Originally published at: Check out this retro commercial for Karate Kid action figures | Boing Boing
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Whatever happened to “wax on, wax off”?
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A figure without enough points of articulation to emulate the Crane Kick seems like it’d be a bad idea.
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Available at the time, but notably missing from the commercial given the voice over, the Mr. Miyagi action figure.
I was curious, there are these.
I also found this one, not for action figures but pretty clever.
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I had the Daniel action figure when I was a kid. Pretty sure one of the nurses who was taking care of my premi twin brothers (as in brothers thst are twins and not some temporal anachronistic my twin) in the NICU bought it for me. That nurse was awesome and I loved that toy. 36ish years later and we still talk glowingly about that nurse.
The toy was pretty cool too but my sister hated Daniel San fighting her barbies.
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I’ve really really tried to like Cobra Kai. I love many of the characters (especially Hawk) and I love how Daniel and Johnny are always poking fun at themselves for sorta being parodies of themselves. However the world-building in it is just too much hard cheese for me. I can’t suspend disbelief for a world where high school kids get into giant suburban white kid karate fights over everything. I feel like the movies played that better- the kids doing karate in competition fought each other because it was an insular world apart from school, but it wasn’t some weird John Williams version of Hong Kong cinema where everyone is kung fu fighting all the time over everything. Plus as they keep trying to ramp up the villains with the return of various sad elderly baddies from the movies, it’s getting increasingly very silly. I also feel they need to address the weird cultural appropriation of suburban white kid karate. The movies get a pass on it because of the time period, but even they did address it more in the sequels. However in Cobra Kai, the distillation of dozens of ancient traditional martial arts from many cultures down to “karate for white kids” is the elephant in the room nobody ever talks about. Meanwhile Daniel is wearing headbands and kneeling on tatami mats in reverence to… something. The new mall in Reseda, I guess.
The movies had a sweetness to them that seems missing from the show. It may be the innocence of the time, or the absence of the late Pat Morita may be what’s missing. Not sure. Anyways, no disrespect to anyone who likes it. It seems like a great show for many reasons.
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I liked the first season but totally agree that the everyone karate fights over everything aspect and returning villians started to pass my ability to suspend disbelief. (Come on someone would just sue/arrest someone right?)
As to the Karate in the States thing. Its actually an interesting history.
Karate in the States devloped due to post WW2 policies in occupied Japan. When Japan lost the war and the US military moved in martial arts were effectively banned. However Karate ended up being allowed after some clever negotiations with Gen. Douglas Macarthur where he was convinced that Karate was a sport like Boxing. As a result many service members learned Karate during the occupation and brought it home. This helped Karate become one of the best known martial arts from Japan. After a while a distinct “American Karate” developed which is quite different from the traditional Okinawan schools. This has spread across the states (and Canada). Some of these styles now have no ties to an original Japanese schools and are basically their own thing with different goals in their training.
(I am making no comment on appropriation etc. just the background as it is very different from every other martial art)
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Yah, you have to basically accept that police and courts don’t exist for this world to make any sense.
Thanks for sharing! That is interesting.
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My take is that they all live in an alternate universe where guns are not a thing.
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“Vintage”, not “Retro”.
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