Daniel85

Wow, for once a current commercial I enjoy is actually on YouTube! (I know the blog is supposed to be on hiatus, but posting a random vid doesn’t really count, does it?)

Check out the funky top-loading VCR!

In addition to just being a plain cool commercial, it’s also of interest to me as it’s relevant to some research I was doing last semester about television in the 1950s, and the way Walt Disney (or his studio, I should say) presented a view of history and progress as inseparable from and propelled by consumer technology. Here’s one example.

In other news, I’m off to Seattle on Friday.

I’m thinking of finally buying an mp3 player, cos I’ve already listened to all the (good) albums Qantas has loaded on their entertainment console thing numerous times on previous trips. Gonna pack it with lots of They Might Be Giants and 80s film scores (Giorgio Moroder FTW!).

I just did a quick search of what movies they have playing this month. There’s not much on offer. They have a few movies that I was vaguely interested in seeing, but not beyond the actually-doing-it threshold, such as Cloverfield, 10,000 BC, or even The Mist (probably would never have considered seeing it, but Matt from X-Entertainment gave it a pretty good review, and his taste is always impeccable). I could always fall back on Casablanca, too. Or I could just hope that they’ve updated the same 3 episodes of The Office they always have, or even added some Flight of the Conchords… If only they offered Who’s The Boss, Family Ties, or ALF!

I always laugh whenever I see this ad. It’s for TSR’s Dungeon game, a board game based on the fantasy tropes of D&D.

There is just something so awkward about the framing of the picture. It looks like the jocks are playing the game just to humour the little geeky kid… like they’re about to kick his ass or something. And the geek knows it, too:

“That’s a twenty, gents. Looks like Kragamor The Destroyer wins the day again, heh, heh.”

“Your ass is grass, Poindexter!”
“Yeah, when we get back from shopping for more geometric-print sweaters, you are DONE!”

BONUS: Clip from the final episode of Freaks and Geeks, where the AV Club invites bad-ass Daniel to join their D&D campaign.

Just kidding!

I like how the kids have Indy and Toht refer to that one figure as “Cairo Swordsman” as if that’s his actual name.

And the shot with the mother setting a picnic table in the background is a nice touch. Very thoughtful for a standard 30-second “these kids are playing with our toys, you should too” 80s toy commercial.

Pele knows what he’s talking about. Am I right? Am I right?!

I couldn’t find any Gobbledok ads on YouTube, so I uploaded one myself.

Tell me that ad didn’t terrify you as a kid. I always thought there was just one Gobbledok, but the voiceover implies that there are hundreds of them, everywhere, lurking behind couches across Australia!

I still won’t touch Smith’s products due to unpleasant Gobbledok associations. There was a life-size cardboard cutout of the Gobbledok in the spare room at my grandparents house. I had to sleep there. Yyyyeaaahhh…

Hey, remember Lites?! Whatever happened to them? And Ruffles! Oh, my god, Ruffles! I need a life. 

I know the Gobbledok is supposed to be cute, but he just looks like some bizarre hybrid of an Ewok and a Firey from Labyrinth (thanks to Laura for that spot-on comparison). He also reminds me of the creepy aliens from that early 90s Aussie kids’ show, The Miraculous Mellops. I’m probably the only person who remembers that show, so I don’t know why I’m bothering to reference it.

Now that Go-Lo has the use of Bandana Kid, they’ve wasted no time reinventing his image for the Zoomin’ Zeros (like the Roaring Twenties, but with iPods).

They’ve done away with the beer-gut emphasising black t-shirt in favour of a hip tank-top, and even introduced a love interest to the Bandana Kid Universe. That’s bullshit, man. Bandana Kid is never tied down to one woman.

Probably the biggest crime committed against Bandana Kid’s image should be readily apparent to any Bandana Kid fan: the removal of the bandana.

Turns out he has a normal head. So much for all our predictions of BK’s looking like some kinda hybrid of human and dinosaur (pachycephalosaurus.. say it with me… pachycephalosaurus) with a grossly deformed forehead, like in that Whoopi Goldberg movie. No, not Made In America; I mean Theodore Rex. Little Ted Danson humour for ya there…

How could a discount chain that gave us something as awesome as the giant Olmec Santa head do this to Bandana Kid?!

