My menagerie at home

Metal Voltron

I wanted to quickly respond to a recent post and 140 characters were not enough.

Ben Malbon at BBH just posted a great article on T-shaped people and the new creative production paradigm and used Voltron as a visual reference.  There have been a few other giant robot mashups since Voltron such as Transformers Constructicons that form Devastator but Voltron is the leader as far as I’m concerned.  And Lion Voltron, not Vehicle Voltron or any other spin-off.

It struck a personal chord with me not only because I personally identify with the T-shape model but also that I’ve been a fan of many of the great robot properties from the 80’s since their original run and long into sydication.  (We’ll keep this with animation only and not get into live-action because this would get long)

When I was a kid I was not able to have the Voltron toy because it was made of metal parts and had spring loaded projectiles.  Remember, this was the era of Kenner’s Boba Fett mail-away action figure that had a spring loaded projectile backpack.  Forcing Kenner to re-tool the line with the projectile attached.  (One of the originals sold at auction for $16,000 in 2003).  I’ve been collecting for as long as I’ve been able to buy my own things.  When I had my collectibles company and was working the circuit my appreciation grew for both products and licensing.  There was a plastic Voltron that was released years later but it lacked the character of the original heavy metal lions.  I finally bought my own metal Voltron off eBay seven years ago.

Voltron is a great reference for the nature of the business right now. The work that’s going on at places like BBH is helping change a business long mired in out-dated practices.  One day the word will spread up to the C-suite and we might see global change in how agencies are structured.  And I don’t think this idea is necessarily restrained to the advertising community but could be adopted across the board to all varieties of client-service companies.

There was a panel at SXSWi 2010, Jack of all Trades or Masters of One? that I covered in my writeup that could serve as a great primer for Ben’s article today.  I’ve included the presentation from SXSWi below and you can read Ben’s article at BBH Labs.