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Go Figure Action Figures
12 Plays3 years ago
Salman soliloquizes on gruesome movies, action figures and his love for the alpha.
Catch Salman at live shows by following him on instagram to see all upcoming dates - @salmanzq
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Transcript
Aman's Secret Bet Success
00:00:05
Speaker
Hey, everyone, it's Aman from Reishi, and you're listening to the Yes, Bad Brad Podcast.
00:00:09
Speaker
What's up?
00:00:10
Speaker
How's it going?
00:00:11
Speaker
Have you had a great week?
00:00:12
Speaker
I've been a little bit off the radar for the last few days because I've been so busy with good stuff, all good stuff.
00:00:20
Speaker
And I'm hoping you've had the same kind of...
00:00:23
Speaker
great week where you're supporting a team and they're really close the games right on the line and and and then they pull through and the win and you're so delighted about it because you actually secretly had put in all your savings into betting that they will win this match without telling your spouse or anybody else and you were worried also because your job was on the line
00:00:48
Speaker
But it's all paid through.
00:00:50
Speaker
And now you have enough money to cover, not just cover up your savings, but double it up and retire and not worry about your job.
00:00:58
Speaker
And also pay for your kid's school fee, which was due.
00:01:02
Speaker
But you, again, hadn't really dealt with the problem because you like to hide your head under the sand.
00:01:08
Speaker
And it's all worked out.
00:01:10
Speaker
It's all worked out.
00:01:11
Speaker
I hope you have a week, you have had a week
00:01:15
Speaker
where you've had that great feeling going through your body throughout the whole week.
00:01:20
Speaker
Although, I don't know if that kind of emotional roller coaster is good for your heart.
00:01:26
Speaker
But we'll deal with that later, right?
00:01:28
Speaker
All right.
00:01:29
Speaker
So what is going on with you guys?
Remembering 'Fresh' on Disney+
00:01:32
Speaker
I've been keeping myself busy with important things like TV shows and movies.
00:01:38
Speaker
And I just watched a film last night that's on Disney+.
00:01:45
Speaker
Yes, it's on Disney+.
00:01:46
Speaker
It's called, oh, I'm forgetting the name now, but you'll know it's one of these new releases.
00:01:56
Speaker
And the tagline got me.
00:01:58
Speaker
And it's basically this guy, this girl who is, you know, dating around, has a shitty dating life, and then finds the perfect guy only for it to turn into this really weird.
00:02:15
Speaker
I don't want to reveal it, but there's no point if I don't know the movie, right?
00:02:21
Speaker
Now you guys are just going, what is he talking about?
00:02:24
Speaker
So I do have to somehow find the name.
00:02:27
Speaker
How do I find the name now?
00:02:29
Speaker
Because...
00:02:30
Speaker
For me to search it, I'd have to know.
00:02:33
Speaker
All right.
00:02:34
Speaker
I don't know.
00:02:34
Speaker
What were the new movies on?
00:02:35
Speaker
All right.
00:02:36
Speaker
Fresh.
00:02:37
Speaker
That's what it's called.
00:02:38
Speaker
It's called Fresh.
00:02:39
Speaker
All right.
00:02:40
Speaker
And it's pretty dark.
00:02:43
Speaker
It's like a black comedy, but like the black is dressed really high.
00:02:49
Speaker
Like it's when I say it's dark.
00:02:53
Speaker
It's good, though, at the end.
00:02:56
Speaker
Like, yeah.
00:02:58
Speaker
Overall, it was a good film.
00:02:59
Speaker
It was just a very shocking kind of thing and weird.
00:03:02
Speaker
It reminded me of this other movie my wife and I watch on Netflix.
00:03:05
Speaker
You guys might have seen it.
00:03:06
Speaker
It was about this violinist who attacks another young prodigy.
00:03:16
Speaker
she maims her and then the real reason comes out later again really weird dark kind of stuff in that film as well anyway these two if you're into that kind of stuff like dark stuff I find that scary with my wife because I'm like watching it
00:03:32
Speaker
And I kind of, you know, these Saw type, it's not as gruesome as Saw and whatever, but those kind of films made me go, oh, oh my God, I don't think I can watch this.
00:03:41
Speaker
This is so gruesome.
00:03:43
Speaker
I normally like thrillers, but this is getting really sickening.
