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Siblings and the possession of popular cartoon characters

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02:00 / 16.06.05

I don't know if anyone else here with siblings ever did this, but... I'm the oldest of four brothers. When we were kids, naturally, we watched a lot of cartoon shows and movies and, even more naturally, often argued over who got what toys. To solve this problem we would usually pass out characters, and whoever owned that character had the right to all toys or other merchandise based on that character. Fortunetly, a lot of those shows had 4 good guys (for example, there were 4 ninja turtles, 4 Real Ghostbusters, and so on). This solved all such arguments. We did this with Star Wars, He-Man, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Real Ghostbusters, Batman: The Animated Series, even King Bowser's Kooperlings in the Super Mario games (yes, we would even pass out end-level bosses in video games).

For the record... I owned Peter Venkman (those these days I prefer Egon Spengler), the Hammerhead alien in the cantina, Ig-88, Bossk, Leonardo (I chose him because I liked the color blue), Rocksteady the mutant rhino, Baxter Stockman (Yes!), Ludwig Von Koopa, King Hiss, and so on and so on.

The series we got the most out of, though, was the Batman cartoon, mainly because there were so many villains. Each of us got ten. We saved most of vthe crap characters for the two youngest brothers: Sure, they had a few money characters like The Riddler, Mr. Freeze, Two Face and Joker, but they also owned nobodies like Rupert Thorne, Roland Dagget, Dr. Milo, Dr. Dorian, and so on. The second oldest got some notable villians like Penguin, Catwoman, Clayface, Hugo Strange, Harley Quinn, but he got a lot of crap too: Red Claw, that fat guy in the show where Bruce Wayne was looking for kidnapped homeless people. No, when it comes to Batman villians, I made it out best. Check this out: Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, Ventriloquist/Scarface, Posion Ivy, Man Bat, Ras Al-Ghul, Talia, Wormwood, Nostromos, Sid the Squid (er, forget those last 3, they're crap). Sure, not many A names, but those are some of the most fascinating Batman villians IMO (and 7 of them got made into toys... I rest my case). I'm touching the animated Batman toy Mad Hatter right now BTW: He comes with a giant all-green remote control that's almost bigger then his body.

02:12 / 16.06.05

Goodness. What organised sibling rivalry.

Tryphena Absent

02:27 / 16.06.05

Me and my brother did this sometimes... He-Man characters were divided up between us, we really used to fight about Catra, he got Sharky and I got George, I got Splinter and one of the turtles, I got the one with the long hair out of Charles and Eddie (yes, it took over with pop stars for a while as well). Unfortunately we often involved two other children who were like cousins (still are though they're not really cousins, they just have that role) and because I was the oldest my brother and the other two (both girls) always managed to make me get the crap characters, hence out of all the planeteers I was the boy with the heart ring and I got Bobbie out of Home and Away and when we played house I was always the dad, which meant I had to sit and wait for hometime, which I always tried to accelerate and then there'd be an argument because I was home too soon. Life is so unfair.

Tryphena Absent

02:29 / 16.06.05

Ah, I've just realised why I can never let go of an argument for fear of humiliation...

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04:14 / 16.06.05

Wait, you were the oldest and you got crap characters? You should have shown some authority! The oldest should never get crap characters, they should get the best ones! 'Course, if that were true I probably would have owned Krang instead of Rocksteady. Gah...

08:11 / 16.06.05

Uh, no. Not that I can remember. But I didn't want any My Little Ponys and I doubt she would have wanted any Transformers or Action Force.

It sounds like more of a TV thing. We didn't watch much TV, and almost never together. The only shared mythology came through books, and somehow it seems inappropriate to claim characters from books.

08:13 / 16.06.05

of course it's a TV thing - I started to reply and then my brain just poofed like a dandelion and I forgot that the thread actually had "cartoon characters" in the title

08:36 / 16.06.05

I’m not sure why, but I think this is my favourite Conversation thread evah. I didn’t want Syph or Nina’s posts to end.

