Ma Ma Ma Mask

I am still not feeling amazing, so once again I am going to lean upon the nostalgia that has been feeding me currently. One of the things that I mourn a little bit in this age of cable television, is the absence of specific dense blocks of cartoons. Saturday mornings for example started some time around 7 am and ended around 11 am with a solid block of new and exciting cartoons swapping every thirty minutes. Something similar occurred before and after school, and one of these blocks will have a special place in my heart.
Growing up we had three UHF channels, 23 which would eventually become a Fox Affiliate, 41 which eventually became a UPN Affiliate and 47 which was a weird religious channel. 41 especially was a magical place that tended to play the sorts of cartoons that I was really into at the time. I remember a very specific line up that included both Robotech and M.A.S.K. back to back… then if I kept watching got progressively stranger with Beverly Hills Teens and then for some reason Jim Baker’s PTL Club show.
I have a deep love of Robotech, but at the very least the Macross portion of that is a very well acknowledged and respected fandom. What effectively was one cohesive show to us kids as actually an edited and dubbed amalgam of Super Dimension Fortress Macross, Super Dimension Cavalry Southern Cross and Genesis Climber MOSPEADA. We instead understood them as three time periods of the same battle in Macross Saga, The Masters and The New Generation. Of the three the third part was my favorite because of Cyclone armor.
However if I am being completely truthful my favorite of these cartoons was M.A.S.K. and sadly it is a really hard thing to track down. For starters M.A.S.K. has one of the best theme songs of any of the 80s cartoons. I’ve linked it above for your own benefit, because I still get all sorts of happy tingles when I hear it today. The toys were also freaking amazing, and in truth were sort of a weird spin off of transformers. Instead of vehicles that transform into robots… they are vehicles that change up in some way to enter a sort of battle mode with weapons that pop out. In the cartoon the Masks themselves played a role granting the wearer a special power that was never really explained how any of that worked.
There is also something weird going on with the logo that never really made sense. I think the “Mask” shown is supposed to be that of Matt Trakker, because the color scheme fits. However it obviously looks nothing like either the mask from the animation or the mask from the toy. I think instead it was likely supposed to make us THINK of Optimus Prime, and maybe confuse kids who were already into Transformers into maybe buying this other toy line of vehicles that transformed. I mean to be truthful being a fan of both… I was probably way more into M.A.S.K. than I was the Transformers.
I’ve talked about my “cool aunt” before that somehow managed to figure out the toy trends long before we even knew the toys exist. She was the one who got my Optimus Prime for Christmas the year before the cartoon really took off at least on our affiliate stations. The same was true with M.A.S.K. because if my fuzzy memory is correct I believe I got it as a birthday gift and was completely blown away by how cool the toy was. I’ve always been partial to the color green, and given my love of Cyclone Armor from Robotech, I was super on board with this motorcycle that transformed into a helicopter.
Around this same time there was a building toy by Fisher Price called Construx that was, while not hte same scale in the general range of the Mask Figures. I remember as I got more of the toys I built these elaborate bases for the figures and garages for their vehicles. There were many a “defend the base” scenario as Venom attacked, and later when StarCom was a thing… everything got sorta mixed together given they were both around the same scale.
I loved the cartoon for Mask so much, and I was super into the central conceit that they were this group of secret agents and anytime there was a mission they would call upon the specific team members that had the powers needed to solve the problem. Unfortunately that was never really how it worked, because recently I have been watching the show again and I am noticing that for the most part Matt Trakker the leader and Bruce Sato and Alex Sector the team that drives the vehicle Rhino are pretty much on every single mission.
I think looking back, why the cartoon felt so good to watch and why it hooked me in such a significant way is that it had a self insert character in the form of Scott Trakker. So often in the cartoons of the 80s… if there are kids involved they are the ones that are constantly getting into trouble and needing to be rescued. If that is not the case then they serve as the comic relief character, which also feels odd at times. Sure Scott got into plenty of trouble, but they gave him T-Bob a robotic companion that serves as this the Orko or Snarf of this series, allowing Scott to be the brave one that often times saves the day through his misadventures. It was super easy to transplant yourself in the role of this character while still being able to play along as the various team members.
Lately I have really been wanting to watch the cartoon, but the problem is… there are seemingly issues with the distribution. It has been released in two forms so far, a 12 disc dvd set and a “volume one” DVD release that never got any follow up releases. In both cases there are issues, the 12 Disc set claims to be the complete series but includes only 65 episodes and is missing the 10 episode short run season 2. This has also been out of print for some time and I have seen it going on ebay for upwards of $250. The “volume one” is available but only includes 11 episodes, and without any subsequent releases it kinda makes it a useless product.
In my travels however I came across someone who has ripped all 75 of the episodes and uploaded them to YouTube. The quality is not great, and I hope at some point we get a proper release of this series, but for now I am happy enough. I may or may not have downloaded all of the episodes so I have a local copy, and was able to pull them in 480p. Honestly I spent the other night watching several of these and they mostly still hold up. It is absolutely peak 1980s, but so am I at times. Needless to say it is still very watchable and I legitimately think modern kids would probably even be into it.
In my recent tripping down memory lane, I uncovered that apparently there was an unofficial follow up to mask that took place in 1996 called Vor-Tech. The vehicles even looked like maybe they recycled some pieces from the later Mask toys, specially the Desert Striker looks quite similar to one of the later generation Mask releases. While looking functionally different, the Rattler effectively does the same thing that Gator does so there was at a minimum a recycling of ideas. I was in college during this time and completely missed the existence of this thing, which is sort of a bummer. I was collecting the new releases of Star Wars figures at this time, so I probably would have tried to pick some of these up for sheer nostalgia if for no other reason.
Another thing that I have noticed going back and watching these… I am absolutely certain that Bruce Sato and Alex Sector were a couple. Sure Hondy Maclean and Buddie Hawks were paired up in the Firecracker but that made sense given that there was the Truck and attached Motorcycle, and later in the series/toy line they both got their own unique vehicle in the form of the Hurricane and the Wildcat. Bruce and Alex were always paired up in the Rhino and were never dispatched separately, in a vehicle that in theory only ever needed a single pilot. Alex as the bald bear and Bruce his little twink boy toy, and no one is going to change my mind about that.
Mask toys have always been somewhat of a rarity, and as a result command a premium in the aftermarket. However recently there has been an interesting find. Someone was opening up an old warehouse and stumbled upon a bunch of new in box Kenner merchandise from the 80s including case after case of Mask toys. I remember after the second series it became exceptionally hard to find Mask stuff, and if my memory serves me Walmart and K-Mart stopped carrying it entirely. It makes me wonder if this hoard of product form Chile was just stuff that never made it into the distribution system because a bunch of the vendors backed out on the line. Whatever the case, it is really interesting to see this sort of thing pop up. I doubt I will buy any of it, but still very cool nonetheless. The post Ma Ma Ma Mask appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.

