Your Coca-Cola bottler presents Claudia based on the famous play and novels by Rose Franken Brought to you transcribed Monday through Friday by your friendly neighbor who bottles Coca-Cola Relax and while you're listening refresh yourself. Have a coke And now Claudia David now what time is it? I don't want to be late tonight. Would you look who's worrying about being no remarks Just tell me the time, please. It's eight o'clock the concert doesn't start until quarter of nine Good, then we'll have time putting the lights out in here. There's no use leaving the living room looking as if we're home I mean as if we were home is there no none at all. I said is there David can't you answer me? I can't my jaw has dropped Well, that's a fine thing for it to do just before going out the thing that you are ready for an appointment with time to spare Now now I have seen everything just see if Fritz and birthday are ready to a no back talk, please and no back Go on. I give you one compliment and no back talk Please can't stand it that I'm ready on time. Can you know? I just can't stand it neither can I David I I hope what do you hope I hope nobody'll embarrass Fritz and birthday at the concert Do you think I mean because they know she's our cook and he's our farmer Certainly hate Fritz and birthday to be hurt. Of course you would but stop worry. They can take care of themselves. Yeah, I guess so Do you know mr. Nought and you are about the only man?  No, what do I look like? Oh Pet usher, maybe Careful, you'll turn my head As a matter of fact, you look pretty all right, too Is that all I look pretty all right? No, you look all right to me. Well, how would I look to a stranger? stranger Honestly, maybe I should have gone to the hairdresser something do you think Little clock doesn't it really does. No, what have I done? Ouch David you're crushing my dress No How do you think that I think you look? Well, I still don't know how I look but the way you kissed me. I certainly feel wonderful And put on your coat I'll call bertha and fritz. You're so businesslike all of a sudden. That's me bertha You're almost ready. You want to be late? I'm coming mr. Noughton I just wanted to make sure my stove was out and turned the icebox down a little Well, what about fritz? Oh, he went to the barn to get the car. He said he meets you out in front. Well, that's fine Are they ready david? Well bertha's just finishing putting her stuff away in the kitchen and puttering around I don't think my mama never leaves a flak of dust unturned does she? How about fritz? No, he's up at the barn getting the car. He'll meet us out front.  I'm glad we asked him to come with us tonight david Whoever heard bertha sing? I live here too. Remember? Oh I mean I I wanted if I'd survived what she has I wonder if I'd be able to sing too Man, I dare say you could. Oh, I don't know Let's be the hardest thing in life to see your whole world crumble Start at the bottom of the ladder again and make no excuses for it.  We never never talk about it. Yeah, I'll help you on your coat. Oh, thanks darling Fritz, how hard do you ever talks about himself either does he? No, it's none of our business I know it's none of our business. What are you taking for a nosy little female But sweet. Oh david What if the world should crumble again? This time we were the ones Well, we mustn't let it Now I'm already everything in is in the kitchen ship and shape as you say ship and shape I do. Uh, I hope I do not keep you waiting. Oh, not a bit. We're already Mrs. Nothing you are like a picture if you're in your evening David somebody appreciates me. Well bertha's being polite. I see. I hope I do not disgrace you without an evening dress Perfect. Was it just my black dress, but it does it must so it does very well too David we're all ready.  You heard the boss Oh, when he's this way bossy. I never feel he's the boss. I see what you mean here. I lock the door Here I am mr. Norton. Oh good. The car the motor is running. Oh good. Good. Thanks for taking her out of the garage fritz not at all This is a little too big for his dark suit now. I was just thinking he looks very handsome He bought it when he was still superintendent in new york now. He's stronger than he was More muscle, you know It builds a man up to do outside work. So fritz is too big for his suit But i'm very happy about it. So are we And would you like me to drive mr. Norton? No, not at all. You and bertha get in the back. I'll drive He always has to run everything, you know all husbands do you talk too much mama get in the car Fritz i'm old enough to know what I do You don't have to tell me everything you said all husbands do bertha All right, we uh all set all set. Let's go Bertha, do you realize what we are doing tonight? No pinch me fritz pinch me But I realize we have to hear music. All right. We're off to the concert. Let's go Goodness lobby certainly crowded, isn't it? What a very dressed up business. This is mrs. Norton. I know I did be so fancy bertha I guess everybody likes to show off once in a while. Look, there is jarry tucker over there. Oh, yeah See in the corner sunday suit on what do you know all his teeth too? david you see Where's david? Where'd he go? Oh, he and fritz are looking at the photos and paintings on the wall. Oh, yes, I see them Yeah Mr. Norton is handsome. I do know what I was thinking you had it in your eyes It is too bad mrs. Brown could not be with us here. Well mama wouldn't have cared cared much about it You know, she's funny about claws As a matter of fact, I think I'm a little funny about him too. You must not be when you are young You must go out much homes too nice. How's everybody turned out in great style? Frankly, I never suspected eastbrook had so many evening clothes in its closet. I smell mothball Bertha, there is a picture there on the wall you would like very much to see What is it of fritz come and you will see tell me first before I come Like a woman it is a picture by an american soldier of bodense. You were there once remember on our marriage Yes, I remember Now I prefer to see texas But come show me fritz take my hand. I don't want to lose you in the crowd Well, you have not lost me yet that you will have that's no such luck How you talk just like an american woman You thinking what I'm thinking mr. Naughton. I wouldn't be surprised mrs. Naughton like two children the night before christmas The children of sadness in their eyes. Oh, there you are. I thought I saw you come in the door and here you are Oh, hello mrs. Reed. Good evening. Good evening. We haven't seen you since summer mrs. Reed Well winter, you know, I move back to town. Oh, we bear winter up here It's so bleak and dull But this being the big local social event. I thought I'd drive up and see some of my friends Charming isn't it? Yes charming quaint so many dear people here tonight Of course, I don't know everybody, but the nice people are here tonight, too. Have you said hello to nancy? No, no, I haven't seen her right over there in the corner. Oh, yes. It's all the orange hair We have to say hello to her david. We do why? You know, I've gotten very good.   Reed She's a very good friend.   Yes quite good for us very there. She is and that man her husband Yes, oh a very striking looking man There aren't many people like that left in the world. Oh, they're my dear. No, there certainly aren't and especially in eastbrook I'm afraid I'm not all that poor with country people. Are you quite You'll introduce me. Won't you why I'll be very happy to mrs. Reed There's Nancy middle now. Oh dear. What a dreadful lavender dress. She's wearing and with her orange hair Still, I must talk to her. Will I be seeing you in the intermission my dear? Well, yes.  Well, what do you want me to do? Something should be done about people like that You're the man to do it. Only you don't well at least I didn't make polite small talk I know I could have kicked you letting me carry the brunt alone. Well, that's what wives are for and I'm glad at last You found a purpose for us darling Now what are you smiling at the joke is on mrs. Reed You mean about fritz and brith well, she sees him at our house fritz and his white coat And if he she goes into the kitchen birther with her head in the oven Well, certainly serve her right. I'd love to see her face. So queen well cheer up You never will she'll never cross my threshold almost be worth it If I was sure it wouldn't embarrass fritz and birther I'm gonna take a take a great great deal more than mrs. Reed to embarrass fritz and birther Certainly would Why do I waste my breath on her? Only I wish I'd told her off. You are really bitter aren't you? You bet I am and I intend to stay bitter Well, maybe you shouldn't be David Maybe the fact that mrs. Reed saw fritz and birther here and never thought of them as anything less than what they Looked to be and what they are Maybe that's a good sign. No because if she knew she could change your mind very quickly As you said, there's still some people who wouldn't accept them as as a man that's just what he is And not the labor that he does The snobbish fool David darling don't get so angry in the middle of the mobby Why not it makes my blood boil In a democracy a man is supposed to be taken for what he is without social ladders and scales and barriers We'll get there someday. I hope David look look at fritz and birther now Say that's uh, that's george reynolds. He's talking to it. Now mrs. reynolds talking to birther Probably comparing recipes fritz has probably given reynolds some hot tips on farming george reynolds is the The first select man, isn't he so So david isn't that your democracy? Looks to me as if it was pretty healthy When you're home alone for lunch, do you snatch a hasty icebox snack? Nutritionists insist you're the better for a quiet relaxed sit-down meal You can make that meal refreshing as well by the addition of a bottle of ice cold coca-cola Get a carton of coke when you're out today and lunch refresh tomorrow Hey david claudia david is joe king. Yeah, let's see what he wants First time i've caught you two together. Mind if i talk to you? Well, you know, we're very expensive. We charge by the minute. Well good I'll buy it because mondia st valentine's day and i want to find out something very important Uh-oh joe. I I really don't think we're very good authorities on valentine's You know, I have not sat one single valentine since I was in grade school me either Well, you're good authorities on love and that's enough for me Tell me what makes your marriage tick. What did you say that's a big order? I mean i've been watching you two for a year and a half now What's the secret of you're having such a good time out of life? A lot of things name one love name another well respect Do you mean you respect me david? Now you keep out of this You know, he hates to give me a compliment that man. All right I think i'm beginning to get your secret though two hearts that beat as one Just one big walking valentine. Now hasn't he got a nerve? I'll go along with you. Sorry. I interrupted you and as I was saying Every day monday through friday claudia comes to you transcribed with the best wishes of your friendly neighbor who bottles coca-cola So listen again monday at the same time And now this is joking saying or if war and remember whoever you are whatever you do Wherever you may be when you think of refreshment think of coca-cola For coca-cola makes any pause the pause that refreshes and ice cold coca-cola is everywhere The parts of claudia and david on this program were played by catherine bard and paul crabtree And the entire production is supervised and directed by william brown maloney And now here's a word from your friendly neighbor who bottles coca-cola