00:03:46
Speaker
And my wife's also like, you know, sitting there going, yeah, this is terrible.
00:03:50
Speaker
It's sick.
00:03:51
Speaker
Let me see what happens.
00:03:52
Speaker
Oh, I want to know how he does it.
00:03:55
Speaker
There's that little difference with how I react and she reacts and it makes me slightly worried why she's interested in the procedure of it all.
00:04:05
Speaker
And she, I think the two of us react to disasters in two different ways.
00:04:10
Speaker
I have to turn my eyes away.
00:04:13
Speaker
So I'm, I'm the head in the sand kind of guy.
00:04:17
Speaker
And she is fixated on the oncoming train and just going, this is horrible.
00:04:24
Speaker
This,
00:04:25
Speaker
Like, I think that's how we both look at things.
00:04:29
Speaker
And that's how we watch these thriller horror films.
00:04:32
Speaker
She'll catch me like in, I'm one of those people, right?
00:04:35
Speaker
Like if I'm in the cinema and I can't fast forward stuff and there's these, what really scares me are like these thriller aspects of films where a chase is happening or I know someone's like behind the door and I'm like, no, don't do it.
00:04:49
Speaker
Run, go.
00:04:50
Speaker
What are you doing?
00:04:51
Speaker
Why are you doing that?
00:04:51
Speaker
Why are you going down that stair?
00:04:54
Speaker
And I hate watching these dumb people in films, man.
00:04:57
Speaker
They're just too stressful, right?
00:04:59
Speaker
Like, why would you do that?
00:05:00
Speaker
And so I'm always, like, trying to look away and shit.
00:05:03
Speaker
And in the cinema, I will try to, like, hide or pretend I have to look at my phone.
00:05:09
Speaker
Thank God for mobile phones now.
00:05:12
Speaker
Or just look on the side and stuff.
00:05:13
Speaker
Whereas, again, like I said, my wife will just be staring at it and going, aha.
00:05:17
Speaker
Yeah.
00:05:21
Speaker
And she's caught me a few times looking away.
00:05:23
Speaker
It's a little embarrassing.
00:05:25
Speaker
Traditional masculinity on the line and shit.
00:05:29
Speaker
Which brings me to the topic...
The Marketing of Action Figures to Boys
00:05:33
Speaker
I wanted to talk about in this podcast was action figures, man.
00:05:37
Speaker
Cause I was, I have this figurine that a good friend of mine, Rami, fellow comic and a great guy.
00:05:46
Speaker
He got me Jordan's figurine.
00:05:50
Speaker
What do you call these things?
00:05:52
Speaker
Kind of like a, not a bobblehead, but those kind of things.
00:05:55
Speaker
They're collectibles.
00:05:57
Speaker
And I love it.
00:05:58
Speaker
It's so cool.
00:05:59
Speaker
It's the only thing I've not let my kid touch.
00:06:03
Speaker
I normally don't care if he takes anything of mine, destroys it.
00:06:07
Speaker
It doesn't matter to me if he wants to play with stuff.
00:06:09
Speaker
I'm just like, yeah, whatever.
00:06:11
Speaker
But that one, I was like, hands off.
00:06:14
Speaker
Get away.
00:06:15
Speaker
Step away, little kid, before I punch you in the face.
00:06:19
Speaker
So I've kept it on his shelf.
00:06:21
Speaker
He doesn't get to touch it.
00:06:23
Speaker
And it's just because it's so cool and I really do want to keep it.
00:06:28
Speaker
But I realized I'd taken it out of the box so it's not worth the same thing anymore.
00:06:34
Speaker
How dumb can I be, right?
00:06:36
Speaker
And that being put aside, the...
00:06:42
Speaker
It just took me back to what action figures were for me.
00:06:47
Speaker
And I remember, you know, it was a big thing in the 80s and 90s.
00:06:50
Speaker
And I know if you don't know the history, it's really interesting because action figures...
00:06:57
Speaker
are basically dolls, right?
00:06:59
Speaker
Aren't they?
00:07:00
Speaker
They're just dolls.
00:07:01
Speaker
And they needed a way to market it to boys.
00:07:04
Speaker
So they changed the name up, right?
00:07:07
Speaker
And they just went action figures.
00:07:09
Speaker
It's such a cool name, though, to come up versus dolls.
