Just A Reminder...
ROM Week? Oh it's coming.
How can you not love a toy ad as self-deprecating as this one?
"ROM's translator is the size of an engine block! It lights up! You can.. uh.. you can pretend he's from space, I guess. Maybe he fights bad guys?"
Summer, 2007
posted by Chris Sims at 4/14/2007 11:33:00 PM
35 Comments:
Is there any way....ANY way you can top "Rom and Me"?
Because, really, where does one go after that?
4/15/2007 2:18 AM
USB plug... of DEATH!
4/15/2007 4:20 AM
^^^ That was my sister.
4/15/2007 4:21 AM
Had Parker Bros just lost some weird false advertising lawsuit where they had to pay out for the fact that one of their toys couldn't really fly by itself, or something? 'Cos they seem to be being very careful about what the toy does and what you have to pretend it does.
"Hello, yes, is that Parker Brothers? I wish to make a complaint. I purchased a thousand of your Rom Space Knights to use their neutralisers to open a portal to the Shadow Zone and it's just not working. I'm beginning to suspect that the Shadow Zone doesn't really exist."
4/15/2007 4:25 AM
Ah Rom. Mantlo's 2nd greatest creation...
4/15/2007 4:48 AM
Anyone see the the Earth X Moon Knight using ROM's gun in limbo, sticking it to them pesky Dire Wraiths, that was awesome
And yes... ROM and Me, sinister
4/15/2007 5:20 AM
I love that: "pretend it allows him to see if creatures are good or evil."
Cos, you know, normally he doesn't care and will just shoot the hell out of anything.
4/15/2007 6:19 AM
I can pretend this's NOT one of the funniest things I've ever seen... but I'd be lying to myself!
4/15/2007 11:31 AM
I just finished reading the entire run of ROM. It was a favorite when I was a kid (along with Micronauts) and I enjoyed reading it again. Well, I enjoyed the first 50 or so anyway. I am eagerly awaiting ROM week.
I'm still waiting for someone to explain why ROM crashes into the earth, leaving a crater and debris, at the beginning of issue #1 instead of just, y'know, landing.
4/15/2007 12:11 PM
Someone get Abnett and Lanning on a ROM reboot. I loved the comic as a kid. And I'm not alone in that, it seems.
4/15/2007 12:57 PM
"Cos, you know, normally he doesn't care and will just shoot the hell out of anything."
I love the idea of ROM just wandering around randomly blasting things, then saying "Uh, yeah, my Energy Analyzer said they're evil, you see. No, um, only aliens like me can actually interpret the readings...."
4/15/2007 1:59 PM
The Spaceknights got name-checked in NOVA #1 this week. Could ROM be making an appearance soon?
~G
4/15/2007 2:33 PM
Sweet.
I *love* ROM.
4/15/2007 2:35 PM
I picked up one copy as a kid and he was out of the suit hanging around in a leper's colony. Did not come back. Creeped me out for a year or so.
4/15/2007 2:40 PM
Marvel doesn't own the rights to the name and original likeness of Rom, sadly. Marvel is allowed to reprint appearances of Rom in other books (As in Essential X-Men Vol. 5 and Essential Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe Vol. 1), and Rom out of costume is allowed to be shown (as he was at Rick Jones' wedding), but The Greatest of the Spaceknights himself is lost to the ether.
In 2000, Marvel published a Chris Batista plotted and drawn Spaceknights miniseries about the son of "The First One" (Rom) and his spaceknknights pals, but it was one of the last things to come out of the Harras regime and Joe Q allegedly hated it so much we won't see it ever again.
4/15/2007 3:11 PM
I look forward to this. ROM was such a bizarre phenomenon; a comic to promote some cheesy toy... that somehow ended up literally transforming the ENTIRE MARVEL UNIVERSE --- and not always in a bad way, either. I would not have believed it had I not seen it.
I believe I have the entire series, plus several of the side pieces.
4/15/2007 4:35 PM
Any chance of printing some of that Craig Russell inking on Steve Ditko? I'd like to see if I still like it as much as I recall.
4/15/2007 6:08 PM
ROM-week? Count me in.
4/15/2007 7:18 PM
I have a deadly obsession with ROM. I go around to message boards posting a picture of the first issue in threads looking for video games ROMs, annoying people. Other times, I start new threads titled "ROM Help" then ask people what ROM needs.
I love ROM.
4/15/2007 11:22 PM
Anyone with a spare $150 can pick up some ROM art on eBay right now.
Y'know, just incase you have more money than you know what to do with.
4/16/2007 1:20 AM
ROM WEEK?!?! Oh this realy IS my new favorite blog. Rock on, Chris Sims. Rock on with your bad, Spaceknight lovin' self.
4/16/2007 8:30 AM
“His respirator makes realistic breathing sounds.” How horrifying. Ever wondered what grandpa would sound like as an action figure? Ponder no longer! All they’d need to complete the package would be a little shit-chute in the back that you have to empty periodically.
4/16/2007 9:16 AM
Oooh! The space/time continuum aligns in perfect accord.
I have just finished re-bagging & boarding all my ROM comics (have the full run, plus every appearance in other comics), and re-read a chunk of them last night.
Oddly enough, I still had the brown paper mailing sleeves from my subscription tucked behind the boards in the old bags.
I couldn't bear to throw them out (fond memories of ROM arriving in the mail) so I just slid them behind the boards in the NEW baggies too.
The first 50 issues kicked every kind of ass.
After that... well...
As as for the TOY, back then, as a young lad, it was my ONE wish for a birthday gift that year.
My mother, however, thought it was wrong for a boy to want a robot doll, so she bought me a tape-recorder instead.
Many years later I would be the proud owner of not one but two of those bad-boys.
One with no box that I take out and play with occasionally, and one in a beautiful box that is on display.
BRING ON ROM WEEK!
4/16/2007 10:02 AM
There was a UK full-page ROM advert that ran in an issue of 2000AD back in the dawn of time. Art by Ron Smith. There's probably no way to find the damn thing and scan it but I wish somebody would because there are enough potential jokes in it to last 1000 bloggers for 1000 years.
4/16/2007 11:30 AM
I got the ROM toy for Christmas when I was ten. It was the awesomest thing ever. I get wistful thinking about how much fun you could have in those days with a couple of red LED's and three sound effects.
4/16/2007 11:30 AM
ROM Week? ROM Week? Sweet Christmases all at once! Now I know you got you some Mantlo love there, Chris, but don't you be skimpin' on my man Ditko...
4/16/2007 7:37 PM
The only thing that could have made Rom better would have been guest appearances by Godzilla, Devil Dinosaur, and/or the Shogun Warriors.
4/17/2007 3:35 PM
Or Fin Fang Foom.
Never can have too much of him.
4/17/2007 5:05 PM
Chris Sims + ROM = I am resetting my home page in IE to the ISB.
Bring it.
4/17/2007 7:43 PM
To Al Ewing (and Chris Sims):
I HAVE a great scan of that UK ROM page.
Chris, if you want it to post on the ISB, please reply here and I'll email it to you.
It's a jpg (under 500K).
I won't send it unsolicited.
~P~
P-TOR
4/18/2007 1:14 PM
J-j-joy!
4/18/2007 2:28 PM
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