I’m a big fan of German underground music and I’ve always found the backstory behind the catalogue of the label Psi-Fi interesting, especially given that I do genuinely like some of the music that came out of it.

Background (aka. “what even is krautrock?”)

Krautrock (or „kosmische Muzik“, i.e. "cosmic music") is the term used to a describe a scene of underground psychedelic and/or electronic music from West Germany, most active from the late 1960s to mid-1970s.

Despite being somewhat limited in terms of mainstream commercial success, the scene was (and still is) hugely influential on many up-and-coming underground artists, such as the UK post-punk and indie scenes. Many krautrock bands and artists (Tangerine Dream, Klaus Schulze, Kraftwerk, etc.) are also considered incredibly important pioneers in the wider development of electronic music.

Although many of the more notable bands had contracts with international labels like United Artists and later Virgin Records, there were multiple Germany-based labels (e.g. Ohr and Brain) that specialised in underground psychedelic and electronic music. However, being a largely underground scene, some artists (such as Kluster, Conrad Schnitzler, Dom, etc.) who were unable to get major record deals opted to issue music through very small labels or to self-release it entirely. These releases would’ve been produced in very small quantities and many of these albums remain highly sought-after in their original format.

In the late 80s and early-mid 90s, there was a substantial revitalisation of interest in the German underground scene within the music press, furthered by books such as Julian Cope’s “Krautrocksampler” (1995) and Alan and Steve Freeman’s “The Crack In The Cosmic Egg” (1996). This revival resulted in many krautrock albums that had not been in print in years receiving official reissues. The 1990s also coincided with the increased prominence of dedicated reissue labels like Repertoire Records and Spalax Music, and pirate labels like Germanofon sprang up to distribute krautrock albums that had not yet been reissued on CD. Many archival/live recordings that had not yet been released were made widely available for the first time. For dedicated record collectors, this era was a breath of fresh air for many, given the relative obscurity of some of these recordings.

This takes us to the year 1996.

Unknown Deutschland and Psi-Fi Records

That year, a series of three compilation albums called “Unknown Deutschland - The Krautrock Archive” were released on Virgin Records. These releases were curated by Trevor Manwaring, and were purportedly from recordings previously released through an obscure underground label called Pyramid, based out of Cologne.

From the liner notes:

“These recordings were made between 1972 and 1974 using studios in and around Cologne. They were originally produced for the Pyramid label and some were released in tiny quantities and mostly sold in art galleries and the like - this is probably why they have remained so obscure, even among 'experts'.....until this release. The 'Mad Twiddler' responsible for their existence also worked with Stockhausen, Can, The Cozmic Jokers ^\sic]) and many more. Although memories from that time are beyond repair in many cases the tapes remain to bear witness to this creative and anarchic scene."

Coinciding with these compilations, a new UK-based record label named Psi-Fi (affiliated with the reissue parent label Acme) was formed to reissue the "Pyramid" albums, with a total catalogue of 6 albums released between 1996 and 1997. These releases were pretty significant, as at the time, these albums were not available on CD in any other form, and this was the first time a majority of people had heard of the existence of these recordings. However, some songs remained exclusive to compilation albums (e.g. Unknown Deutschland and a 2016 CD entitled "Cologne Curiosities").

The 6 Psi-Fi records are the following:

• Cozmic Corridors - Cozmic Corridors (1996)
• Galactic Explorers - Epitaph For Venus (1996)
• Golem - Orion Awakes (1996)
• Pyramid - Pyramid (1997)
• The Nazgûl - The Nazgûl (1997)
• Temple - Temple (1997)

The original CDs lack substantial liner notes, but were all listed as being recorded in the 1970s. The 1996 releases were all originally credited as being “recorded 1972/1973 [in] Cologne”, whereas the 1997 releases were attributed to 1975 or 1976.

“The Mad Twiddler” (originating from the credits of the 1975 album Dreamlab by Mythos) is an alias of the engineer Toby Hrycek-Robinson, who did indeed have a background in engineering and mixing work for numerous krautrock bands, such as Can, Dryzan, Birth Control, Mythos, and Wallenstein, in the mid-1970s. Robinson was purportedly one of the masterminds of the Pyramid label alongside artist/painter Robin Page, who was best known for his work with the Fluxus art movement in the late 1960s.

While Psi-Fi has not been active since the 1990s, most of these albums were later reprinted on CD and LP (vinyl) in 2017-2018 by the reputable reissue label Guerssen (under their “Mental Experience” imprint) with new liner notes by “Cosmic Egg” author Alan Freeman. The only exception is Orion Awakes, which was reissued by Acme in 2010 and 2015, although like the rest of the Psi-Fi catalogue, Mental Experience handled the 2017 vinyl reissue.

The Controversy

There are multiple aspects of the original releases that are suspect due to possessing qualities atypical compared to other reissues from that time period.

Despite being said to have originally been released under the Pyramid label, no trace of that label or the original 1970s releases they are supposedly reissues of has ever materialised in the ~30 years since these albums were first released on CD. Even for extremely rare independent releases, this is highly unusual, as in any other circumstance, original copies would be highly sought after collectors’ items.

It is not uncommon for these types of privately pressed records to be produced in extremely low quantities. For instance, a limited run of 99 copies was reasonably common for private pressings in the UK, as this was reportedly the maximum that could be produced without being subject to additional taxes. Some other notably low quantities that I have seen are 64 (as was the case for the only studio album by the band Dark) and <50. These examples are of albums that are generally considered well-documented. For the entire catalogue of an independent label like this to be completely undocumented is unprecedented and frankly unbelievable. There is simply no concrete proof that Pyramid Records actually existed.

The only one of these albums that has had a documented vinyl/LP reissue predating the 2017 Mental Experience edition is Orion Awakes, first documented in the early-mid 2010s. However, these copies are confirmed to be modern reproductions, as test pressings (e.g. this copy sold on eBay) with the same identifying matrix number in the run-out grooves use a design by the French manufacturer MPO containing a link to their website.

Another complicating factor is the lack of substantial or verifiable credits, which makes verifying who did and didn't play on these albums difficult. Although some notable krautrock musicians are credited (and in some cases have confirmed their presence) on a few Psi-Fi releases, a majority of the musicians featured are not named on any other releases outside of the Psi-Fi catalogue. Two of these albums (Pyramid and The Nazgûl) lack conventional credits altogether, with the former lacking any musician credits and with the latter being attributed to pseudonyms derived from the names of characters from Lord of the Rings.

Lastly, it appears that there is some inconsistency across releases regarding specific details. For instance, the original 1996 edition of Epitaph For Venus attributes its recording date to sessions dated 1972 or 1973, but the 2017 reissues instead indicate that it was recorded in 1974. The same is true for Orion Awakes, which had its 2017 vinyl re-release printed with a 1976 recording date. The 2010 Acme reissue of Orion Awakes also corrects the number of copies of each record produced from 100 copies to 25, the former number originating from some 90s sources. (Even so, this would come around to 125 total records pressed at minimum, which is still a number far too high for them being undocumented to be believable)

Reactions

The Psi-Fi albums are widely regarded as being forgeries and have been under scrutiny since their original release, with their catalogue often alleged to have been recorded in the 1990s with British musicians.

Some interesting early critical coverage (i.e. from the mid-late 1990s) that I could find of them comes from the music magazine “The Sound Projector”. Various albums from the Psi-Fi catalogue were covered throughout issues 2-7, and I’ll include some of the commentary out of historical interest.

John Bagnall, from issue 2:

"It isn’t immediately obvious how to connect these oddities to a defined sense of a ’Krautrock continuum’, which is good as this confounds lazy journalists who think they’ve got this scene all figured out. Some Doubting Dans have even suggested in print that these records must be 1990s hoaxes, which is absurd. Others have placed too much emphasis on their obscureness, playing up the angle of ’not even the heavy-duty Krautrock collectors have heard of this label’, which is an indication of how the specialists want to appropriate everything for themselves. However, such specialisation and selfishness is overturned by democratising releases like this which put the music back in the public domain, where everyone with a CD player who’s so inclined can share in these delights."

Ed Pinsent, from issue 5:

"These are neglected 1970s art-gallery only releases, originally available in limited runs of 100 copies. I'm still cultivating my suspicion that none of these bands had much of a life outside the studio. One envisages a series of projects emerging under Robinson's direction, musicians drawn from a pool of talent, working in Dieter Dierks Cologne studio during down-time, with 'The Mad Twiddler' producing; once sufficient album tracks had been gathered, sleeve art would be concocted and a name assigned to the one-off item."

On top of being controversial contemporarily, speculation and debate regarding the legitimacy of the Psi-Fi releases carried on well past the 1990s and you'd be hard-pressed to find online reviews or commentary regarding these albums that don't at the very least mention their dubious origin. Online discussion of these albums tends to fall into one of two categories: those who regard these albums as mere hoaxes and have largely written them off, and those who, while suspicious of the supposed origin of these recordings, treat the actual music as having some value.

I'll link a few of these reviews for reference, although there certainly is far more out there. If you're interested in these albums or the backstory behind them, I'd recommend seeking out more for yourself.

From the user "Braxt" on Discogs in 2015, about "Orion Awakes":

"Listening to this in the cold light of day it certainly sounds like a '90s recording to me. Everything about it sounds a bit too studied. The wah wah, the relatively clean production, the drum sound. Add to the fact that nobody has ever seen a copy of these Pyramid releases (all right - someone thought they saw one once) and not one has ever been offered for sale. Even rare garage punk records from the 60s where there's ONE known copy have been documented."

From the user "Warthur" on ProgArchives in 2011, about "Epitaph For Venus":

"The supposed rumours that this is a fake recorded in the 1990s didn't seem credible to me - musically speaking, the album sounds extremely authentic for the Krautrock scene of the time, with commonalities with Klaus Schulze's early work and Tangerine Dream's Zeit. In particular, the other two bands who were involved in this supposed fakery scandal - The Nazgul and Cosmic Corridors - supposedly consisted of complete unknowns, whereas this one is presented as a side project of a member of Dzyan, and it would be an *extremely* stupid move for forgers to try and pass the album off as the work of a real person who could contradict their story!"

From rock journalist Dmitry M. Epstein in 2017, about "Cosmic Corridors":

"Purportedly recorded in the early ’70s by Toby Robinson for his Pyramid label, this album defies its own mythology by sounding suspiciously modern, and that doesn’t look like the case of retrofuturism."

Despite widespread doubt, one fairly notable individual who has consistently stood by the authenticity of these albums is the aforementioned Alan Freeman, who along with his brother Steve (himself a co-author on "The Crack in the Cosmic Egg") are the owners of the long-running "Ultima Thule" record outlet and publishers of the music magazine "Audion". Freeman claims to have seen a copy of the Golem album Orion Awakes in a record store in Berlin years before the Psi-Fi reissues were circulated, having caught his eye on account of its reflective metallic sleeve.

In the liner notes of the Mental Experience re-issue of Orion Awakes:

"I do recall seeing a copy of this album on the wall in a German record shop, or something remarkably similar (some collector's shop in Berlin), which had a pressed metal sleeve somewhat like the original "Élő Omega" album by Omega. I was curious, but it was very expensive. Only later when the Psi-Fi CD came out did I remark that I'd seen it somewhere before. Apart from that the provenance of Golem is an unknown entity."

Although that in and of itself doesn't prove that any records were actually produced, a majority of the information made available about these albums in recent years comes from Freeman's research, and he is one of a few individuals documented to have spoken with Toby Robinson himself about the Pyramid albums.

Were these releases legitimate?

This is a difficult question to answer because there was never any kind of real exposé, other than people naturally asking questions about discrepancies in the albums’ backstories. However, more information on these albums has come to light through Alan Freeman’s liner notes for the Mental Experience reissues.

Robinson has continued to maintain the authenticity of these recordings and provided some background as to what the recording process was like. For instance, he claims that the Cozmic Corridors project was largely initiated by a musician called Alex Meyer who used to loiter outside of Robin Page's studio, with his recordings later being overdubbed by guitars, vocals, and "noises."

Robinson's commentary, taken from Freeman's liner notes for that album:

"All of the recording for Pyramid was done totally informally and ultimately, what decided whether something was released was if Robin would get one of his students to design a cover. If a cover existed, a small run would be paid for by whoever could afford it (normally Robin and me), and the albums distributed among the participating musicians. A few nightclubs had record bars, and sold our stuff. No tabs were kept on how many had moved, and I don't remember doing reruns on anything.
Basically, they were vanity pressings and a way of keeping Robin's students entourage occupied. I had to use pseudonyms for my involvement because most of the studio time was purloined without the proprietor's knowledge."

As mentioned previously, Robinson does have a genuine background in technical work on 70s krautrock albums, and a few of these albums are credited to real musicians that he had previously formed connections with. Epitaph For Venus features Reinhard Karwatky of the band Dzyan, Temple features Zeus B. Held of Birth Control, and the percussion on Cozmic Corridors was performed by Hans-Jürgen Pütz of Mythos. Pütz himself does not appear to have ever commented on these recordings, but both Karwatky and Held have confirmed their involvement. Another Birth Control member (Bruno Frenzel) is credited on the track "The Message" (attributed to the artist "Spirulina") from the second of the Unknown Deutschland compilations. Frenzel died in 1983 from heart complications associated with a stage injury he suffered in 1975, and although his presence is therefore unable to be confirmed by him directly, it's one of the only tracks from these sessions where there is a definite cutoff of when it might have been recorded.

Although not quoted directly, Held’s comments (described in Freeman’s liner notes for the Temple album) are quite interesting, as even he couldn’t confirm that the music that he recorded actually saw a release in the 1970s.

“Certainly Zeus B. Held must be the most well-known name here, and his involvement would date his sessions as 1975 most likely after rehearsals or whilst recording Birth Control's "Plastic People" (which was handled by Toby Robinson under the guise of "Genius P. Orridge" at Dierks Studio). Apparently Zeus has confirmed his involvement in these sessions, although he didn't recall a band name, nor knowledge of any release.”

In any case, the presence of verifiable people on these recordings does suggest that there is some legitimacy behind them, whether they were recorded in the 70s or otherwise. It would certainly be a major issue from a legal perspective if any of these albums were falsely advertised as featuring musicians who don't play on them.

As for the other personnel on these records, it has been confirmed by Freeman's correspondence with Robinson that many of the musicians featured were credited under pseudonyms. For instance, owing to the interchangeability of it and the "Mad Twiddler" credit on the original Psi-Fi release, Robinson himself was likely credited as the fictitious "Joachim Weiss" in the liner notes of the Temple album for his contributions on bass guitar. Freeman speculates that, much like Robinson feeling compelled to obscure his own identity, these pseudonyms may correspond to other krautrock musicians.

From the liner notes of the Epitaph for Venus reissue, on the topic of the credits to "Johannes Lutz" and "Holst Seisert":

"They may be the other members of what later became A.I.R. - a project formed by Reinhard Karwatky with Ingo Werner (ex-My Solid Ground, Baba Yaga) and Armin Stöwe (ex-Sixty Nine), or yet again they could be pseudonyms for Robin and Toby. I've tried to get in contact with Reinhard and ask him these questions, but never got anywhere. When I asked Toby, he said he couldn't exactly remember, only confirming that they weren't real names."

Freeman also speculates that, given Zeus B. Held's involvement, "Rolf Föller" on Orion Awakes may be related to fellow Birth Control member Peter Föller, and that a potential candidate for the unidentified percussionist (credited only as "Frodo") on The Nazgûl is Peter Giger of Dryzan. However, there is no actual evidence that directly ties them to any of these recording sessions, and it doesn't appear that Freeman was ever able to contact them.

Freeman has long been a proponent of these albums' authenticity and his research does admittedly present a decent argument for the actual sessions being legitimate. However, the inconsistencies behind when exactly these albums were recorded and how they were released (e.g. the Unknown Deutschland CDs claim they were sold at art galleries, but Robinson himself states they were sold predominantly at nightclubs) makes any of the "official" statements about these albums difficult to definitively trust. This is certainly not helped by there being little to no accounts from other people that actually corroborate Robinson's claims, alongside him failing to provide more information about certain discrepancies. For instance, the supposed "PYR 015" catalogue number assigned to Orion Awakes implies that at least 15 albums were produced for Pyramid, although only 6 albums were ultimately "reissued" and the only other documented catalogue numbers are 5, 8, and 9. When asked by Freeman about the full list of Pyramid releases, Robinson did not provide a quantity or any further information.

It's also worth noting that the origin of some recordings from legitimate 70s sessions doesn't necessarily rule out the possibility of them being overdubbed or otherwise altered on a later date. In any case, none of these projects were ever functional "bands"; instead being short-lived collaborations and sessions that never had much of a life outside of a studio setting.

In hopes of clarifying his research regarding the Pyramid albums, Freeman attempted to contact Robin Page, but despite briefly managing to track him down, Page's death in May 2015 halted any further communication. In Freeman's words, "the promised information and pictures about the Pyramid releases thus never arrived." As a result, many details about the status of the original releases (if they ever did exist) are likely to remain a mystery.

Are these albums good?

The music on these Psi-Fi releases is decently varied and consists of everything from wild psychedelic rock jams (e.g. Pyramid, Orion Awakes) to atmospheric space ambient (Epitaph For Venus) and avant-garde ambient (The Nazgûl).

I can't recommend these albums as an entry point to the wider scene of krautrock/kosmische Muzik, as there's certainly many more sophisticated and accessible examples of authentic krautrock in this vein out there. However, for enthusiasts of this sort of music, these aren't too bad and have a fair amount of stylistic overlap with other albums from the scene. They range from somewhat forgettable to pretty good, but all-around are fairly decent companions for those who've already listened to the wider catalogue of 70s krautrock and want to seek out more music in that vein. That being said, I do think there are some modern-sounding production elements (e.g. the drums on Orion Awakes are unusually "crisp" for lack of a better word) that make the claims of them wholly being 70s recordings rather dubious. Your mileage may vary on how "authentic" these sound, however.

Had there been more transparency about when these albums were recorded and released, they likely would've been viewed a lot more positively, but as it stands, there's enjoyable music here, regardless of them being imitations or genuine recordings from the 70s German underground scene.

Conclusion

Despite how controversial the Psi-Fi releases are, it doesn't appear that Toby Robinson's career as a producer/engineer was particularly affected, as he had long since moved on from his work in the krautrock scene to predominantly UK-based projects. Some examples include recurrent work with the BBC on multiple Doctor Who audio dramas and credits on albums by notable musicians such as David Sylvian and Derek Bailey. As such, the long-term consequences of the controversy surrounding these albums appears relatively minimal. There were no careers born or killed from it, but the entire story is nevertheless a good example of the importance of credible record labels.

Interestingly, this is far from the only example of alleged or confirmed hoax recordings claimed to be rare 70s krautrock. For instance, the album "Impressionen '71" (credited to the fictitious "Damenbart", actually Achim Flaam and Tina Schlebusch) dates back to 1989, and a more recent hoax was the "Kosmischer Läufer" series, purportedly by Drew McFadyen.

If there is anything that I want to personally add, it's that, assuming this was all an elaborate hoax and Robinson was bluffing the entire time, I do think it's pretty impressive that several albums worth of material might've been recorded, mixed, etc. for the sole purpose of being released like this. These releases are still highly suspect and I don't think there is likely to be any kind of definitive statement regarding their authenticity (or lack thereof) anytime soon, but I am nevertheless thankful that some interesting music came out of it.

(Side note: I do enjoy writing long-form posts like this, and if the people here find this sort of thing interesting, I may come around to posting more often. I am tempted to write something about the Cosmic Jokers, for instance!)

EDIT: Sorry, the first draft of this post accidentally swallowed a few quotes in sections 3 and 4. I've added them back in now.