00:07:13
Speaker
And so because boys didn't want to play with dolls, they...
00:07:18
Speaker
They gave them action figures.
00:07:19
Speaker
And it's the whole color stuff.
00:07:21
Speaker
It's everything.
00:07:22
Speaker
You got to market something.
00:07:24
Speaker
It makes me think what we need to call these things going forward with the re-merging of genders.
00:07:30
Speaker
So will they have to – will they go – because marketers have to find a way to get to you.
00:07:37
Speaker
So will they – I wonder what color –
00:07:41
Speaker
will be how they will kind of splice through and how they will market, what will they change?
00:07:47
Speaker
Because if you don't know, a lot of the modern life is because marketers have put that in our heads.
00:07:56
Speaker
Like in the West, like bacon for breakfast or coffee breaks.
00:08:03
Speaker
Previously, they were just called breaks.
00:08:07
Speaker
And they've kind of had a huge influence
00:08:10
Speaker
on our language and on our habits.
00:08:13
Speaker
So the same thing with the boys and the girls, like the blue color and the pink color was a marketing thing.
00:08:20
Speaker
I've heard, I don't know how true this is, I've heard that previously pink was a color boys would be okay with as well.
00:08:28
Speaker
And then it became like a girl thing and whatnot.
00:08:31
Speaker
And so it's interesting.
00:08:33
Speaker
how they can have such a strong freaking influence.
00:08:38
Speaker
All right.
00:08:39
Speaker
And so that's the case.
00:08:40
Speaker
So, yeah, I wonder if the future color, beige for them and purple for they.
00:08:48
Speaker
I don't know.
00:08:50
Speaker
Keep an eye on this stuff, right?
00:08:52
Speaker
How it changes.
00:08:53
Speaker
And, yeah.
00:08:55
Speaker
And so that, yeah, so this action figure stuff for me was interesting.
00:08:59
Speaker
As a kid, I loved it.
00:09:01
Speaker
And the whole history is interesting because you go.
00:09:03
Speaker
So, you know, who started it was the G.I.
00:09:05
Speaker
Joe guys.
00:09:07
Speaker
I can't remember.
00:09:08
Speaker
Was it a Japanese company?
00:09:10
Speaker
It sounded Japanese.
00:09:11
Speaker
Hasbro, something like that.
00:09:13
Speaker
Is that Hasbro?
00:09:14
Speaker
I'm bad with names.
00:09:15
Speaker
If you've listened to any of my podcasts, you'll know that.
00:09:18
Speaker
And they started the G.I.
00:09:19
Speaker
Joe action figures, soldiers, right?
00:09:24
Speaker
How much more masculine?
00:09:25
Speaker
How much more can you go the opposite of dolls?
00:09:30
Speaker
They went...
00:09:31
Speaker
all in with that idea.
00:09:33
Speaker
Like completely, what's the most opposite thing we can think of?
00:09:37
Speaker
And they were cool.
00:09:38
Speaker
As a boy, I loved them.
00:09:39
Speaker
They were interesting.
00:09:40
Speaker
They were really well made.
00:09:41
Speaker
I don't know how the earliest G.I.
00:09:44
Speaker
Joe figures were, but around the time I started playing with them, you used to get these ones with the ball bearing kind of thing.
00:09:51
Speaker
So they were very fluid, not gender wise, but fluid and movement.
00:09:55
Speaker
And
00:09:57
Speaker
And they were just like remarkable.
00:09:59
Speaker
I just remember loving to collect them and play with them and fight.
00:10:04
Speaker
And I was also lucky I went to school with a lot of rich kids.
00:10:10
Speaker
That helped a lot because their parents would buy them all the latest stuff, a bunch of toys.
00:10:15
Speaker
And I get to go over and try and play with those things.
00:10:18
Speaker
And around the same time, I had an uncle who's working for a toy company and
00:10:25
Speaker
And so he kind of like distributors more like it.
00:10:28
Speaker
So they they had access to all kinds of stuff.
00:10:31
Speaker
I got a lot of Lego out of him and and a lot of toys because of him.
00:10:36
Speaker
So I got to I got to send him a thank you note.
00:10:39
Speaker
You know, my life, my childhood was really like I wouldn't have been able to afford half that stuff or even play to that.
00:10:45
Speaker
I've had it at home if it weren't for him.
00:10:47
Speaker
So it was really cool what I got out of it.