I like Street Fighter 2 G.I. Joe toys. And I don't. We must fight. I see we aren't evenly matched, but I have a secret weapon. Enjoy the paralyzer. Ha ha ha! Say goodnight, Fluffy! I cannot defeat you with my arm paralyzed, but I also have a secret weapon. Sonic Boom! I have a better idea. Instead of fighting, let's work together and review a G.I. Joe toy and a Street Fighter 2 toy. You don't want to fight to the death because we disagree? I have decided against it. This channel is a place of inclusion for all G.I. Joe fans. Hello, everybody. Hooded Cobra Commander 788 here. This is the show where we review every vintage G.I. Joe toy from 1982 to 1994. But what counts as a G.I. Joe toy? Does it include everything that had the G.I. Joe label on it? I don't count everything to be within the vintage toy line. I don't include licensed products. I don't include video games. I also don't include a set of toys that nearly every other fan considers to be part of G.I. Joe. Street Fighter 2. I swore to never review Street Fighter on this channel, and I shall not. But it would be irresponsible to talk about all of G.I. Joe and never talk about Street Fighter, so I brought in an expert, someone who knows and likes Street Fighter, the Dragon Fortress. Hi, my name is Dustin. I'm the owner and curator of the Dragon Fortress, which you can find at thedragonfortress.com. I review and wax poetic about toys from the 1990s, including our mutually beloved G.I. Joe. Thanks to the Dragon Fortress for being here, and now, HCC 788 presents the Paralyzer and the Dragon Force presents the Sonic Boom Tank. This is the 1991 Cobra Paralyzer. This vehicle was introduced in 1991 and was available in 1991 only. It was discontinued for 1992. It did not include an action figure. There were no later versions of the Paralyzer in the vintage G.I. Joe toy line, but the entire mold was used to create the Street Fighter 2 Sonic Boom Tank. As a tracked vehicle, it is in the lineage of Cobra Tanks, which started with the legendary His Tank in 1983. Cobra Tanks have always been kind of bizarre. Sometimes they barely qualify as tanks. The His had a glass canopy and a streamlined body shape. In 1984, there was a Sears Exclusive Red His Tank. There was also a more traditional tank, the Sears Exclusive CAT, which of course was recolored from the G.I. Joe Mobat Tank. The 1987 Cobra Maggot was another vehicle that maybe didn't qualify as a tank. It was more of a tracked artillery vehicle. The 1988 Cobra Imp was not quite a tank. It was a tracked missile vehicle. The 1989 His 2 was based on the original His design and carried over some of its design quirks. In 1991, the old His Tank wasn't forgotten. It was remodeled and recolored to become the Septic Tank. That was in the Eco Warriors subseries. G.I. Joe always had the advantage though. In 1991, they had the Brawler, a much more substantial tank. In the TV commercial, the Paralyzer was pitted against the G.I. Joe Badger, an off-road vehicle. The Paralyzer was advertised during a period when G.I. Joe was producing live action TV commercials. Some vehicles were built in full scale for those commercials, but the Paralyzer wasn't one of them. I have the box for the Paralyzer so we can see how this vehicle was marketed back in 1991. It is described as a fast attack vehicle with advanced track tread technology. I think I know what they mean here and we will take a look at this vehicle's tracks later in this review. We have some decent artwork here. The driver of the vehicle is the Desert Scorpion. This orange color is a bit obnoxious, but if you're going to have an orange vehicle, it makes a little more sense to have it in the desert rather than maybe a jungle environment. So we have sandy ground in the artwork. That kind of makes sense. Manning the turret, we have the Crimson Guard Immortal. We have a sticker here for the Combat Pay promotion. We have the same artwork on the top and the sides of the box and on the bottom. And then on the back of the box, we have a photograph of the toy. It looks like this is a photograph of a prototype of the toy. There are some differences between this photograph and the toy that came out of the box. The trigger on the missile launcher is a different color. On the toy, it is orange. And here it's green. The gun on the turret does not have a plastic wire that is on the toy. Also, the hinges on the tracks are black on the box, but on the toy, they are orange. Utilizing the latest in SAML weaponry, Paralyzer can stun G.I. Joe with this incredible surface-to-surface firepower. And it describes what SAML is down here that is Spring Action Missile Launch System. That's right, this vehicle has a spring-loaded missile launcher, but it also has an 80s style flag point. It's worth two flag points. I guess they had not switched to the 90s style flag points by 1991. Let's take a look at the parts and the features of the Paralyzer. And let's start by looking at the main body of this vehicle. It is in a bright orange color and it has a ton of technical detail all over it. They did not skimp on the detail. Almost every millimeter of this vehicle has some kind of gadget or knob on it. And they really look great. The details are excellent. Unfortunately, the choice of color can sometimes wash out those great details. It has some paper stickers. The underside of the vehicle is mostly hollow.  But this part has some detail on it. It has some stickers. It has what looks like control sticks on the outside of it. But in fact, the controls are on the inside. You can open this hatch by just pulling up at the front. It is hinged at the back and that reveals the driver's seat. It's a single seat cockpit, but that driver's seat is very wide. It's made for one action figure though. The vehicle isn't quite wide enough to fit two figures in there. It does have a couple control sticks, one on each side. To demonstrate putting a figure in the Paralyzer, let's use the Desert Scorpion like on the box art. You just bend his legs and put him in the driver's seat. Those control sticks are so far apart that his hands don't really reach them very well.  But of course if his arms are stretched out to reach the control sticks, the canopy doesn't close very well. So he kind of has to have his hands by his side in order to close the canopy. The canopy is still an open cockpit so he's still not protected by any armor. He is still exposed to enemy fire. You could put the figure in that way, but honestly it's just as easy to place the figure in by putting him in through the top. The Paralyzer has four treads, two on each side. These are fake treads. They are in black plastic. The vehicle actually rolls on four wheels that are connected to the treads. One on each tread. These wheels and wheel connectors use the same mold as the ones on the Mobile Battle Bunker but in a different color. These treads are hinged at the back. That's what these orange connectors are for. So you can tilt the tread downward by pushing down at the front. Each one tilts downward like that. And that can place the Paralyzer in an elevated position. This I guess you could use to fire from behind cover. The Paralyzer has a turret. It's a pretty large turret. It's located behind the cockpit. The turret will rotate 360 degrees but you have to kind of work with it a little bit. As you can see, the gun kind of hits the head of the driver. But if you move it around a bit, you can rotate that turret 360 degrees. The turret has a gun and a missile launcher and they will elevate about 45 degrees. And one thing I like is the gun and the missile launcher will elevate in sync. The gun is on the starboard side of the vehicle when facing forward. It is in a dark blue-green plastic. The blueprints call this a double-barreled concussion cannon with servo firepower. To me, that just sounds like random words. There's a tab at the top of the gun that you can pull back and pretend the gun is recoiling as it fires. And it will spring back forward which is a pretty cool feature. There's a plastic wire that runs from the back of the gun down under the gun and that provides the recoil feature. It's fine. It looks pretty cool and it works pretty well. But unfortunately it does tend to stress at this connector at the back and that could be a point of breakage. On the other side of the turret is the spring-loaded missile launcher. The launcher itself is in orange plastic and it has three dark blue-green missiles. These missiles can tab onto the launcher itself. It has the traditional GI Joe dumbbell shaped pegs and the missiles can peg on. And this is nice if they're going to give us extra missiles for these spring-loaded missile launchers. It's nice that they give us a way to store the extra missiles so they don't get lost. There are three missiles and three tabs for those missiles. To operate the missile launcher just take one of the three missiles and press it into the hole in the front of the launcher. Press back until it clicks. The trigger is on the back of the launcher. You just press it to the right to fire. Let's demonstrate the missile launcher by firing at our favorite target, Dr. Meinbender. I don't really have anything especially against this Dr. Meinbender figure but this became a tradition on this channel just because this figure happened to be handy when I was testing one of the missile launchers and I just kept using this guy. This is kind of close range so I'm going to aim carefully and press the trigger over to fire. Ooh