Thread: Who here remembers The Space Giants?

I used to watch Ultraman (right after Speed Racer), sometimes replaced by Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot, but no Space Giants.

Land of the Giants was a good show.

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

I used to watch Ultraman (right after Speed Racer), sometimes replaced by Johnny Socko and his Flying Robot, but no Space Giants.

Land of the Giants was a good show.

No Space Giants?!! I used to love Speed Racer too. My father thought Speed Racer was the stupidest cartoon he had ever seen and made fun of it while I watched it. He also made fun of Space Giants because it was a show with English dubbed in over Japanese, like those Kung Fu movies. He got me a Speed Racer DVD for my 34th birthday because he still thinks it's hilarious that I used to love that show. I sort of liked Ultraman too, but I was a fanatic for The Space Giants. Had you ever heard of that show before you saw my post?

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

No Space Giants?!! I used to love Speed Racer too. My father thought Speed Racer was the stupidest cartoon he had ever seen and made fun of it while I watched it. He also made fun of Space Giants because it was a show with English dubbed in over Japanese, like those Kung Fu movies. He got me a Speed Racer DVD for my 34th birthday because he still thinks it's hilarious that I used to love that show. I sort of liked Ultraman too, but I was a fanatic for The Space Giants. Had you ever heard of that show before you saw my post?

No, I never had. Those shows didn't come on a network channel, it was a local channel that played Creature Feature on Friday night, and had local "celebrities' doing stupid things. It was VHF, I'm pretty sure, but it might have been one of the UHF stations. I guess you just got to see whatever your local channel put on.

Now it is too late for me to appreciate Space Giants. It just wouldn't be the same anymore.

P.S. Why is that smiley on top of that word? My DV seems to have gone wacko, doing an RC, no, not dreaming...I better go to bed.

Originally Posted by Moonbeam

Now it is too late for me to appreciate Space Giants. It just wouldn't be the same anymore.

It's never too late!

Hey guys!

UM, I'm pretty amazed by Space Robots, which I didn't know before this post. However, it looks like it's very closely related to the show that was my all-time favourite when I was 8 years old: a Japanese cartoon called Goldorak (in the French version, anyway). Check out how similar it is to SG. Here it is:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KWqGWlt1W...elated&search=

Originally Posted by three and four

Hey guys!

UM, I'm pretty amazed by Space Robots, which I didn't know before this post. However, it looks like it's very closely related to the show that was my all-time favourite when I was 8 years old: a Japanese cartoon called Goldorak (in the French version, anyway). Check out how similar it is to SG. Here it is:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=KWqGWlt1W...elated&search=

Wow, I had never heard of that. I guess it never made it to mainstream U.S. television. A lot of the Japanese sci-fi stuff is similar, but that is a whole lot like Space Giants in the way the robots turn into rockets. It reminded me also of Transformers, which got big in the mid-1980's. Come to think of it, I bet Transformers was influenced by Space Giants. Transformers was all about robots that turn into cars and airplanes and things. I think SG influenced a lot of stuff that became huge, but it seems to have been forgotten by most of the world. I don't think I ever saw the other kids in early elementary school get as blown away by a television show as they were by The Space Giants. The kids who were into that show were total fanatics.

I was aware of transformers, but I think it came to TV quite a bit later here, and by that time I was watching other stuff. Goldorak is also a (friendly alien) giant robot who saves earth from unfriendly giant alien robots. Also, doesn't the name of the main robot in SG start with "Gold" - something? There is influence for sure, but I suspect that there might even be the same writing or production team behind both: they seem so similar.

Would you say that SG dates from the late 60s / early 70s? I always thought that Goldorak was early to mid 70s (which would make SG the original model...). I'm just guessing about these dates. Dunno really.

I was mad about Goldorak. I had the card collection, the soundtrack, would drop everything to watch it every week. Even today, the soundtrack gives me shivers.

However, even at that time I was unimpressed by the evil guys' tactics: why send one single evil giant robot per week to try and defeat Goldorak: better just to skip a few weeks and send three. He'd be toast then for sure...

Originally Posted by Universal Mind

It's never too late!

I'm pretty sure it is.

I always liked those kind of shows better than Brady Bunch and Gilligan's Island. Of course I watched those two also, because they were there.

Originally Posted by three and four

I was aware of transformers, but I think it came to TV quite a bit later here, and by that time I was watching other stuff. Goldorak is also a (friendly alien) giant robot who saves earth from unfriendly giant alien robots. Also, doesn't the name of the main robot in SG start with "Gold" - something? There is influence for sure, but I suspect that there might even be the same writing or production team behind both: they seem so similar.

Would you say that SG dates from the late 60s / early 70s? I always thought that Goldorak was early to mid 70s (which would make SG the original model...). I'm just guessing about these dates. Dunno really.

I was mad about Goldorak. I had the card collection, the soundtrack, would drop everything to watch it every week. Even today, the soundtrack gives me shivers.

However, even at that time I was unimpressed by the evil guys' tactics: why send one single evil giant robot per week to try and defeat Goldorak: better just to skip a few weeks and send three. He'd be toast then for sure...

The Goldorak page you posted said it ran from 1978-1983. 1978 was the year I got into The Space Giants, but I was watching reruns. The show was made in Japan in the late 1960's, but it was dubbed over in English and shown in the United States starting in 1972. It might have been made by the same production team. The main robot in Space Giants was Goldar, and that name is pretty much the first two syllables of Goldorak. There would have to be some kind of connection.

