Robot Claw – Page 82 – “Life In The So-Called Space Age”

Golden Stamp Books

March 14, 2024

Some months ago I purchased this for only $3.50 at a local antique store:

This was quite a find, not only because it’s Australian, but because I owned this exact book in my youth!

It’s a picture book of reptiles that came with a sheet of gummed stamps. The lucky owner would separate the stamps and stick them into each entry like they were putting a postage stamp on a postcard. The stamps in my copy have been stuck, but the back cover shows what the unused sheets would have looked like:

And here’s the charming instructions for the reader:

The book is 48 pages long, almost all of which are dedicated to a single animal with a picture and several interesting paragraphs. As a child I would have loved this. All the famous and well-known reptiles are included, like crocodiles, goannas and this old favourite:

But the true wonder of this book is that it also includes many lesser known – and possibly even nigh-unknown – beasts such as the Tryon Gecko, Master’s Snake and the good old Scrub Mullet:

I can vividly remember in the schoolyard, when my lesser-educated peers were yapping on about crocodiles and frilled lizards and I started dropping facts about Curl Snakes, Dtella Geckos and Krefft’s Tortoises! Immediately they recognized a master herpetologist in their midst, and rightly admired me for my knowledge 🙂

This book was first published in 1973, but I would have of course got it years later. I had other titles as well. I don’t remember exactly which ones, but I believe I had at least a sea life one and one about fossils or minerals. A quick search online reveals that many titles in the series were printed well into the 1980s. Here’s a selection:

The Golden Stamp Book series was popular not just in Oz but also in the USA and England, and no doubt other countries as well. Educational, fun, and lovely to look at: these were great books to have when we were kids 🙂

Star Destroyer

March 10, 2024

Yesterday I made this Star Destroyer:

It’s a cardboard model kit, and only cost $20. The reviews were good and I was looking forward to seeing what it looked like assembled.

First impressions are excellent. A 30 page manual, 16 ‘runners’ with over 200 pieces printed on thick card that punched out easily. It even comes with glue that the manual says is only required if the connections were loose.

The print detail was excellent, and the pieces are clearly marked making assembly – at least initially – fairly easy. I could have done without punching out the hundreds of tiny slots though!

It’s a massive model, and very sturdy. Assembly up until the point in the above pic wasn’t too difficult, but after this things changed a lot. Putting the main hull pieces onto the superstructure was an exercise in frustration, since it was extremely difficult getting the tabs lined up.

The hinged pieces I think could have been better designed as well. Far too often the print separated from the backing revealing the cardboard as seen above. I probably could have fixed these easily with a bit of glue, but I didn’t care enough.

The spherical parts were almost impossible to correctly assemble. The design of these overall was dubious, and they were very loose even when I attempted to glue them. In the end I just left them as you see above.

The whole kit took me about 4 hours, and here’s the finished model:

At first glance it looks great, and as I said with a bit of extra work it could have been near perfect. I think this is a kit that shouldn’t be rushed (which I did), and would look very nice if every part was assembled with great care. That said it’s almost too big: where would one display this?!

I found it fit very nicely – after some rigorous disassembly – in the recycling bin 🙂

Overall I’ll give this a thumbs up despite the epilogue above, since I think the design is fundamentally strong and because I have another by the same company that I have high hopes for…

WcDonalds

March 9, 2024

Watch enough anime or read enough manga and you’ll eventually come upon a scene where the characters eat at a fast food joint often called WcDonalds:

The almost-but-not-quite name of these restaurants is of course to avoid copyright, while telling viewers that they’re eating at McDonalds. It’s become somewhat of a trope these days, and apparently a version of WcDonalds appears in over 60 manga or anime series.

McDonald’s itself has embraced anime for several Japanese TV commercials, and of course these use the real name of the restaurant:

But now McDonalds has gone one step further, and actually embraced the WcDonalds name. Stores in America are right now participating in a month-long WcDonalds event where much of the food packaging and in-store branding (posters, ordering kiosks, even uniforms) now display a large yellow W in place of the familiar M:

Here’s all four sides of the bag you get when you order takeout during the event:

There’s a website (WcDonalds.com) where you can read manga and watch anime based around the characters on the bags. You need the QR code from the bag to unlock these, so here it is:

The manga and anime are cute enough for corporate advertising, but predictably tame. Here’s a panel from the latest one about two teenagers falling in love while sharing WcDonalds:

Disappointingly, the event is limited to branding and the manga/anime. There’s no burgers, toys, or anything to collect. Surely they could have made a ‘Big Wac’ or something? The only actual menu item that is limited to the event is this nugget sauce, which I’m told isn’t fantastic:

A true crime is the lack of any Ronald WcDonald character. I know they’ve turned their back on the world’s favourite clown but surely his bizarro-world brother could have made a triumphant return just for this?

This event is USA-only now but will apparently happen in 30 other countries as well. While they’ve obviously put a lot of effort into it (an actual WcDonalds store is opening for a limited time in LA!) I feel there’s potential for even more. Let’s hope it’s a success and we see Super Saiyan WcDonalds in the future!