yeah, really powerful missile launcher. The blueprints call these missiles anti-radar electronically charged communication deactivation missiles. What? The missiles are the same color as the gun. They just used that same color plastic for the missiles and the gun and the wheels and the connector bar between the missile launcher and the gun. Basically all the parts that weren't orange and black were molded in this color. Finally we get to the rear of the vehicle and the paralyzer does not have a universal tow hitch that is unfortunate. That means it cannot tow any of Cobra's towed weapons like the ASP and the ASP. It does have a platform on the back with two foot pegs so it can carry two additional action figures. Let's demonstrate with the Crimson Guard Immortal, the same figure that is on the box art. Just peg his foot onto that foot peg and he should stay on there reasonably securely. This is great. I like this feature. I like having a platform that can carry extra troops that is good. One downside though is it severely limits the range of motion for that turret. The gun runs into the guy on the back. But you can also pretend that this back gun is being manned by your Crimson Guard Immortal. Looking at how the paralyzer was used in G.I. Joe Media, the paralyzer was a mainstay of the Deak era of the animated series. It first appeared in the episode channel. One thing I like about the Deak series is the toy accurate vehicle models. Deak may not have done everything well, but they did a good job animating the vehicles. Looking at the comic book series published by Marvel Comics, the paralyzer was used quite a bit there too. They were often deployed as fast attack vehicles and usually work in teams. At one point, Cobra Commander even drove one. As noted by many fans of 90s G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe's most successful years were in the early 90s. Sales were apparently bolstered by the addition of spring firing weapons and cool live-action TV commercials. Through the leadership of Hasbro executive Kirk Bozigian, G.I. Joe's sales were boosted from a low of $65 million in 1990 to a high of $100 million in 1992. The story for G.I. Joe in the early 90s was not all rosy. According to the book Toy Wars by G. Wayne Miller, market research in 1993 revealed G.I. Joe was losing popularity with kids. Boys were more interested in X-Men. The TV show's ratings were failing and there were no plans on producing more shows. Further, quoting Miller, out licensing income, an indicator of a property's resonance in the culture, was in its fourth straight year of decline. Those four years of decline included the otherwise profitable years of 1991 and 1992. G.I. Joe was in trouble by 1993. It was under these circumstances that Street Fighter was introduced to G.I. Joe. It's here that I turn the review over to the Dragon Fortress to talk about the history of Street Fighter and to review the Street Fighter version of the Paralyzer, the Sonic Boom Tank. I was born in 1984. The G.I. Joe of my childhood is the G.I. Joe that's so often scorned by people older than myself. My main childhood G.I. Joe years were 1990 through 1994. To you, that may be the era of bad, bright colors and lazy accessories, but to me, that was just G.I. Joe. In 1993, this is probably what my main G.I. Joe squad looked like. Thankfully, I can't see you doing a guile frown through the screen. Obviously though, this is proof that I'm the best man for the job. Because I grew up in that era, HCC asked me for my perspective on the G.I. Joe Street Fighter toy line. I lived it. I was the perfect age and demographic for those toys when they came out. I loved both G.I. Joe and Street Fighter in 1993 and had several of the toys at the time. Today, we'll look at G.I. Joe's Street Fighter Subline through the lens of the 1993 Sonic Boom Tank, a repaint of 1991's Cobra Paralyzer. In 1993, I received the Sonic Boom Tank as a reward for attending a chicken pox play date, and the weaker more of suffering than it caused me. Today, we'll see if this tank was worth the torture, and we'll also take a more nuanced, in-depth look at the intersection of the world warriors and a real American hero. In 1991, arcade goers were introduced to the charming pixelated violence of Capcom's Street Fighter II. This revolutionary game allowed players to use weaponized yoga against both cars and sumo wrestlers. Because of these visionary gameplay features, Street Fighter II became the best-selling title since the golden age of arcade games. In the early 1990s, you'd find Street Fighter II everywhere. It was in my local arcade, at the drug store by the comic book rack, and in the lobby of my neighborhood Pizza Hut. In an age before eSports and Twitch streamers, people were intense about competing at Street Fighter II. Even some of my friends wanted to get in on the action and would get soundly thrashed by squeaky voice, wispy mustache teenagers at the local mall. By 1993, two years after Street Fighter II's launch, sales were over $1.5 billion in gross revenue. More importantly, Street Fighter II came out for home consoles in 1992. When 1993 rolled around, a kid might have Street Fighter II Championship Edition, which allowed you to play as M. Bison, Vega, Balrog, and Sagat for their home console and a handful of Street Fighter II action figures to accompany the game cartridge. But what else was in the home of many kids in 1993? America's highly trained special mission force, G. I. Joe, of course. By 1993, the G. I. Joe toyline was already divided into several sub-series, many of which were answers to other pop culture trends. Hasbro released a Street Fighter II sub-team for the G. I. Joe line, where it joined the ranks of Ninja Force, Star Brigade, and others. But was Street Fighter II really a good fit for G. I. Joe? Let's figure it out together using the Sonic Boom Tank and its driver, Championship Edition Grumpy Pants Guile, as an entry point. As early as 1988, G. I. Joe released figures in different sub-teams such as Night Force, Python Patrol, Tiger Force, and Sonic Fighters. Many of those toys were just repaints of pre-existing figures. By 1991, though, the sub-teams included new figures and new characters. These new sub-teams, for better or for worse, existed to cash in on trends in pop culture and action figures. Want to save the environment? You can turn to Captain Planet, Widget the World Watcher, Zen, Intergalactic Ninja, or G. I. Joe's Eco Warriors. Interested in brightly colored martial arts mayhem? You've got the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and G. I. Joe's Ninja Force. War on Drugs? You've got your school's Dare program, the video game NARC, and G. I. Joe's Drug Elimination Force. Want to take on some monstrous abominations? You have Kenner's Aliens toyline, or G. I. Joe's Mega Marines. You see the pattern. Some G. I. Joe fans say this diversification was a soulless cash grab that destroyed the G. I. Joe brand in the 1990s. Other fans note that trying to stay current with different themes actually helped the G. I. Joe toyline last as long as it did. As a kid, I loved Eco Warriors and appreciated the message. I also loved Ninja Force, Star Brigade, DEF, and the Mega Marines. I grew up on rented VHS tapes of the old cartoon and G. I. Joe the Movie. To me, G. I. Joe was always a diverse science fiction property. These subteams might have been capitalizing on pop culture trends, but to a kid in the early 90s, they fit G. I. Joe perfectly. Hasbro's Street Fighter line was definitely capitalizing on a trend. But did it actually fit G. I. Joe perfectly? Street Fighter II was huge in 1993. Without a doubt, it was a bigger cultural force than G. I. Joe. Capcom allowing Hasbro to integrate the cash cow that was Street Fighter II into the G. I. Joe line was an immense gift. It was like Capcom's international pop star giving Hasbro's less popular, but well respected GarageBand, an opening slot on an international stadium tour. In short, the Street Fighter and G. I. Joe alliance was a great example of corporate brand synergy. I first heard about the Street Fighter toy line in my fourth or fifth grade classroom. At first, I didn't believe something so perfect could exist. Could I really have Ken, Ryu and Chun Li fight alongside Duke and Roadblock? When I went over to a friend's house and saw his Crimson Cruiser with M. Bison, I knew it was for real. For a time in 1993, the Street Fighter action figures were THE most coveted toys at my school. If you had a Vega or a Blanca, you were a rock star. The 1993 Street Fighter sub-line consisted of 12 individually-carded figures, three vehicles with drivers, and one placeup with included figure. Many of the Street Fighter toys used existing bodies with new heads. Ninja Force molds and their spring-loaded martial arts action features were a popular and obvious choice for Street Fighter figures. Hasbro also got back together with some X's, which included a very scandalous and public display of affection for the Road Pig and Big Boa molds. They also gave Xangi for Robot Legs and M. Bison a baseball jersey. So that's a lot of repaints with new heads, but how lazy was the Street Fighter line, really? There were three all-new, all-original molds for the Street Fighter line. Dalsim, Sagat, and E. Honda all contained questionable action features, but were very detailed, well-done molds that closely reflected the video game characters. And we also need to talk about Chun Li. Prior to 1993, the last female character Hasbro released in the G.I. Joe toy line was Jinx in 1987. Miraculously, two female characters showed up in 1993, Chun Li and Scarlet, who both used the same body mold. Except for Banzai's use for Vega, Chun Li was the only figure in the Street Fighter line who used a 1993 mold. Most of these figures used much older molds, so Chun Li and Scarlet were probably both planned uses for the mold. I don't think we would have gotten Ninja Force Scarlet without Chun Li to make sure they got their money's worth. The various Ninja Force, Muscle Guy, and Robot parts used for the Street Fighter 2 line were often a poor match for their pixelated character models. They also came with weapons trees ill-suited to the characters. In fact, Vega, the only Street Fighter 2 character to use a weapon in the game, didn't come with his trademark claw, but Chun Li did. Even as kids, we notice these things. I believe 1993's Sonic Boom Tank and its driver, Gile, are the epitome of the Street Fighter 2 toy line. Let's take a look. The Sonic Boom Tank is a dark green and bright yellow recolor of the 1991 Cobra Paralyzer and