13:23 / 16.06.05

No, I was a total girl about this and just shared out characters among me and my then-best-friend (F), and [where applicable] whoever was the third member of our shifting threesome (X). So, like, I was Charles Winchester, F was Hawkeye, and X was BJ. Or I was Pooh, F was Piglit, and X was Eeyore. Or I was Louis, F was Prior, and X was Belize (we kept doing this till we were really old). So not so much as a tool for distributing material possessions, more a mechanism for facilitating interpersonal relationships. Like I said, girl...

14:05 / 16.06.05

Oh the memories! I'm the oldest of three (two younger brothers) and we often came to civil agreements about which movie/tv/video game characters to call ou own. I was ALWAS Raphael, Rainbow Brite and this strange Go-Bot lady who turned into some kind of flying disc thing...

the trouble only came when we got together with our cousins and went outside to 'play videogames'. we would each pick a favorite video game character and have wild adventures in the woods behind my aunt's house. My middle brother always insisted on being a boy called 'Skip' who'd been magically sucked into his TV screen and had to battle his way home, which left a plethora of interesting characters for the rest of us to claim. BUT one cousin and I both wanted to be tough videogame broads, and were constantly fighting about who got to be Zelda(the cartoon version with a bow and arrow, of course) and who had to be Princess Toadstool. i mean, who just ants to float around and do nothing when there are Big Baddies to defeat?

Then came the day when one of us discovered a cheat code for Metroid that revealed the main character to be a woman (she fought in a bikini). There were finally enough ass-kicking video ladies to go around.

Tryphena Absent

14:16 / 16.06.05

Wait, you were the oldest and you got crap characters? You should have shown some authority!

You have no idea how sneaky I had to be to get Splinter...
"I'll have Raphael, you can have Michaelangelo. I'll have the other turtles."
"I'll have Splinter."
"Nooooooooo, I want Splinter!"
"Too late."
"That's not faaaiiiirrrrr."

14:18 / 16.06.05

I was eldest of two. A brother, with more attitude and less sense.

We chose accordingly.

I was Leonardo, he was Raphael.

I was Lion-O, he was Panthro/Tigra

I was He-Man, he was anyone else.

I was the Black Lion, he was the Red.

I was Duke, he was Snake Eyes.

I was Optimus Prime, he was Prowl/Jazz/Blaster/Bumblebee.

I was She-Ra too, and I think he calls me faggot once in a while only to make up for the fact that it would've made him "Glitter".

18:37 / 16.06.05

I don't recall which characters I wound up with, but my father says that around age 5 or so, my cousin and I would sit in front of the tv for hours, thumbs in our mouths, saying 'that's me,' 'no, that's me' until we got yelled at.

Damn. Now I really want to know who I wound up with.

22:07 / 16.06.05

{threadrot}

this strange Go-Bot lady who turned into some kind of flying disc thing...

That would be Pathfinder, I believe. I always thought it was cool that the Go-bots had "female" characters. Were there any "girl" Transformers? I don't even remember...

{/rot}

paranoidwriter waves hello

22:22 / 16.06.05

Despite his continued protestations, the "truth" remains that my brother has long since pawned my childhood: my comics, my records, my clarinet, my books, my comics, my...

That reminds me, I must go and feed him soon...

06:57 / 17.06.05

I have no brother. Or sister.

So I get everything. All for me.

13:49 / 17.06.05

That would be Pathfinder, I believe. I always thought it was cool that the Go-bots had "female" characters. Were there any "girl" Transformers? I don't even remember...

That boringly pink one, RC? She showed up in the movie. Hotrod's beard from Cybertron.

13:53 / 17.06.05

I love the idea of RC as a beard - I kind of thought of her as a slut, hanging around with the dull older men looking for some action, while all the youngsters showed off trying to get her but she wasn't interested - but yeah, she was more of a beard.