00:10:50
Speaker
And I got to collect some great stuff.
00:10:54
Speaker
I got to have it before other people.
00:10:58
Speaker
And again, with the school friends, I got access to the G.I.
00:11:02
Speaker
Joe toys.
00:11:03
Speaker
There was these Transformer ones.
00:11:06
Speaker
And my favorite Transformer one, apart from the fact that I loved Optimus Prime.
00:11:11
Speaker
I'm very boring that way.
00:11:12
Speaker
I loved Optimus Prime, Hulk Hogan, Arnold.
00:11:17
Speaker
Like...
00:11:18
Speaker
It sounds such like an 80s guy, but I'm the least like stereotype man out there.
00:11:28
Speaker
I don't know.
00:11:29
Speaker
It's funny that those guys were my heroes back then.
00:11:34
Speaker
The alpha male, I think that's, yeah, the alpha, right?
00:11:41
Speaker
That seemed to be my attraction was towards the alphas, as is for most people, I suppose.
00:11:45
Speaker
So why am I judging myself, right?
00:11:48
Speaker
And I liked, but maybe I was very vanilla.
00:11:51
Speaker
Oh my God.
00:11:53
Speaker
Vanilla was the flavor I liked most as a kid.
00:11:56
Speaker
It's so fun.
00:11:56
Speaker
Like, I know my siblings, all my friends used to be like, why are you eating vanilla?
00:12:00
Speaker
There's like a bunch of other flavors here.
00:12:02
Speaker
And I'd be like, I'm cool, man.
00:12:03
Speaker
I like vanilla.
00:12:05
Speaker
That's very interesting.
00:12:07
Speaker
I just realized how boring of a human being I was and maybe still am.
00:12:13
Speaker
Just safety all the time, right?
00:12:15
Speaker
Oh God.
00:12:17
Speaker
Sorry, guys, I'm just having a realization of my life right now.
00:12:20
Speaker
And that's terrible.
00:12:22
Speaker
Anyway, the Transformer guys had these this this one like these Dinobots.
00:12:31
Speaker
Yeah, I think they were called Dinobots.
00:12:34
Speaker
And those action figures were amazing because they were half Dino, half Dino.
00:12:38
Speaker
robot, I suppose.
00:12:40
Speaker
I remember borrowing it from a friend, borrowing it.
00:12:44
Speaker
And I loved them so much.
00:12:45
Speaker
I kept them as long as possible until he hounded me to give them back.
00:12:50
Speaker
I can't remember exactly which friend that was either.
00:12:52
Speaker
But I just remember going, oh, I wish I didn't have to return these.
00:12:56
Speaker
That's terrible.
00:12:59
Speaker
Not my behavior.
00:13:00
Speaker
I don't I don't care about that.
00:13:02
Speaker
I just terrible that to lose them.
00:13:04
Speaker
But those action figures made a lot of my childhood really great.
00:13:11
Speaker
Probably because, again, I lived in Saudi and at that time you didn't have the iPad and whatnot.
00:13:16
Speaker
And those were just my way out.
00:13:18
Speaker
I loved the imagination aspect of it, the creating stories out of those action figures.
00:13:23
Speaker
It was always fun.
00:13:25
Speaker
I remember for me what was really cool was we went to London and
00:13:31
Speaker
And I got to go to Toys R Us at that time, Toys R Us or anything like that.
00:13:37
Speaker
Actually, yeah, on a much smaller scale, you'd have some toy shops in the region here in the Middle East, but nothing on the level of Toys R Us, dude.
00:13:46
Speaker
I walked through the doors of Toys R Us and I think it was a greater joy than, you know, when you see Tom Hanks walk into that store in big...
00:13:56
Speaker
I think that thing was even bigger for me, right?
00:13:59
Speaker
It was the coolest place I want to run around.
00:14:01
Speaker
But obviously, I was only allowed to buy, like, pick one toy.
00:14:06
Speaker
And I went for the Karate Kid action figure.
00:14:11
Speaker
I don't know what made me pick that if someone influenced me into buying it or I just thought it was cool that it had this thing, you press a button and it did a chop and it came with this plank thing that would break.
00:14:25
Speaker
So you position it and then you put the karate kid next to it and you press the button and it would chop and the thing was designed to break, right?
00:14:33
Speaker
It was already like...