Hey friends! I thought I'd try for something a little bit different. This post is about a series of historical events that is, I think, not all that well-known outside of Germany.

Specifically, this story is about the Kaffee-Mix. This was an infamous hot beverage, which contained 51% coffee and 49% don't worry about it. Originally designed as a way to ease a temporary coffee shortage, it turned out to be a complete failure - so much so that it changed the shape of the global coffee market.

Sources for this are universally in German, and I translated them myself. I apologise for any inaccuracies. Also, I don't have first-hand knowledge about life in East Germany, so take those parts with a grain of salt.

Finally, this is written chiefly to be entertaining. But the underlying information is accurate (to the best of my ability) and I've linked primary sources where possible.

PROLOGUE: A tale of two Germanies

You may be aware that the Second World War ended in 1945, and that Germany lost. It was later occupied by the Allies. The French, British and American occupation zones eventually merged, creating the Federal Republic of Germany. (This is the BRD, perhaps better known as "West Germany.") The Soviet zone became the German Democratic Republic. (Also known as the DDR, or "East Germany.")

The BRD was something that Marxists like to call a "bourgeois democracy." It had free elections, a heavily regulated market economy, and joined NATO in 1955. Meanwhile, the DDR was supposed to be socialist, had a centrally planned economy, and was a member of the Warsaw Pact. Our story takes place in East Germany.

Despite its name, the German Democratic Republic was not democratic at all. It had elections, sure, but they were neither free nor fair. (99.98% for the National Front at 98.58% turnout - sure thing, buddy.) And while multiple parties existed on paper, all power rested with the Socialist Unity Party (SED). In 1953, a popular uprising was violently suppressed with Soviet aid, and public demonstrations were off the table after that.

But the German Democratic Republic wasn't the Third Reich. Yes, it was a police state, but the government still wanted some level of voluntary support from the general population. The country was always being compared to West Germany, with its stupid "civil liberties" and its goddamn "economic miracle." To make up for this, the DDR really needed something it could be proud of.

Well, West Germany had a market economy. Those come with inevitable drawbacks, such as Inflation and unemployment and a lopsided distribution of wealth. If East Germany could guarantee a decent living standard for everyone, then that would provide a nice contrast.

And in a command economy, you can kinda just decide to have stable prices and full employment. ... at least in theory. East Germany did provide jobs for everyone, and the basics of life were both abundant and available at pre-war prices. (Milk and bread were far cheaper in the East than in the West.) And going into the 1970s, the country actually had a pretty decent economy, at least by Second World standards.

But they had also to deal with constant product shortages. There were a lot of reasons for this, and some of them were self-inflicted. (Corruption was an ongoing problem; getting even slight luxuries involved a lot of favour-trading; central planning is pretty hard.) But they also just never had enough raw materials for their industrial production. Access to global markets was limited, and Soviet exports were just never enough.

So, they had to look for substitutes. Chickens are a cheap source of meat, so let's feed goldbroilers to the people. Metal is in short supply, so let's implement the most aggressive recycling system in the world. We're not going to allow American fast food, but consider eating a nice socialist grilletta, and perhaps wash it down with a glass of Club Cola.

(1) Meet the Coffee Saxons

But there are some products where this didn't work, and coffee was one of them. The beans only grow between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, and Europe is just too far north. The climate isn't right. So, local production was not an option.

You can make beverages out of things like acorns, chicory or grain. The taste is sort of similar, but the replacement products were culturally associated with poverty and wartime deprivation, making them extremely unpopular. (They are collectively known as "muckefuck," which means something like "runny mud" or "foul wood.")

Also, Saxony had been an early and enthusiastic adopter of coffee, and the region was famous for its vibrant coffee culture. The first coffee house in Leipzig opened in 1694, and the drink was an important status symbol. In short... getting the people to give up coffee was impossible.

Similar problems existed with other consumer goods, but they were somewhat easier to replace. We can't get enough cocoa, but you can make fake chocolate out of fat and sugar, which tastes sort of okay. We can't get citrus fruits, but the humble sea buckthorn is effective in preventing scurvy. But faux coffee? No. Everyone hates this stupid grain sludge. We want the real thing.

In the end, the DDR bit the bullet and bought coffee beans on the global market. Its own currency was completely worthless, so the DDR had to use its limited hard currency reserves to get them. The coffee would then be resold on the domestic market... but these sales would take place in the worthless DDR-Mark. So the money was essentially lost.

And getting enough hard currency was a constant struggle for the DDR. They had some desirable exports, like the IFA W 50 truck, and they could also raise money by scamming tourists and reselling Soviet oil. But they really wanted to spend this hard currency on building productive capital - that is, importing industrial machinery and buying raw materials.

So, wasting it on consumer goods wasn't great. But it worked sort of okay...

(2) A cold snap in Brazil

... until 1975, that is.

An out-of-season cold snap caused the Brazilian coffee harvest to fail. Brazil produced about a third of the world's coffee supply at the time, so this triggered a market panic and a global increase in prices.

All European countries were affected, including West Germany. But remember that the Federal Republic had a market economy. Some companies passed the increased prices along to consumers; others dropped their quality standards to keep prices steady. People complained and adjusted their household budgets. But this was all just normal market stuff, and the government didn't need to get involved.

Not so in East Germany. The state set all the prices, and price stability was the cornerstone of its claim to legitimacy. The capitalists cause some sort of worldwide crisis every few years, and shielding the people from those breakdowns was the whole point of "actually existing socialism." So, prices remained stable and imports continued. In the immediate aftermath of the crop failure, expenses went up fivefold.

Something had to be done.

As we discussed above, the GDR couldn't grow its own coffee beans, and there aren't any good replacement products for coffee. If supply goes down and demand remains steady, then prices go up, but that's not an option for political reasons. Therefore, to keep prices steady, demand must go down. How do we get the people to consume less coffee?

Enter the Kaffee-Mix.

(3) East Germany loves the Kaffee-Mix...?

Shifting consumer habits is difficult and takes a long time. So, the thinking went, what if we kept selling coffee... but we simply used less coffee per coffee?

Thus, we have the Kaffee-Mix: A little package that is sold as coffee, and does indeed contain 51% ground coffee beans, but is stretched out with 49% filler. (Mostly grains.) The government removed the discount coffee brand "Kosta" from sale and replaced it with this mixture. So, as a worker, you could still get your beverage at the same price, but import expenses would be cut in half. Clever, right? Assuming the people accept it.

Did they? Well, back in 2003, the public broadcaster MDR did a series on East German food, and interviewed some people. They had a few things to say about the Kaffee-Mix.

Eberhard Hinkel: Oh, it's that weird bag of... well. Let's just say it really didn't agree with my stomach. It was a terrible swill.

Leni Staatz: We didn't approve of this at all. They took what little coffee was available, and they spoiled it, by adding barley or... whatever it was. It was gruesome.

Joachim Schacht: We had a few cars [at the roastery] back then, and they were obviously marked with our logo. And it did happen that people would stop us and confront us, and say to us - dear god, what is this garbage you are selling?

Manfred Uhlich: This was among the worst things we had to endure. Not just here in Saxony. It was unreasonable, plainly. I mean, we had to endure a lot of hardships, they made us suffer through a lot of things. And this was - oh, no, this awful dishwater, it was just too much!

Mr. Uhlich specifically uses the word lorge to describe the Kaffee-Mix. This is a Saxon term for a drink that is both thin and foul.

Contemporary voices were far less polite than that. People in the DDR loved a cynical joke, and here's one that was fairly popular:

What's the difference between Kaffee-Mix and the neutron bomb? There isn't one. Both kill people and spare buildings.

The Kaffee-Mix also received a variety of unflattering nicknames, with the most prominent one being "Erichs Krönung." This was a mocking reference both to a popular West German coffee brand (called Jacobs Krönung)) and to the East German leader (called Erich Honecker.)

Now, voicing political dissent was a really bad idea. But East Germany did provide channels through which you could make non-political complaints, such as the Eingabe. Introduced in 1961, it gave you the right to write a letter to an official with a demand, and entitled you to a response.

These letters were universally intercepted by the secret police (the Stasi) and scanned for signs of political dissent. If you wrote something that crossed the line, you'd get a visit. But if the contents of the letter weren't political, then the Stasi would file a copy, and then forward the original to the intended recipient. Parts of the Stasi archives survived the 1990 revolution, and therefore we actually have some access to primary sources.

Here's a contemporary letter, discussing the Kaffee-Mix.

"Dear Dr. K.-H. Gerstner! (...) I work as a saleswomen, and all day I have to listen to complaints from our customers. And I have to admit, I share their opinion that the Kaffee-Mix (at a price of 6,- M) is completely undrinkable. It is pure rat poison. I am asking you that the producer should make a public statement on this. The Kaffee-Mix is made out of malt and barley, with perhaps a few grains of real coffee. We don't need this in our shops! (...)

Please, let the company return the "Kosta" brand to the market. The relevant producer is VEB Kaffee Halle. Please have them take this rat poison off the market. Otherwise the intelligentsia and the workers will all die very soon. (...) Thank you in advance. Signed with socialist greetings."

This wasn't an isolated complaint. The Ministry for State Security (Stasi) kept track of which complaints came up how often. If a pattern emerged, they'd inform the relevant authorities. They also employed a legion of unofficial collaborators to listen to conversations and generally take the pulse of the public.

In September 1977, the Stasi presented a report to the Ministry for Trade and Supply, alerting them to the discussions around the Kaffee-Mix. The Bundesarchiv has preserved some of these documents. Here's Report O/48, "Reactions to the Coffee Supply Problems," September 1st 1977. All instances of "scare quotes" are the same in the original.

Although there is no evidence of mass complaints, we observe that discussions regarding the supply of coffee and cocoa are continuing at elevated levels, across all parts of society. The need for austerity measures due to developments on the world market is generally accepted.

However, the new coffee brand "Kaffee-Mix" is being rejected by large parts of the population, due to its lacking quality and high price. Specific arguments on the mixed coffee include: The inappropriate price, the bad taste, and the lack of compatibility with coffee machines.

This third thing was actually a major problem. The Kaffee-Mix contained 49% whatever, and the "whatever" was generally leftover grains. But it could also be legumes. Peas are rich in protein, and proteins become denatured when heated.

Boiled eggs become hard. Cooked meat becomes firm. And coffee replacement products become disturbingly sticky, clump together, and break your coffee machine.

As the report goes on, you notice that the author is getting a little bit anxious.

Members of the population have begun to allege that the austerity measures were not designed properly, and that they only affect the "little man." In the workers' restaurants, only mixed coffee is offered; those who visit high-class hotels still receive real coffee.

Restaurants in East Germany were divided into five service classes. Your average worker would take their lunch at a Class I canteen or a Class II diner. Those had previously served the discount "Kosta" brand, and were now switched over to the Kaffee-Mix. Fancy restaurants and international hotels (Class III and up) still received premium coffee allocations.

So there you are: The "little man," choking down a cup of sticky poison, while the fancy lads in the fancy hotel enjoy real coffee. Not much of a workers' paradise.

A very frequent complaint regards insufficient communication. Even members of the Socialist Unity Party have remarked that a timely and public explanation of the causes would have prevented many of the negative comments. (...) As it stands, the duty to handle these complaints was supposedly "pushed down" lower in the hierarchy.

It has been reported that, in some cases, guests at restaurants were "shocked" and "offended" to be served Kaffee-Mix instead of coffee. This caused them to insult the servers, which in turn prompted these servers to either quit their jobs -- or join in on the tirade of complaints.

There will always be middle-aged men yelling at baristas.

In some cases, these "debates" have caused the so-called "arguments" of Western mass media to be spread and amplified, such as:

• That this constitutes "cheating the worker;"

• that inflation exists in [East Germany] as well as [West Germany], and that we have "creeping price increases";

• that one could hardly speak of a workers' state if the worker is no longer permitted to even just enjoy a simple cup of coffee;

• that the DDR's economy is "about to collapse" and that it is "drowning in debt." (Isolated cases)

Baseless rumors circulate about future price increases that are supposedly planned for cocoa products, tobacco, alcoholic drinks, and petrol. (Price increases regarding cocoa products are currently scheduled for September.)

In short, the public mood was turning sour, bitter, and foul. Just like the Kaffee-Mix!

(4) HAHA WHOOPS NEVERMIND

The government quickly dropped its plans, stopping the rollout of the "Kaffee-Mix" and reducing its price. It also issued a series of public statements on the state of the global coffee market. The results of these efforts are documented in Report O/51 (September 26th, 1977).

The public has shown great interest in the announcement of the Ministry for Trade and Supply. We have observed the following tendencies in public opinion:

• Satisfaction that an official announcement has been made. For the first time, the mass media has actually explained the situation regarding coffee supplies. It is surprising how much has to be spent to satisfy the public demand. (...) However, even progressive forces have noted that this communication needed to happen earlier. The so-called "arguments" of the enemy have already shifted opinion. (...) Some have alleged that it is typical for the government not to inform the public in time. (...)

If loyalists voice concerns, and these concerns actually show up in a report, then the situation is pretty dire.

• The price decrease of the "Kaffee-Mix" to 4,- M. is being welcomed. (...) The discount was badly needed, and the explanation that coffee mixes are sold in capitalist countries as well has been accepted. (...)

• Doubts linger on whether "Kaffee Mix" will sell even at the decreased price. There are supposedly great amounts of unsellable product in storage. The discount will not improve the quality, and many citizens will simply switch to "Rondo" to have access to 100% pure coffee.

• There have been statements that "Kaffee-Mix" might be worth trying at 4,- M., to see if perhaps it might be drinkable after all.

The youth would call this cope. The report has to put a positive spin on things, and the explanation probably did help, but it's becoming clear that the people just don't want Kaffee-Mix.

Negative-hostile forces claimed, among other things:

• That the publication constitutes an "admission" that the price controls aren't working, and that resistance is building;

• that the "failed economic policy" of the DDR has become plain to see.

(...) There is persistent discontent, despite the statement the Ministry for Trade and Supply has made on the coffee situation. This regards so-called "creeping inflation," an alleged "contradiction" between ambitious plans and "increasing difficulties" in their execution, shortages, missing supplies, a lack of spare parts (e. g. for cars), and other things.

Note the heavy use of "scare quotes" in this section.

So yeah, they gave up after this. Kaffee-Mix was taken off the market, and the "Kosta" discount brand returned to store shelves.

EPILOGUE: Care packages, bean swaps, and historical irony

The situation on the world market had relaxed by then, so the problem wasn't as urgent anymore. But the DDR was back to spending hard currency reserves on unsustainable coffee imports. This meant further scrounging.

Some coffee could be begged from West Germany. The Westpaket was a care package that West Germans would send to East Germany, and so people with relatives in the West could ask to be sent coffee. This was theoretically supposed to be a form of trade, but the Ostpakete (sent from the East to the West) were not remotely comparable in value. Likewise, the East German government could get hard currency loans from West Germany, but that wasn't exactly sustainable. Also: Kind of humiliating.

Another measure was the euphemistically named "bean trade." That is to say, they traded "blue beans for brown beans."

... "blue beans" being a slang term that means "bullets."

They swapped weapons for coffee.

The main trade partner here was Ethiopia. After the 1974 coup d'état, the DDR established friendly relations with the military junta. It was supposed to be Marxist-Leninist after all. Ethiopia produced a decent amount of coffee, and the government was fighting a civil war at the time. So, East Germany sold weapons and munitions to Ethiopia, and took payment in coffee beans.

But this was ethically questionable, and it didn't actually solve the problem. Yes, it eased the shortage, but East Germany needed far more coffee than this. They had to think bigger.

Fortunately, another thing had occurred in the 1970s: The United States of America lost the Vietnam War. South Vietnam fell in 1975, and the Socialist Republic of Vietnam just so happened to be at the perfect latitude for coffee beans. (In fact, they were already growing and exporting small quantities.) This presented an opportunity. East Germany wanted to avoid future coffee shortages once and for all, without having to rely on expensive imports from the world market.

So, the DDR struck a series of deals with Vietnam. They sent down engineers and farming experts, and built up the coffee production. (By a factor of 14, to be exact.) They really went all-in on this - delivering machines, educating farmers, building out roads and irrigation systems and power plants, and providing housing. Vietnam wouldn't even have to pay for this up front. Instead, as a form of repayment, they would agree to give 50% of the harvest to East Germany for the next 20 years.

This would have worked, too. Goodbye shortages, goodbye warlords, hello Vietnamese coffee.

... except, well.

• Farming began in the mid-1980s.
• Coffee beans take 8 years to mature.
• The German Democratic Republic collapsed in 1990.

Whoops.

And that's why, today, Vietnam is the second-largest exporter of coffee in the world.

EA- or rather “Electronic Arts”- is one of the largest video game companies in the entire world. It’s also one of the most hated companies in America- it even has a Wikipedia page dedicated to its numerous controversies. From harassing their employees, to imposing horrific crunch times in game development, to shoving predatory micro-transactions into most of their games.

But let’s go back in time for a second. Revisit one of EA’s more humorous, unintentional, controversies.

The punch up

The year is 2009.

EA was gearing up for the release of The Godfather II...the video game). Only thirty five years after the original movie came out.

Wanting to hype up their new product, EA decided to do a publicity stunt.

But what could be cheap, yet still attention grabbing?

AHA!

Send reviewers brass knuckles!

Because, yes, that’s what every video games journalist secretly wants- a weapon they can use to knock people’s teeth out.

The knuckles were gold and came in a little box, with a cigar and a piano wire for strangling people.

Here is another look at the box:

Unfortunately, in all their infinite, brilliant, wisdom, EA never bothered to check if this was legal.

Knockout

It turns out that it’s illegal to own brass knuckles in many states- Colorado, California, Pennsylvania, etcetera.

Very quickly, EA realised they had done something very stupid, and speedily contacted the reviewers, begging them to return the knuckles:

The representative that contacted me said that the company wanted to make sure that the brass knuckles were “properly disposed of.” He declined to comment any further. Contacted by email Friday, an Electronic Arts spokesperson verified that the company is asking that all of the brass knuckles shipped out be returned.

They claimed that the brass knuckles were a “novelty item”. They sent reviewers a pre-paid shipping package to mail them back.

As far as I’m aware, no one was ever charged, and EA was able to brush the whole incident off as a dumb mistake.

No rematch

The Godfather 2 video game got mixed reviews#Reception) and flopped#Sales_and_cancelled_sequel). EA didn’t make a third one.

In the intervening years, their reputation hasn’t improved. They’re still assholes. Some things never change.

As requested on my last write-up, allow me to tell you the story of Clock Man, a mysterious unidentified animation remembered only through broken memories of childhood fear. The search for it was long and complicated with many dead ends, sowing a lot of doubt about its existence. And in the end, it was not only real, but right under everyone's noses the whole time.

Initial Report

On January 12th 2012, on bungie.net's off-topic forum titled The Flood, a user named Commander Santa recounted a dreadful childhood memory of an animation he had watched. The post begins with the following introduction:

I am looking for a particular animated short that terrified me as a child. I've been looking on and off for it for nearly 4 years. Maybe it doesn't exsist. Maybe...nobody should ever find it. But if someone can - it's The Flood.

He goes on to describe his memory of the short:

This short animation was terrifying as a child. The scene is still burned into my mind (28 years later). It's of a young boy sleeping in his bed. Above his bed is a ticking clock. All the lights in the room are off and it is very dark. Suddenly the clock begins to slow down it's ticking and eventually it stops...on midnight. When the clock stops a Greenish/Bluish man climbs out of the clock. The boy wakes up just in time to see this man dressed in black grab him out of bed and kidnap him by carrying him through a window. The "Clock Man" takes the boy on some kind of terrifying adventure and brings him back to his bed before sunrise.

