More $1 videos from Wal-Mart.

Solar Adventure:

This show threw me at first because it begins as a class room that I assume was in Vietnam during the war with the North (I could be wrong and this was done in Korea)? It talks about how the Communists are bad...blah blah. I was asking myself did they somehow copy the wrong show onto the disk. Luckily it will move on after the first 17 minutes into something you may find more interesting as it has the predecessors of Whirl and Reflector in this show.

The kids in the class go on a nature expedition and camp out near a lake. Then we sort of go Alice in Wonderland with a transition into the cartoon, with something falling out of the sky into the lake which wakes the kids. It turns out to be a yellow and red colored Whirl w/o the blades. There are two green skinned children within the machine. The kids pull the "plane" to shore with a rope. Evil Sipora destroyed their world and so they came to Earth in their robot Shang. Sipora is going to help the Communists, whom soon appear to attack by throwing grenades at their space ship. The kids help and then Shang changes into his robot mode (I wonder if the W on his chest stands for Whril?).

We now get to check out Sipora, a funky green too-big-brained pointy-eared alien who is promising to help the Communists by giving them weapons. This is the first we will hear about a "control program" for Cannon Robo. Evidently someone called Proffessor Kantico created both Shang and Cannon Robo, thus is their enemy.

We now go back to the kids and learn that Siporta can't use Cannon Robo because it was built to run on "emotional wavelengths", whatever that is. It's funny to see all the kids now have uniforms. So the kids undergo some kind of "training". Communist soldiers outfitted with Sapora's weapons attack the lab. Shang kills them all. (Now where'd those helicopter blades come from?)  They follow a helecopter back to Sipora's base.

This is where we get the very first look at Cannon Robo, I have to admit I watched a pretty big chunk of this and did not recognize them until they combinded. The bad guys, unable to figure out how to use Cannon Robo decide to melt them down and build their own combat robot. During a battle with fighters Shang suddenly looks a lot more like Whirl's color scheme.

The kids try to infiltrate the base to rescue Cannon Robo while Shang fights with the guards to create a diversion. Sipora sends three of his robots out to attack Shang with some kung fu type moves. Meanwhile all but one of the kids is captured by the Communists. Shang was doing alright until the robots began to attack with their guns. The one kid that hid stayed that way until nightfall. He then sneeks out and gets into one of the parts of Cannon Robo. This is probably the funniest scene in the show as there is a guard posted, whom has just told his superior that everything's fine. The robot sits up and nudges the guard with his finger, the guard is all flipping out and then the robot does the shh sign. If that wasn't good enough, the robot then flicks the guy's head to knock him out. That guard sure was having a bad day. Then he flattens two other guards before finding one that's sleeping, which he has to wake by tapping the guy's hat?  He frees his friends who take control of the other parts of Cannon Robo. They guard Shang while repairs are being made.

The now four robots go to attack the bad guy base and wind up fighting the terrible three that damaged Shang in the last battle. The three join together to form Cannon Robo, which is Reflector. I found it funny that the button guy's head is pointing toward the enemy. They blow up one of the bad robots and the enemy solar energy colleciton plant (perhaps where the whole show got its name). They are now after Sipora, can we say synchronized running?

Sipora's base/ship is destroyed and he runs to the Communist General for help. The General laughs in his face since Sipora can be of no further use. He orders his men to kill Sipora. The General orders his troops to move on the South. The tanks begin to enter a tunnel and using Cannon Robo Shang destroys the tunnel. Then all four go to work to take out all the rest of the General's tanks.

They say a sappy farewell to the alien visitors who leave in Shang. At about 55 minutes and 30 seconds the show returns to real video rather than the cartoon. The good guy troops kill the Communist troops off, perhaps someone can tell me their nationality from the symbol on the good guy troop's commander's hat? The kids wake up and was it all a dream?

Space Transformers:

This show sort of harkens back to Micronaughts as far as how they're going to shrink some people and robots to enter Ivy, the smartest girl on Earth. You see, the bad guys have injected her with a virus to kill her so they can conquer Earth. Since everyone on Earth has come to rely upon Ivy's genius gifts, they're too stupid to think on their own. (Though, if you ask me they seemed to do just fine in her absence.) The three components below combine to form the larger bad buy robot called Parieris B. The thing that cracks me up is how the good guy ship is named "star wars", I wonder if Lucas knows about this?