00:14:34
Speaker
It was already like split into two and you could you get what I'm talking about, right?
00:14:40
Speaker
Like stunt pieces.
00:14:42
Speaker
And it came with a robe that you put on him and took off and you wanted him to fight.
00:14:47
Speaker
I don't know who.
00:14:49
Speaker
I think my brother got Miyagi with him.
00:14:52
Speaker
Maybe, I'm not sure, but we were so delighted.
00:14:57
Speaker
It was the coolest thing I ever got up until then.
00:15:00
Speaker
And I don't know which one was my first.
00:15:02
Speaker
I don't know if that was the first action figure I bought.
00:15:05
Speaker
I had to go back and check when I flew the first time to India versus the first time I flew to the UK.
00:15:12
Speaker
Because when I went on a trip to India with my mom,
00:15:15
Speaker
who is originally from India, like a lot of Pakistanis.
00:15:20
Speaker
And I went to this town next to Delhi called Al-Habad.
00:15:26
Speaker
That's where her family comes from.
00:15:28
Speaker
And a lot of them are still there.
00:15:31
Speaker
She, we went there and there I bought He-Man and my brother bought another figure from the He-Man series.
00:15:41
Speaker
It was, see again, I went for He-Man, the alpha guy, the main hero.
00:15:46
Speaker
Wow, so predictable.
00:15:48
Speaker
I think the other guy was called Pluto, not Pluto, I'm thinking Disney.
00:15:53
Speaker
This bald blue guy with spikes on his back like stuff, like the armor he wore.
00:16:00
Speaker
What was his name now?
00:16:01
Speaker
I can't remember.
00:16:03
Speaker
God, I'm like trying to figure out things all the time while I'm chatting with you guys.
00:16:07
Speaker
You'd think by this point I'd go, maybe I should just prepare a little bit, right?
00:16:12
Speaker
Before I start podcasting, before I start the episode.
00:16:16
Speaker
Anyway, Panthro.
00:16:18
Speaker
Yes, that was the name, Panthro.
00:16:21
Speaker
No, he was in Thundercats.
00:16:23
Speaker
Now I'm confused.
00:16:24
Speaker
Oh, wait, no, I bought He-Man and he bought, I forgot what he bought, man.
00:16:29
Speaker
But we had Thundercats and Panther at one point too.
00:16:32
Speaker
Shit, now I've got all these cool action figures swervelling in my head.
00:16:36
Speaker
And again, I like the Thundercats guy, the main lead again.
00:16:40
Speaker
Oh my God, there's a pattern.
00:16:43
Speaker
So we got He-Man in India.
00:16:46
Speaker
It was a I got to keep that.
00:16:49
Speaker
That was one of the coolest toys I had.
00:16:51
Speaker
And I think I used to influence my younger brother to get like complimentary action figures so that we'd have a set for my liking.
00:17:01
Speaker
And I'd convince him to get like the second character or the third character.
00:17:04
Speaker
And then, yeah, so poor guy always agreed to it as well.
00:17:09
Speaker
Oh, I feel it.
00:17:10
Speaker
Now I'm a shitty brother as well.
00:17:12
Speaker
My God, this whole episode is just me going, what a terrible human being I've been my whole life.
00:17:18
Speaker
Sorry.
00:17:19
Speaker
I should send him an apology about that and maybe buy him an action figure.
00:17:22
Speaker
I don't know.
00:17:23
Speaker
So those two were my first.
00:17:25
Speaker
And that's how strong that memory is ingrained because they were both special moments.
00:17:31
Speaker
And to have them and I played with them a lot all the time.
00:17:35
Speaker
They were just like the coolest things I ever knew.
00:17:38
Speaker
And I
00:17:39
Speaker
At some point, you know, like a lot of things, I know they started becoming collectibles.
00:17:44
Speaker
And I have friends, again, who do it.
00:17:46
Speaker
And I'm talking about keeping one myself.
00:17:49
Speaker
But a lot of people started buying these things to just collect and watch, like grown-ups, right?
00:17:54
Speaker
So the kids, we never grew up, I guess, our generation, if you think about it, right?
00:17:58
Speaker
So we went from playing with those toys to going...
00:18:02
Speaker
I got to still have these action figures and I'm going to do it by calling them collectibles and just save them up, but never play with them.