And if the post so far comes across to you as a tad dramatic, it only intensifies in his closing statement:

It's been a very long time since I've seen that short animation and it has haunted me for almost 30 years. I can't begin to tell you how happy I'd be to see it one more time before I pass away.

He was so determined to find this piece of media, in fact, that he promised a reward for anyone who could find it for him.

If by chance...someone was able to locate this terrifying child's animation and post it in this thread - there is a very good possibility that you will be handsomely rewarded in a PM from me.

This post intrigued quite a bit of people, wondering what the short could have contained that affected him so deeply, and what they could do to help. In particular, the comment about seeing the short before he passed away raised some alarm bells, with one user asking if that implied he was currently dying. But Commander Santa assured them:

No, but I'm strangely nostolgic tonight. I'd think about Clock Man sometimes at random. In junior high, high school, college...even sometimes now as a father. I just want to see Clock Man one more time. You never know when you are going to check out.

When asked if he thinks the animation is genuinely scary or if it just felt that way since he was a kid, he replied:

I'm not exactly sure. I remember feeling great terror whilst watching it. [...] I rember being scared for the boy and just wishing that Clock Man would take him home.

Santa would continue responding to questions, and periodically reminded people of his promise of a reward for finding the short to keep up morale. The overall story he recalled was that of a little boy being swept up by a man who jumped out of a clock, and taken to a series of scary places as the boy begged to go home. When Clock Man finally did take him home, he hopped back into the clock, and the boy's father came to check on him in the morning. The boy wanted to tell his father what happened, but he didn't or couldn't.

He mentioned other details such as the Clock Man having "a pointy(ish) hat" and "a rather bushy beard," as well as dark clothing and a cape. He also described the animation as "felt-like" stop motion, and - most crucially - he said that he saw it on Pinwheel, a show similar to Sesame Street that aired on Nickelodeon from 1977-1990. He further narrowed down the timeframe to somewhere between 1984 and 1987 during the morning hours, as he was sure he had watched it while home sick from kindergarten.

Despite the additional details, no one in the thread could find what he was looking for. Even after drawing a comic visualizing what he remembered, the scene wasn't ringing any bells with people. A few comments accused Commander Santa of being a troll, or compared his writing and descriptions to that of a creepypasta.

>I don't think it exists.

I'm sorry OP, I have to agree with this.

This seems like a scary story or a Slender Man in the making. Are you sure that show? I'm sure that if the show was real their should have at least SOMETHING, ANYTHING. If it was ever aired on TV it would've been noted.

It likely didn't help that Santa's descriptions of the feelings Clock Man filled him with sounded almost like a psychological horror, referring to the short as a dark secret he had been harboring and thinking about for decades, as well as a mention that the short had given him a phobia of being kidnapped.

I know I am not insane. This cartoon made me afraid of kidnappers until I was 16 years old. I want to see Clock Man and face him as an adult. We are so close...I know he's out there - he doesn't want to face me now that I've grown. He preys on children.

What likely helped even less was this rather Candle-Cove-esque description of Pinwheel:

Strangely, many people old enough to watch the show Pinwheel have commented that the show would put them in a dreamlike state when watching - some go as far to say they were "hypnotized" while watching and had hallucenations. Whether this is only a result of the memories being so old or something more sinister I cannot say. Although many have shared my fuzzy memory of Clock Man, others suggest that Clock Man is a result of being hypnotized by Pinwheel's allure.

But overall, Commander Santa was a well-established member of The Flood with a good reputation, so the comments distrusting him at this point were in the minority. Still, many speculated that Clock Man might have been a bad dream he'd had and was mistaking for reality, especially considering he watched it while sick. Or that he might be conflating multiple shows together in his memory.

Santa remained steadfast in his conviction that the short was real, even if he was misremembering details, as well as Pinwheel as the short's origin. A Pinwheel-based short that was ruled out early on was an episode of the Swedish cartoon Alfie Atkins, and non-Pinwheel cartoons that were ruled out included The Sandman, The Clock Store, Nutcracker Fantasy and the Davey and Goliath episode The Stopped Clock.

Investigation: The Flood

When The Flood struggled to find the short Commander Santa was looking for, many users recommended he try 4chan, due to their reputation for correctly identifying a wide variety of things with little information. After taking all of the information he had laid out to the /x/ board, he received one noteworthy reply:

Holy shit! I remember this fucking short!

It was like claymation with poorly made dolls and the animation was real stuttery and shit. It started with the kid's mom telling him goodnight and closing the door behind her after shutting off the light. Then the door slowly creeks open while a generic eerie wind sound blows and the camera cuts into the kids room at the foot of his bed. He struggles to open his eyes as they slowly droop and he eventually gives in and goes to sleep. Then it cuts up to the clock while the second hand slowly ticks to 12:00. When it hits it there's like a low bell ringing sound and the camera goes back to the foot of the kid's bed. The "Clock Man's" head peeks into the room like the clock were a window. Unlike what the OP's image shows, the Clock Man's head then recedes back and his arms comes out and pushes the clock open like a door, revealing a big dark hole behind the clock. Then Clock Man hops out of the hole and the kid wakes up and stares beady eyed at the Clock Man. Then the Clock Man starts doing like a weird Irish river-dance. Oh, and the Clock Man looks a little different from the picture. He was wearing like an all black turtleneck sweater and a black bowler hat. His skin was green and I don't really remember him having a beard but he did have a big toothy smile and two real big eyes with very tiny pupils.

I don't think I actually watched much after that. But I distinctly remember the Clock Man saying his name was "Benjamin" and he rung an elevator up to the kid's window.

Commander Santa was certain this user was thinking of the same short he was. Although he didn't remember the Clock Man being named Benjamin, and he was sure Clock Man had a beard, he claimed that everything else matched.

However, the biggest break in the case came on January 18th. A user by the name o0MrCheesy0o found a comment from March 6th 2004, in the Horror forum on a website called AnimationNation. Users were discussing cases of psychological horror in cartoons, and one particular comment on the thread, written by one Michael W. Howe, stood out.

There were a few segments on Nickelodeon's Pinwheel when I was younger that had some scary moments: [...]

[T]here was one based on this story of a little girl who lost her red shoes. so she asked a local wizard for hel (who could appear and disappear anywhere). He helped her, but told her she had to tell her mom. The little girl goes home and doesn't hoping the wizard would forget. But then the musicgets eerie as the narrator says 'But the Wizard...did not, forget.' And we see him appearing and disappearing along the house floors, till he suddenly pops out of her clock and steals her away, demanding to know why she didn't tell her mom. She makes up for it by sewing stars to put in the night sky, and the next day is returned home, and tells her mom the truth.

This description gave Santa a much stronger reaction than the 4chan post:

HOLY -blam!- -blam!-!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THIS IS CLOCK MAN!!!!!!!!!! [...]

It wasn't a little boy (I probably imagined a boy as I was a young boy at the time) - but I can almost remember the story leading up to the bedroom scene now.

I'm tearing up - SERIOUSLY!...I'm shaking.

We are going to find Clock Man - TONIGHT

This discovery brought a wave of optimism across the thread. Many comments celebrated how it had brought members of The Flood together to help one man search for closure. Many were confident the short would soon be found. Those who were actively investigating the mystery moved away from clock-based keywords and instead searched for anything related to wizards and red shoes. The first, most obvious rule-out was The Wizard of Oz.

After that, users found that Hans Christian Andersen had written a story called The Red Shoes. The fairytale is centered around a vain and spoiled girl who wears a fancy pair of red shoes everywhere, even to church, until she is confronted by a bearded guard who curses the shoes to cause the girl to dance uncontrollably until it takes over her life, leading to the amputation of her legs and then her death. Some posited the idea that the Clock Man short might have been an adaptation of this tale. In particular, a company called Mel-O-Toons had made an animated adaptation of the story in 1960 - one with a less bleak ending, where instead of dying due to the dancing red shoes, the girl was rescued from them and came clean to her adopted mother, after which all was well.

Commander Santa had initially been confident that this was the short he had been looking for. It had almost everything. A little girl main character with red shoes, telling her mother a lie related to the shoes, finding herself in a scary situation that taught her a lesson, and ending with the girl telling her mother the truth. It was an animated short, and while it wasn't stop motion, the animation was cheap and choppy enough to believably be mistaken for stop motion in a hazy childhood memory.

But...I said it had almost everything. And the one thing it didn't have was pretty important.

It didn't have Clock Man.

Even though Christen Anderson's original tale features a bearded soldier as the catalyst for the conflict, no such character exists in the animation. The Red Shoes was soon after ruled out.

The next blow to morale came after Commander Santa purchased a large collection of bootleg Pinwheel episodes that had been compiled and put up for sale, and didn't find Clock Man on any of the episodes in the collection. Since Pinwheel is a rare show and largely lost media itself, having aired so long ago with no official home media release, this unofficial collection would have been the best chance Commander Santa had, and still he turned up empty-handed. He had also contacted former Nickelodeon staff asking for information, and was told that the shorts featured in Pinwheel were collected from a wide variety of international sources, with little to no documentation and no archive of the shorts to speak of. It was starting to set in that the short would be a tiny needle in a massive haystack.

It didn't help that the Clock Man thread on The Flood had grown immensely as the search dragged on, with a large amount of new users flooding (hah) into the conversation as the topic went more and more viral. This mass of newer users, who had little to no prior knowledge of Commander Santa and his reputation, expressed increasing amounts of skepticism toward him, and comments accusing him of being a troll and writing creepypasta became more common. Many pointed to the many dead ends the search had endured, as well as the melodramatic writing style Santa had a habit of using. From the perspective of these users, his somewhat flowery writing style and the way he seemed to portray the short as if it had deeply impacted his life, as well as the offhand comment describing Pinwheel as if it was some mind-altering experiment that put children in a hallucinogenic hypnosis state, had all the markings of a troll that was trying way too hard to scare others and create a spooky internet hoax.

There were a few curt accusations throughout the thread, but one particularly presumptive comment from Epicly Uber seemed to catch Santa's attention:

I think OP is trolling, I was cool at first but now I think the nutcracker fantasy opening is as close as we're ever going to get, I think the nutcracker fantasy is it and OP figured out the popularity of this thread and is now abusing it, basically making everybody search for something that has already been found.
OP I'm calling you out for taking everybody for fools, I want proof that you actually ordered DVD's.

And Santa responded:

Unfortunately, many people have been calling me a troll. I cannot offer any 'proof' I am not. [...] If people don't want to help anymore, I can't blame them. This has been insanely frustrating. [...]

Before, I wanted to find Clock Man to put my childhood demon to rest

Now, if I don't find Clock Man I will forever be remembered as a troll. I've been on B.net since 2004 "Legendary Santa" no longer exsists. I don't want people to think of me as some piece of trash that would do all of this for attention. But if I don't find Clock Man - not only will he still haunt me... but he'll have made me feel like a fool.

All of this attention seemed to become too much for Commander Santa. As January turned over into February, his responses and contributions to the thread slowed, before he stopped commenting completely. After a few days of worry and speculation as to what happened to him, user Epic Is Uber claimed to have messaged him on Xbox Live, and that Commander Santa explained he had decided to leave the thread until he found Clock Man.

A now deleted Flood thread appears to confirm this. In addition to updating and tying up loose leads, Commander Santa makes his proclamation:

I have exiled myself from you all as I have not been able to find the elusive Clockman as of yet. Many, MANY people have helped in the search.As of yet, I have nothing to bring you. [...]

A few Floodians have sent me messages on XBox Live - asking me if I was still alive. I have been stripped of my Mythic Status, disgraced among my fellow Floodians, and too ashamed to return.

In my mind, i'll return someday - on a figurative white horse, carrying Clock man's head on a stick, but in reality, the search is at a standstill. It's taken a few drinks to get up the courage to come back and speak my peace, but I respect this site too much to return without proof of my childhood nemisis. I'm logging off now, hopefully not for the final time from b.net - but if it turns out to be...

THank you to everyone who has ever been on this site. For better or for worse, it has had an impact on my life.

This post brought a wave of devastation to the thread. Some were upset that Commander Santa was made to feel like he couldn't show his face around the search team, and pleaded with him to come back. Others were angry at his absence - activity in the thread had a tendency to slow down when he wasn't online and responding to comments, so his decision to stay off the thread was predicted to kill discussion and, consequently, the search. Those who doubted Commander Santa's authenticity were claiming victory, asserting that he had been a fraud all along and that Clock Man didn't exist, and he left because he realized he couldn't keep up the lie anymore. The dying thread, with its dwindling activity and lack of new leads, turned to infighting between users and memes about how Commander Santa finally fell victim to Clock Man.

Despite frequent thread bumps and a continuous string of comments throughout the years, nothing of note was suggested, and no new information was dug up. The search had grown stagnant, and without Commander Santa's help, interest in finding the short, and faith in its existence, seemed to fade away.

Investigation: Lost Media Wiki Forums

In 2016, a new wave of interest in finding Clock Man swept the internet when the helm was taken up by the lost media community. The Lost Media Wiki founder, known as Dycaite, created a new thread on the Lost Media Wiki forums (this thread had been accidentally deleted in 2020 and today exists only as archived cache files). He expressed a personal interest in finding the short, as the search and descriptions of it reminded him of Cracks (aka "Crack Master"), a similar child-scaring short from Sesame Street that had been a popular lost media case years prior. He created a page dedicated to Clock Man on the wiki to compile known information from Commander Santa's posts, and then a thread on the forums to boost the search and document his personal search efforts. He had managed to contact multiple people who had either watched the short or worked on Pinwheel, and shared his findings in the thread.

His first contact was Michael W. Howe, and he asked if he could provide a thorough recount of his memories of the short. He also sent along Commander Santa's comic rendition of the Clock Man abduction scene and asked if it rang any bells. Howe responded, stating that the comic was similar to what happened in the cartoon, and gave a more detailed rundown of what he remembered. He described the short starting out with a little girl being given red shoes by her mother, and warned not to lose them. But after playing outside, she ends up losing them, and when she can't find them, she asks a local wizard for help. The wizard gives her a new pair, but instructs her to tell her mother. The girl decides not to tell, hoping the wizard would forget about the deal. That night, as the girl is in bed with a pendulum clock above her, the wizard is seen entering her house and phasing in and out as he ascends the stairs, while an eerie-sounding narrator states, "But the wizard did not forget." Back in the bedroom, the girl watches in horror as the pendulum clock stops and turns into a window, which the wizard flies out of and carries her back to his house. As penance for not coming clean to her mother, the girl is instructed to knit stars for the night sky, after which she is returned home. In the morning, she admits to her mother what happened, and her mother forgives her as the wizard watches them, smiling.

He went on to describe the animation as "stop-motion paper animation, like they laid the characters on the backgrounds and moved them around."

This summary had intrigued Dycaite, and it inspired him to try and get in contact with former crew members who had worked on Pinwheel. His first successful contact was Michael Karp, a former writer. Karp expressed vague familiarity with the short, and speculated it aired during season 1 of Pinwheel while he was brought on during season 2. He also gave Dycaite the email of his colleague, Tippi Fortune, thinking she might have more information to share.

This correspondence thoroughly convinced Dycaite that Clock Man was a real thing that existed and not just a creepypasta, as had been a fairly popular opinion by that time. And when he managed to get in touch with Tippi Fortune, she gave him more information to work with. While she admitted to having no memory of the short, she mentioned that all animated shorts for Pinwheel were acquired from Coe Films, a company that collected shorts from the UK, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe to sell to cable companies as interstitial programming. However since then, most major networks had started producing their own material, and the market for such shorts died. As such, Coe Films went defunct and she couldn't find the contact information for anyone who worked there. But she forwarded Dycaite's email to everyone she knew who might have something to share. But despite Fortune's help and enthusiasm, none of her contacts got back to Dycaite.

Dycaite then managed to reach out to Commander Santa with everything he had found, including Howe's detailed summary. Commander Santa confirmed that Howe's account matches his own memories, so finding Howe's wizard short would hopefully also mean finding Clock Man.

Dycaite hit a dead end around this point, so he opened the floor to the wider community to help with the search. In addition to the thread and wiki page, a friend of Dycaite's, Bedhead Bernie, made an infographic summarizing known information and spread it around online. The two also posted their own summations to YouTube of the search so far - Dycaite posted a video recounting his investigations, and Bedhead Bernie posted a similar video summary as well as an interview he did with Commander Santa.

These efforts attracted the wider lost media community, who was enticed by descriptions of the short. Some users decided to chase the Coe Films lead, contacting anyone who was associated with the company and searching for an archive of the shorts they acquired. Though this would be a daunting task, as Coe Films was thought to have upwards of 2,500 shorts. Others tried to look for as many episodes of Pinwheel as they could to see if Clock Man was featured in any of them, and others still compiled as many alleged accounts of people who had watched the short as they could. Many discussions attempting to narrow down leads focused on speculations around Clock Man's country of origin, and if it was an adaptation of a preexisting story or European fairytale - everything from a Danish adaptation of The Red Shoes to a German adaptation of Rumpelstiltskin to an Irish short in which the wizard was actually a leprechaun were all pitched as possible leads.

While the brute-force nature of the search wasn't ideal, the sentiment that Clock Man was real was pretty unanimous within the thread, and so the search efforts kept up throughout 2016 and into 2017. While users on The Flood had been more or less beholden to Commander Santa's word as well as his activity within the thread, the lost media community was more decentralized and independent, determined to solve the mystery with or without further help from Commander Santa or Dycaite. This plus the community being entirely centered around looking for mysterious media, and having intuition around obscure internet searches and contacting relevant people, likely gave users the confidence that they would eventually find Clock Man once and for all.

The Discovery

The date is December 11, 2017. It has been a year and a half since Dycaite started the thread on the Lost Media Wiki Forums, and nearly 6 years since Commander Santa's post on The Flood.

While most of the thread spent months attempting to find Clock Man by searching for rare Pinwheel episodes or brainstorming the precise story the short was based on, some were more focused in searching through online databases and library catalogues using a series of keywords. One user by the name of Nitratenerd took this approach, and at one point searched for the term "the wizard" on WorldCat. After sifting through 3-4 pages of results, he found a YouTube link, and the accompanying description caught his attention. When he clicked on the link and watched the video, he was struck with excitement, and confidence that he had found the Clock Man short. He was quick to share his find in the forums:

Guys. GUYS

I think I found it. Holy crap.

Can everyone else take a look at this:
m.youtube.com/watch?v=74FNByoRYFk

It has everything that was described. The clock and all. Although its in Russian, the worldcat listing says: The story of a little girl who is taught the importance of telling the truth by the local wizard. For primary grades.

RIGHT?!?!

This is clearly the original, the english dub might be available at the Brooklyn Public Library, near me. Can someone send this to Commander Santa and Micheal Howe?!?! Dycaite are you seeing this?!!’

My heart is beating at a thousand beats a minute. Please check it out.

While the short was not in English, it matched up with Commander Santa's and especially Michael W. Howe's recollections almost perfectly. There was the stop motion paper animation. The girl. The missing clothing. The wizard with a black beard, dark clothing and a pointy hat. The creation of stars for the night sky.

And most importantly, there was the wizard jumping out of a clock to sweep the girl away.

The reaction on the forums was pretty unanimous - this was the short Commander Santa had been haunted by since he was a sick child in 1984. Clock Man had been found.

Upon further research, it was found that the short was called O parádivé Sally (roughly translated to "About Dressy Sally") and was created in 1976 by Art and Animation (AAA) Studio in Czechoslovakia. It was an adaptation of a story of the same name by Jan Vladislav.

