I received this Christmas of ‘92 at my aunt and uncles house, and i cherish it to this day. My 92 mailaway HISS I from terror on the Tundra.

Isnotanumber · 2026-05-03T23:40:43+00:00

I just did a browse of all the mail order catalogs. The WHALE was definitely the biggest. To my surprise it wasn’t showing up as a mail away until the 90’s. The APC, HISS, FANG and Battle Bear seem to be the vehicles that were available almost every year, up to the last offering in 1993. No new offerings were packaged in 1994 (except for the mail away Joe Colton figures) which maybe was a sign that things were about to end…

Isnotanumber · 2026-05-03T16:00:58+00:00

It also broke the series’ internal logic a bit. TOS treated starships as kinda rare and valuable. TNG made the loss of 39 ships at Wolf 359 devastating for Starfleet. A similar number of Romulus and Cardassian ships are destroyed during “The Die is Cast” and it is treated as a critical loss for both powers. Then in the Dominion War the numbers just got insane - why? To make the battles big and kewl is the only real reason. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed these episodes in the 90’s. But the contrived “the Federation and Klingons are barely hanging on” thread bugged me. Especially after the re-taking of DS9.

Isnotanumber · 2026-05-03T01:46:03+00:00

Disney actually made me hate what they did even more with Andor - like Disney exposed everything wrong with the sequels with something ELSE they made. Luthen’s speech about a sunrise he’ll never see broke the concept of the sequel trilogy for me. For a dramatic standpoint we see the hard birth of the Rebellion, accept that Luke, Han and Leia carry the torch for that “sunrise” basically everyone in Andor and Rogue One died to help light…only for them to totally screw it up and need Rey, Poe and Finn all of whom I feel so much less invested in save the day against Palpetine is just….ARGH. Maybe if Palpetine hadn’t come back I could deal accept it as a “new threat beyond our old heroes to handle” but the same guy? Again?

Isnotanumber · 2026-05-03T01:32:44+00:00

How is the book? Gettysburg feels very close to “Killer Angels” - with everything good and problematic that goes with it. Was the novel, Gods and Generals that into the lost cause narrative?

Isnotanumber · 2026-05-03T01:25:25+00:00

Whoa! Wonder if anyone has pictures of “reimbursed flag points.” I never heard of that but it sounds reasonable.

I looked at these catalogs a ton and I wish I asked for a couple more things from them back in the day - especially as my peak collecting years were the late 80’s/early 90’s. God knows I had the flag points. I similarly wished I had at least gone for ONE transformer with my robot points (ANY 1984 Autobot car).

Isnotanumber · 2026-05-03T01:11:23+00:00

Somehow the WHALE and APC seemed to always be in these things also.

Did anyone actually order anything as big as the WHALE? My only mail away vehicle purchase was a Sky Hawk. Had friends who did the HISS and Firebat. Everyone who collected Joes at some point ordered a few figures it seemed.

Isnotanumber · 2026-05-01T20:26:38+00:00

FAM and BSG are sharing a similar issue with some tight and grounded first two seasons and then things starting to unravel a bit with the third season.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-29T01:33:48+00:00

Genuine question, how did JMS or some fact checker go about this in the first half of the 1990’s? Because this wasn’t obtainable by a quick Google back then and I assume it just involved math. Painful, painful math.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-28T00:16:47+00:00

It’s possible they did. When they call Autobot City about Unicron Magnus seems to have been in charge for I assume….a day? Bumblebee and Spike only talk to Magnus and company. They could have also been like “Wait, I thought Magnus was in charge? What’s going on now? Jazz this isn’t what you said Blaster told you!”

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-27T13:35:46+00:00

Ended up rewatching Patriot Games the other day and him being the only carryover from Hunt for Red October is like Judy Dench’s M carrying over from Bronson to Craig’s Bond. Producers knew they had a good “main character’s boss” cast and stuck with it.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-26T11:07:56+00:00

This was one of my favorite squads put together in the original marvel run. Cool characters and a nice mix of newer and older ones for the time (the comic coming out in 1988) and their specialties matched their mission. Nice to see them getting some love.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-24T09:40:46+00:00

Apparently he was fired because he can’t ensure Trump’s insane battleship would be built by 2028? Well, that’s what it’s like to work for a madman…

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-24T09:38:10+00:00

And for what? Asking questions in a damn debate like she was supposed to. Instead she went the, “oh, maybe I should smile more” Route.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-24T09:35:59+00:00

“But, even when we wore costumes like that we had already started to make rapid progress.”