00:18:11
Speaker
And that's partly amazing because you've got this great collection of toys preserved.
00:18:16
Speaker
You're almost like, you know, it's a shrine, a museum to something that was really great and still is versus playing and using it for joy.
00:18:27
Speaker
So I don't know, maybe, but we are getting joy by keeping them.
00:18:30
Speaker
Ah, yeah.
00:18:31
Speaker
Yeah.
00:18:32
Speaker
And what would I do?
00:18:32
Speaker
Play with action figures.
00:18:34
Speaker
Like sit there and make up stories.
00:18:35
Speaker
Maybe that's a cool thing.
00:18:37
Speaker
I try that sometimes with my kiddo.
00:18:39
Speaker
He just takes them and runs off.
00:18:41
Speaker
He doesn't like the stories I create.
00:18:43
Speaker
All right.
00:18:43
Speaker
But here's my favorite story about action figures.
00:18:46
Speaker
All right.
00:18:46
Speaker
At one point, everybody, any kid who grew up in the 90s, you had to get your hands on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.
Childhood Toys and UK Censorship
00:18:54
Speaker
All right.
00:18:54
Speaker
And my favorite stories are about them because...
00:18:58
Speaker
Again, I got Leonardo.
00:19:01
Speaker
Did you guys see that coming?
00:19:03
Speaker
Yes, right?
00:19:04
Speaker
I had Leonardo, even though Michelangelo was my... No, no, no.
00:19:07
Speaker
That's the only time I didn't go for the alpha male.
00:19:09
Speaker
My brother went for Leonardo and I went for Michelangelo.
00:19:13
Speaker
Yes, maybe that's when I started changing a little bit and humor started taking over the idea instead of being the alpha male leader or whatever, right?
00:19:24
Speaker
That's the turning point in my life.
00:19:26
Speaker
Michelangelo saved me.
00:19:28
Speaker
So it was no, not even Leonardo.
00:19:31
Speaker
We did not care for Leonardo.
00:19:32
Speaker
We thought he was the most boring turtle ever.
00:19:35
Speaker
Right.
00:19:35
Speaker
Like even if you listen to the song, he gets nothing like everybody else gets like a decent kind of cool intro.
00:19:43
Speaker
What are the lyrics?
00:19:45
Speaker
Leonardo leads Michelangelo.
00:19:47
Speaker
Donatello does machines.
00:19:50
Speaker
Raphael is rude.
00:19:53
Speaker
Michelangelo is a cool dude.
00:19:56
Speaker
Everybody's got a couple of words.
00:19:57
Speaker
Leonardo literally gets...
00:20:00
Speaker
leads.
00:20:01
Speaker
All right.
00:20:01
Speaker
That's all he gets.
00:20:02
Speaker
Leonardo leads.
00:20:03
Speaker
That's it.
00:20:04
Speaker
That's just, that's the only bit about him, about his personality.
00:20:09
Speaker
He had nothing else going for him.
00:20:11
Speaker
If he wasn't the leader, he'd be just another turtle, not even a mutant ninja turtle.
00:20:17
Speaker
He just blend into a pet shop or something.
00:20:21
Speaker
That's how bland he was.
00:20:24
Speaker
Oh my Lord.
00:20:25
Speaker
Anyway, back in the day, I probably would have loved him.
00:20:27
Speaker
Maybe something to do with the fact that a friend of mine,
00:20:30
Speaker
um, who I used to talk about Ninja Turtles 2 all the time and we bonded over it, Yasser, he picked Leonardo as his favorite, so that influenced me to pick something else.
00:20:41
Speaker
He edged me out of the alpha male.
00:20:43
Speaker
Oh, this is like a therapy session now.
00:20:45
Speaker
Um, he edged it out and so I went with Michelangelo.
00:20:49
Speaker
That was really cool.
00:20:51
Speaker
Uh,
00:20:52
Speaker
And my brother had Donatello, which would swim in the water.
00:20:56
Speaker
Again, these were like amazing new things back in the day, right?
00:21:00
Speaker
Yeah, you'd wind up Donatello and then his legs would kick and he'd float in the bathtub.
00:21:05
Speaker
It was so cool.
00:21:06
Speaker
That's not the point of my Ninja Turtle stories.
00:21:09
Speaker
The point is, at one point, one of my uncles got me these action figures as a gift.