The good guys on Earth have a robot called Diatron 3 that they are going to shrink to fight off Ivy's infection. Diatron 3 can split up with a smaller guy in his chest, I wonder if this is the predacessor to the Brain Masters? Diatron 3 can also seperate into 3 distinct vehicles. Not sure why the inside of Ivy's body looks just like being out in space, but there are more of those bad guy robots here too. They end up using the parts of Diatron 3 against each other while the control robot is freaking out (these guys use the same annoying voice for the small robot characters).

Two kids are sent in with more robot parts to try to help destroy the Red Star, the infection within Ivy. Suddenly the control mechanism part of their robot is pulled away by a magnetic force. Without it they can't form the larger robot, Diatron 5, so they go search for it. After a bit of a battle with the Red Star people the boy escapes to find the control mechanism in some kind of metal junk yard. He then goes on to attack the bad guy base and destroys the 3 bad guy robots. Who invited Castle Greyskull? Flying fists again, how original.  Good guys win, Ivy is saved, the universe is a better place, you know the score.

Raiders Of Galaxy:

More blue aliens that are set to conquer the Earth and all planets of the solar system. Here we have Super Mezenga 3, which seems to be in some state of prototype testing on Earth. The kids in charge of the robot were told to return home, but the bad guys appear and attack them. This robot sure reminds me of Tranzor Z. My pet peeve with this show is how the humans keep saying they haven't seen anything like the enemy ship, it's the standard UFO profile so what gives? The UFO is too good for them so they decide to seperate Mezenga 3 into its component parts. They fight a bit more before the UFO decides to flee.

The humans are puzzled about the entire thing. The bad guys send someone to Earth to investigate Mezenga 3. The good guys have a cool looking base. The Korean Investigation Space Base has been reported missing, completely dissappered. (Hmm, then the above video probably was about Korea, not Vietnam.) The person sent to investigate impersonates one of the crew's mothers to get into the base and sabotage the Mezenga 3. She is caught and tries to escape while an alarm is set off.

It seems that the alien space ship can transform itself into a big baddass robot. It attacks and retrieves the spy from the base. The kids hurry up and get into Mezenga 3 so they can fight the enemy robot and protect their base. The enemies decide to use a device that the spy planted on the Mezenga 3 to override their controls. The enemy robot begins to smash the Mezenga 3 while it's down. The operator of the enemy robot is dumb and decides to smash the Mezenga 3's head, which is where their override device was planted. This frees the Mezenga 3 to fight back.

The alien robot decides it has had enought and converts back into UFO mode. If you have watched as many of these shows as I have it becomes apparent that the sound effects people either didn't have much of a budget or they just really enjoyed annoying the audience with the piercing bomb falling sound.  The Mezenga 3 is launched to search out those who are missing, suspected of being captive of the evil aliens.

The enemy space fleet looks like they came right out of Starblazers. The Mezenga 3 smashes through the first wave of enemy ships and then moves on to the destroyer escourts. They decide to slice through their competition here. The bad guys decide to pull a retreat and they catch the Mezenga 3 in an electrofield before they high tail it out of there. Especially when they discover there's an electro/cosmic storm coming, which catches the Mezenga 3 and drains the robot's energy.

They find some freaky computer and a prince who has been kept in suspended animation. The computer gives the Mezenga 3 power once they agree to free prince Orion. They take off to fight again. A quick warning: if you have any epileptic tendencies, these shows may not be for you. They have a lot of flashing in scenes and this one is probably the worst offender.

The Mezenga 3 hitches a ride on one of the enemy ships in order to gain entry to the bad guy base. When the bad guys realize the Mezenga 3 is there they sick a robot dog to "bite them to death". The Mezenga 3 utilizes the flying fists gimmic against the robot dog. The good guys rescue the captive humans, but not before the impersonated mother is killed. The robot dog is destroyed after explosives were planted in the base. The true master then leaves his humbled and defeated general to be destroyed along with the base.

The solar system and Earth are safe once more.