retains all the features of that earlier toy. It includes a driver, Gile, repainted in a very sensible brown color scheme. Here's your military realism. Even though he uses parts from Road Pig, Dusty Version 3, and Roadblock Version 2, he is a pretty good representation of the game character. He's much more accurate to the source material than most of the figures in the Street Fighter line. But there is one problem, and it's the Gile frown. Gile is supposed to be the heroic US military member that appeals to US Street Fighter fans, but instead of his natural good looks and unnatural hairstyle, we got the world's grumpiest frown. This was not uncommon in the Street Fighter line. Kin, for instance, looks more like a clean-shaven Chuck Norris than an American Playboy martial artist who listens to Alice in Chains while he drives his convertible around Malibu, and Gile is frowning the entire time. But, I gotta say, Gile makes sense with G.I. Joe. In the games, he's portrayed as a major in the United States Air Force. His military background makes him a natural fit. I'd say he fits him better with Joe than any other Street Fighter character, though M. Bison, a terrorist leader, and Chun Li, an Interpol investigator, also makes sense. The Sonic Boom Tank itself is a pretty decent small vehicle. It fit the G.I. Joe aesthetic I was used to at the time, and the military green is a nice color. I used it with my regular G.I. Joe figures more than my Street Fighter figures, and it got a fair amount of use for me as a kid. I still really enjoy the cockpit detailing and the pom-pom guns. But how much sense does this vehicle make? Well, for starters, Gile is in the Air Force. It would make much more sense for him to come with a jet like a repaint of the Storm Eagle. That would even somewhat match the background of his video game stage. But a tank is a bit more playable than a jet, especially because this tank can fit a couple more of his World Warrior friends on its footpegs. To me, the Sonic Boom Tank sort of resembles the Wolverine. It has the same open cockpit design and a rear-mounted missile rack. Not to mention the colors are similar. In fact, I display and photograph the Sonic Boom Tank with Cover Girl in the driver's seat. She just really seems to fit. By now, you're beginning to see how the Street Fighter toys do, or do not, fit with G.I. Joe. But what about Street Fighter as a concept? Both brands have some themes in common. They're both about a band of plucky, individualistic heroes who work together as a team to take down a shadowy terrorist organization. There also could be an underground high-stakes fighting tournament in the world of G.I. Joe. M. Bison Shadaloo would be a good ally or competitor for Cobra or the headhunters, though Destro might get jealous. Gael and Chun Li could easily fit on the core G.I. Joe team, and the martial arts theme is a logical step forward from Ninja Force. But mega monsters aside, G.I. Joe doesn't have many characters like Blanca. G.I. Joe team members can't harness their body's natural energy to throw Hadukens or Sonic Booms. Yoga Flames are also out of the question. So it seems like the fit is middling at best. More of a marriage of convenience than a marriage of passion. However, there is something that might convince you. A conversation with my friend Dan several years ago made me realize that the 1994 Jean-Claude Van Damme Street Fighter movie is, in fact, the best live-action G.I. Joe movie of all time. The next time you watch it, watch it through that lens and your appreciation for it might increase. When the JCVD movie came out, Hasbro's Street Fighter toyline continued alongside it, minus the G.I. Joe branding. In 1994, Hasbro was obviously hedging its bets more on Street Fighter than G.I. Joe. That same year, they also rolled out a Mortal Kombat toyline. The 1994 Street Fighter movie toys greatly improved on the previous year's line, with better sculpts and cooler vehicles, including versions of the Dragonfly and Snowcat. Ultimately, though, Hasbro dropped the G.I. Joe branding because it didn't see Street Fighter fitting with G.I. Joe, and that's because Street Fighter, at the time, had its own much stronger legs. In the 90s, Street Fighter outlived G.I. Joe with movies, a Saturday morning cartoon, comics, an anime film, and many more games. In 1998, Toy Biz would release a much more appropriate toyline in X-Men vs. Street Fighter and continue onto Marvel vs. Capcom. It somehow made much more sense to see Ryu fighting Wolverine than it did to see Ryu fighting Duke. Street Fighter can fit in with G.I. Joe if you're open-minded, but it is a bit of a stretch, even I admit that. Even if you're not open-minded though, some of the Street Fighter figures and vehicles from 93 and 94 fit in pretty nicely with the toys from G.I. Joe's later years. Remember, it's your imagination, and you can use these toys however you want to. I personally think many of these toys deserve a second look, even the Sonic Boom Tank. Regardless of how either of us feel, Street Fighter was officially part of G.I. Joe for a year, and it was a Hasbro product with G.I. Joe construction, even beyond that. Street Fighter toys were loved by kids my age at the time. I was there and I lived it. I remember it well. These toys were exciting for Street Fighter kids who didn't even like G.I. Joe, and it gave G.I. Joe kids more characters and vehicles to choose from. Objectively, it was a pretty lazy cash-in that produced varied results. But Street Fighter is a weird, charming, wild, and worthwhile part of G.I. Joe's history. Thank you to the Dragon Fortress for covering that material so well. I don't have the background to cover it as well as that. Even though we disagree about the merits of Street Fighter toys, the perspective of the Dragon Fortress is important to know and understand. Looking at the paralyzer overall, obviously I'm not going to like the color. Cobra gets more leeway than G.I. Joe when it comes to obnoxious colors, but the orange on this one is still over the top. I can kind of tolerate it as a desert color, but there are still better colors to use for a desert vehicle. Looking beyond the color, the toy itself has some decent features for a vehicle its size. It has a fair number of moving parts. It has the recoil on the gun. It has the elevating tracks. It has the opening canopy. A lesser toy line would have done without most of those features. I still have a hard time calling it a tank, though. It is a tracked vehicle, but it doesn't have any armor to protect the driver. As usual, the driver is exposed to enemy fire. The Street Fighter version of this toy has a better color scheme. If Street Fighter took this mediocre G.I. Joe toy and made it better, why wouldn't I want to add that to my collection? Well, I guess I gotta talk about that now. You've heard the Dragon Fortress talk about his perspective and why he considers Street Fighter II to be part of G.I. Joe. My perspective is a bit different. Other than having the G.I. Joe label and being in a couple of the TV commercials, I don't see these as having anything to do with G.I. Joe. I think Street Fighter was brought under the umbrella of G.I. Joe for one reason, to inflate the sales of G.I. Joe during a time when the numbers were sagging. The earliest waves of Street Fighter II figures recycled the bodies of G.I. Joe figures, and often they had little resemblance to the characters in the game. Is there anything bad about Street Fighter? Of course not. Is there anything wrong with the toys? Not if you like them, not at all. But I feel like this effort to shoehorn Street Fighter II into G.I. Joe shortchanged Street Fighter fans. A lot of the figures had springy action gimmicks often copied from G.I. Joe's Ninja Force figures. I think that actually makes some sense for Street Fighter II. But what makes less sense is making the Street Fighter II figures in G.I. Joe's scale. G.I. Joe's 3 ¾ inch scale is perfect for a toy line with a lot of vehicles, which I think was less necessary for Street Fighter II. I think Street Fighter II figures would make more sense in a larger scale, maybe He-Man scale, which I think would be more fun in one-on-one battles, like in the game. They should still have their springy action features to mimic the moves the characters made in the game, and most importantly have the figures resemble the characters in the game. Instead of getting toys that would make more sense for Street Fighter II and would closer mimic the play pattern of the game, instead you got recycled G.I. Joe toys. And aside from the TV commercials, no real effort to integrate them. You don't have a reason to play with your Street Fighter II toys and your G.I. Joe toys together. That's my perspective on Street Fighter II. The game is not bad, obviously, and there's nothing wrong with the toys and there's nothing wrong with the people who collect and enjoy those toys. I just don't consider them to be part of G.I. Joe. And if you're a Street Fighter fan, I kinda think you deserve better. That was my review of the Paralyzer and the Dragon Fortress' review of the Sonic Boom Tank. Thank you to the Dragon Fortress for being part of this video. Make sure you check out his website, especially if you like 90s G.I. Joe. You wanna follow what this guy is doing. I think it's important in a fandom to have a variety of opinions and perspectives, as long as the people who hold those opinions and perspectives can behave respectfully toward each other. And thank you to the Dragon Fortress for doing that here. Thank you for watching this video. If you enjoyed it, I'm making more like it, so please give this video a thumbs up on YouTube, subscribe to the YouTube channel, hit the notification bell so you don't miss any future videos, and share this video with your friends. That's what helps this channel grow. You can find me on social media, on Facebook and Twitter, and I have a website, HCC788.com. If you want to know if I've already reviewed a vintage G.I. Joe item, that's a good place to check. Special thanks to all my supporters on Patreon, including the names you see on the screen now. Support on Patreon helps keep this show going. So if you like this show, and you'd like to support this show in that way, please consider checking out Patreon. You can get some special rewards, including early access to reviews, and you can find out how to decode the secret messages you see in these videos. Thank you for joining me on this adventure of collecting vintage G.I. Joe toys. I'll see you next time, and until then, remember, only G.I. Joe is G.I. Joe. We must fight!


