Post by Philip Ayres on Mar 21, 2012 20:56:41 GMT
Express your joyous gratitude to the TMUK-Chat mail archive: groups.yahoo.com/group/tmuk-chat/message/6988 gives us this essay from Ralph Burns of this parish dated June 29th 2002:
For a little change, an alternate review of RID Ultra Magnus...
...so, after successfully managing to be sensible and not spend money in Forbidden Planet that I need to save for Transforce, I walked into Woolworths and bought RID Ultra Magnus. With the original Ultra Magnus being one of my quiet obsessions I suppose it was only a matter of time before I caved in and bought the latest model. Especially after I had purchased the spychanger version, whence my journey to oblivion had begun.
My first portent that events were to take a downward turn came when the shop assistant, in somewhat of a panic as the ink had run out for the till, seemed convinced that he was in fact selling me Optimus Prime. As he handwrote 'Optimus Prime' on a till receipt he brought up from the bowels of a dusty drawer, I tried to point out that the toy was in fact called 'Ultra Magnus'. He looked at me myopically and called for his supervisor. She confirmed that yes, it was 'Optimus Prime'. I made a cheeky remark about opticians and left.
On the way back to the train station I popped into a back-issue comic store and saw a fellow buy 2 two copies of Giant Size X-Men for the princely sum of £180. I mention this just to point out how ludicrous my day was going.
A short while later I was home and out came the scissors in what would prove to be just the beginning of my foul language as Magnus proved reluctant to come out his box. Eventually, he did. Violently. Winging his way acrosss the room towards the far wall as I pulled out the surrounding cardboard just a *little* too hard. Luckily, the wall lost and Magnus was undamaged. I took a good luck at him and thought "oh, nifty" before loading him up with spychangers and making "whoosh whoosh" noises in the way that we all do but rarely admit when sober. I then threw the packaging in the bin.
My first problem was realising with some annoyance that I didn't have the right size of screwdriver to put the batteries in.
I squinted at the instructions and as I gazed upon the endless microscopic pictures my heart began to sink. It was then I noticed I was missing the missiles and so had to retrieve them from the bin where they had had a close encounter with a tin of beans.
Since I started buying the toys again, I had confined myself to nice simple ones, like spychangers. Or...spychangers. However, I had now decided that I was ready to do a Level 4 toy. I was ready. I could do it. I once solved a Rubix Cube when I was eleven. How hard could it possibly be?
So began the transformation process. Half an hour later I was still at it when disaster struke and one of Magnus's legs fell out of the open window as I tried to attach it to the torso. Thus began the heavy swearing. It is rare for me to swear much in anger but this was one of those times. What's more, a child outside was apparently coveting Magnus' leg. What he wanted to do with it, I do not ever want to know. Ithink he wanted to eat it. Generally, the only legs I want to eat are chickens'. With yummy barbecue sauce.
Having chased the little savage away I hacked away at Magnus once more. Staring at the pictures without the aid of a microscope was starting to make me go blind but I was determined to go on. Magnus would live! At some point.
And then... and then I came to point 21. Yes, point 21. Or Magnus' Waterloo as I now call it. What that picture is trying to show me, I have no idea. None that aren't rude. I've read easier physics books. Even books by Stephen Hawkins have more comprehensibility. My inner rage grew and grew on an exponentional tangent of anger until BANG! There went one leg into the livingroom! There went another into the bathroom! The torso, which I was sure was laughing at me, bounced off of several windows. My level of swearing must have reached titanic propertions for my neighbour popped round to see if everything was alright. This was unusal to see him in daylight, which I thought burned him.
Everything was not alright. Ultra Magnus had driven me to drink.
I went away. I had a beer. I tried to think of calming thoughts, like beaches, flowers and other things not suitable for a family audience.
After the break, I tried once more to turn the bits of Magnus into a robot. Forty minutes later I almost had it...but the head was upside down. Yes, upside down. Magnus too appeared to have a drinks problem. He taunted me with his upside -down headedness, as if daring me to make it right. And lo, I tried. Oh how I tried. It just wasn't to be, and the plastic was beginning to make strange unearthly sounds as I thwacked at it any way it would go.
I had another beer. It was chilled and pleasant.
I decided to give up with the robot thing. I would just put it back into vehicle mood for now. I could still make 2whoosh whoosh" noises. Just turn it back to vehicle. That couldn't be hard, surely. There followed another twenty minutes of violent swearing and bits of Magnus bouncing off of various pieces of furniture. It's sturdy, I'll give it that.
But it wasn't to be. The bits of Magnus just wouldn't go back together again. No matter how hard I tried, or swore. They were by now obeying some new and strange law of physics which meant that bits of plastic that went together before wouldn't now. In its' stubberness it mocked me. And do that is how he remained. Even now he sits in his bits in the coner, daring me to have another go at transforming him. Just another try...
I think I shall stick to spychangers in future!
=====
Ralph Burns
"Second star on the right, and straight on 'till morning."