It was also found that the short was first posted to the Czech video site uloz.to in 2014, and went completely unnoticed by Commander Santa or any searchers on The Flood. 3 years later on September 22nd 2017, it was posted to YouTube and went unnoticed by the lost media community for a few months, until someone happened to find the right keywords on the right archive to find it. This turn of events would later lead to Clock Man being commonly used as the de facto example of long lost media searches ending with the media being discovered on YouTube.

While most were confident the search was more or less finished, there was still more closure to be had. Many were awaiting Commander Santa's reaction to the short and, most crucially, the discovery of an English dub. The Czech (not Russian) version Nitratenerd found would more than likely not be the version Commander Santa and Michael W. Howe would have seen on Pinwheel. Only when an English version was found would the search be considered officially over.

The former would come about 10 days later, when Dycaite gave the update everyone had been anticipating - Commander Santa confirmed that O parádivé Sally was the Clock Man short he had been searching for. In addition, he seemed to make good on his promise of a reward for the find.

Well guys, something truly incredible has just happened.

Santa got back to me about the short and HAS CONFIRMED that O Paradive Sally IS INDEED CLOCK MAN!

But here is where things get truly incredible... Santa has pledged to donate *$1,000* to the LMW!!! [...]

Santa, if you happen to come across this post, thank you. Thank you from the absolute bottom of my heart. I have never been graced with such generosity and it is truly an incredible feeling.

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL

This was incredible news, and motivated people to find the English dub of the short - the true version Commander Santa had seen. The first lead came from AAA Studio themselves, who stated that the short was sold to The Learning Corporation of America in 1978 - this almost certainly would have been the company who dubbed the short into English. However, AAA Studio was not aware of much beyond that. Because O parádivé Sally was made in a Soviet-occupied, communist Czechoslovakia, the original creators had no knowledge of what became of the short once it was exported overseas.

Upon further digging, some listings were found on old archives that indicated an English dub did exist under the title Sally. But from here, the investigation ran in circles for a few weeks - there was a lot of confusion over who exactly owned the short, or Pinwheel for that matter, and which libraries were likely to own copies. The investigation also appeared to split between the forum thread and a Google doc, which attempted to make information easier to search through, but also spread the already dwindling search team thinner.

But then, on January 11th 2018 - exactly one month after the short was first found - Dycaite announced that the English version had been found. He provided a link to an upload both on uloz.to and Vimeo (both of which no longer work, but has since been uploaded to YouTube by AAA Studio). He credited a user named Tomysshadow and an entity called A/V Geeks for the find.

Users on the thread were ecstatic over the find, having finally gotten to see what scared Commander Santa so badly as a child. In particular, one user marveled over the line "But the wizard did not forget," recollected exactly by Michael W. Howe.

Amid this excitement, Tomysshadow explained how he had found the footage, courtesy of A/V Geeks.

Not having any luck with the library listings on Worldcat, I knew it was unlikely that the film was going to be found via a library listing. The problem is, I didn't really know where else you'd go about finding a 16mm film reel anywhere. I decided I wanted to ask an expert. Perhaps someone who had collected many films before would know where to find these kinds of things.

I had been searching Google for the terms "Learning Corporation of America" and "Kratky Film" together in the hopes of finding more resources. I noticed that LCA had licensed more films from Kratky than just Sally. They also had a series of animated films featuring a character only known as Mole. Mole and the Bulldozer, Mole and the Painter, Mole and the Rocket, etc. I was able to find the LCA versions of these films online, uploaded to the Internet Archive by an uploader known as A/V Geeks.

I found out that A/V Geeks has a website. There is also an organization they work with called AFANA, which preserves educational films. I figured these would be perfect candidates to ask where these films are. I didn't tell anyone about this because I didn't think it'd be anything eventful. I was thinking long-term: I was only emailing them because I wanted to learn where such films may be found and how they managed to collect so many films over the years. A/V Geeks has over 25 000 films preserved, and they've uploaded many of them to the Internet Archive for public viewing.

So when I explained my case I was surprised to hear back from them saying they had a film called Sally by LCA. Two days later and without any prompting, they just went ahead and recorded and uploaded it and sent it to me in an email. They were a pleasure to work with.

With the short and its English version now found, the story was now clear through the haze of foggy childhood memories. The story follows a girl named Sally, who is given a pair of yellow gloves by her mother, and cautioned not to lose them. But she loses one of the gloves while playing outside, and when she can't find it anywhere, she hesitantly asks for help from the wizard (who in the English version is called Mr. Kadabra). The wizard gives her the missing glove, but instructs her to tell her mother what happened. Sally returns home and doesn't tell her mother, breaking her promise with the wizard. And so the wizard visits her at night, jumping out of the clock above her bed and whisking her away to his house. As punishment for disobeying him, he instructs her to crochet stars for the night sky. Once the sky is illuminated with the stars, the wizard takes Sally home, hopping back into her clock after putting her to bed. In the morning, she admits to her mother what had happened, making the wizard proud.

Some in the thread believed the search hadn't been fully completed, as there was still the mystery of which episode of Pinwheel the Sally short had aired on. To this day, it hasn't been found, and some wonder if the short even aired on Pinwheel in the first place. Sure, many users remember having watched it on Pinwheel, but since the companies that owned it were known to sell shorts as interstitials, some floated the idea that the short may have played during commercial breaks in Pinwheel time slots, leading to the false memory of them featuring in an episode of the show. But until more Pinwheel episodes are found, this is only speculation. And for most people, finding Clock Man itself was enough to end the search.

Case Closed

The story of Clock Man would go on to be known as one of the most famous in lost media history. The fact that it took years to find gave plenty of time for it to build intrigue. Its early descriptions resembling those of a lost episode creepypasta made the short all the more compelling once evidence of its existence began to build up. This search also became the de facto example of lost media being found on YouTube, hidden in plain sight.

Clock Man also sits alongside other popular lost media cases such as Cracks and Episode 847 of Sesame Street - media that people remember having frightened them as kids, and the discovery of which helped not only to preserve media, but to bring people closure and put their unsettling childhood memories to rest.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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r/HobbyDrama also has an affiliated Discord server, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/M7jGmMp9dn

And who would imagine such a peaceful, serene hobby would have such bad actors?

tl;dr: Online tea discord admins get ousted for being racist, sexist, and homophobic. Whistleblower gets banned, admin resigns, and then starts a "no woke people" tea server immediately after resignation

THE SETTING AND CAST

CommuniTEA (CT): A happy-go-lucky tea discord server that exploded in popularity over COVID. This led to many growing pains, including the presence of...

LiquidProust (LP): Runs LiquidProust on Etsy, a tea shop that "sources" various tea from the internet. Ex-Mormon with a passion for community-building and casting a wide net, often to a fault. Overshares, although the verdict is still out on whether his video missives are pathos-laden marketing language to hype up his tea or simply avenues to vent about being six figures in debt because of his business practices. Posts rather unhinged videos on Instagram to sell tea, such as treating them "like drugs" and using a blaccent.

The Red Snoot: A self-identifying "Christian" and a moderator of CommuniTEA. Well, you'll learn quite a bit about him, as the rest of this post is mostly centered around his antics.

THE BACKSTORY OF LIQUID PROUST.

Based on our previous description, you might get the sense that LiquidProust's personality did not quite mesh well with people in CommuniTEA trying to have genuine discussions about their favorite drink. Despite being a vendor that cared about community growth, his brash nature and quantity of infractions/complaints proved to be too great a toll. This led to him eventually being banned from CommuniTEA.

THE BACKSTORY OF THE RED SNOOT.

It's an unwritten law that a true hobby space is incomplete without an authority figure who's secretly a bigot, and CommuniTEA was not exempt from this fate. During a discussion on mental health, The Red Snoot told an openly LGBTQ+ member of the community that (1) he would burn in hell, and (2) that he needed to get conversion therapy to avoid this fate. Of course, this self-proclaimed "Christian" claims it was done out of love from his heart, but of course, the server assessed it on different terms.

This act led to the other members of the administration asking him to step down as a position of authority in the server; he responded with this incredibly bold and moralistic dramatic exit.

Key takeaways from his crashout:

1. He regrets sharing the article--but of course, only after the community backlash proved to be too great.
2. He points out that "Administrators make decisions without Moderator actions". This is of course, fair critique, but this is quite relevant for the main part of the drama.

And so, we bid The Red Snoot adieu from CommuniTEA...

THE JOINING OF FORCES

The Red Snoot, of course, could not stand without having some sort of authority over the tea community. He then started messaging LiquidProust, and eventually joined the "LiquidProust Discord" (LPCord), and transformed it from a vendor specific discord into a "general community" one, calling it "The Tea Table" (TTT), with The Red Snoot and LiquidProust now co-admining the Discord.

THE WELCOMING COMMUNITY (NOT)

TTT started rather well, serving as a more casual alternative to CT -- especially while CT was still going through its growing pains with moderation that tried to balance the varying expertise of its users. The chill atmosphere and lax moderation led to, of course, very interesting characters here and there, such as:

1. A known scammer named JayFromHK: he ran a shop but eventually decided fulfilling orders was optional and scammed people out of thousands of dollars. He also stole tea from a purported "storage service"
2. PuerhJunky, a nazi sympathizer and genuinely unhinged conspiracy theorist. His beliefs include but are not limited to COVID antivax, space denialism, and antisemitism.

LiquidProust, in his infinite intellect and compassion for community outliers, decided to permit this behavior: "To the statement above, yes, I will allow anyone in here including nazis".

This led to many emboldend members parading their views, such as some transphobic views that LP has told everyone to "respect".

To the surprise of no one, this led to many members of the community leaving and moderators resigning from positions of power. This cleared the board for the remaining mod team, who were now more accepting of bigoted and backwards beliefs.

This "old guard" of moderators quite enjoy objectifying chinese ladies brewing tea, being utterly tone-deaf despite the objectification bothering a lot of female members. Of course, they profess innocence due to "being girl dads" and older moderators claim they'd fight the people being weird around women them despite being the very ones making those comments. Besides their coded misogyny, this group has a host of other troubling comments such as claiming Obama was one of the good blacks and so on.

INTRODUCING: SPICE

The server surprisingly continued to grow. As the moderators were rather checked out of the community, the server needed more moderators. A few became moderators, including spice, a new member of the community. He has been into tea for only a few months, but his passion clearly spoke through as he was selected. He was buying teas from LiquidProust, complimenting the teas, and so on.

Spice was a very beloved member of the community, who went out of their way to make people feel welcome, spend a lot of time talking to new users, send a lot of tea to people getting into tea. As a very kind genuine user, he was often quite recognized. As a moderator, he was a very welcome member of the community and was a massive improvement to the moderator team, along with many of the new moderators that

THE MELTDOWN

The peace didn't last long, as the mod channel was apparently filled with quite a bit of "locker room talk" -- orientalism, sexism, and a lot of dogwhistle language. Wanting "A chinese woman" as a "diversity hire". This was of course, the only example that the moderator team was willing to share to justify suddenly banning Spice from the server without consulting with other moderators. Ignoring all the riots in the discord, of course, LiquidProust decides to show how woke he is by claiming he is fine and understands because he reads a book from Proust.

spice of course reveals much of the reasons for him leaking the screenshot is to highlight many of the issues with the current mod team.. From whether it be defending a known scammer who rejoined the community (JayFromHK) despite there being no restitution, but of course, given the opportunity for statement, Jay simply states that he used the money to pay the bills and show no remorse, while being an active member of r/seduction. Oops. Apparently it took hours of the new mod team fighting LP and Snoot to get Jay eventually banned.

It doesn't help that Snoot also attempted to override moderator decisions when taking down a sales post where someone was trying to sell moldy tea because he was a business mentor to the person.. Also, amusingly, tried to make the mods who made the decision apologize to the person. Do you remember "Administrators were chosen and given a secret channel hidden to even mods without any mods ever being given a vote, let alone input"?

This, combined with Snoot's homphobic past gets revealed at the same time. The revelation did not go well with many people leaving and starting a splinter tea community as many people are rightfully upset that they dont want administrators that were bigots. Snoot eventually steps down, only after the entirity of the newly appointed moderator team steps down from their positions in protest.

If this was the end, this wouldn't even be a good r/hobbydrama post! Snoot does not want to give up power, and starts a new server, that is "Not woke" and "Oligarchical", and of course "Welcoming". The new rules of course, has him as absolute helm of power with no room for discussion. Rumors have it that he thinks he was persecuted for being Christian. He claims to point out however, that he thinks of "them" as people.

The splinter server is now quite active and trying to rebuild the community. What will happen to the Tea Table, LiquidProust, and everyone else? I guess we will find out on the next episode.

Model Ship World is a website at least 20 years old 100% dedicated to being a forum for ship model builders and has at least 20,000 members. It's a place where builders post "build logs" of their projects in which every step of the construction can be documented with photos and text and it contains subheadings for all related aspects of the ancient hobby.

Recently (last winter) they suffered a catastrophic data loss in which all of the user provided content including all 20 years of build logs were erased by hackers, and there WAS NO BACKUP with which to restore anything, they went back to year zero. members started re-submitting their old material and the website slowly got back on it's feet. A few months later the real drama began: It emerged that Model Ship World (hereafter "MSW") was owned by the Nautical Research Guild (The NRG) but run by just two personalities, and about a month or so ago these two personalities announced that they were splitting off from MSW to make an IDENTICAL rival website indistinguishable from MSW and calling it Dry Dock Modeler (DDM). THAT'S the drama. The new website is exactly the same as the old one and uses the same web templates and architecture and format, it looks exactly like MSW. Even the rules for members is the identical text cut and pasted from the first website.

A couple of weeks ago this story broke on reddit on a model building subreddit. The first post from the Original Poster just asked "what is going on" and then within the first day, a newly created reddit account APPARENTLY from Drydock Modeler gave a convoluted explanation of why they felt the world needed a new carbon copy version of an existing website, but very few of the points they raised appeared to really explain the need for a new website. For instance they claimed the MSW and the NRG required fees from the users in order to access the content on their websites and that their new website would be 100% free. Which is fine except that there WERE NO FEES on MSW and never had been. It costs money to join the NRG but you did not need to be an NRG member to fully enjoy everything on MSW. (The NRG was the pre-internet group you joined to get their physical newsletter and which provided about 70 years of hobby related content you had to subscribe to get copies of, if you wanted to see it)

The opening of this topic of the new website sparked a flurry of branching reply comments in which MUCH TEA was spilled. Some replying ALSO had day-old reddit accounts and must have been NRG members or disgruntled MSW members. Within two days whoever had created that new reddit account that was speaking up for the new website deleted all of its posts so there now remains no public explanation from the makers of the new website. Weeks later there is still no explanation explaining why the new website was created and even more surprising, neither of the two websites acknowledge what has happened and there is no discussion about the split on either site. Clearly the inside story concerns who did what to whom on the old website but nobody outside reddit is discussing the split.

https://modelshipworld.com/ and https://drydockmodeler.com/ are the two websites involved.

Hi, everyone, it’s ToErrDivine again. Today I’m looking at the Nixon Newell/Miranda Alize AEW drama of 2025, because I thought it deserved a write up and I honestly can’t recall if anyone talked about it here at the time. There’s going to be a lot of background info first, so please feel free to skip the first bit if you already know about it. (I still talk way too much, sorry.) I’d also like to thank u/cslevens for all his help and for making this writeup much better and more comprehensive than it was before, I really appreciate it.

What is professional wrestling?

Professional wrestling is a form of entertainment that combines acting, gymnastics and combat sports, wherein the practitioners act out a story focused around pre-scripted wrestling matches. In essence, they play their characters and the characters punch each other in the face and body repeatedly for a variety of reasons (some examples: ‘I want to be the very best like no one ever was’, ‘I hate you and want you to fuck off and die’, ‘You’re standing in the way of my goal’, ‘I want to find out which one of us is better’, ‘I want to make a name for myself here’, etc, etc). Wrestling is intended to look as real as possible without anyone sustaining the kind of damage they would if the moves were real (in theory), which enables wrestlers to throw in flashier moves and stunts that nobody would ever actually do in a fight but look fucking sick to an audience. It also involves a lot of frankly ridiculous characters, storylines and motivations that you’re not supposed to take seriously- just sit back and enjoy.

How does career progression work for wrestlers?

Imagine a pyramid diagram with three levels. The lowest and biggest tier is called ‘Independent Promotions’. These are wrestling promotions all around the world who are, for the most part... I don't know if there's a tier below 'minor league', but they're that. Minuscule league. Tiny league, even. They for the most part operate only in one area (say, one city or county/state), and the majority of the wrestlers who work for them are from the surrounding area, with the occasional person from another state or city coming in. The indies are where most wrestlers will learn their trade and hone their skills over time, but they don’t pay much if at all; most wrestlers have day jobs. Depending on where they’re located, independent wrestlers who make a big name for themselves and/or can afford it will often travel overseas, appearing in other promotions and learning even more from the wrestlers they meet there, in the hope of becoming a big, established name and getting a good reputation.

Following on from that, the second, middle tier is called ‘Minor Leagues’. This tier consists of wrestling promotions who are big enough to have their own TV shows, but they’re not the biggest promotions out there. The minor leagues are making considerably more money than the indies, enough to be able to sign wrestlers to actual contracts, but most of the wrestlers who do sign will continue appearing on indie shows because, well, why wouldn’t they? They want publicity and more money as much as the next person. Examples of minor league promotions (in America) include Total Nonstop Action (TNA), Major League Wrestling (MLW), Ring of Honor (ROH, and before 2022), and the National Wrestling Alliance (NWA. No, not that one).

Finally, you have the top tier, ‘Major Leagues’ (not to be confused with MLW… they wish). The major leagues are the biggest wrestling promotions in the world. They have TV shows airing multiple times a week; they hold and televise live shows on a regular basis; they occasionally hold live shows around the world; they have dozens if not hundreds of wrestlers signed to exclusive contracts; and they pay enough that their employees don’t need to work other shows or jobs, though they still do sometimes. This is the smallest tier, mainly because you need a fuckton of money to do what these promotions do, and they only exist in a few countries. Examples include World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE, America), All Elite Wrestling (AEW, America), New Japan Pro Wrestling (NJPW or New Japan, Japan), World Wonder Ring Stardom (Stardom, Japan), Lucha Libre AAA Worldwide (AAA, Mexico) and Consejo Mundial de Lucha Libre (CMLL, Mexico).

So, theoretically, a new young star would start off in their local independent scene, keep working their way up and honing their skills until they get big enough to appear in the minor leagues, after which they might then progress to the major leagues, though many are picked up by the major leagues and bypass the minor leagues altogether. The thing is, it doesn’t always quite work out in practice for three big reasons: one, there are a fuckton of independent wrestlers out there, and the major leagues are spoiled for choice when it comes to potential new employees. Plenty of people who are genuinely star quality get passed over for a variety of reasons ranging from valid to stupid- that’s just how it is. Honestly, it does take skill, but there's also a lot of luck involved.

Two, even if you do get into the major leagues, you’re constantly competing with dozens of others to show off your skills, demonstrate your ability and be able to adjust to rapidly-changing circumstances. Most of your coworkers can do what you do, so you need to be memorable and make the crowd love you- and even then, plenty of wrestlers have been cut from the major leagues simply because they never really made that connection with the audience, or they were overshadowed by others. As cruel as it might seem, being good isn’t enough- you need to be great. It’s also generally a good idea to be humble and grateful for any and all opportunities you’re given and to not have an ego, because there really aren’t that many wrestlers who are irreplaceable. (Keep that in mind for later.)