It's funny that you mention the tactics used for fighting the villains on those shows. The "space giants" were really a 50 foot robot and his wife and kid. The wife was the size of a human lady (and just happened to look like one), and the kid was the size of a human kid (I found that stuff on Youtube last week and started questioning for the first time how in the world that couple conceived that kid.). Couldn't the protector aliens have done better than that? They needed to send three Goldars, or 100 if possible. My father used to laugh at the show, and one of his points was that Goldar could have easily stepped on Rodak and destroyed him. But instead, he always waited until Rodak created a giant monster for Goldar to fight. On the last episode, Rodak was so fed up with defeat that he became a giant monster himself and fought Goldar. Goldar finally killed him and then told the people of Earth that he and his family were no longer needed. (He didn't mention that it was because of a failure in the ratings.) Why did he have to wait until Rodak turned into a giant monster to kill him? It would have been much easier to do it when he was only the size of a big human.

What you said made me think of something else... If Rodak could create monsters, he should have created them all at once and sent them charging at Goldar. Goldar really struggled to kill every one of those monsters. Just two would have done the trick. And I just thought of something else. The wife and kid didn't ever jump in and help Goldar. Why were they even there, other than to turn into rockets and transport people? One more thing (Then I will stop going off about the illogic of a show I loved as a kid.).... The main character on the show was a Japanese kid named Meko. He became best friends with Goldar's son, Gam. Meko's father knew about Meko's adventures with the robots, and Meko was like 13 years old. It seems like his father should have said, "Son, there is a very serious alien battle going on between three space robots and an evil nut job with super powers who is here to take over Earth. You need to stay way the Hell out of that conflict. I don't want you hanging out with Gam any more." I guess it didn't all add up, but I really loved it.

damn, do you think the guys writing those shows thought that us kids were total idiots and that they were amazed, week after week, at how we all kept coming back??

Other show: I much later became a Babylon 5 fan (I only recently finished watching the entire thing on DVD...). Did you ever get into that one?

Originally Posted by three and four

damn, do you think the guys writing those shows thought that us kids were total idiots and that they were amazed, week after week, at how we all kept coming back??

They either really understood how kids think or got very lucky. Or else maybe they were total morons with good imaginations?

Originally Posted by three and four

Other show: I much later became a Babylon 5 fan (I only recently finished watching the entire thing on DVD...). Did you ever get into that one?

I don't think I have ever watched an episode of that. I still like alien stuff (though not on the fanatical level I did when I was a kid), but most of the television shows about aliens that were on in the 90's seemed really cheesy and Hollywooded up. I didn't like the Star Trek spinoffs at all (Surprisingly, I have never even liked the original Star Trek. It bores me now and bored me even more when I was a kid.), and I guess I saw Babylon 5 as something so much in that category that I never gave it a chance. I should probably check it out the next time I come across it.

EDIT: I swear that my former double use of the term "Start Trek" (It's Star Trek!) was a double typo.

Originally Posted by three and four

Other show: I much later became a Babylon 5 fan (I only recently finished watching the entire thing on DVD...). Did you ever get into that one?

I watched all of those; something to watch during exercise. Also all the Star Treks (Deep Space Nine was the best, I think), Firefly, now in the middle of the Deadwood series, the Rome series, and the new Battlestar Galactica. I never watch anything while it's on anymore, just wait for the DVD's.

Firefly was a really good show; they shouldn't have cancelled that.

UM, you should definitely give Babylon 5 a chance, but season 1 takes a few episodes to really get the main story going. Once this main storyline really IS going, I was completely hooked (you have to watch B5 chronologically, as one big story, not as random episodes, as you would watch Star Trek (which I never really liked either)). It has its weaknesses, but the proportions are epic and all the interstellar the politics are great.

Actually... I recently watched season 1 of Star Trek next generation and liked that (I loved the way Patrick Stewart as Captain Piccard would quote Shakespeare while blasting away with photon torpedoes...).

Moonbeam, what's "Rome" like? It's just out on DVD here (I'm in Switzerland) - would you recommend it?

Originally Posted by three and four

UM, you should definitely give Babylon 5 a chance, but season 1 takes a few episodes to really get the main story going. Once this main storyline really IS going, I was completely hooked (you have to watch B5 chronologically, as one big story, not as random episodes, as you would watch Star Trek (which I never really liked either)). It has its weaknesses, but the proportions are epic and all the interstellar the politics are great.

Allright. Because of your recommendation, I will get the first season and watch at least the first few episodes. I'm always looking for cool stuff to watch. Thanks.

You guys are nerds. I can't complain, though. I was a big fan of Dragonball Z at one time. I don't care what anybody says, that show was not meant for children.

Originally Posted by Half/Dreaming

You guys are nerds. I can't complain, though. I was a big fan of Dragonball Z at one time. I don't care what anybody says, that show was not meant for children.

Hey bud, you don't know Space Giants! All the cool jocks in first grade watched it.

Originally Posted by three and four

Moonbeam, what's "Rome" like? It's just out on DVD here (I'm in Switzerland) - would you recommend it?

It's really good; I think they're only going to have two seasons; I've seen the first. It is about Julius Ceaser coming to power. Very graphic and violent, but realistic (?) I think.

Deadwood's kind of the same; it's the story of the town of Deadwood, S. Dakota where there was a gold rush right after the civil war. Three seasons of that; I've seen the first two.

I'd recommend both of those.