We have the first playoff game and the first heartbreaking loss. This one's brought to you by DraftKings. Twins and Astros are tied in the ninth inning and Sergio Romo is on the bump. Now Sergio Romo just threw a two seam sinker to a righty batter. He had only thrown six of those all season. He throws 64% sliders and that's what people sit on. He just threw another one to a right-handed batter. So now he's got him 0-2, he goes with the slider and it's just a poke job from Gurriel. Just leans back, his hips are all wrong, pokes it, he's on first. Now look at this slider, this doesn't get called a strike. That's a nasty pitch, I would have given it to him, I liked it. Now he goes back to the two seam sinker. Again he's thrown three to righties, that's half of the total amount he threw all season. He just threw another one, Correa hits it. So now he threw four two seamer sinker pitchers to righty batters and he gave up a hit. So he's probably thinking I should stop throwing that pitch and giving up hits on my second best pitch when I don't even throw it a lot at all. He pops up here, he gets the pop-up, I liked his reaction. Looks up, he says it's right there and then thinks the third baseman can't see it, gets all scared. They got it, one out, two on. There's a slider, there's another slider and there's another slider, two oh slider. Another kind of like hipster out ahead of it, out. All right, now springer's up and he's got him one and one. That's my favorite pitch he threw all outing. That is just a nasty slider from Romo there. I love that pitch. There's two outs and there's the off balance just swinging at the slider and there's the heartbreaking error by Polanco. Throws it away, your eyes can't catch it. Imagine if he caught it right there with his bare hand or he caught it in his glove and then grabbed the bag with his bare hand. That would have been a much cooler play if your Twins fan would have ended the inning in a tie game but instead he drops it, picks it up. He's frustrated. Polanco's like, what happened? Who, me? Dusty Baker's like, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. I got a plan. Now Altuve's up, he goes slider way away, he goes slider, no that's that same swing we keep seeing, the hips are out, they're just recognizing slider and throwing their bat at it, hoping good things happen and good things have been happening. There's the same swing. Altuve it's a strike but they put that in play. Now he goes back to the two seamer, again to a righty. He goes back to it again to a righty. Now he's going slider again, three, two. He tries with the fast ball, he doesn't get it. Altuve says your turn, I mean Altuve's about five, six, five, seven so that's probably a strike on judge, not a strike on Altuve. At first he wants, he says, no, okay. Rocco says, we're gonna go, we're gonna take you out. And he looks over at someone and goes, I don't know about all that. Nothing got pitched pretty well. First pitch, bang, two more runs. Four to one, Houston ninth inning, take the lead, heart breaking error to the hair crew here. You got Pineapple on one side, you got Blonde Mohawk on the other. Oh and then sadness abounds for the twins, 17 playoff losses in a row. This one was brought to you by DraftKings.  Most importantly, be responsible and use the code Johnboy when you get the DraftKings app.


Everybody for us here ripping a box of 2022 Panini one football hobby for Daniel out. Thanks Daniel and best of luck Daniel it is a Christian Watson solid 11 to 25 in the dual patch rookie auto Christian Watson the 25 two color patch on top two color patch on bottom good receiver there hopefully him and Jordan love can make a Good a connection next year Thanks for the order Daniel will get this card out to you in just a bit


Okay, welcome everyone. We'll start in just a moment as we allow a few moments for people to get connected. I want to say hello to all of our Amherst and ARPS community members and we thank you for joining us on this community chat. We will be holding community chats like this on Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon for the next couple of weeks. My name is Brianna Sunrid. I'm the communications manager for the town of Amherst. In this webinar, to ask a question from the Zoom application, click the Q&A button to type in your question. Your questions will only be visible to hosts of this meeting. Additionally, if you'd like to speak, please use the Zoom raise hand button or press star nine from your telephone. We ask that you introduce yourself before asking your question and to maintain civil discourse. As a reminder, this webinar is being recorded, so please refrain from asking any personally identifying health questions. So today, joining your town manager, Paul Bachman and I, we have Amherst school superintendent, Mike Morris. Welcome to you both. Thank you. Before we launch into Q&A, are there any status updates from either of you? So I'll start. Yeah. So I was talking to someone on the phone earlier today and I had not talked with them since March 10th or something. And the world has changed so much in those in the time since it's barely five weeks, I think, and it's, it's has been a tremendous change in how we've done business. The way we communicate with each other now we're using Zoom or Microsoft Teams or different platforms for talking to each other. The services we provide has changed. We've just become a wholly different society. So that was really struck me this morning as we're talking on the phone with this person. So I'm really happy that with Briana's help, we've really set these things up. So we're having bi-weekly meetings every Tuesday and Thursday at noon and we record them. You can go to our COVID-19, AmherstCOVID19.org website and watch any of the previous ones. On Tuesday, we had a police chief Scott Livingstone on. And we were supposed to have Julie Fetterman, our health director on today, but she is unable to join us. And it's okay because we've got Mike Morris also scheduled. And Mike has a lot to share with you, I'm sure. So I'm going to hand it off to Mike in case you have anything you want to start with. Yeah, I'll just, I'll give a broad overview of where we are and then, you know, open up for more interactive dialogue as we go. So yeah, we're, as Tom Andrew said, we're on week five and it is a different world that we're in. And I think notably in the schools is that we've, the first couple of weeks we were encouraged by the state to offer enrichment activities for students and families. And that shifted as this extension of the closure statewide actually as well as locally took place. So we've transitioned what we're calling distance learning 2.0, which is more structured to it. There's much more interaction between teachers and students and really it was a group of over 150 teachers, power educators and administrators have put together the different plans both at the elementary, middle school and high school level as well as focusing on special ed and English language learners who each have their own distance learning plans. And so it's it's been a huge amount of work. I want to publicly thank our teachers. I promise someone that I'd wear a Fort River school shirt. So I am wearing a Fort River school shirt. Those teachers in addition to doing their normal duties have organized drive-by through Fort River neighborhoods. They did one about a week and a half ago, another one coming on Friday, which has been greatly appreciated. I happen to live in the Fort River catchment area and was so nice seeing folks in my neighborhood whose kids had graduated Fort River some years ago come out. It was such as just a community event, even though it was I think designed more for the staff and the students and the feedback I heard from staff is it was equally beneficial to staff as it was to students for them for the staff to be able to see their their students be able to wave at a physically safe place. I want to thank the Amherst police department firm just from a safety point of view. There's not many. There's not much traffic on the roads these days and there was a long caravan of cars and they provided support for them as well as some interesting commentary which I appreciated as they were going making sure that kids were listening to their parents and working well with us. So that was that was fantastic doing it again and I want to thank the staff all over the place and particularly at Fort River. So, you know, I'm open up, you know, we can open up for dialogue or any comments and questions but I think the big transition been is providing more structure for families and students in this process and, you know, it's a work in progress. Obviously, this is not something our schools were designed to do a month ago. We didn't have distance learning plans but I really think our staff have stepped up wonderfully to support students and families and it looks different at the elementary middle school and high school level but I think we've made our approach age appropriated each of those. Great. Thank you for that intro, Mike. I'm just going to remind our attendees who have joined us that if you would like to put a question you can use the q&a function in zoom and type that your question in it'll only be visible to us the hosts and then we will read it. Alternatively, if you'd like to speak, you can raise your hand in the zoom application and we will acknowledge you and unmute you so you can come into the conversation. So we have a couple of questions already on deck so one question we have for Mike is what is being done for students who do not have internet at home. Sure. So we spent a lot of time looking at different options furiously looking at other different optional work best for our families and where we landed is that mobile hotspots for the best solution for to provide internet in homes that didn't have it already. So this week actually Tuesday and Wednesday we had a pickup and we did some delivery for families who weren't able to get there of and I'm trying to forget the number but it was between 60 and 70. We still have some families on the list that we have to work out drop off points for mobile hotspots and the nice thing for mobile hotspots is they're ready. We are I staffed at all the configuring and they're plugging in play you plug them in the wall and you've got Wi Fi in your home and we purchased. We purchased plans for them. One of the things that a lot of districts who are doing similarly is if they purchase something that wasn't unlimited data, doing things like we're doing right now. There was a lot of data and so we did would provide the unlimited data plan and this was been generously supported by the PGO is there in our district they ran an amazing across the whole district. They ran amazing fundraising effort to support students and with the unclear knowledge of when we're going to turn or how return really thinking about this digital divide not just during this crisis but actually long term and how we could support them so we're thrilled to get the hotspots out kind of well time but the transition discipline 2.0 the folks who volunteer to to either deliver or to drop off those front of the middle school building said just it was just really nice moments that families, not just for the academics and the teaching and learning that were the primary focus, but so many so many people video conferencing like this is how families are staying in touch. And we want to support families in this time not just on the academic side, but really on the social side as well because you know how challenging it is. Great, we've got a comment here and a question. Thanks to all ARPS teachers and staff for the tremendous work undertaking in the last five weeks. Looking forward, is