All That Meets The Eye

I was never a big fan of the Transformers when I was a kid.  I guess I was a little too old to be interested in them when they came along.

(The blogger, on the eve of his 44th birthday, looks down at the Lego race car on his desk and realizes that his previous sentence may not be entirely accurate.)

Okay, maybe I wasn't too old.  It was more a matter of not having the feeling of intrigue in the whole concept.  On the one hand, I found the idea of the "transforming" quite interesting.  Seeing how you could design a robot to fold up into the shape of a car or plane or something was a fascinating spatial challenge.  Seeing how they did that gave me a joy that I now only get when unpacking Ikea furniture.

It's just after that which I didn't get.  Okay, these cars are now robots.  What do they do? Fight? That's it?  And yes, I know now that they have a big backstory.  But at the time you didn't really get that idea when the commercials just showed kids making up their own flimsy battle scenarios.

Speaking of made up flimsy battle scenarios - the movies.  I haven't seen them either, and once again, there may be a lot more to them, but the ads and the impressions of others seem to indicate that they don't really do anything but fight.  Sure, it's now in excruciating CGI detail instead of eight-year-olds waving their toys at each other, but it still doesn't draw me in.

And this is a bit off-topic, but can we spare a thought for the Go-Bots? The Pepsi to the Transformers' Coke have been ridiculed over the years, and largely left-out of eighties nostalgia. But it's hard to believe that in today's world where they make blockbusters on any pop-culture property, that no studio would take a chance on them.

Anyway, there's yet another Transformers movie coming out. And it looks like it's doubling-down on the concept of fights between giant robots that are inexplicably built out of a lot of really tiny, intricate parts.  That leaves me with a question - again, having not seen the movies - do the Transformers, you know, transform?  All they ever show is them in robot form fighting it out.  And since the battles are epic, destroy-everything-in-sight affairs, there doesn't seem to be much point in hiding.  I'm assuming that if you see a the aftermath of a Transformer battle, with a neighbourhood turned into a huge crater of destruction, and then notice a few undamaged cars in the middle, they aren't fooling anyone.

Hoverboards Falling Back To Earth

What's up with hoverboards? Not the ones from Back to the Future, I mean these new devices that look like the spawn of a Segway and a skateboard. A lot of people have decided that it's the thing we're going to Cabbage-Patch into a Christmas obsession this year.

For a start, that's a bad name, since it doesn't hover. I know, I shouldn't expect the name of a commercial product to be accurate. But there is a problem with promising that much more than you can deliver. Lots of car companies exaggerate their products' performance, but no one just suddenly decided to call their engines "warp drive."  And yet, despite the pathetic attempt to oversell a product by piggybacking on a pop-culture favourite celebrating an anniversary this year, the public seems to be eating it up.

But somehow, I don't think this is a big breakthrough in wheeled conveyances. Yes, it looks clever and useful. But often new inventions turn out to be just stepping-stones to more profound achievements. For instance, people in the 70's probably thought roller skates were here to stay, but now it seems they'll just be remembered as an evolutionary step towards inline skates. Similarly, this "hoverboard" just looks like an invention that someone in the future will turn into something else.

(I just looked it up, and apparently the first roller skate was inline-style, so never mind.)

I don't just mean actual hoverboards - even with today's technology, I'm sure we could do better. I mean take a look at Orbitwheels. Doesn't that look cooler? And I know they have robots that balance on a single ball. And since Sergways/pseudo-hoverboards use the same sort of technology, why not a platform with a ball in the middle, so you can move in any direction?
I'm going to get to work on that right now, out at least after I check Amazon for Black Friday deals on hoverboards.

Girls' Friends

There's been some controversy over a new line of toys from Lego.  "Lego Friends," which is aimed at girls.  And they aren't the only ones: Even TinkerToy, which is even more abstract than Lego, has introduced a new line for girls.

This has a lot of people angry that they're reinforcing stereotypes.  Lego has always been a very gender-neutral toy, so the idea of femming-it-up seems gratuitous.  Personally, I don't like the idea. As a mild-mannered liberal male, I always liked Lego's abstract, androgynous, oh-so-Scandinavian style.

But, the people complaining about the new toys are off target.  Yes, there was a time when a mostly-male business might waste money on products that make little financial sense but reinforce their image of gender roles.  But in today's business climate where no belief is too sacred to be sacrificed for profit, I have no doubt they'd rather sell one product line to both genders.  Introducing a new line of toys is expensive. Aside from the cost of manufacturing new parts, there's the huge cost marketing a whole new brand.

If they are going to all that expense, it could only be because they know that's the only way to get at that market.  So don't get angry at the company; get angry at the parents who won't buy toys for their girls unless they're pink, flowery, and in the same aisle as Barbie.