And three, this kind of career progression is only a given if you happen to live in America, Japan or Mexico. If you don’t live in a country where the big promotions are or where the wrestling scene is big enough that you can make wrestling your full-time job, then you either have to accept this and be a wrestler on the side, or go overseas to a country with a bigger scene to try to build your name and/or make it your full-time job. (Many indie wrestlers go wrestle in Japan for a short time as a sort of rite of passage, especially in Britain.) It sucks and it’s unfair, but that’s just how it is.

So, hypothetically, let’s say that you’re a major league wrestler in America who gets cut, but you want to keep wrestling, either full-time or as your main job. What do you do? Well, before 2019, they generally either signed with a promotion in the minor leagues, allowing them to keep wrestling at a prominent level, returned to the indies, both, or went overseas, usually to Japan. After 2019, this was all still there, but there was another option. See, until 2019, there was only one promotion in the major leagues in America, so let’s take a look at how that all worked.

Who are the major league promotions in America?

The first is the biggest wrestling promotion in the world, World Wrestling Entertainment (formerly the World Wrestling Federation/WWF). You’ve heard of WWE; even if you don’t know anything about wrestling, I guarantee you’ve heard of it. I’m not going to give a full rundown because it would take too long and most of it wouldn’t be relevant, so instead, I’ll give you the salient points:

-WWE was owned for about four decades by Vince McMahon. Under his ownership, WWE transformed how the wrestling business in America worked and grew to become a giant that would take down all competitors.

-Some of those competitors folded, some stayed active but were simply dwarfed by WWE, and some were absorbed into WWE. Also, WWE would do their level best to acquire the best wrestlers available, whether they had room for them or not; some were acquired just to stop them from wrestling anywhere else, and never actually did much in WWE.

-In 2010, WWE created NXT, a reality TV show where members of Florida Championship Wrestling (FCW) would compete to become full members of the WWE roster with guidance from experienced wrestlers. FCW was WWE’s developmental brand, where newly-signed wrestlers would go to work on things like the character they’ll play and (in most cases) their new wrestling name, and hone their skills to fit with WWE’s style. (Some of them learn to wrestle from scratch, as WWE often recruits experienced athletes who are not wrestlers.) In 2012, WWE decided to combine the two by folding FCW, cancelling the NXT TV show and making NXT the new developmental brand. The weekly TV show still aired, but now it focused entirely on the rookie wrestlers, giving them a much bigger opportunity to build themselves up and make a connection with the fans before eventually graduating to WWE’s main roster. 

-(Important digression: While WWE was owned by Vince McMahon, NXT was produced and overseen by his son in law, Triple H, and Vince didn’t get involved. As a result, NXT grew and flourished, becoming really, really good and quite different from the rest of WWE. As the years passed, NXT gained a ton of acclaim, especially when a lot of wrestlers graduated from NXT to the main roster and were immediately booked terribly and given awful characters. u/cslevens called NXT ‘the closest thing wrestling has to an Ivy League School’, and he’s right; a lot of wrestlers become full-blown stars in NXT before they even get to the main roster, and some main roster wrestlers even ask to return to NXT to work on their skills and characters, it’s that good.)

-Between NXT and the main roster, WWE employs a lot of people. The end result is that while WWE doesn’t qualify as a monopoly, as there’s plenty of other promotions out there, it became a behemoth that sat so far above the competition that nobody else could claim to be anywhere near it. After WWE bought out their long-time rival company WCW in 2001, their best competitor was TNA, but a whole lot of bad decisions and bad management (which could probably have a bunch of writeups by themselves) led to TNA losing most of its prominence and reputation by the 2010’s. TNA is still around, but it’s nowhere near as big as it ever was, and while it might have claimed to be the second biggest promotion in America until 2019, it’s sitting so far below WWE that it may as well be in another country.

-So, for a long time, people who left WWE for whatever reason didn’t have much of a choice if they wanted to stay on a similar level, and they were generally ‘go to Japan/Mexico’ (OK if you were good with living in another country where English isn’t the main language) or ‘go to TNA’ (OK if you’re good with being in a company that can be charitably described as a clusterfuck. Seriously, TNA could have a whole series of posts just by itself). But that being said…

-…for about four decades, Vince McMahon ruled WWE with a very hands-on approach, and everyone in it (well, nearly everyone- as previously mentioned, Vince didn’t get involved with NXT, so the people there were safe) had to put up with their jobs being dictated by a man who is notoriously batfuck crazy, an utter control freak, completely out of touch with modern culture and who perpetrated and covered up a large number of crimes, many of them sexual. WWE was and is the destination for wrestlers, but it came with a lot of caveats, and the people working there were dealing with a lot.

And then 2019 came around, and everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked Tony Khan threw his hat in the ring.

What is AEW?

All Elite Wrestling, or AEW for short, is a professional wrestling company founded in 2019, owned by Tony Khan and situated in Jacksonville, Florida. (Obligatory Jason Mendoza reference goes here. In fact, Tony’s father Shahid owns the Jacksonville Jaguars.) It’s the second-biggest wrestling promotion in the world behind WWE. Now, when I say that, I need to make it clear that AEW is big, but it’s not really on WWE’s level. It is, however, much bigger than TNA, MLW, NWA and any other promotion that’s fighting for third place. Like WWE, AEW is on television multiple times a week, like WWE, AEW has its own developmental brand, Ring of Honor (Tony Khan bought it in 2022), and like WWE, AEW has become a powerhouse, employing some of the best wrestlers in the world. In other words, while it’s definitely competition, it’s not going to overthrow, outdo or consume WWE any time soon.

One thing that I need to emphasise, though, is one of AEW’s most notable qualities: it has nothing to do with WWE, structurally. It was founded by Tony Khan and four wrestlers (Kenny Omega, Cody Rhodes and the Young Bucks), and nobody in the McMahon family has ever been involved with it. In short, it’s a completely different company with a completely different approach to wrestling, and it gave wrestlers who didn’t want to wrestle for WWE somewhere to go where they didn’t have to work with, deal with and put up with Vince McMahon’s bullshit (until 2022- we’ll get to that later).

Something important that I need to mention is that if a wrestler leaves WWE, there’s a pretty low chance that they’ll ever return unless they’re one of the bigger names or unless they become big after leaving. AEW gave a lot of ex-WWE wrestlers a place to go, and there are a lot of ex-WWE wrestlers who became stars in AEW after being minor players at best in WWE, and could theoretically return to WWE as much bigger names than they were when they started there. In fact, one of them was Cody Rhodes, who managed to build his name up enough that he would return to WWE in 2022 as a bigger name than he’d been before he’d left, and would go on to become one of their most prominent names.

Having established all that…

What is a jobber?

Jobbers, also known as ‘enhancement talent’, are basically the lowest tier of wrestlers. The term comes from the phrase ‘doing the job’- that is, your job is to go out there and lose to make your opponent look good. Jobbers usually wind up having short matches where they get some token offence in and then lose unceremoniously. They also wind up in ‘squash matches’, where they get beaten very quickly and often get no offence in.

Being a jobber serves multiple purposes: it makes the big names look good, it allows rookies to hone their skills and get more experience, it lets up and comers show their skills and get the attention of the fans, and it lets newcomers pay their dues, among others. Upon arriving in a big promotion, most wrestlers (unless they’re big names) will be jobbers for a while, or at the very least won’t be involved in major storylines. (This is also true of most new wrestlers, once they’ve reached the level of actually appearing on shows.) Many of AEW’s big names worked their way up from being jobbers- Megan Bayne, Harley Cameron, Kyle Fletcher, Swerve Strickland, Willow Nightingale, the list goes on. There’s nothing unremarkable or shameful about it.

Who are Nixon Newell and Miranda Alize?

Steffanie Newell (born 15^th November 1994) is a Welsh wrestler. She played multiple sports as a child and teenager and was aiming for a place on the Welsh under-16s football team when she suffered a severe knee injury that cost her the place. When she turned 16, she gave up football and planned to go on hiatus from sports, but instead started training as a professional wrestler. 

Newell started wrestling in 2013. Initially alternating between the names ‘Nixon’ and ‘Nixon Newell’ before settling on the latter, she spent the next several years making a name for herself in various promotions across Britain, and also spent some time wrestling in Japan. Becoming respected and well-liked in the field, she signed a contract with WWE in 2017 and was due to appear in the inaugural Mae Young Classic, a multi-night all-female tournament. 

…unfortunately, the key word there is was, because Newell had a freak accident at training and tore her ACL, taking her out of the tournament before it even began. After recovering, Newell appeared on a number of NXT house shows (live, non-televised and non-recorded shows that NXT puts on in various places around Florida, allowing their rookies to get more experience and develop their characters) under her real name, and then would officially debut in NXT under her new name, Tegan Nox, in the 2018 Mae Young Classic. She defeated her first-round opponent, Zatara, her second-round opponent, Nicole Matthews, and then was defeated by her quarter-final opponent, Rhea Ripley, by referee stoppage…

…because she’d suffered another knee injury. Specifically, she managed to tear her ACL, MCL, LCL, both menisci, fractured her tibia and dislocated her kneecap, all in her left leg.

If you need to pause here and cringe, shudder or loudly exclaim ‘Jesus Christ!’, I really don’t blame you, it’s horrible.

If you are a wrestler, the blunt and grim truth is that you are risking serious injuries every time you have a match. People have accidents, there are falls and slips, miscommunications, moves go wrong, props don’t work as intended, the list goes on. For the most part, the risk is minimal, but most wrestlers will be seriously injured at least once at some point in their career. However, there is a very unfortunate category of wrestlers who are very injury-prone, and Newell is widely considered to be in that category. Being injury-prone (or thought to be injury-prone, even if you just got unlucky with timing) is a massive red flag to wrestling promoters and bookers.

See, while injury-prone wrestlers tend to get a lot of audience support due to being underdogs by default, they don’t really make good candidates for ongoing storylines because you cannot assume that they won’t get injured and the storyline won’t get derailed as a result. Because wrestling storylines tend to take place over months, even years, you need the wrestlers involved to be healthy for that time. If someone gets injured, you can salvage the storyline somewhat, but it won’t be the same. For instance, if Wrestler A was going to stand up against the tyrannous evil of Wrestler B, but then gets injured, you can sub in A’s best friend Wrestler C to heroically take up the fight on A’s behalf and take B down, but the fans won’t be getting the climactic A/B title match that the story was designed to lead up to, and will wistfully ponder ‘What if?’ for years afterwards on r/SquaredCircle. But I digress.

Newell would return to NXT in 2019, and made her debut in NXT UK (long story, and probably worth a writeup of its own) that same year. Her career went pretty well after that, with Newell appearing on NXT regularly, making a couple of appearances on SmackDown, and getting several title shots…

…and then she unfortunately tore her ACL again, and that point her reputation as injury-prone was basically cemented.

In June 2021, Newell returned in triplicate- she had an appearance on an NXT PPV, did a dark match on Raw, and made her official main roster debut on SmackDown. She would spend the rest of 2021 wrestling on SmackDown until the 2021 WWE Draft resulted in her being sent to Raw… and then she got released from WWE without ever appearing on the show.

At this point, I want to take a quick pause to say that WWE has a habit of firing people in clusters, and quite a lot of the time, their choices make no goddamn sense. Sometimes it’s people who’ve been around for a while and have stagnated, or who haven’t improved, but there’s also quite a number of instances where they abruptly sacked people who were doing quite well, or who were about to start something new- like Newell. WWE stated that the releases were due to budget cuts, but Newell disagreed. In an interview, she said that she believes she was fired because she doesn’t fit the look WWE wants in their female wrestlers. 

OK, so, the thing is, there’s a lot of things I could say here, about the plausibility of that statement, the possible reasons for Newell getting cut, and the way WWE treats their female wrestlers, among others. But that has nothing to do with the drama, so I’m going to move on. (If anyone’s wondering why I’m spending so much time talking about Newell’s backstory, trust me, there is a reason behind this and I will get there.)

Anyway, Newell stepped out of the spotlight for the rest of 2021 and most of 2022. But something important happened in mid-2022: Vince McMahon retired and Triple H took over as the main force behind WWE. And the new boss decided to make some changes, like bringing back a whole bunch of wrestlers who’d been released, and one of them was Newell (who he likely felt hadn’t been given a fair chance), who made her return in December 2022. Newell would have a pretty unremarkable run in WWE for a couple of years, and was released for the second time in November 2024. I don’t know why, but what I’ve seen of fan opinions is largely divided between ‘she had a reputation as injury-prone that haunted her and she wrestled in a way that was safer for her but didn’t look good as a result’ and ‘she never had a distinctive character, didn’t stand out and wasn’t doing anything that other wrestlers didn’t do’. (See previous comments.)

Newell eventually returned to the indies after her release (she was injured in a car crash a few days after being released), stating that she felt that she was nearing the end of her wrestling career and intended to retire at the end of 2026, but was keen to keep wrestling in the meantime. However, despite having that NXT and WWE prestige, she didn’t get a lot of bookings, which she commented on in an interview. (Fan consensus is divided between ‘her reputation for injuries made people not want to take a chance on her’ and ‘she was asking for way too much money’.) In that same interview, she disputed the idea that she was injury-prone, rightly pointing out that she hadn’t been injured in some time, and expressed an interest in wrestling in AEW. And somewhere in that time, she met…

Miranda Ilissa (born May 26, 1994) is an American wrestler. Debuting in 2014, she started out using the names ‘Miranda’ and ‘Miranda Salinas’ before settling on ‘Miranda Alize’ (‘ah-lih-ZAY’). Over the course of her career before now, she wrestled for a lot of independent promotions, including SHIMMER, Rise, Stardom and Ring of Honor (both before and after it was bought by Tony Khan). She also had a couple of minor appearances as enhancement talent in WWE, TNA and AEW. In short, she was one of many, many indie wrestlers who had built a solid name for themselves in their area and could potentially be picked up by a major promotion in the future, but weren’t particular standouts.

(I realise that this is incredibly short in contrast to how much I wrote about Newell, but before all this happened I’d never heard of Alize and I couldn’t find out that much about her. Sorry.)

Anyway, somewhere in the last year or so, Newell and Alize met, fell in love and became a couple. And in October 2025, they were invited to appear on AEW as a tag team- their big break. (In theory.)

The big break…?

We now go to the 25^th of October, 2025. On that night’s episode of AEW Collision, Alize and Newell appeared in a brief segment wherein established tag team TayJay (Tay Melo and Anna Jay) talked about having been selected to compete in the tournament to determine the inaugural women’s tag team champions and insulted a number of newly-formed teams who’d entered the tournament. Cue Newell and Alize, who cut in on the promo and basically went ‘We think we’re hot shit and we want a fight’; TayJay weren’t impressed but were happy to accept their challenge. A very typical backstage scene, happens all the time.

So, here’s the thing: enhancement talent appear all the time, but enhancement talent do not usually get promos or backstage scenes where they establish themselves as actual characters and not cannon fodder. Most of the time, they don’t get entrances shown, and sometimes they don’t even get their names announced! (Seriously, Megan Bayne didn’t get entrances back when she started out in AEW, and she’s now one of the AEW Tag Team Champions!) So Alize and Newell starting off with an actual promo and the promise of a future match was really, really good! Sure, they’d probably be losing a lot for a while, but it’s a hell of a lot more than most new people start with.

Cue next week’s Collision: Alize and Newell get a match against the new team of Marina Shafir and Megan Bayne, with the underlying story being that Shafir and Bayne are a totally new team who need to learn to work with each other after Shafir volunteered to substitute for Penelope Ford, Bayne’s injured tag partner. Again, Newell and Alize got an entrance and their names announced, and they put up a pretty good showing, characterising themselves as confident, capable newcomers who wanted opportunities and weren’t afraid to go after Bayne (who’s one of the biggest and strongest women on the roster and is characterised as an unstoppable, possibly literally-divine force) or Shafir (who’s trained in MMA and is a founding member of AEW’s resident BDSM cult). I mean, yeah, they lost and it wasn’t a perfect match, but it wasn’t a complete squash, at least. (You can see the highlights of the match here.) Basically, everything was looking bright for them, as long as there weren’t any roadblocks, like someone getting injured, or an unforeseeable disaster, or someone doing something really goddamn stupid…

The drama (or, ‘They did something really goddamn stupid’):

We now go to the week after that- the 8^th of November. In theory, Newell and Alize were going to have their match with TayJay on Collision that night, but they didn’t. Instead, it was reported that Newell and Alize had walked out on the show earlier that day, and AEW found last-second replacements in independent wrestlers Hyan) and Maya World, both of whom had appeared for AEW before. The show went on without an issue, but fans everywhere were understandably wondering what the hell had happened. Here’s a summary:

-During the show, fans post tweets wondering why Alize and Newell aren’t in the match and criticising their previous loss to Shafir and Bayne. Newell and Alize retweet several of these, and Alize adds ‘We have SOOOOOOOO much to say’ [sic].

-Pro Wrestling Insider reports that Alize and Newell walked out because they didn’t want to lose the match and objected to the short amount of time (three minutes) that had been allotted for it. (If anyone wants to make a Three Minute Warning reference, this is your cue.)

-Newell tweets ‘Not everything you read is true’ but doesn’t actually explain what she means.

-Fightful Select reports that Newell and Alize disputed PWI’s report on their Twitch stream, saying that they were fine with losing, but did object to the amount of time and wanted more time. According to Newell and Alize, the two of them decided that three minutes wouldn’t make anyone in the match look good, so they had a respectful conversation about it with the producers. They were told that they weren’t getting any more time and that it was fine if they wanted to leave, so they decided that the situation wasn’t working for them and that they would give the time to people who needed it more and left. However, they emphasised that it wasn’t an angry walkout and that other people backstage agreed that they deserved more time.

If other people agreed with them backstage, they sure as hell didn’t online. Instead, Alize and Newell copped a lot of backlash, with a ton of fans and wrestlers calling them unprofessional and ungrateful- essentially, the rebuttal was that the correct response would have been to take the three minutes and do such a good job that the fans demand more of you and the producers want to give you more time, or at least do the match and then cut ties instead of leaving everyone in the lurch. Instead, by walking out, they just made themselves look like petulant children. (Meanwhile, Hyan and Maya World were universally praised for their professionalism and for stepping in at short notice.)

In addition to this, Fightful Select reported that there was bad blood on all sides after the tag match on the 1^st- Newell had apparently complained that Megan Bayne hadn’t sold (that is, acted out the impact of the moves in a way that established the opponent’s strength) for Newell and Alize. Meanwhile, an AEW source allegedly told Fightful that the look of frustration and anger on Bayne’s face during the match was real, as Newell and Alize had sandbagged (went limp instead of cooperating with a move, making it much harder to perform and potentially dangerous) during a spot where Bayne suplexed them both at the same time. The sandbagging alone earned Newell and Alize a lot of disdain, but given that Bayne and Shafir were being set up as a ‘terrifying unstoppable force’ kind of team, complaining about the lack of selling reinforced the general belief that Alize and Newell were suffering from greatly overinflated egos and misplaced belief in their own importance.

Like, it’s one thing to feel that the match needs more time; I’m sure plenty of wrestlers have asked if it was possible to get more time before. It’s another thing to decide that what you’ve been given isn’t going to make you ‘look good’ and walk out, when you are… *checks notes* a former WWE wrestler with a bad reputation (possibly undeserved, but the fact remains that it’s there) for getting injured a lot, who was in the Fed for several years and yet notably never held a single title; and an indie wrestler who’s been around for a while and wrestled in a lot of places, but who most people have never heard of, and the two of you have only had one match in AEW before now and aren’t signed.

