Optumis Prime advertising opportunity
While going about my business at my place of employment (I don’t want to plug it, so lets just say that it starts with a Barnes and ends with a Noble’s) last night, I happened upon something strange in the children’s section: A Transformers sticker book. A generation one Transformers sticker book. Yes, that generation one. “I’ve got the touch, I’ve got the power,” generation one. Finding myself rather disconcerted by the event, I decided to buy the seemingly generation-skipping book and do a rumble on it. Which brings us to the present. It’s a whopping eight pages long, and boasts a cast featuring “the legendary figures Optimus Prime, Megatron, Starscream, Snarl, and many more!” The front proclaims that it contains over 60 full-color stickers, but nine of ’em are Optimus in a variety of poses… Not only that, but it prominently features a suitably phallic megatron on the cover (and on, like, every page). Yeah, it’s ok to advertise for the bastard, just not to sell him. You know, gun laws and everything. That’s ok though, ’cause my Japanese one has a cool purple mace! To me, this all seems like some Toys ‘R’ Us conspiracy to sell some more of their hideously over-priced re-issues. I mean, come on! The Optimus Prime doesn’t even have his original smoke stacks! Seriously though, we’re having a pretty nice time right now, as far as the nostalgia wave is going. Everything old school seems to be marketable again. Take a look at Animeigo’s too-cool-for-school release of Macross on DVD. That was a gift from Jesus! And ADV just started putting out its re-mastered DVDs of Aura Battler Dunbine (which is executed very nicely-check it out)! Don’t even get me started on ADV doing the recently released Mospeada and soon-to-be-released Southern Cross. Oh, and we can’t forget that they’re also doing Mazinkaizer, now can we? Stuff is so crazy lately, that I can’t even walk up to my mail box to get the new month’s issue of Newtype without the neighbor kid running over to tell me about how they call the whiney kid at school Amuro, or about the cost-effectiveness of waging wars using giant robots. As I was writing this just now, a guy looking exactly like the detective character on every anime I’ve ever seen came up to my door and said he was investigating a government plot to bring giant robot anime into the forefront of pop culture. I told him to get lost. I think he was just trying to steal my Gaiking ringer T-shirt, the asshole.
