Welcome to the fourth installment of TOY VAULT from Holy Mountain Printing. The feedback and overall support from these have been amazing. We all love that we can share our favorite toys with you all. We have A LOT planned for this series including doing some videos showing off some of these amazing toys we write about. The post we have for you all this week includes a story behind the figure we are showing today from Danny. The G1 Shockwave! We will have a guest writer Jordan Neidert (00GundamreviewsV2) who is a good pal of mine and major part of the Gundam scale modeling community. He will be giving us a brief bit of history behind the G1 Shockwave figure as well. Enjoy!
G1 SHOCKWAVE
"CLARITY OF THOUGHT BEFORE RASHNESS OF ACTION"
By: Daniel T
Guest Writer: Jordan N
Shockwave was and is still in my top 5 Transformers of all time. Now as an adult I would have a hard time arranging the order of that top five list but as a kid, he was number one with a bullet. Something about him, the one eye, the purple colors, that he was an actual gun, he was outrageously cool. Sure Megatron was a gun also but he did not have actual laser blast sound effects and lights. Whatever it was about him, Shockwave was in my mind, the king of all Transformers at this point ( a seat formerly held by Sideswipe but that is another story altogether. )
So it was my birthday, I was turning 10 years old and the only gift I wanted was Shockwave, he was literally all I could think about. My family never had a lot of money when I was a kid but my parents made sure birthdays and Christmas were off the charts for my sister and I. They would save all year to make sure those two holidays were where we got everything we wanted all year. My birthday came and of course, the mighty Shockwave had arrived.
He was even cooler out of that box than I dreamed he was when I would stare at him on the toy aisle. Shockwave lived up to all my expectations of a toy and then some and I could not believe I finally got him. The day after I got him as I was playing with him his blaster stopped working, no sounds, no lights.
I brought it to my mother and we changed the batteries and still no lights and no sounds. My mom took me to exchange him and when we got to the store there were no Shockwave figures left to swap him out for. I remember my mother being irritated and stating she just wanted a refund and then we left the store. I was confused, what the hell were we doing? Would we get him at another location? We got in the car and drove away.
After a short drive, we pulled up at my mom's bank and went inside. At this point I was super confused, why did we return him, why were we at the bank? We went inside and my mother proceeded to open a savings account for me using the money from the Shockwave return. She handed me my new bank book and told me that my savings account was now my gift. This seemed to me as a kid just plain evil, I mean I just had the Transformer of Transformers and now I have a bank account! I spent my life periodically thinking about what happened that day. Did the lady at the store make my mom mad? Did I do or say something bratty that pissed her off?
At the time I never asked, I just sadly got my bank book and put it out of my head until literally this year. At dinner I asked my mom about the whole thing, recounting the whole story and she looked at me with no sign of recollection on her face at all. She did not remember any of this. She doesn't remember returning it or being mad at me or anyone else. In my head, I spent my life assuming I probably did something to make her mad and that this was some sort of punishment. As an adult, I realize how amazing my parents were and how small and insignificant this whole thing was but as a kid having Shockwave for a day and then losing him was worse than if I had never had him at all.
Fast forward to being an adult I was thrilled to be reunited with one thanks to Crowemag Toys here in Raleigh, NC and for all the time I did not have him, I can tell you he is now a VERY cherished piece of my collection! Side note to my mom's credit and I owe her a LOT of credit, that bank account was the first money saved that went to what would become my first car, so thanks, mom!
Shockwave's G1 toy, like many of the original Transformers, came from a pre-existing mold used by another company. Despite most of the original cast being taken from the pre-existing "Diaclone" toy line, shockwave was made from the "Astro Magnum" toy produced by Korean toy company, Toyco which was produced in 1983. Radio Shack would go on to use this same toy mold in their own Transforming robot toy in 1985 known as "Galactic man"
We hope you all enjoy this latest installment of TOY VAULT. We will have a video showing off this G1 SHOCKWAVE out very soon. Thanks for the continued support!
- HOLY MOUNTAIN PRINTING