there any thought of offering catch up opportunities during the summer. It's funny you mentioned so we just had that conversation a little bit today. We're not quite sure exactly what summer will look like we'll, you know, because we typically have some summer school programs both credit recovery at the high school and some programs at the elementary level as well as special ed across K to 12. And so we're looking for guidance from the state and from local public health departments about whether summer programs will be possibly buildings if it is possible to be in buildings. What the what the programs will look like I know for California for instance their governor has laid out a set of criteria that would limit the number of students in classrooms and really well students in the fall there will be returning to school it won't quite look the same likely as it has in the past. So we're trying to look at what that looks like and how we can support students we know that in terms of summer opportunities some of our students perhaps are having a harder time, not because of internet I think we've done well with that but just accessing the rich curriculum that our, our staff offer and so we're also looking from, you know, what some people call achievement gap we'd like to call educational debt in our district in other places. How do we make sure that students aren't falling further behind during this time and how do we do in the summer to support students so when they re enter school in the fall, they're caught up so all those things long winded I'm sorry I apologize but it is something that we're actively working on thinking about and feel really deeply concerned about both locally and nationally about the impact on some students who distance learning for their learning style their child's learning style may not be the modality that is the easiest to access and and how do we support them moving forward. Let me throw something in here. We've all watched the interplay between the president and the governor's about who makes the call but what's open what's not open. Can you talk a little bit about who makes the call about when our district is going to open again and right now I think you are on May 4, although that's been adjusted somewhat and you know when will people know about when we're going to be open again. Yep. Thanks. So that's exactly right. So the governor right now that the existing orders may forth that and it was no sooner than May 4 so I think that's one point of confusion. The governor did not say schools need to reopen May 4 just with the state of emergency. They were not able to open sooner. So I think probably sometime last week about a week ago I put out a statement based on some information that came out of base state and other public health departments with concerns about Western Massachusetts and really recognizing that May 4 wasn't a reasonable date for return. And so for me I went date less. It was schools were reopened when I feel confident from both the public health perspective locally as well as experts down at base state that it's safe to reopen schools. I think it's I think it's highly likely that the governor will extend the May 4 piece given the the numbers we're seeing of confirmed positive cases of COVID across the state, whether that's a spring cancellation, you know and return in the fall or a later push to a later date in the spring, really is anyone's guess right now but from my perspective, I'm not going to be comfortable opening school until the experts which to me are the public health department and doctors and physicians assure me that it is. And so I think like many superintendents know the state we are looking for leadership at a state level on this. And at the same time, you know, great working with the town of Amherst, Julie Federman has been absolutely wonderful. She's sick of getting phone calls from me at this point but but I'm lucky she still answers the phone and and I, there can be statewide decisions and still I have to go to what the local experts say, and you know, we don't take action steps in our district without talking to our local experts first. Unfortunately, it's the superintendents decision on when schools reopen. Basically, it's not neuro president making the call. That's, that's my belief. I know in New York City that's getting a little complicated. Fortunately, Amherst is in New York City. And I don't think we'll have those political complications certainly hasn't played out the same way in Massachusetts on many fronts as it has in New York, you know, for better or worse. But I think to read my point is, you know, working closely with local public health officials, both on whether it's safe to reopen but also how it's safe to reopen. I think that second piece is perhaps not as much in the consciousness yet of the public but I would say it's equally or more important because there's real questions whenever we come back. So if we do come back this spring for instance, I think it's, it's highly unlikely we'd be able to have school wide events with hundreds of people in that we usually have in the spring, not just at the high school level but at all of our schools right that's not going to be every every expert I've seen has suggested that it'll be a gradual opening up of schools of businesses, you know, not just like poof one day it goes back to normal that normal is is not the term that we'd be using right now. So that's really, you know, it did have a conference called the Commissioner of Education with other superintendents this week and a lot of the focus was exactly that trying to figure out what will it look like when we return, as well as when we return but really what would it look like and what are the educational implications of that. And so, you know the six feet distancing for instance we, in our current model of school. We're not six feet between students and staff at all times. If that's really you know if there's some distance that they're going to ask for it we're going to have to shift our shift our operations and so I think the interplay between the date we return as well as how we return is what I'm watching for and certainly what I'll communicate out to the public as we get more guidance from the state and local levels. Great. Thank you. So, Mike, next week was our normal April vacation week in the school system. Can you say a little bit about what that looks like now. Sure, so we pulled the staff in particular we wanted to know what it was, what it would look like what was preferable. And I work with the, the Association, the union president, teachers union president on this. And we both felt that based on what we were hearing from teachers, but the stress of the transition to the new type of work, as well as managing different family needs that they have that we wanted to make sure that staff did have some break based on what we're hearing. So we gave multiple options and the option that came out with I think 86% of our staff, supporting it was to, was to have a two day week so Monday's a holiday it's Patriots Day that would be off anyway, but to have school on Tuesday have no school on Tuesday and Wednesday, it's a five day weekend but have school on Thursday and Friday from distance learning. There was a couple reasons we did that one or staff for support of that one is it made the end of the school year Thursday. I think it's June 19 or 18 whatever that Thursday is. If we didn't do anything the school would have come back for a Monday in late June, which is nobody's idea of a picnic, so to speak. So we thought it would be the right mix of giving everyone a break families students and staff. Well, not making it too long a break and having an interruption that would start on a Friday and not return a week and a half later on a Monday that felt too long to staff and it felt too long to us. So I think it was a happy medium I've seen districts go one way or the other there's about six or seven districts that are recalling ourselves the hybrid districts, we're having some break but also some school that week I think Holyoke's the community is locally doing that. But it felt like the right amount of balance. There's a lot of stress for staff for families, and we wanted to balance that with also maintaining the kind of operations that we have now and just as learning to point out. Great, thank you. I think we've gotten this next next question a couple of times in different formats but so this is the current situation push back any of the funding from the state for the new elementary school. Right so the time manager and I were in a conference call the week before last fall. That's right with MSBA. What they're telling us is at our sort of nascent stage of the process that we should continue and we, she asked if we could and we felt like we could, could continue our path which means that May 1, our enrollment period opens up. I think it really involves the town forming a building committee, some work on my end which is really just cataloging our maintenance practices and our current programming and thinking a little ahead to the future but there's not high stakes decisions in the first couple months, other than the formation of the committee but not in terms of the actual building structure or anything like that. So we are feeling like the last week I would say that we're able to at the school department take on we made this transition around distance 22.0 we're able to get back to some of the projects that were on pause a bit and this is one of them so we feel good about where we are. I think, talking to other districts there are some concerns because the construction industry in general. There are staff who are. Some projects have slowed down to it down to a halt construction projects and that is something that came up with MSBA meeting the other day and districts were in the middle of projects are concerned about cost escalation if construction stops for six months. All of a sudden you've got you got challenges with that. Fortunately for I mean unfortunately for us we're still far away from a newer renovated school but the fortunate part on the timeline is that won't affect us. Because actual construction is quite a ways away and the MSBA is functioning in a virtual environment the same way the towns and schools are is it's different but we're still having meetings and they're still having meetings and they had one this week and and so for us I think we're we're continuing we're staying the course and MSBA staying the course with us. I don't know if town managers I think else that you'd like to add to that. I agree I think you really summarized it as well. So we will continue moving forward again in this virtual environment when we start to form the school building committee and ask for volunteers who want to serve on that. So I think that that will be a good thing to be moving forward on. And I think you're right Mike one of the things I felt was at the last day or two it felt like we could. I got our legs under us finally because we're just dealing with thing thing after thing after thing and feeling like oh we can get our projects moving again. It reflects a little bit about how we're managing the town's meetings. We're you know in March it was just pretty much the governing board in April. We've opened it up to some of the adjudicatory boards like the zoning board and the planning board and Board of Health. And then in May we hope to open it up to a lot more excuse the phone a lot more committees I can operate and even this week you know the school committee and the town council got together to select a new member of the school committee so school committee is back up fully staffed. This is Ms. Lord gets sworn in so that can be done virtually to self. And Paul when when