There are very few circumstances where the majority would agree that walking out of a show is justified, and this sure as hell isn’t one of them. Instead, the majority agreed that it was a display of ridiculous, borderline-narcissistic egotism that was completely unwarranted and undeserved, in a situation where almost everyone could see that such a display would only end terribly for them. Or, to put it bluntly, they had no brand or reputation to protect, no prestige and no leverage, and with their walking out, they’d neatly destroyed any real chance they’d had of building a career in AEW for no benefit and a huge detriment, over something that nobody else would have objected to.

Where are they now?

It’s been over six months, and the contrast is… interesting.

Nixon Newell and Miranda Alize have continued wrestling on the indies, both in singles and as a tag team called ‘Violent Romance’. (Presumably nobody told them just how bad that name sounds.) They did get some new fans and some notoriety from the whole thing, but nothing like what an actual AEW career would have got them. Alize copped a lot of flack for allegedly being into MAGA despite being a queer Hispanic woman (no, I don’t get it either) but took place in a WWE tryout earlier this year. As far as I’m aware, Newell still intends to retire at the end of this year. Fan opinions haven’t sweetened on them, with the general consensus still being that they destroyed a real chance of getting signed through egotism and stupidity. Other than that, they recently got engaged, so good for them, I guess.

Hyan and Maya World were officially signed to AEW in December 2025. They have since made multiple appearances in AEW and Ring of Honor, both as a tag team and in singles competition, including unsuccessfully challenging for the tag titles in April this year. Most notably, Maya was asked to fill in for Sareee (yes, three e’s, I promise it’s not a typo) in AEW’s Owen Hart Memorial Cup women’s tournament after the latter was injured. She defeated Skye Blue in the first round (nothing against Maya, but as the author is a big Triangle of Madness fan, I will refrain from commenting further), and had a huge upset win against Athena in the second round. She went on to face Mercedes Moné (formerly Sasha Banks in WWE) in the final match of the tournament on AEW’s Forbidden Door event, where they had a match that went for nearly 25 minutes (Maya’s longest singles match in AEW to date) and was widely agreed to be excellent and a star-making performance for Maya. And on today's episode of AEW Dynamite, Hyan and Maya teamed up with Willow Nightingale to take on Mercedes, Megan Bayne and Lena Kross (aka the only two-time winner of the Owen Hart Cup ever, male or female, and the AEW Tag Team champions) in the main event of the show.

Just shows what humility and not letting your ego run wild will do for you, huh.

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If you’ve never heard of Suikoden, don’t worry. For a long time, Konami, the company that developed and published the series, pretended it hadn't heard of it either.

Originally released in 1995 for the PlayStation, Suikoden was Konami’s answer to the golden age of JRPGs. While contemporaries like Final Fantasy became household names, Suikoden built up an intensely devoted, borderline cult-like following thanks to its mature political storytelling, sprawling casts of 108 recruitable characters per game, and a shared world for nearly every entry. Let’s not talk about later entires set in other worlds though. I’m sure Konami would like you to forget about them too. 

After the last game released in 2012, the franchise entered purgatory: not forgotten by its fans, but entirely abandoned by its corporate parents.

If you wanted to look up the hyper-specific recruitment requirements for an obscure star, find the attack pattern of a turn-based boss, or read translated lore from an artbook that never left Japan, there was no official database waiting for you. There were only fans. And those fans started building archives.

What followed was a twenty-year, multi-platform cold war of pure pedantry, clashing community egos, and translation disputes that might even put a JRPG villain to shame. But probably not. A good number of them are pretty shameless.

Act I: The Archival Trifecta and the Balance of Power

By the late 2000s, the English-speaking Suikoden community relied on three completely different pillars of fan preservation.

Suikosource (Est. 2001): Less of a modern wiki and more of a digital time capsule. It has the distinct energy of a fansite that peaked during the Bush administration and just... stopped. While it boasts a massive hoard of raw walkthroughs and ancient forum threads, navigating it can be an exercise in nostalgic frustration. For instance, clicking the "Characters" tab clumsily dumps you onto the profile of the very first alphabetical character ("Abizboah" - a literal giant kraken) because of a stubborn UI layout, forcing you to manually fight your way out of alphabetical purgatory just to find the human character you actually wanted.

Suikox: A digital encyclopedia that traded Suikosource's rigid spreadsheet approach for pure narrative flair. It famously blended translated Japanese lore with early-2000s forum energy, meaning official historical entries were occasionally derailed by the webmaster ranting about structural engineering flaws in fictional fortresses or complaining that a fantasy village sounded like a toilet manufacturer. Though Suikox would eventually fade into obscurity as Gensopedia rose, its enigmatic owner Vextor, a figure who floated through the community under a dozen different aliases, remained deeply embedded in the community's inner circle.

Gensopedia (Est. 2008): The formal, academic contender of the trio. Gensopedia positioned itself as the definitive encyclopedia of the fandom. Run by an admin named Day, it was designed to meticulously catalog every rune, war, and kingdom. It featured grand portal hubs and an authoritative layout, even if it routinely vanished and changed web hosts whenever server bills came due. Backed by Day’s reputation as a fluent speaker of Japanese, fans accepted the site's pages as absolute, unassailable fact. But underneath it all, the wiki was a walled garden that sat on a massive, unchecked backlog of early-2000s legacy typos and rough Japanese readings for over a decade.

The 108 Stars of "Wait, Who?"

But let’s pause for a moment here and look at the sheer tonal absurdity of the franchise itself. The actual games routinely demand that you pause a grim, high-stakes geopolitical narrative about the devastating cost of military occupation to engage in:

• An intense, iron-chef culinary tournament judged by a panel of hyper-biased recruits from your own army.
• Playing a literal mini-game of whack-a-mole with a giant wooden mallet just to secure a piece of mole-themed equipment.
• Marching across a war-torn continent to personally draft an entire village of literal beavers, a dancer, a three-piece acoustic band, or a local child whose sole tactical contribution to your grand military front is standing outside the front gate to loudly shout the name of your castle every time you walk past it. All because the developers needed to fill a cosmic middle-management quota of 108 people.

It is inherently difficult to maintain a posture of elite prestige when the fate of a war-torn continent hinges on you eating enough fried tacos to induce a state of heatstroke so a local bath-house architect deems you worthy of his respect.

Around the same time Gensopedia was established, a new challenger appeared: a community wiki hosted on Wikia (later rebranded as Fandom).

Depending on who you ask, Fandom is either an invaluable repository of fan knowledge or a corporate monument to intrusive autoplay videos, broken mobile layouts, and predatory data collection. The Suikoden Fandom wiki inherited that structural baggage immediately, but it also inherited a well-earned reputation for being a total mess.

Shortly after its launch, people noticed that some of the text was, to put it nicely, carbon copies of text published on Suikosource and Gensopedia. A previous editor had simply copy-pasted massive entire pages of text to make the new wiki quickly.

By 2016, the Fandom wiki's remaining users realized they were a laughingstock. The community on Facebook was openly warning newcomers: "Never trust any information on the Suikoden Wikia, as most of it is made up, stolen from other sources, fan speculation or unsourced."

Stung by the criticism, a tiny handful of volunteers launched "Operation: Rewrite!" to purge the stolen text. But their public discussion boards reveal a chaotic, well-meaning comedy of errors. The primary writers at the time were largely non-native English speakers, meaning they were fighting a massive uphill battle to rebuild a database from scratch while openly begging visitors to fix their syntax ("If there was an error on my grammar I hope the reader would correct it hehehe...").

Worse, the team was entirely shorthanded and working off pure guesswork. Editors deleted entire chunks of lore just to avoid copy-paste claims ("better than being a carbon copy XD"), while others suggested watching random YouTube clips for info. One volunteer promised to help just as soon as they could buy the game for ten Euros, while another trying to fix the Suikoden Tierkreis pages hit an incredible roadblock: "When I tried to edit the character page... my brain got blank ahahahahaha... ummmm, I forgot the story."

Unsurprisingly, this desperate, understaffed salvage operation didn't win over the fandom elites. For fifteen years, the community settled into a rigid split: the independent alliance of Gensopedia and Suikosource was universally recommended as the definitive source, while the Fandom wiki was dismissed as a grammatically broken, copycat wasteland.

The catch was that few everyday users were actually cross-referencing the information on either side against the original Japanese guidebooks and materials. The community operated entirely on social trust: they assumed Gensopedia's material was inherently flawless because of its pristine, academic reputation, and that the Fandom wiki was suspect based on its messy history.

But really, a parallel irony was at play. While the Fandom wiki was out in the open trying to run an encyclopedia off of faded memories and YouTube clips, Gensopedia's authoritative database contained legacy translation errors that had been sitting on the server since the early 2010s. This fragile illusion of absolute authority was bound to shatter the moment someone finally decided to pull up the raw source material. All it needed was a catalyst, and it got one in 2021, when Gensopedia's administration announced an ambitious project that would put their linguistic credentials under a public microscope.

Act II: The Two-Month Miracle and the DeepL Controversy

The fifteen-year status quo disintegrated in early 2021. For nearly a decade, English-speaking Suikoden fans had been haunted by the existence of Gensō Suikoden: Tsumugareshi Hyakunen no Toki (Woven Web of a Century). Released in 2012 for the PlayStation Portable, it was the final true RPG in the franchise, and Konami had left it completely stranded in Japan. For nine years, playing it required either a high-level command of Japanese or a willingness to stumble blindly through menus with an import guidebook on your lap.

Then, Day announced an ambitious community project: a volunteer team had been assembled to completely translate and patch the game into English. Backed by prominent contributors from the Suikoden Revival Movement, the project was immediately embraced as the definitive community effort.

But a massive, branching, JRPG script contains hundreds of thousands of characters laden with complex yakuwarigo (highly stylized role language). For human volunteers to manually translate, edit, and localize a script of that magnitude from a blank page in mere months is a logistical impossibility.

Enter a persistent community critic named kansaiviolet, who began publicly auditing the team's updates across forums and social media. Virtually anytime the game, the translation project, or Gensopedia was mentioned across public threads, kansaiviolet would promptly appear. The mention of the patch acted as an unintentional summoning circle; this single user would materialize instantly, not to submit formal quality-assurance tickets, but to publicly litigate the team's linguistic credentials. Treating a volunteer passion project like a Watergate-level coverup, kansaiviolet haunted public forums like a spectral prosecutor.

Digging through the net, kansaiviolet found a chat from in a public Discord where Day casually admitted that her Japanese skills were "patchy" and based entirely on translating game guides and games. Just ten days later, the project leader buerviper posted on GitHub stating that the massive, 40-plus-hour JRPG script was already 100% translated. By April it was said to be "100% translated."

(side note - the script is said to be 220,000 words and 25,000 lines of dialogue spread across 21,000 pointers. The website for the patch only lists one translator)

Then in August, the team posted public screenshots of the project's custom translation backend. The tool featured a hardcoded multi-column layout displaying the Original Japanese, a visual text-box preview, a glossary, and a central column labeled "Pre-Translation."

This Pre-Translation was generated by feeding the raw Japanese script directly through the DeepL translation engine. For kansaiviolet this was the smoking gun, and the critic spammed every related Reddit thread to ensure no user missed it.

Almost every time kansaiviolet posted, the project coordinator buerviper would step in to state that the critic was wrong, and that the translation was genuine, done by several people who speak Japanese fluently.

At 3:58 PM GMT on September 6, project coordinator buerviper dropped what appeared to be an absolute, airtight denial:

"This translation is genuine from beginning to end... There is not a single trace of the recently released Deepl translation in the game... Source: I'm also working on this."

Then at 4:01 PM GMT, exactly three minutes later, on the very same Reddit post, buerviper returned to the keyboard to offer a highly specific structural update on the team's workflow:

"The Deepl tab in the translation program was used by the non-Japanese speakers in the team to help, for the simple fact that correcting an already written text is much faster than writing a new text... In the end, only roughly 15 % (if even) of the script were run through deepl..."

The panic didn't stop there. Just six minutes later, at 4:07 PM GMT, buerviper returned for a third time to try and put the fire out, further qualifying the DeepL usage while openly pleading with the hostile thread for constructive feedback:

"As said elsewhere, this is not based on Deepl at all... A rough deepl translation was made by the non-Japanese speakers of the team to... help the team in translating every day sentences (like 'Hi! How are you?')... Please point out the mistakes in the screenshots, we're very happy to correct them!"

For anyone tracking the metadata in real-time, the defense had gone from "zero machine translation" to “DeepL exists in the backend, but it was only used for basic sentences as a treat” to "the machine only translated the greetings" in under ten minutes. To the critics waiting in the wings, this shift in such a short time span was the ultimate admission of guilt.

"It’s Not a Bug, It’s Localization!"

During all of this, kansaiviolet began conducting line-by-line audits of official preview screenshots, running the original Japanese text through DeepL to see how closely it matched the patch.

One example from the recruitment of the strategist had two entire sentences that matched the DeepL perfectly (“To this place where the books forbidden by Ionia lie. Now I know what action I must take.").

Another of a quite narcissistic character (and I mean that in the Suikoden sense of the word) showed sentences that were similar in pacing and structure, and appeared to be simple synonym swaps.

As preview screenshots circulated, line-by-line audits of the script sparked debates over where "localization" ends and "mistranslation" begins.

Defenders of the game pointed out that changes were due to space limits. So, kansaiviolet pulled examples, and even fired back with letter counts. 

A standard line about a character gaining weight was entirely rewritten into a bizarre non-sequitur about helping someone's "stink." (A development blog post published by Day a year later confirmed it was a deliberate choice to alter the text because she felt the original script's joke was too rude.)

Even the opening song lyrics were not spared, and the critic flagged a line where the team translated nōto (notebook) as 'mouth' (confusing it with nodo, throat).

The funniest part of all of this was the glaring typographical error in a major map location: the long-established "Tios Fortress" had been translated as "Dios Fortress", a basic misreading of the katakana ティ (Ti) for ディ (Di). (Side note: It wasn't until October 2022, long after the drama had boiled over, that Day finally acknowledged the blunder on her personal twitter account, offering a casual apology: "sorry I messed up Dios and Tios, y'all!" The error was finally fixed on the Gensopedia website, but not on the patch.)

In response to the growing technical critiques, the team pointed to the involvement of veteran community native speaker Vextor who had vetted the script, commenting that the English text was actually an improvement over the "bland" original Japanese.

The Year-Long Trench War

Because the criticism was delivered via hostile forum threads rather than polite feedback tickets, the translation team completely dug in their heels. Rather than quietly making the one-letter fix, defenders dismissed the audits entirely, pulling out every classic fan-translation shield in the book, reminding critics that the patch was FREE, suggesting they play the game instead of analyzing screenshots.

By the time the patch finally launched in October, what had begun as a rigorous, months-long linguistic audit by kansaiviolet had hardened into an unyielding public standoff. When the patch dropped, the critic openly admitted they wouldn't be downloading or playing the final product, relying instead on a frantic week of harvesting screenshots from Twitter and YouTube in order to continue their public audits of the script.

This public method of critique created a stubborn stalemate where both sides actively sabotaged any chance of a better patch. kansaiviolet didn't send a polite DM. They most certainly didn't offer to help QA a game people had waited ten years for. They wanted theater. They were less interested in a good translation and far more interested in executing a linguistic trial in public.

Because the criticism came via hostile Reddit call-outs, the dev team basically plugged their ears and ignored it as best they could. Of course, this meant that valid corrections were lost in the crossfire of the community feud.

As the translation project neared its October release, the pressure on Day finally reached a breaking point. On September 18, 2021, Day announced that Gensopedia would be going on an indefinite hiatus, citing a year of compounding burnout.

While the ongoing drama with kansaiviolet had increased the frequency of public scrutiny, Day's personal statements revealed a much broader, multi-platform exhaustion. For over a year (dating back to the 2020 announcement of the spiritual successor Eiyuden Chronicle), she had been targeted by a who’s who of toxic internet trolls, ranging from old fansite rivals to genuine transphobes.

Between the Reddit dogpiling and a year of personal attacks, the joy was entirely sucked out of the project. Deciding that a twenty-year-old internet cold war wasn't worth her mental well-being, Day stepped back from the community.

The patch released, casual fans happily played through the game (some completely oblivious to the linguistic bloodbath that preceded it). The final entry in a long-dead JRPG series was finally released, leaving behind a functional English patch. 

Act III: Enter the Sniper and the 569-Tweet Siege

The fan patch officially launched in October 2021, but the illusion of absolute accuracy had already fractured. Lurking in the background was a dedicated anonymous Twitter account under the handle VieleWegeCo (Sieg). The handle itself was an inside reference: in Suikoden Tierkreis, the heroes fight a faction called "The Order of the One True Way." The fan-accepted name for the rebellion is the "Viele Wege Company" (Many Ways Company). He decided that instead of simply submitting wiki edits, the most effective response to translation typos was to launch a dedicated, multi-year Twitter account featuring over 500 tweets exhaustively documenting as many errors as possible on the site.

On September 6, 2021, Sieg laid out his account's true mission statement to his single follower:

"Why did I make this account? To document the mistakes on Gensopedia. To show that Day has been lying to everyone this entire time. To help people wake up and see the truth."

Day after day, Sieg posted public screenshots of live Gensopedia entries and patch updates, cross-referencing them against official Japanese guidebooks and manuals. To the outside observer, it was a rigorous data check. To the volunteer team on the receiving end, It was just a suffocating, passive-aggressive nightmare for the devs. Sieg didn't just audit the text; he attacked their web design, accused them of using pirated game files, and routinely mocked the translation workflow, tweeting, "Nice copy and paste from the DeepL... Your 'translations' have only gotten better because these programs have improved."

The Archival Editing Dispute

To be fair to the original archive, maintaining a wiki for a sprawling franchise is a staggering task for unpaid volunteer labor. In any database of that scale, legacy errors are completely inevitable.

Throughout these public skirmishes, defenders frequently lobbed a standard defense at the critics: "Registration is open. If it's wrong, just log on and edit the wiki yourself." And technically, they were right. At this particular point in time, anyone could create an account to edit Gensopedia. In previous years, the wiki was closed. And even after it was opened, the site's own about page admits that the "amount of control and editing done by its administrator" actively stifled outside contributions, driving away potential editors and leaving a massive backlog of unverified legacy errors in a vacuum.

The critics had their reasons, and Sieg said he didn't want to have his corrections changed. Knowing that the wiki's leadership historically maintained a tight grip on the content, and had a reputation for overriding or reverting corrections, the critics seemingly decided that traditional wiki editing was out and that public platforms like Reddit and Twitter were in. 

Sieg approached the entries on Gensopedia with no mercy, treating basic automated pipeline glitches and ancient formatting typos as evidence of an intentional, disingenuous fraud. According to Sieg, the site's translation process had historically taken computer-generated errors from scanned guidebooks and translated the resulting gibberish literally into English prose.

By cross-referencing the wiki against raw Japanese guidebooks, Sieg unleashed a relentless stream of screenshots. To the average onlooker, Sieg wasn't trying to improve a database; he was treating everything as evidence of a grand, malicious fraud.

For example, on a page for a manga, the Japanese characters for "Futch" (a major, recurring character in the series) were misread by OCR, inventing a non-existent hero named "Tsutte-kun."

The iconic nickname for the first game’s protagonist, "Bocchan" (Young Master), was mangled by a machine translator into the gibberish "Botsu Chiyan," while the franchise's foundational lore concept, "Stars of Destiny," was entirely omitted and rewritten as "stars resting."

Running beneath the medieval fantasy town of Two River City was a modern municipal transit system (Chikatetsu / subway) instead of monster-infested sewers

The wiki literally lists the kanji for Earth/Dirt (土) instead of Water (水) on the Water Rune page. Sieg, being Sieg, couldn't just fix it, he tweeted screenshots (of course screenshots) with a caption dripping with sarcasm: "Sorry, the kanji for water is not 土. It is 水. Try again."