AggroChat #253 – Thiamine and Riboflavin

Featuring:  Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra, Tamrielo and Thalen

So just a heads up we had some technical difficulty while recording the show.  Apparently the server that we use to record on was slowly dying throughout the night and culminated in a grand crescendo at the end with us all getting disconnected.  As a result we cut off abruptly. In between these issues however we talk about Final Fantasy XIV Live Letter and the upcoming class changes. Bel talks about how Crowfall is turning into a game and feels like less of a tech demo than it did.  Tam talks about Total War Three Kingdoms. We discuss the madness that happened after last weeks show and lots more people signing on to the World of Warcraft Classic madness. We wrap up with a topic about some of the cool stuff Games Workshop is doing.

Topics Discussed:

  • …. Pation
  • Final Fantasy XIV Live Letter
    • Class Changes
    • Benchmark
  • Crowfall is Actually A Game
    • Nostalgia for Corpse Runs
    • Eve Offline Skill Progression
  • Thalen Wants a Survival Game that Cares about Correct Nutrition
  • Total War: Three Kingdoms
    • Another Romance of the Kingdoms
  • World of Warcraft Classic
    • More of AggroChat joins this madness
  • Games Workshop Continues to be Decent
    • Awesome new shading paint
    • Contrast Paint
  • Abrupt Cut Off

AggroChat #250 – Planeswalkers for Days

Featuring:  Ammo, Ashgar, Belghast, Kodra and Tamrielo

aggrochat250

Tonight we are down a Grace and a Thalen but have picked up a special guest.  Ammo is the official unofficial AggroChat Artist given that she has done most of the artwork that you have seen over the last few years associated with both AggroChat and the Aggronaut blog.  First up we talk about when breaking the rules of a game makes for a better experience. From there Bel talks about Marvel Heroes notalgia and quelling it with the Mobile game Marvel Future Fight.  From there Bel talks about his new Mayflash f500 fight stick and some discussion about Mortal Kombat 11. We talk a bit about the release of War of the Spark on Magic the Gathering Arena. Ash talks about the Lancer pen and paper RPG system, and finally some discussion about Persona 5 Royal.

Topics Discussed

  • Breaking Rules for a Better Experience
    • House Rules
    • Cheating to Remove Frustrations
  • Marvel Future Fight
    • Marvel Heroes Nostalgia
    • Very Free to Play
  • Fight Sticks
    • Mayflash F500
    • Square vs Octagonal Gates
    • Mortal Kombat 11
  • War of the Spark
    • Sealed Gameplay
  • Lancer
    • Pen and Paper RPG System
    • Kickstarter
  • Persona 5 Royal
    • 5.5
    • Hoping for Switch Release

The last cupcake

The last cupcake

Today is the last day for my most beloved MMO, Wildstar. I’ll be there tonight when the servers go down. It’s the least I can do, to stay in that amazing world until the last possible second.

Wildstar’s demise wasn’t really a shock to anyone, but that doesn’t make it any less sad. I spent last night wandering around the world, checking in on all of my characters, and watching the players chat with each other for possibly the last time. I was reminded that Wildstar has more character than any other MMO I can think of, and certainly more than my next 2 most-played MMOs put together.

The last cupcake

Thayd was party central right up until death rained down upon us

I still remember the beta for this game, and how much fun we had as those servers shut down in preparation for launch. The shutdown tonight will be a bittersweet echo of that  event. I met a bunch of amazing folks while playing, and made a lot of fantastic memories. This blog wouldn’t even exist if I hadn’t gotten so excited and wanted to share my love of Wildstar with the world. Some of my favorite MMO memories are of building my housing in this game, or participating in its huge, complicated, telegraph-tastic raids.

Did you ever play Wildstar? What are some of your favorite memories? Will you be there tonight when it goes dark?