There is something magical about objects that can transform, taking on multiple functional identities at different times. <\/p>\n
The idea goes back to antiquity, but it has taken on a new kind of resonance in our modern technology-obsessed world. In 1948, four year old Bernadette Castro<\/a> starred in commercials for her father’s convertible couches, incidentally becoming the most televised child in America.<\/p>\n I remember as a child having a toy that was themed from some then-popular TV spy show, which at the press of a button would magically transform between a camera and a gun. It didn’t actually function as either, which was probably a good thing, but I didn’t care. Just the idea of a magical transformation of form and function made me happy.<\/p>\n There are so many examples of this power in popular culture, from Q’s gadgets to George Jetson’s flying saucer \/ suitcase, and of course the man himself, Inspector Gadget.<\/p>\n Children today obsess over a certain eponymous toy\/mega-movie franchise, but I don’t really like the whole rhetoric of “they can do this because they are space aliens”. I don’t want magically transformable objects just in my space aliens. I want them in my real life!!!<\/p>\n Is that asking too much?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is something magical about objects that can transform, taking on multiple functional identities at different times. The idea goes back to antiquity, but it has taken on a new kind of resonance in our modern technology-obsessed world. In 1948, four year old Bernadette Castro starred in commercials for her father’s convertible couches, incidentally becoming … Continue reading “Transformers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12739"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12739"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12739\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12740,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12739\/revisions\/12740"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12739"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12739"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.kenperlin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12739"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}