Kinda.

Reader Vic alerted me to a sighting of Bandana Kid in the latest Go-Lo catalogue. I was skeptical at first, seeing as Bandana Kid has heretofore only appeared in catalogues for that other great discount chain, The Warehouse, but it turns out ol’ Vic was right: 

The image used is actually the ‘zactly the same as one from a previous Warehouse catalogue, which is kinda weird. I dunno if The Warehouse and Go-Lo are owned by the same parent company, or if maybe The Warehouse traded Bandana Kid to Go-Lo like some albino Muggsy Bogues. Maybe next season Bandana Kid will be traded to The Reject Shop! With that big ‘Thumbs Down’ logo and Bandana Kid, Team Reject Shop will be UNSTOPPABLE!

And the Kid’s also back in the latest Warehouse catalogue, which makes me unsure where his loyalties lie. I’m pretty sure the shield/axe pic is a reprint, but the cutlass one is all-new and all-gold. What a dashing swashbuckler our boy makes!

Why would they randomly capitalise the word ‘knight’? They’re either illiterate, or this is a reference to Bandana Kid’s Daniel85-led superstardom. Be a Knight… B.. K… Bandana Kid? You decide.

So Bandana Kid is now in two national catalogues. I guess it won’t be long before we see him on TV, billboards, perhaps even… the silver screen?

New catalogue day has been kinda empty ever since Bandana Kid’s untimely passing, but there are still many things to be mocked in these little pamphlets of idiocy, and so we press on, extracting what marrow we can from the bones of life, day by day. Ashes to ashes and all that.

Take this guy for instance. Notice how one of his arms is more pumped to the max than the other? He’s noticed it too, and can’t stop looking at it! I guess that’s the arm he uses to masturbate to the very thought of himself.

And now, just in time for Christmas, the Orgasm Poolchair!

This ‘remote control flying saucer’ in the Go-Lo catalogue is something I would’ve gone nuts for as a kid, and then been infinitely disappointed when it didn’t work at all. Seriously, does this thing look like it can fly to you?

The remote control does look kinda like a cop’s radar gun, though, so maybe I’ll buy it just to go stand on the highway freaking people out.

Our mailbox contained a hefty sheaf of Christmas catalogues this morning. (Enough that if they’d been delivered to our doorstep there would’ve been an audible thud.) Naturally I ignored the flash of the Target catalogue and the style of the Myer catalogue, going straight for the crappiness of the Warehouse catalogue and hoping for some Bandana Kid.

Nothing. No bandana in sight.

It’s probably just that my theory about all his pics being taken on the same day was right, and they’ve run them all now. I think we’d all like to believe, though, that this brave soul has passed on to a greater place. A place full of eyepatches and battle-axes and plastic AK-47s.

So no Bandana Kid pics, but here’s one of a decidedly creepy Santa from the same catalogue that broke a nation’s heart:

Bandana Kid would’ve been perfect for the role. He had a bigger belly than this guy, at least.

Survey for ex-GHS types: Dr Edward Reilly- Santa Claus?

Every day I make the hopeful trek to my mailbox, in wide-eyed anticipation of another Warehouse catalogue with more ‘Bandana Kid’ fun.

I especially needed the hilarity yesterday, when my Internet connection (and phone) were down due to AAPT’s crappy policy of giving you a 24-hour warning to pay your bill, and then proceeding to cut off your services three minutes later. Add to that the fact that I almost sliced my left index finger off and burned three fingers on my right hand at work, and yesterday was a pretty shitty day. Not even the unseasonal hailstorm could cheer me up, and I’d usually be out dancing in it like a pagan.

Here’s BK’s (we’re calling him that now?) latest:

I’m beginning to think, from his always wearing the same clothes, that they just snapped all of the photos in one session, and have been using them ever since. Or maybe he’s just po’, and these are his only clothes.

In any case, this week’s BK instalment is a bit disappointing. There’s none of the awesome pirate histrionics of last week, just some uninspired posing with plastic weapons. We’ve seen what you can do, Bandana Kid! Don’t waste your talent!