you put up the the call for volunteers for that it'll be on our on our website pretty pretty prominently is that correct. And on the hopefully the school's website as well. Absolutely. Absolutely. Social media as well. Yeah. I did see a couple new people come in so I just want to remind people if they would like to pose a question you can use the Q&A button in zoom or raise your hand in zoom. So next question we have here is about graduation and what that's going to look like for our seniors this year. Yeah. So one of the concerns that well there's a lot of concerns just about what the senior year experience has been and you know on the state publicly what everybody I think would assume that we feel poorly that this isn't the senior experience we want for our students and they've been wonderful at you know bearing with us as we're trying to do the best so there was this week there was a meeting between the senior class advisor who is one of the assistant principals of high school and the senior class council and they've co developed a survey that's going out to all. Students seniors and as well as their families to try to gather some thoughts about different ways and what we really felt strongly about wasn't that we one solution or other we really wanted in particular students and to a larger group as well their families to be weighing in and helping us make a decision. You know our job is to set parameters of what's reasonable you know we're highly unlikely we're going to be in the Mullen center on June 5th just from a physical distinct standpoint that doesn't seem realistic. At the same time what else we do we've seen a lot of different models universities and colleges have you know you can see really different things that have gone on. So we gave them the students came up with a number of different scenarios as well as an open ended answer of what are we not thinking about and that relates both to graduation things like prom other events that are likely to be canceled in the near future just because of the physical distancing and we're just I'm just appreciative that our students jumped right in they've developed a survey that I think would make our data folks at UMass and other colleges very proud really really smart survey that wasn't leading in any way but provided a number of different options. We are purchasing or have purchased some live streaming software that would allow for a model that could work and we've contacted the graduation speaker was already identified that person lives in California and you know doesn't seem like there's a scenario where they would be here. So we really there was about six or seven options as I remember the survey as well as what are we not thinking about and we really want the students to make this decision as much as the graduations. People like me you know I get to go and say my piece in the high school principal and families. It's really important us that we're honoring the students legacy by giving them, putting them in the driver seat to help us make a decision and really for them to be able to make it and our only role is, you know, making sure it's safe. It's reasonable in terms of access for for all of our families and all of our students. So stay tuned for that and I can't wait the survey just I think it went out to families about an hour ago and I think it's going it might have already went to students and we're I'm really curious of of what they come up with and what ideas they have but they'll certainly lead us to a better place than if we just got in a room with a bunch of adults and made a decision and that's how we're leading on it. That's great. Thank you. I'd be curious to see what what they come up with. Yeah. Shifting gears a little bit. Can you talk a little about the prepared male meals distribution and what that's like right now. Yeah, so since so the 13th of March is when we close that was a Friday we made the decision to close the following Tuesday we started meal delivery. So it's 13 sites we added a 14 site which is at Pellum elementary school. And we the second week of that we partnered with UMass who took on half of our sites. And so we between the two of us it's about 2500 meals a week that are delivered for our service we're now in a Monday Wednesday Friday schedule we provide four meals at each of those drop offs. UMass is that still on a daily schedule for us it was just trying to be as physically safe keep our folks as physically distance as possible. Over the last we started that I think last week. And so we picked high density locations where we knew a lot of our families would live. And it's the support that we've received is great we just received a grant that was going to support us with $2,500 more for $2,500 to continue and support that. But our food service staff are volunteers which are staff members in the district who support the sites have a really good method of making sure the meals are laid out and so physically safe way, keeping distancing in mind, and families come up one by one to get their meals. And the demand has continued to be high which I think speaks of food scarcity in our community at this point in time. And we're just we're really happy that we've been able to contribute to support that effort that I know many, many people in the survival center many, many folks in Amherst are deeply concerned and are contributing to food. So trying to help with food scarcity, but it's a very real issue because we know for many of our families, the fact that their children get two free meals a day in our district really supports them in a number of ways and so we've been happy to be able to do that and again, thank you to the members of the family center and the food service department who have just been rockstar outstanding on this front. And we're going to continue it till the end of the year we're continuing. That's one thing I want to mention is we'll be continuing it will do Monday, Wednesday, Friday next week, even though Monday's a holiday. We'll have staff in working on a Monday to make sure that we're continuing our meal service over April break. And that that the senior center is also doing on wheels for the seniors which is terrific. And then just this morning we had a call with left and Ezra who's the director of the survival center because in our estimation, food security is going to be one of the big issues that sustains through the next. I think of things that I call the 246 two weeks four weeks six weeks, but for the survival center as we've talked to them we talked about the next three months, six months, 12 months, 18 months because I think with the economy and such depths of being in bad shape that food security could be a major issue in supporting the survival center plus all the other groups that are working with that and to see where the town can step in and where the town can provide support and we program some of our money to ensure that food scarcity isn't an issue. And they have seen, you know, love was saying that there was a tremendous uptick in the demand for services both in prepared prepared meals of 50% increase just on that alone, but also for bulk foods and that the grocery stores are who used to donate so much. They have few so much bulk food. They have less food to donate so they're they might be in the market for purchasing more so they need funds to do that. And it might be ways that in terms of physical locations we've talked about different locations that we may be able to help expand their services because one of the things she also identified is that with the reduced bus service from PVTA people can't get to the survival center and get home at a reasonable time so bringing food to where people are, which is what the school district is doing with the prepared meals is something so there's a million logistics that come into play with this and so it's really good to have, you know, subject matter experts like like love who's who's thinking 24 seven about this and talking about what we can bring to the table to support. It's because it's not just one solution. There's lots of people who are in this area who are all thinking and I think it's really great that we have such a robust network of supporters here in Western Mass. Yeah, I think the only thing I'll add grew with everything Paul said and we've been kind of encouraging we have had staff who say we want to support this effort, you know, we know the school's food service and, you know, we've been encouraging them to get in touch with the survival center, whether that's, you know, literal in person support or, you know, financial support because the great work they do. And we're all supporting the same people. Right. And so I think that's really important to know but our we did, you know, the only reason we were able to start so quickly is because we do have a summer food service program that started two three years ago and so we'll be we'll be doing that again this the summer as well which will support summer, so our families well the school year. Well, the school year is not in session. And just one little note that Bistro 63 is also offering prepared food for restaurant workers who've been laid off. So there's a lot of grassroots things are happening that are really, really terrific. So I cut out because my internet connection is being told it's I'm being told it's unstable. Could you repeat that one follow. I'm sorry. I guess I Bistro 63 service workers is also on their own just offering support and food prepared food for folks, which is just I love how seeing how these things are popping up everywhere. Yeah, and I think I'll just if I could add to that just briefly and you're looking to get in Brianna but I think there's so many stories like that like I started with the Fort River teachers no one told them to make a parade through the Fort River neighborhood. They chose to do it because they thought and you know if we had more time in this show, we could we could each tell many, many stories of residents staff of the town staff of the schools who independent of being asked to do anything have done just amazing acts of support, encourage during a really hard time so I just want to thank everybody for We lost him. Oh, internet stable. Yeah. Well, I've definitely seen that in our community. All right. Well, great. Thank you both. On that note, it is time for us to head to wrap up. I will say that we are going to be doing this Tuesdays and Thursdays at noon. Next Tuesday, we're going to have our special guests is Amher senior services director Mary Beth. Oh, hello, it's did I say that right? Yeah, that one. And she is going to be talking about resources for seniors and programming that she has going on. So if you have any seniors in your life, please ask them to tune in. We will record these sessions and they'll be on our YouTube channel as well as channel 17 for Amherst media. So any last comments before we we wrap. I think the town. I'll let Paul the last word but I just want to thank the town for continued collaboration. It's infrequent that I have a day where Paul and I are neither talking or texting or not just and I like the three six week nine week right it's we're thankfully for the most part out of the three week piece you know where the current piece and we're thinking Oh, I could finish this sentence for on my think is a really appreciate I want to say that that partnership. Right back at your mic. So, thanks, thanks. And thank you to all our attendees today if you had questions that didn't get answered and you want to email us you can email us at info at Amherst ma.gov. If it's a question for the superintendent we will get it over to him and to hit into his team for answering. So thank you all for joining us and we'll see you on Tuesday at noon. Thank you.


