ones that were NOT fun were mainly sullied by the fact Dad forced us to ride them as he watched from the sidelines and busted a gut laughing at us.

Also, once upon a time I was a fan of the Giant Slide that you ride the potato sack-esque thing on. This was until this particular trip whereupon my hand scraped the edge of the grooves in the slide (to keep you on track) and ripped open a fresh gory wound, also damning my interest in Giant Slides to an early grave.

Then for lunch we stopped at a pizza place in the park and I recall lifting the steamy hot piece of pizza up, and the hot melty topping slid down the pizza and fell on my face with scalding displeasure.

So here it is 20 years later and I can still remember that trip as clear as day. On the plus side I got to watch my brother ride a giant mechanical pig while I rode a mechanical panda bear, and we went on a Smurf boat ride the best part of which it was cool and refreshing inside. Also, air-conditioned wildlife viewing monorail.

Bad vacations? I can’t think of any in particular, but I know we went on some family vacations, with the aunts and uncles and cousins (all of whom are rednecks) and they got on my friggin’ nerves.

Sorry I missed the SNT…I fell asleep to the sweet sounds of the end The Empire Strikes Back and the beginning of First Blood (Brain Dennehy is such an asshole!) on SPike TV. Unfortunately I also had to contend with the ugly sounds of Spike promoting their first showing of Joe Dirt. As if people didn’t have enough opportunities to see it when Comedy Central showed it every other day…

Worst vacations, eh? Well…I’ve never been on an actual vacation before. Some crappy road trips, and trips to amusement parks (which I hate, by the way). That’s pretty much it. One of these fucking days I want a real vacation dammit.

Oh yeah, I missed SNT. The fiance had a friend over and since we don’t have a router or anything, I had no internets since they were using it. I spent about three hours listening to anime music and playing Mahjong.

Living in a tourist town, my dad decided to save money one year by staying home and doing the touristy things nearby. That lasted a couple of days, but then he felt like we were missing a great opportunity to catch up on all the things around the house that we never have time to do, and the vacation turned into a cleaning fest (or, more accurately, a try-to-find-ways-to-avoid-cleaning fest.)

I totally LOVED the Heart Beeps review that was hidden in your Steel Fortress article. ALWAYS wanted to see that film! Fun Fact! There was a rumor going around, that the latex and chemicals used in Andy’s costume made him get the lung cancer he died of!

The world ended. I was cloned. Original Rev. BIOU is currently enjoying a thorough probing on the pleasure saucers. Rev. BIOU v. 2.0 is here, revelling in summer megaparty. How I’ve missed you all. There are no words to describe it.

my worst “vacation” ever probably was camping with my ex-husband and his extended family. all they ever did was argue and talk about how much better they were than everyone else. pure white trash folks.

REV BIOU: I don’t know if I like the idea of you being a clone. You either turn out evil and want to kill everyone and take over the world, or you want to permanenly replace the original. Plus clones made Spider-Man’s life hell in the comic.

At least you’re not a symbiote, a shape-shifter, or an evil android from the future.

Believe it, or disbelieve it: I won a big boss award yesterday. I got a blue ribbon. Also, “Most Adorable”. My fuckin heart melted for sure I can tell you.

I am now on a serious detox from good food and hardcore slack. I need to get back into a strict lifestyle regimen to keep my mind from being so “limber”. The photos I brought home indicate that I had a pretty good time.

Mandy-OMG when I was a kid my familty moved to Florida for about one month. Florida is bullshit.

Matt-Don’t be too surprised that someone would steal those guns. Today at Kmart there was this dude in his twenties,all thugged out,stealing the PlayDoh can out of a Playdoh Fun Factory box. I swear to God.

JLAJRC- What does your name stand for? I used to think it was Justice League of America Green Lantern Corps,but then I realised I’m an idiot. There’s a guy on another board I go to named like “GLCHal69″ or somesuch and I got you two mixed up.

Nicky: You’re right on the Justice League of America. JRC are simply my initials.

Well I realize that this is old now and no one is reading anymore so I’ll simply say I love the robo force stories because I had them and loved them.

I too realize this thread is old, but for the sake of people who suck like me and totally forgot about the Megaparty and are going back through entries they missed, I’ll post my worst vacation story. I started out typing the whole ordeal in sordid detail, but it was getting super long so I’ll shorten it up.

Picture it: August of 2005. Warped Tour in Randall’s Island, NY. 110-degree heat. My then-boyfriend gave me the tickets as a present for my birthday, which was just a few days after the show. Only band I wanted to see cancelled just before the show because the lead singer had cancer. I got heat exhaustion after only about half an hour there and we spent the entire day at the hospital. I had no health insurance because I had just started a new job. The nurse forgot to clamp my IV when it was unhooked so I could use the bathroom, and I bled all over the bathroom and freaked the hell out. Also realized on the ride home that I had poison ivy for the first time in my life, all over my legs and especially on my inner thighs. When I got home, my grandfather who was battling cancer was admitted to the hospital, having completely lost all sense of reality. He stayed there for a week, through my birthday (we didn’t even have cake, which he would have hated as we always had huge celebrations for birthdays), and that proved to be the last week of his life. That month was just the gift that kept on shitting directly on my face.

I love it when people post on more than the most recent entry. :) It makes me feel like we have a back room or something.

We do. Just tell the doorman “Walt sent me” and you can get riiiight in. Well, you might want to give him a banana…

Lord have mercy… that was a ghastly story, Nicole. My sympathies for the loss of your grandpa and for August 2005’s relentless defecation upon you…lousy, dick-faced month that it was.

Hang on a second…I have to toss a gruff, discouraged private detective seeking personal redemption who looks a hell of a lot like Mario out of this blog entry because he had the nerve to ask me “Who are you calling a chump, chimp?” We can’t tolerate wiseasses like that around here, Nicole…even if they do look like Mario.

Hell, the only proper vacation I ever went on was gawd awful. My dad worked ALL the time but his boss at the time gave him free hotel passes for a new “nice” place that was opening in New Orleans. This was around 1991?

Of course a few weeks prior he stabbed a knife in his knee while sharpening some fishing tools (it was a filet knife) and was on crutches. My mom was in a wheelchair from asthma/thyroid problems and couldn’t walk far without passing out and so forth. Despite these setbacks… THEY WERE GOING TO NEW ORLEANS.

It was June or July, just a few weeks before their big Aquarium of the Americas opened (which was the whole purpose of going). The hotel room was extremely nice, but I had problems breathing because of all the “new” paint, furniture and the strong airfreshners put up to “hide” it all. These things are DEATHLY for those who have allergies. Hades-sent air freshners. GRRR.

It was soooo hot and they decided the ZOO was the thing to do. I was excited til we got there. I was like… 9 or 10 and had to push my mom in the wheelchair while my dad hopped along. It was horrid. Then I got sunburned because I wasn’t used to direct heat for so long. Don’t remember much about the rest of the trip.

I applaud my parents for trying not to disappoint me, but it was just too much for everyone involved. Luckily we all survived to tell the tale though it was bad enough that Dad was never interested in going anywhere that required more than a two hour drive ever again (it was about 5-6 to NO).

Thanks for the sympathies, The Yeti. Be careful throwing those wiseass detectives around, though…they have a tendency of sneaking back in through the convieniently-left-open window.

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