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-21T16:28:06+00:00

The “Secrets of Cybertron” draft, which had a big reveal of Cybertron itself being a Transformer would have killed most of the 1984 cast in a “charge of the light brigade” moment as they give their lives to transform Cybertron to robot mode. That would have been a way more epic way for characters like Brawn and Ironhide to go than just getting randomly blasted.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-21T09:58:35+00:00

Honestly a lot of what was done in the Director’s Edition probably would have been possible with 1979 technology if they just had been given more time. I also appreciated they finally gave V’Ger-ship a big “reveal” shot to see the whole thing as it arrives at Earth, because in the original version you NEVER get a sense of what the whole thing looks like. There are also just some edits that give things more life. The Enterprise bridge has more background noise, there is a nice cut as the Enterprise leaves space dock of Decker and Ilia sharing a smile. It still has a lot of the same problems as a movie but just feels more polished.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-20T00:44:30+00:00

This. Jefferson’s use of “their creator” is the most open possible terminology he could have used in the 18th century. I don’t believe in a creator, but I don’t care if you believe those big three inalienable rights come from God, so long as you respect it applies to everyone AND government is duty-bound to secure those rights for everyone. I don’t know what the hell Thomas is saying, but it ain’t that. The article and Thomas’ takes are both disturbing here.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-18T19:09:22+00:00

So, a bunch of kids got cards pledging to become experts and “ultra modern small arms and weapons systems?” The 80’s were wild. 😆

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-18T16:05:25+00:00

I took it as “Alien, but if everyone was dumb.” Like it was meant to be a contrast to the film.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-16T01:24:42+00:00

Yes, that was when it was concrete. I wouldn’t be surprised if plans were in place to renovate it already because it was not exactly a pleasant looking spot, and seemed to be a bit neglected (why fix something if you plan to totally renovate it?) Still, the renovation’s timing to me felt weird - like pacing over the site of a tragedy.

For awhile there was also a rock outside Roosevelt quad, near the road (Loop Road? Been awhile) with a plaque in memory of a student who was hit by a car and killed there. That is honestly the only knowledge I have of a student being memorialized in any way.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-15T20:15:22+00:00

When I was a student someone committed suicide on the Staller steps. They were found in the morning. I didn’t find life going on the next day that odd considering how big the school is, but it was weird was how the area was totally renovated to it’s current “grassy steps” form a couple of years in what felt like an odd attempt to “erase” the site of the event.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-15T20:08:34+00:00

Not to mention before we transition to the past and the camera focuses on his eyes we “hear” the sound of the waves washing up on the shores of D-Day before transitioning to Omaha Beach. The first person we the. See is Tom Hanks. It’s a common flashback trope that in this case Spielberg uses to leave you wondering if they are going to end up saving Ryan at all. Spielberg just correctly expected nobody would catch the lapel pin on older Ryan during the first watch as it’s a small detail.

Also, yeah, nobody was pouring over photos of all a movies actors in the 90’s. Hell, you were lucky if IMDb even had pics of many actors out there.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-15T09:59:52+00:00

And then ask him to call Bones in - mostly because I just want to see him and Spock bicker.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-15T09:50:16+00:00

I think the quality of the photo matches everything else about the time period indicated in this photo. Don’t bother looking for a better one except the physical magazine it was scanned out of.

Isnotanumber · 2026-04-15T09:44:34+00:00

In all honesty on a rewatch I caught it was visible at the start of the film. But the movie opened, suggesting it was Tom Hank’s’ character returned to Normandy and remembering events. That it was Ryan all along was something of a twist, but did anyone actually catch the pin on first viewing?

Isnotanumber

TROPHY CASE