year and they break it into nine chunks and they say okay this is September 1st to October 15th and then they pick a characteristic week just arbitrarily pick the first week and then they optimize them if they tried to optimize everything the problem would be too large and it would become unsolvable in the finite amount of time so the decomposed it into a characteristic week and they optimize that one week and then they basically extrapolate that for the for the rest of that period so they generally solve the problem one week at a time and then basically copy and paste that information for a specific period ideally they should be able the goal is to solve the problem for every single day but we're just not there yet do you do crew scheduling as well not yet but it is in our horizon yes we have experience working in the crew area as well for a different area yes not not not ever like this yeah and just a reference point so most of these are so all of these are planning tools so these are used to create the schedule and then publish it at least six months out and as sky works is one that's more closer in as you as airlines sometimes have to make changes as you get closer to the date of operation yes yeah so yeah so our architecture is we actually have we have computational notes that actually do all the computations and then I don't want to say completely inclined but we have like a hybrid between dead and declined and a dedicated app server for the user interaction so the application is a web-based application but it's desktop and all the computations are done in remote what we call them computational notes which can be scaled up or down based off the needs of that airline okay I will hand it over to Sepone we'll walk you through the real case today thank you hope everyone enjoyed Sherman's speech now it's a boring time interesting about railroad is that it's much much much older than allies the industry itself was long long time ago you're telling the first time that people have something very close to railroad is like in 1500 when you actually have a horse pooling a carriage and actually you still have semi-track to actually let them track pooling your goods over the trail so it's still much better than using human or just pure horses a thing of change so much especially in 1800 when you actually have a steam engine right everyone have seen the steam engine like but yes does that actually revolutionize of exporting goods across the state across country with the real world let me show some more beautiful picture from our graphic design so before we go on to this you know trains people say train train trains all the time but what actually train train the composition of what is this anyone know what it's called locomotive locomotive locomotive engine local meaning from somewhere someone with no Spanish better than me but motive is that cause for motion right so you go from somewhere to another with some kind of engine so that really straightforward locomotive engines and basically the forecast of the top today but let me give some brief overview we will watch the video earlier you see how we come so far from 2000 actually our famous researchers happened to be also our speakers that do actually in the expert also he is an expert in network optimization and very first problem he worked with industry actually locomotive optimization why this is important simple is expensive it's very expensive so locomotive right now one of them would be created and our modern cost would be close to two to three million dollars for the locomotives but you say yeah this would be a very good engine and it never failed no it actually failed all the time they actually come to encounter through the reality so that's why watch how Monday for the airline makes sense you have a plan ally is a cuteing plan almost hundred percent of the time railroad yeah 50% you're lucky you know most of the thing actually in the railroad was actually unprecedented situation you don't know in the entire network for example the CSX is actually our main customer 20,000 miles or 35,000 kilometers half of the network was actually occupied by unscheduled trains the other half basically scheduled so when you have a mix of deterministic you know how it should go in with that in the domestic and mix together it actually gets created chaos to manage a chaos network you cannot rely solely on the plan and that's why we actually have our application to solve that problem what you see here can you guess what it is well you don't read on the top do you know what it is it's a yard so why we need yard yeah let's say it plays out where the action happened where the terminal people try to reassemble what is it the group of the cars actually come from google map so you zoom in and it's actually one of the biggest yard at CSX you see like thousand and thousand and car actually line up in several tracks and actually we also have an expert in the yard also simulation this is a type of the yard for hum yard there are two types of yard for for the railroad one is a hum yard one is a flat yard so what's that different hum yard usually the one is more efficient how it's more efficient because it's using gravity right you're actually pushing your cars over the hump and gradually slide out and integrate it without the cars and making something called blocks and then after that you're putting your locomotive in the front and pull it away you become trains and also uh so we're going to talk about why why this problem is important so us class one or basically the top top in the industry uh in us each one have between four thousand locomotive to eight thousand locomotives so you can see how much money they're spending they're not they're not actually afraid to spend uh they spend maybe two three years to replace about 10 percent of the locomotives so two billion dollars for them is nothing but because of their digging process right in the past they said hey this is also part of the capital they have to spend all the time but we want to share their mindset because if they can just save what charm and saving for the airline 10 percent let's say every year right we save the closer to what he did at least one or two million per day right and that is a lot a lot of money and this is interesting when we look at this it's actually in just a great cost 30 percent actually based on locomotives right it basically uh the the most important moving part of the railroad is locomotives and including our soul field but this is the last one is most interesting is that for all the locomotives they have only 50 percent have been used all the time and you will say why why they spend so much money and already half half of the time is anyone want to guess repair repair yes well that's one of the problem repair waiting waiting waiting waiting yes waiting for something to happen right yes and another interesting thing is that number of number of tracks number of tracks is limited your movement yeah i mean number of trips you need the locomotive okay so you said you don't have a lot of number of trips that's why yes yes so i think all this is is part of the problem but interestingly why they only 50 percent have been used because they don't know where their locomotives weren't warriors so why and i asked the same question why the thing is that look you have to remember that railroad actually have a very long history running for 100 and 130 years they're running through mainframe system a lot of locomotives actually won't equip with the gps so when they move around the yard and location you pretty much don't know sometimes you rely on people to call sometimes people just hiding and hiding locomotive is real why do you want to hide a locomotive this actually i think would have to guess but i still is fun to guess you know like basically each one getting their bonus based on on time departure you want your train you always depart on time right so what is it easier as a solution to do you're always holding your locomotives at your location you never be shocked at the locomotives that's why everything was said never can cause imbalance and you know demand supply just like what he did for the passenger demand supply same thing here along the network about 20 000 miles 35 000 kilometers sometimes it's more on the east east coast sometimes you're on the west coast so imbalance is happening all the time to make sure you counter the imbalance in general they're using repositioning right so basically you create your plan to move the locomotive against the ahead of the time of the demand of imbalance but if you don't know the prediction and everything so you just hold it you just keep it as much as you can so this is not critical at all we're just thinking through human minds okay so what we try to solve this is the product that we just started with cooperation with our partner we want to optimize the assignment and repositioning so assignment is nothing that nothing besides that you just put locomotives the right locomotive to the right trains and i'm going to explain more later and repositioning need that you move in from the location that actually have surplus to the one that actually need needed so shorter locomotives right and basically there's a lot of things happening in the real world all the time sometimes we delay and sometimes we broke down and everything we want actually the manager who managed the movement assignment and locomotives to actually just focus on the exception management what the exception management means i think doesn't go the way you think it would be right and basically we want to integrate this closely to operation so you see what we try to do is to help people in the field we want them to do the right things at the right time right what someone created is creating excellent plan that the people in the field can execute it this one is to help people in the field closer to the people who actually do this every day so if you're doing something suggesting something that people cannot execute you can create and have a walk right away and it's always changing second by second so improve on time departure and improve lonely utilization actually this is the biggest one so this is improve on time