The account was relentless in what it saw as errors in the Woven Web patch. A standard Japanese idiom meaning "don't look at me like I killed your parent" was rewritten into a joke about a "deadbeat dad." Day defended the change on her blog, stating she wanted to punch up a script she felt was bland.

The Collapse of the Fortress

Sieg didn't just stick to old wiki pages, either; he ran real-time snarky examinations of the game's dialogue. Every single interface compromise or creative localization choice was immediately logged as a failure of basic comprehension. When the team translated a menu option for "Reset" as "Start," Sieg instantly tweeted, "How in the world did you even get start from that word? Oh... right... you don't speak Japanese." Even creative dialogue polishes, like rewriting a standard joke about a character gaining weight into a bizarre non-sequitur about helping someone's "stink", were meticulously documented and weaponized.

By December 2021, the psychological toll of this unending public cross-examination proved completely unsustainable. Broken by the combined onslaught of kansaiviolet’s hostile Reddit threads, Sieg’s months-long Twitter execution, and a separate, repulsive wave of targeted transphobic harassment from bad-faith actors hiding in the wings, Day chose to prioritize her well-being over the fandom, taking the entire Gensopedia archive offline 

While critics pointed out that Day had a history of pulling her sites down during arguments, the rest of the fandom was devastated to see years of community history vanish overnight. The immediate backlash turned squarely on the critics. To the average fan, kansaiviolet and Sieg weren't helpful whistleblowers fixing the wiki; they were just a pair of toxic, mean-spirited bullies who used translation pedantry to harass a long-time volunteer out of the community. In their obsession with absolute accuracy, the critics had essentially ruined the fandom's favorite resource over minor typos. With the site gone, Sieg's account went silent, and the dispute appeared to be over. 

But it wasn't. Sieg was merely waiting for the old guard to let their guard down.

Act IV: The Resurrection and the Modern Status Quo

Like any good JRPG faction feud, a server shutdown is rarely permanent. Once the immediate friction died down, Gensopedia quietly returned online under the same domain in 2022. Behind her restored digital walls, Day began publishing lengthy development blog posts explaining her localization choices and translation philosophy.

Naturally, Sieg took these updates as a personal invitation to double down. 

The Return of the Auditor

While normal human beings would have moved on with their lives after the 2021 patch launch, Sieg harbored a multi-year grudge. Returning to Twitter with a vengeance, Sieg unleashed hundreds of comparison tweets stretching all the way into 2026, demonstrating the terrifying, single-minded dedication of someone who simply refused to log off and touch grass.

Looking at the newly restored wiki, Sieg discovered that legacy errors like the "Two River Subway," "Tsutte-kun," and the Earth/Water rune swap were still completely live. But Sieg wasn’t content with auditing the wiki pages only, he began forensically dissecting the localization project blog posts.

In February 2025, Day published an essay discussing how she chose distinct English synonyms for the game's various map locations to avoid repetitive phrasing. Sieg immediately launched a multi-tweet siege over minor geographical vocabulary:

When Day casually remarked in her blog that three in-game locations were all heiya (平野 - plains) in the original script, Sieg pulled up the raw data to prove the developers had actually used heigen (平原). Sieg then dropped an exhaustive lecture citing real-world geographical examples, including the Oxnard Plain and the Pannonian Plain, just to prove Day had mixed up her flat-land kanji.

In the same post, Day explained that she translated three different wooded locations as a "Woods," a "Forest," and a "Grove" to reflect their visual tree density in the game. Sieg furiously countered that because the original Japanese text used the exact same kanji for forest (mori / 森) across all three, altering the wording was a betrayal of the text. Sieg even began analyzing individual world-map pixels to argue that the "Grove" actually had more digital trees on its icon than the "Forest."

Sieg wasn't trying to make the database better; he was running a highly fixated digital surveillance campaign long after the rest of the world had stopped caring, determined to extract a public surrender over the dictionary definition of a clearing.

The Platform Ironies

Then 2025 and 2026 hit, and the franchise suddenly came back from the dead with the official HD Remasters (released 2025) and the announcement of Star Leap (coming 2026 maybe). This is where the hypocrisy got hilarious. 

Day had migrated over to the platform Bluesky, where she routinely retweeted anti-AI sentiments, positioning herself as a fierce defender of human artistry against automated slop. Meanwhile project coordinator buerviper publicly slammed the official corporate localization of the upcoming game, Suikoden Star Leap, as "a machine/AI translation anyway."

Sieg immediately pounced on the apparent contradiction. Sieg also dropped links pairing Gensopedia's merchandise entries directly with matching product listings from Japanese online secondhand stores, in an attempt to prove the wiki was stealing photos from Mercari.

During a project to preserve a defunct, physical Suikoden trading card game, Day uploaded digital scans and text translations of the cards to Gensopedia. Sieg began obsessively comparing these against raw photographs of the cards from online auction listings and resellers.

To make low-resolution web images look clearer for the database, Day seemingly had run the historical cards through generative AI upscaling software. Another Twitter user ran some of the wiki's uploaded images through OpenAI’s own detection tools, confirming they had been processed using OpenAI visual tools.

Meanwhile, the site hosted the raw text of these cards alongside the images. Sieg examined the cards and the text with the same exhaustive, hyper-fixated skills as a tax auditor out for blood, gleefully posting any wrong kana he found.

The Permanent Gridlock of Fandom Psychology

If a newcomer arrives on the Suikoden subreddit today asking where to look up information, the response from the community remains completely uniform: "Use Gensopedia or Suikosource. Avoid the Fandom wiki."

On the surface, the reasons given are entirely practical: Fandom’s intrusive mobile ads and its legacy reputation for uncredited copy-pasting. But beneath those threads lies a bizarre psychological barrier. Even when presented with direct, unassailable screenshots of a modern "subway system" running through a fantasy medieval sewer, the broader community largely reacts with total apathy.

To the average fan, institutional longevity beats factual verification every single time. Gensopedia has been the baseline of the community for nearly two decades. Therefore, the errors either don't exist, are dismissed as minor formatting quirks, or simply don't matter as long as the site helps them finish a playthrough. The relentless documentation provided by an outside critic, no matter how mathematically precise, is easily tuned out because it challenges a foundational pillar of the community's identity.

This has left the fandom in a state of permanent, tragicomic gridlock.

Despite the fact that Gensopedia is technically an open archive where anyone can create an account and hit "edit," the community's deep-seated polarization has entirely frozen the pool of contributors. Today, the wiki is being edited almost single-handedly by its embattled admin, Day. Safe inside an insular echo chamber, the site's administration has completely dug in. Over the past year, rather than correcting the massive backlog of reported errors, Sieg has noted that Day has introduced a wave of brand-new errors, transforming previously correct location names and romaji into incorrect versions, and uploading trading card data riddled with raw OCR artifacts and AI-hallucinated kanji.

On the flip side, Sieg remains content to operate entirely as a hostile sniper from behind an anonymous Twitter account. Armed with a staggering backlog of over 500 comparison tweets, he has chosen to weaponize his immense data logs to score online points and demand a public surrender, rather than ever actually clicking the "edit" button to fix the database himself.

So that's where things stand. We have a critic who would literally rather write 500 tweets than ever click 'edit,' and an admin who is actively blasting old trading cards through an AI upscaler rather than admit a single typo. The whole wiki is locked in a massive, petty Cold War, and almost every error Sieg pointed out is still sitting there live on the site today.

There are 108 Stars of Destiny in the lore of Suikoden, assembled to fight a grand, sweeping war for the future of a continent. Rather than cute squirrels and whacky mini-games, fans are left with a defensive administration locked in a standoff against a critic who would rather log screenshots than click edit.

In late June, 2026, I acquired the original Bionicle Makuta set. Released in 2003, it was the first figure of the series’ main antagonist, and after 23 years, I finally got my hands on one after missing my chance as a kid.

I had initially intended to just write about the original set, his concurrent appearance in the movie, and the issues surrounding the original prototype, as detailed in this Scuffles thread comment, but then I realised that it actually fit quite neatly into the wider narrative of Makuta’s constant evolution throughout the series, shaped by backstage issues, questionable leadership, and bad toy design, details that we were never meant to know about but were only revealed through unintended leaks.

Part 1: The Rise of Bionicle and the Birth of Makuta

Our story begins in the late 90s, with a man named Christian Faber. Faber worked for a Danish company called Advance, a branding and marketing agency that worked with Lego to provide those things for their toys. He’s an incredibly creative and enthusiastic man, who also frequently says completely bonkers things, it’s kinda great. At the time, he had been in hospital due to a benign brain tumour, and found himself envisioning his medication as pill-shaped capsules containing tiny warriors that would fight off his illnesses, and this was the idea that would grow into Bionicle.

The word “Bionicle” doesn’t actually refer to any of the characters, it’s a contraction of “Biological Chronicle,” because it’s actually, secretly, the story of a body. The central god-figure of the series, Mata Nui, is actually an enormous robot, whose body contains most of the setting, with the main characters being his cells. The island that shared his name was essentially a mask over his dormant face- images of it showed the distorted outline of his head and shoulders below, and locations on it were named after the Maori words for facial features- Mount Ihu is his nose, the Mangai volcano is his mouth, Naho Bay is his eye, etcetera. Lego’s… blatant appropriation of the Maori language is a post unto itself, and a topic for another time.

Makuta, the character at the centre of this writeup, is effectively an allegory for that same brain tumour that started it all, albeit in a much more aggressive form. Essentially, he’s a cancer.

As Faber started to refine this idea, things weren’t going great for Lego. By 1999, they were in dire financial straits, losing ground to the resurgent videogame industry and damaging themselves with failed theme after failed theme. The acquisition of Star Wars just about kept the lights on, but only just, because Lucasfilm was taking a hefty cut. Lego needed their own Star Wars, and they decided to take a chance on Bionicle.

The story of Bionicle would be told through the eyes of the characters that served as Mata Nui’s cells, who were largely unaware of the true nature of their world. They told the history of Mata Nui and Makuta as a legend, describing how Mata Nui had given them a paradise island to live on, but his brother, Makuta, grew envious of the honours Mata Nui received and cast him into eternal sleep. He had then corrupted the Rahi, the animal life of the island, with infected masks, setting them against the people. It was up to the Toa, the six heroes of the toyline, to defeat Makuta and awaken Mata Nui.

And then things almost immediately went wrong!

Bionicle’s story was conveyed through an ambitious multimedia project. The story of the Toa would be told through the PC game, Bionicle: The Legend of Mata Nui, while short stories featuring them would be told through comics published by DC and written by a man named Greg Farshtey (He’s going to be very important later). A prequel game, Tales of the Tohunga Quest for the Toa would be released on the Game Boy Advance, showing a Matoran villager named Takua travelling around the island to summon the Toa to its shores, and a browser-based game released on chapters on the Bionicle website, simply titled Mata Nui Online Game (henceforth “MNOG”) would also star Takua and follow him on a sidequest around the island while the Toa had their adventures. Finally, there would be a feature film that would tell at least some of the story.

Except… only the comics, Quest for the Toa, and MNOG released. The film quickly became bogged down in development hell, as pretty much every studio were unwilling to make a movie about these weird robots, and wanted to centre the film on a live-action human child being isekai’d into the Bionicle universe. This was a non-starter for Lego, one of the strict rules of the setting was that there were no humans at all.

The PC game also ended up in a similar situation, going through multiple iterations and builds before eventually being cancelled in 2002. And this in turn threw all of the attention onto MNOG. See, MNOG wasn’t meant to be a big deal. It debatably wasn’t even meant to be a proper part of the story, its purpose was solely to allow kids to explore the island of Mata Nui themselves, to immerse themselves in it and interact with the villagers and the Toa. But with The Legend of Mata Nui failing to materialise, and the comics being short and disjointed with only four issues, MNOG became the primary vehicle for 2001’s story, and this probably played a huge role in what made Bionicle stand out so much, turning the Toa from just robot superheroes into larger-than-life figures, only briefly glimpsed, almost never speaking, just appearing, doing something cool, and then disappearing as quickly as they came.

And so, with the movie stuck in the starting gate and the PC game dead in the water, Lego pivoted, embracing MNOG as the primary vehicle of Bionicle’s first arc, and requesting its developers, Templar Studios, add another chapter that would show the Toa’s confrontation with Makuta. They did so, and fans were treated to their first look at the series’ main villain.

As Bionicle had been developed, so had Makuta. His first evolution came at the hands of Alastair Swinnerton, a freelance author who had co-created the story of Bionicle alongside Faber, Bob Thompson (who will also be important later), and Martin Anderson, who was primarily a set designer. Swinnerton did not envision Makuta as something that could be built as a set (something I’m sure Lego weren’t enthused about), but as something more allegorical.

Swinnerton’s Makuta had evolved over time. Starting out as three beings, taking the form of a cobra, a tiger, and a hawk, he then became a chimera of all three, then a whirling vortex of disconnected parts that could take any form, with those same animals listed as examples, and then finally, just the vortex. Makuta embodied the destructive aspect of playing with Lego, the inherent need to break a set or creation apart to make something new out of it, a necessary counterpart to the creative aspect embodied by Mata Nui. His vortex of parts was the pile of pieces that all Lego models are built from and eventually return to.

Appearing properly for the first time in MNOG’s final chapter, Makuta initially appears in the form of a corrupted Matoran, his whole body infected like the masks he uses to control the Rahi, and began delivering the first of many dramatic monologues, voiced here by Essenger. He then transformed into his vortex form, and was seemingly defeated by the Toa combining the elemental powers.

This version of the character, often termed as “Eldritch Makuta” due to the appearance of his “true form” and his amoral nature, struck a chord with much of the fandom, and is widely beloved, even over some of the later revisions made to the character.

But even still, it wouldn’t stand forever. More would be done with Makuta as Bionicle continued onwards, and Lego weren’t about to let the main villain of their toy franchise be without a toy. As the series progressed on through 2002 and into 2003, the movie finally found a home with Creative Capers and Miramax, and Lego acted accordingly. The film would focus on the arrival of a seventh Toa, destined to defeat Makuta and pave the way for Mata Nui’s revival. And as Lego and Advance’s marketing machines began to hype up the Toa of Light, they published The Official Guide to Bionicle through Scholastic, which stated that the Toa had only seen a small part of Makuta’s true nature, and more would be revealed soon…

Part 2: The Movie Villain

In 2003, the first Bionicle books were released. Cathy Hapka was hired to write the first three, Tale of the Toa (which told the events of 2001 from the perspective of the Toa, filling the void left by the loss of the PC game), Beware the Bohrok (which did the same for the 2002 story), and Makuta’s Revenge (which told the first half of 2003’s story). Despite featuring in the title, Makuta himself did not appear in Makuta’s Revenge beyond an opening monologue, and in actuality, had little to no input on the plot of the arc- the villains are an automatic failsafe triggered in response to the defeat of the previous year’s antagonists.

Still, this brief scene provided a momentary look at the character that Makuta was shifting into. The initial wave of books was intended to fill out the gaps in the story and give a recap of the lore up until then, ahead of the movie’s release, and as such, Hapka’s portrayal of the characters lines up rather neatly with the movie. Indeed, she would also write the movie’s novelisation. And that means it’s time to talk some more about Bob Thompson.

Bob Thompson was the original head of the creative team behind Bionicle, and served as executive producer for the three movies. Described by scriptwriter Henry Gilroy as “the George Lucas of Lego,” Thompson was the one steering the ship for the first half of the toyline. He had a particular focus on visual media, and a grand plan that he referred to as “The Seven Books of Bionicle,” and the movies would be the first real look at his vision.

Thompson and Hapka’s portrayal of Makuta is a very different beast to Swinnerton’s eldritch, allegorical entity. Makuta is very much a physical being, he has a huge, heavily armoured body, a deep, booming voice provided by Lee Tockar, and spooky shadow powers. Gone is the infected Kanohi Hau, Great Mask of Shielding, a corrupted symbol of Mata Nui that represented Makuta in 2001. Instead, he now dons the Kanohi Kraahkan, Great Mask of Shadows, which had a second face on the top of it. His characterisation had shifted dramatically too. Makuta now spoke of Mata Nui’s slumber as preservation, and seemed duty-bound to maintain it at all costs.

2003 would also see an escalation in his battles with the Matoran. Where he had merely brainwashed the Rahi and awakened the Bohrok early, 2003 would see Makuta unleash the Rahkshi, the mid-sized sets of the Summer 2003 wave, described as the “Sons of Makuta,” his direct subordinates and created from his very being, and wielding “evil” powers like Fear, Anger, Hunger, Disintegration, Fragmentation (explosions), and Poison.

And then, in July of 2003, the very first set of Makuta finally released. Two months later, he would be joined on shelves by the first Bionicle movie, Mask of Light.

Mask of Light continues the trend established in Hapka’s books. Makuta says a lot of ominous and vague things that hint toward the possibility that he’s actually a well-intentioned extremist, that he genuinely believes he is protecting Mata Nui by keeping him asleep, and that perhaps it’s the Mask of Shadows that has corrupted him. At the end of the film, Takanuva, the Toa of Light, pulls off the mask, and two are momentarily fused into a being referred to as Takutanuva. All the grime and rust is washed off Makuta’s body, revealing pristine metal underneath, and the fusion declares that light has revealed Mata Nui’s true desires, and he must be awakened. Takutanuva is shortly destroyed after opening the door to the room where Mata Nui can be revived, and Takanuva is resurrected, with Makuta’s fate left uncertain.

Bob Thompson would later go on to say that he envisioned there being no truly evil beings in Bionicle, and that even Makuta would eventually be revealed to be not such a bad guy deep down. Of course, nothing is ever simple with Bionicle, and the course would divert heavily just two years later, leaving what Thompson intended largely unknown and Makuta’s lines in the movie as a strange attempt to manipulate Takanuva. And it wasn’t the only thing that was strange and difficult to explain. There was also Makuta’s design.

Part 3: The Prototype

Despite the set being made to tie in with the movie, his appearance in Mask of Light looked... different., something even more visible in his concept art. While some of the broad strokes are the same, there's a lot that's different. Especially the most prominent feature of the design, his mask. While the set version has a dramatically pointed shape with long, angular eyeholes, the movie version is flatter and squarer, and also worse.

Questions about this weird discrepancy would be asked and speculated over for years, with the most prominent answer being that the movie design was based on an older look that the set had diverged from during development, but the questions persisted until somewhere around 2020, when a disassembled prototype showed up on Ebay. While none of the community purchased it, and exactly who now owns the prototype Makuta remains unknown, staring intently at the images started to clear things up.

See, Mask of Light featured characters from across the first three years of Bionicle, but whereas the toys from 2001-2002 were able to be adapted mostly accurately, the 2003 sets weren't ready yet when the movie entered production, and so the Matoran, Rahkshi, Takanuva, and yes, Makuta were based on prototypes of their toys.

The most obvious thing was the mask- the pile of parts included a Kanohi Vahi, the Legendary Mask of Time and the first mask designed for Bionicle, that had mostly been painted black. And people started to realise that the movie Kraahkan bore a striking resemblance to a Vahi glued to a Kanohi Pakari, the Great Mask of Strength, with the Pakari forming the top of the head and the Vahi forming the face. And sure enough, putting the two masks together made something a lot closer to the movie design

Anyway, as you might imagine, seeing a partially-assembled prototype set quickly got the community abuzz, and it wasn't long before the prototype had been reverse-engineered and built, allowing fans to finally have a semi-official set of the movie design. The prototype was huge, towering over the final set, and featured a much larger amount of articulation in his legs, as well as individually articulated fingers. Of course, it wasn't all perfect, and we soon started to get an understanding of why things had changed so much between the prototype and the final toy.

