From: Dan Newsgroups: alt.humor.best-of-usenet Subject: [alt.toys.transformers] Toy Trauma (was Re: The Concert Video) Date: 21 Oct 1997 19:05:21 GMT Subject: Toy Trauma (was Re: The Concert Video) From: Carcharodon Newsgroups: alt.toys.transformers NOTE: THIS IS THE THIRD TIME I HAVE POSTED THIS MESSAGE. If you've seen the same thing twice earlier, no reason to look any further. Sorry about this. > > (trivia: Captain Power had a new gimmick that not many other shows > > did at the time. What was it?) > Two gimmicks: The first was (gag) CGI, and the second was the very interesting feature where your Capt. Power toys could flash or otherwise react in tune to the characters in the cartoon; a fascinating gimmick, that, perhaps done with photoreceptors.....haven't seen it before or since. I had one of the Captain Power bad-guy jets: a big black monstrosity resembling a cross between a jet and Darth Vader's Tie Fighter. On its handgrip was a trigger: pressing this would cause it to go "bla-bla-blam!" (sounding very much like Optimus' rifle) while activating a pulsing flashlight effect. This light was different from typical flashlights in that it truly projected a visible "cone" of light, instead of just being a light source which made everything nearby lighter. Once, when I was maybe 8 years old, I thought up a new fun game for my Captain Power bad-guy jet. Holding it at arms' length, I slowly spun around and around, firing constantly. "Cool! As the walls of my room spin, it looks like the scrolling background of a cartoon battle!" Shoot, shoot, and shoot again.....this lasted for over 5 minutes (what can I say, I had a long attention span). When the fun was over and I turned the jet off, I discovered that I was ALMOST COMPLETELY BLIND. It was as if both of my eyes were totally covered with that blue aftereffect you get from looking at a camera flash. Silly 8-year-old, I'd just been flicking a flashlight on and off right in front of my face for five whole minutes! It didn't help that the walls and carpet in my room were blue. I didn't dare ask my parents for help, because--hey, who knows?--maybe once they had told me never to shine a flashlight in front of my face and I hadn't been paying attention. More than a little scared, I went to bed early that night. Thankfully, by the next day I was completely cured. Never seen that Captain Power jet again. Don't know where it is, or care. Probably the only time I was traumatized by a toy.