Latchkey Nostalgia: Voltron, Robotech, Transformers, and the Bionic Six were our babysitters

I'm spending the week with my folks in LA and my brother, "The Natural" or "Nat", who also lives in LA, came home for dinner tonight. We're always looking for things for the Cha to play with here and I thought, "Why not raid Nat's old toy box?" This turned out to be genius because his toy box is the receptacle for all great boy toys ca. 1985. He has GoBots. He has Transformers. He has the lions that form arms and body. Form feet and legs. And I'll form the head. Voltron, they call him. The Cha loved Nat's Transformers, so much so that he brought Red Alert*, the Autobot Lamborghini, to bed with him. After dinner, we youtubed some of the cartoons and I am shocked by a) how many cartoons we watched as children b) how derivative they are of each other and c) how crazy violent they are. I know now that they've done the Transformers movie that lots of kids (and 25-35 yr. old men) are reacquainted with this stuff, but I personally have not seen any of this footage since I was 10.

*Editor's note: not to be confused with Sideswipe or Sunstreak, the other Autobot Lamborghinis---Rocky.

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Now mind you, we grew up in LA. 75 degrees almost every day. We had the Pacific Ocean at our feet, quarries and trails beckoned just over the hills. And both of us remember vividly sitting in front of the television, watching these shows. Nat really, really loved them, and would watch them 2 feet from the TV set, while I sort of just did my homework at the kitchen table and remember certain fleeting details about each one. It doesn't seem right that our childhood should be so touchpointed (an ideated word) on this stuff. Both of us turned out relatively okay. Nat is actually quite an outdoorsy, active type of guy and I learned to socialize with people, hm, in college probably, so this didn't set me back for the rest of my life, but still...no TV for the Cha.

Nat's favorites and his commentary on each show:
Transformers. Best thing: Waiting for your toy to show up on the show. Apparently, not everyone could get Megatron or Optimus Prime because they were expensive and scarce, but you could get Sideswipe for $10 and then eagerly wait for him to show up on the show and know it was your toy. Most character depth. Longest running show. Still remember how I could not find a yellow Bumblebee or the Toyota minivan Ironhide.

(Nat actually said that watching this footage was like the scene in "Ratatouille" where the critic tastes said dish and is instantly transported back to his childhood heart and mind.)

Bionic Six. Asian kid in the family. Could do bad ass stuff.

Robotech. Took every cartoon to another level.

Voltron. Remember the early episodes so they could find the damn keys? 4 episodes before you saw the whole robot (Catjjy note: they show the robot being formed in the opening title sequence but whatever).

There is a subset of these shows where humans are part animal: Thundercats and Silverhawks. I never liked these but Nat did.

P.S. Transformers and Robotech are both shows about robots trying to find an alternative energy source after they've exhausted their native ones. I wonder if they considered methane.