00:21:16
Speaker
And on the box it said Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles, all right?
00:21:22
Speaker
Now, I wasn't aware of like fake goods or what they are, all that kind of stuff.
00:21:31
Speaker
But to me, that was the first time I went, hey, is this shit fake?
00:21:34
Speaker
What's going on here?
00:21:35
Speaker
Hero Turtles.
00:21:37
Speaker
And for the longest of time in my life, I believed that someone had just got me, whoever got me that gift, I can't remember again exactly,
00:21:45
Speaker
had just picked up a copy thing of the turtles.
00:21:49
Speaker
But they looked exactly like it and they were still well built and cool, so I never understood it, didn't give it much thought.
00:21:55
Speaker
Until much later, I realized this is an interesting thing.
00:21:59
Speaker
Apparently in the UK, and I verified this with my wife and I made a lot of fun about British people because of it, apparently in the UK,
00:22:07
Speaker
Their censor board went.
00:22:09
Speaker
Ninja's too aggressive for kids.
00:22:11
Speaker
You got to change that.
00:22:12
Speaker
So it was marketed in the UK as Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles.
00:22:17
Speaker
And that's so funny and lame.
00:22:19
Speaker
She tries to defend it and goes, no, that's what they were.
00:22:22
Speaker
And I love that.
00:22:24
Speaker
making fun of that fact that she had that.
00:22:26
Speaker
So Hero Turtles, it sounds so lame.
00:22:31
Speaker
I also saw it on TV then, a couple of episodes from the UK version, and I was like, yeah, they changed the song to Hero Turtles.
00:22:38
Speaker
So that was...
00:22:40
Speaker
That was the most interesting aspect of it.
00:22:43
Speaker
The other thing that really let me down, the Ninja Turtles thing, was I had another uncle coming back from the States, and I asked him to pick up this walkie-talkie type thing for the turtles because I thought it would be so cool.
00:22:58
Speaker
When it got here, I realized it was fake walkie talkies and you just learn to press Morse codes on it.
The Disappointment of a Fake Toy
00:23:07
Speaker
And I was like, what the hell is this?
00:23:09
Speaker
It was go beep, beep, beep.
00:23:10
Speaker
And you know, I was like 13, 14, maybe at that time, 12 to 14, around that age.
00:23:15
Speaker
And it's just the most disappointing thing I ever got as a toy.
00:23:19
Speaker
And I had first pick because my brother was out.
00:23:21
Speaker
So I was like, I'm going to pick the first turtle toy.
00:23:23
Speaker
And I picked that, man.
00:23:26
Speaker
And the thing that my brother picked was much cooler.
00:23:29
Speaker
And, okay, I guess karma.
00:23:31
Speaker
Right.
00:23:31
Speaker
So, yeah, there you go.
00:23:33
Speaker
Life has been figured out.
00:23:34
Speaker
So those were my favorite action figure memories.
00:23:39
Speaker
And, you know, again, just so much joy in collecting them and stuff.
00:23:42
Speaker
And I think I got to witness the golden period of it.
Body Image and Action Figures
00:23:47
Speaker
I think the only downside about these action figures were just like how watching wrestling did that to me was that I always felt like I had body image issues, man, because they were all apparently really well built and sculpted and stuff.
00:24:00
Speaker
And you just kind of went, I don't have these kind of muscles.
00:24:03
Speaker
And maybe if there's any negative connotation ever left with action figures, probably that I need to see some Teenage Mutant dad bod turtles or something.
00:24:14
Speaker
to make myself feel better in my later life.
00:24:17
Speaker
Anyway, look, I got to get going.
00:24:19
Speaker
I hope you enjoyed the episode.
00:24:20
Speaker
Tell me your favorite memory of your action figure.
00:24:22
Speaker
Leave it in the comments.
00:24:23
Speaker
I'd love to hear about it.
00:24:24
Speaker
And maybe I'll reincorporate it into a second episode following up on this topic.
00:24:30
Speaker
Until then, take care of yourself.
00:24:32
Speaker
Show me some love.
00:24:33
Speaker
Share the episode.
00:24:34
Speaker
Give it a rating on Apple Podcasts if you're listening there.
00:24:37
Speaker
And take care of yourselves.
00:24:38
Speaker
Goodbye.
00:24:38
Speaker
Or as a dog would say, woof.