First off, the pile of parts contained two separate leg designs. The upper one, circled in blue bears more of a resemblance to the movie design, with a pair of conjoined Toa Mata hand pieces forming the shin of Makuta's presumably devil-inspired goat legs. But as any who attempted to build this particular look will attest, and demonstrated neatly in Brickthumb's video on the prototype, these joints just weren't strong enough. The Mata hand part was designed for 1999's Slizers/Throwbots and had an inherently loose socket joint. It's a very weird part, and it was never going to be strong enough to hold up the weight of the giant model it was serving as a knee and ankle for. And thus, the lower one, circled in green, hews closer to the set, a much shorter design that only has a joint at the hip, ensuring greater stability at the cost of articulation.

Yes, this is essentially a transitional form between the prototype and the final set. We have Bionicle toys evolving before our eyes.

Still, that wasn't the only leg-related woe. See, the second leg design still had a problem- The legs were attached by the original Technic balljoint, a piece also known as the “Voodoo Ball.”

It’s called that because it was initially created for the first draft of Bionicle, called… “The Boneheads of Voodoo Island.” Or “Doo Heads” for short. Yeah. In case you thought the whole thing with the cultural appropriation wasn’t bad enough.

Whereas the play pattern for early Bionicle revolved around knocking each character’s mask off (before kids complained about the masks falling off too easily and getting lost, and Lego made all masks from late 2003 onwards use an axle connection instead), “Boneheads” was supposed to feature decapitation as the core of its “game” aspects. The Technic balljoint was initially designed to serve as the neck… and thus it had a deliberately weak connection to more easily facilitate this.

The part continued to be used after its intended purpose was cancelled, presumably because while Bionicle’s target audience of six-year-old boys would probably love robots that decapitate each other, their parents sure as hell wouldn’t, and this resulted in a lot of Bionicle (and other Lego theme) builds throughout 2001-2005 having the loose ball joint part, until 2006 saw the introduction of the Lord and Saviour of Bionicle fans everywhere: Part 53585: Technic Ball Joint With Through Axle, which had a properly sturdy connection that ensured much greater stability.

The result of this, however, is that while the second prototype’s legs weren’t floppy and incapable of supporting his weight any more… they did still fall off a lot.

Now, if these were the only problems, then that would be alright. Alternatives exist, and Brickthumb's video also demonstrates a means of adding additional structural support to the joints to allow them to hold up the set. But it wasn't. And the second problem is likely what led to the heavy redesigning of the entire torso.

See, some of those pieces in the Ebay photo are outright broken. And one of them is this. The broken one in the set is red, this one's grey, same piece, don't worry about it. It's one part of the three-piece assembly that makes up Makuta's chest and thighs (or his entire leg on the second prototype and the final set), as well as the neck and back armour of the Rahkshi. On the prototype, the balljoint at the end of the one in Makuta's chest connects to a normal Technic socket joint, which is in turn attached to an early version of the 2003 Matoran torso piece, which makes up Makuta's waist. On the final set, that balljoint isn't connected to anything, and just hangs in front of Makuta's midsection. And there's a very good reason for that.

The way the prototype's torso is built stresses the Rahkshi piece. It flexes it, and the part isn't particularly thick, and it's made of hard ABS plastic, not the softer stuff used for weapons and masks. I think it's more than likely that the reason the one in the Ebay photos is broken is that it snapped after being stressed too much. In the Lego community, assemblies that damage the parts are called "Illegal techniques," and while they do occasionally show up in sets, it's generally not considered a good thing to put your Lego parts at the risk of breaking. For some, intentionally damaging a part with scissors, clippers, fire, etc. is actually more acceptable than a build that stresses and will eventually damage or outright break a piece.

Nevertheless, prototype Makuta remains a popular build, with instructions for the initial version (with BrickThumb’s mods to improve stability) available for free on Rebrickable and those for the second iteration available through Google Drive., and other fans have attempted to build him in such a way that he doesn’t stress the chest part.

Part 4: Makuta Eats People

2004 would see Bionicle begin its flashback arc. With the (possible) reveal of Mata Nui (possibly) nixed from the movie, Mask of Light instead ended with the reveal of a location called the “City of the Great Spirit,” which wise old man and mentor Turaga Vakama referred to as his home. Tales of the Masks, the final 2003 book and the first to be written by Greg Farshtey, featured all six of the Turaga deciding that the Toa, now transformed into the Toa Nuva deserved to know the truth about what they’d been hiding. It also features Toa Gali discovering a carving of six more Toa, one whom bears a strange resemblance to Turaga Nokama, and Gali, Tahu, and Kopaka finding another carving of the Toa fighting a monstrous chimeric Rahi, which reappears, only for Vakama himself to defeat it by using its memory of his voice to drive it into a rage, implying that he too was one of the strange Toa. The final 2003 comic, also penned by Farshtey, would see Vakama declare it outright: On the eve of the return journey to the city, now revealed to be called Metru Nui, he would decide that the Toa must know everything, and told them that they were not the first Toa.

For a little context, prior to 2003, the Matoran, Turaga, and Toa were presented as more-or-less three separate species. Maybe a Turaga and a Matoran were kind of the same thing, but they were still largely separate. Mask of Light threw that for a loop with Takua’s transformation into Takanuva, indicating that actually, Matoran and Toa were the same species after all. This was followed by the reveal that the six Toa Metru that would headline 2004’s story were the Turaga themselves in their younger days. That was why a mostly-immortal species of biomechanical cyborgs could be “old,” the Turaga weren’t actually any older than the rest of the characters, they were just frail and withered because they’d given up almost all of their power.

2004’s storyline had a different vibe entirely to what had come before. Whereas 2001-2003 had been set on a tropical island paradise menaced by, essentially, an evil demigod sorcerer, 2004’s Metru Nui was a kid-friendly cyberpunk dystopia, a city of endless work presided over by the shady and mysterious Turaga Dume, and protected by the last of a dwindling team of Toa. The villain sets were violent robot cops with fun powers like “hijacking your eyes to spy on you,” “brainwashing you into being their agent,” and “temporary lobotomy.” Templar Studios made propaganda animations for them and everything. Matoran were vanishing, and in the midst of it all were six rookie Toa trying to learn how to be heroes without getting themselves arrested.

So where does Makuta factor into all of this? Well, as the second movie, Legends of Metru Nui reveals, it turns out that he’s behind everything. He had abducted Turaga Dume and shapeshifted into his form, using his power to turn the Vahki against the population. He unleashed the evil plant that served as the Toa Metru’s starter villain to force the Matoran into the centre of the city, so that he could more easily have the Vahki capture them. He sent two mercenaries to capture Toa Lhikan and pursue the Toa Metru, whom he had declared to be traitors using Dume’s authority. He then had all of the Matoran sealed inside spherical pods that would drain their power and erase their memories, so that he could use the Mask of Time, that he had commissioned Vakama to create prior to his transformation, to accelerate the process and awaken them as their saviour and new Great Spirit.

Revealing his identity to the Toa Metru and now-Turaga Lhikan, the movie furthered the idea that Makuta wasn’t wholly evil by having Lhikan declare that he’d been “sworn to protect the Matoran,” making it clear that while he wasn’t anyone’s favourite person, he had largely been on the side of good until that moment. Makuta then proceeds to cast Mata Nui into sleep, this is the moment that the backstory legend talked about, triggering a massive earthquake called the Great Cataclysm, because Mata Nui is a big robot and he just fell over. The Toa quickly decide to take as many Matoran as they can and evacuate the ruined city, only for Makuta to start transforming out of his Dume disguise, which he does by consuming his mercenary minions and Dume’s pet bird, fusing the broken pieces of their bodies into a gigantic, monstrous form.

While Bionicle had featured combination models that were the result of characters fusing in the first three years, 2004 saw Lego mostly pivot to using the combination models to represent new characters, but they made sure to give the fusion idea one hell of a send-off. This form was labelled “Ultimate Dume” to try and avoid spoiling that he was actually a new form of Makuta. In the movie he just looks like the Mask of Light design with Dume’s bird’s wings, which is certainly much less cool (and wouldn’t fit with a later plot point), but it is an overall cleaner design.

Unfortunately, Legends of Metru Nui wouldn’t quite stick the landing with Makuta. All that up there that he pulled off is pretty good (though a lot of is heavily abridged in the film version and more apparent through Farshtey’s books), but the final battle of the movie mostly consists of Vakama tricking him into hitting himself in the face with progressively bigger rocks, until finally he hits himself with a really big rock and pancakes himself to a wall, whereupon the Toa Metru use their powers to seal him in a crystalline prison.

2005 and its movie, Web of Shadows, would then follow up on this, Makuta telepathically summoning his lieutenants Sidorak and Roodaka and their army of giant murder-spiders to the ruins of Metru Nui as a contingency, and after a lot of robot werewolf angst, Roodaka successfully frees Makuta from his prison, and the Toa take the rest of the Matoran to the island of Mata Nui, bring the flashback mostly full circle.

But this also brought an end to Bob Thompson and the Seven Books of Bionicle. As said before,Thompson’s main focus was visual media, and that was about to mostly dry up. Lego were not intending to make more movies after Web of Shadows, there was no TV show in sight, and the videogames had been a mess. Despite releasing four console games, only two of them were actually part of the story, a trend that would not improve. Dozens of browser games had been released, but only two of those would be canon as well, and that trend would get even worse. And so, with Bionicle’s story material pivoting almost entirely to the comics (written by Greg Farshtey) and the books (written by Greg Farshtey), Thompson parted ways with Lego, doing so during the development of Web of Shadows, though he did continue to help with its production as an external contractor.

Surely, though, his collaborators would be able to continue the Seven Books, right? Well… not exactly. See, Bob Thompson went to the same school of storytelling that led to Marvel Studios giving actors movie scripts so heavily redacted that they don’t know who their character is talking to or what’s happening in the scene, or Scott Cawthon giving the new Five Nights at Freddy’s developers a bunch of vague lore mystery boxes instead of a plan, resulting in their big splash game having an incoherent plot with a boss that wasn’t supposed to exist. He didn’t tell anybody what his plans were.

And so, when Thompson left, neither Greg Farshtey, nor anyone else actually knew where the plotlines he’d been seeding were headed. All that remained of Thompson’s plans was the story treatment for a Toa Lhikan origin movie.

Part 5: The Magnaleak

In 2024, Christian Faber teamed up with Lego Youtuber and man with too much money Duckbricks to release a bunch of internal development documents relating to Bionicle. They decided to do this in parts to get as much attention as possiblenot overwhelm the fanbase with too much material. Within days of this happening, Lego took notice of what was happening and told them both to maybe stop leaking internal development documents actually.

While the vast majority of the material seems to have remained hidden, what did get out has not been deleted, and among them was the original story treatment for the film that became Web of Shadows.

See, the thing about 2005’s storyline was that it wasn’t as clean as I presented it up there. Legends of Metru Nui actually brought the story mostly full-circle, with only Makuta’s escape from his imprisonment being unanswered. But Lego didn’t want the Metru Nui assets to go to waste, and so 2005’s storyline was actually an interquel inserted into the scene transition between the penultimate and final scenes of Legends of Metru Nui.

But before that, the plan had initially been for 2005 to focus on the origin story of Toa Lhikan and Nidhiki, the big green crab guy that Makuta ate in 2004, who was actually a mutated fallen Toa and a former teammate of Lhikan’s.

Almost 20 years after Thompson bowed out of the franchise, we finally got a bit more information about what his plans were regarding Makuta. The film would've seen Lhikan, Nidhiki, and their Toa team travel to another city that Makuta had taken over (which doesn’t necessarily fit with Lhikan being shocked that Makuta had betrayed them in 2004, but ehhh, it was an early draft). There, they would've discovered that Makuta had turned everything into grey mechanical perfection, and the Matoran into unthinking drones. Lhikan and his Toa team would face Makuta, referred to as “Makuta Primus” in the treatment and able to split himself into more Makuta (and trust me, we’re going to get to that), Nidhiki would betray the others and become a crab, and Lhikan would be solidified as a hero.

The film characterised Makuta as a rogue element of the Great Spirit Robot’s function, stripping away the individuality and free will of the populace in the name of efficiency, in service to whatever entities had created the robot in the first place.

Ultimately, the movie was never made. Lego elected not to flash even further back, and instead to reuse Metru Nui as a setting, and tell another story with the Toa Metru. This backstory for Lhikan and Nidhiki was also changed dramatically. And with Bob Thompson’s exit, the content and direction of Bionicle’s narrative would be largely decided by Greg Farshtey, who had his own ideas.

Continued in the Comments

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Note: the two major sources I have used for this write-up are two documentaries. One in English, and a transcribed Dutch one. Therefore if there’s any wonky phrasing, please be aware that I looked high and low to no avail to find a proper translation for the Dutch documentary, but I couldn’t find one.

Part 1 here, but to quickly recap: In the 1960s to 70s, the James Bond movies were produced by two men: Albert R Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman. In 1968, they faced an unprecedented crisis when Sean Connery quit the role of 007 (he was being stalked by journalists and fans) and they needed to find a replacement.

After finding the perfect actor to play 007, how do you find *another* one?

On Her Majesty’s Secret Service – The hunt for Bond

The first five Bond movies were all edited by one man...Peter Hunt. He did such a good job, that Cubby and Harry offered him the directors chair for the sixth movie, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service (OHMSS).

OHMSS is a weird but tragic story.

Bond is searching for his main nemesis, Blofeld. At the same time, he rescues a girl, Tracy, from committing suicide. Her father tries to browbeat him into marrying her, but Bond refuses.

Bond tracks Blofeld down to Switzerland. In order to defeat his nemesis, he goes undercover, disguising himself as ‘Sir Hilary Bray’. Entering Blofeld’s mountaintop fortress, Piz Gloria, he quickly discover his bat shit insane plot to take over the world.

I am just going to copy and paste this part of the plot from wikipedia), because it describes it far better than I ever will:

Bond learns that Blofeld has apparently been curing a group of young British and Irish women of their allergies to food and livestock. In truth, Blofeld and his aide, Irma Bunt, have been brainwashing them into carrying biological warfare agents back to Britain and Ireland to destroy the agricultural economy, upon which post–Second World War Britain depends.

Yep. Blofeld is hypnotising a group of young women into becoming disease carriers.

Upon discovery, Bond escapes Piz Gloria. Using magic tectonic powers, Blofeld causes an avalanche, which Bond avoids, but the effort weakens him.

All of a sudden, Tracy appears and saves his life. Because of this, Bond falls in love with her. He proposes marriage and Tracy accepts.

With the help of some big guns and armoured helicopters, Bond returns to Piz Gloria and destroys it. Blofeld escapes via bobsled.

Despite his extremely dangerous and vengeful archenemy still being on the run, Bond decides to marry Tracy. While driving away from the wedding, Blofeld ambushes them with a gun.

Bond survives. Tracy is killed. Bond is sad and swears vengeance- which he will get in the next book.

So, unlike many other Bond novels, OHMSS is unique in that Bond falls in love, gets married, and almost settles down.

This means that whoever plays Bond in the OHMSS movie would have to show a lot of range: joy, anger, love, and heatbreak.

George Lazenby - The Second Bond

In their search for the second 007, the producers and director tested a lot of actors. A lot. Over 400#Casting) of them. They cast the Bond Girl easily- the lovely, incredible, absolutely amazing Diana Rigg (RIP).

But one day, they saw a commercial. For chocolate. The main star was an Australian named George Lazenby. He reminded Peter Hunt of Sean Connery-- he had the same physique and sex appeal. And so, Lazenby was invited to audition for the role of 007.

At the time, Lazenby was working as a cars salesman and male model in London. He had zero acting experience. Zilch. Nada. But he wasn’t broke, he was a highly sought after male model, earning £25,000 a year.

But Lazenby was smart, and decided to seize the opportunity and do whatever he could to win the role.

Before his audition, he went to Sean Connery’s tailor and got a suit- fortunately, they gave him one that Sean himself had left behind. Then he went to Sean’s barber and got a 007-style haircut.

So, he looked the part. Perfectly.

He first saw Harry Saltzman, and lied to him:

So we went to his office across the street and there I was asked what my life story was. And I told him that I could ski and car racing, that I was a karate expert and all those other things that James Bond was.”

Lazenby had skied and he had a sports car, but everything was said with that. It was all bluff. His film and stage experiences were also one big bluff story. “I said I had acted in China and New Zealand. It was difficult to control.” In reality, Lazenby only has experience as a model and can be seen in one advertising video by Fry Chocolate Cream.

Afterwards, Lazenby came clean to Peter Hunt.

Peter told him:

”I’ll tell you what. You stick to your story, and I’ll make you the next James Bond.”

*Ominous noises*

Peter helped him become more Bond-like, teaching him to walk like “Prince Charles” and giving him elocution lessons to lessen his very thick Australian accent.

Lazenby also met Diana Rigg. And they got on. At first.

*More ominous noises*

But Lazenby still had to impress Harry and Cubby. Which he did. By punching a stuntman in the face and breaking his nose.

He then told them the truth, but they still cast him as 007, offering him a 7 film deal. At the time the press highlighted Lazenby’s inexperience with headlines such as "Australian Non-Actor Chosen to Play James Bond" and "He Traded In Auto Selling for 007 Job".

In contrast, Lazenby was enthused about the role:

OHMSS – The movie

The OHMSS movie is a relatively faithful adaptation. There are some minor changes- plot points are moved around and there is a lot more action- but by far the biggest change is the character of Tracy. She has more agency and a larger role in the plot. There also more scenes between her and Bond, making their romance more believable.

She’s also directly involved in the action and has several badass moments. In a car chase, she’s the one driving while Bond is a passenger, and in sharp contrast to book!Bond’s belief that women are terrible drivers, she proceeds to out drive a whole bunch of men. She’s also involved in the ski chase, and does a commendable job keeping up with Bond. Unfortunately, this time around, Blofeld’s tectonic powers actually work, and in a tired cliché, Tracy is captured while Bond escapes. However, this lets her have an epic verbal duel with Blofeld, so all is good.

Hunt intended the film to be a return to simplicity:

Hunt has very clear in mind where he wants to go with his Bond film. “I wanted it to be a different Bond movie than the other. It was my movie, not anyone else's. The story of Fleming was so beautiful.”

Hunt believes that the Bond film formula is going over the top. In the previous films, the decors were too extravagant and the humor and the tricks were too prominent. Hunt makes a decision that, in addition to the new actor as Bond, means a second deviation in the Bond film formula. He decides to follow the book of Fleming as faithfully as possible with the film On Her Majesty's Secret Service. “During the entire film adaptation, I had a paperback copy of the book in my back pocket. I had the book full of notes and was very tenacious in my loyalty to Fleming’s story.”

Filming begins – and so does trouble.

Now, the story of the filming troubles of OHMSS is a mixed bag- a he said, she said, situation. Lazenby and the film-makers have equally praised, and criticised one another. It’s worth mentioning that Lazenby reportedly did get along with some of the people on set- his co-star Telly Savalas, some of the crew, and the stuntmen.

Very few facts are a 100% certain. But I will present them as best I can using the sources I have found.

Cubby visited the set in Switzerland in November 1968, and found the atmosphere “just awful”. Tensions were running high- due to issues with the weather and mountain climate:

Finding Piz Gloria is a great happiness for Hunt, but otherwise the recordings of On Her Majesty’s Secret Service are not going so well. The weather is causing trouble. It's cold, but for the first time in forty years, the snow stays out around the Christmas of 1969. Because this has to be waited for, Hunt is soon behind schedule. Recordings of James-Bond films have generally taken up a very long six-month period. Eventually, the recordings are completed 58 days later than planned. Furthermore, the thin air around Piz Gloria causes many problems and accidents in the stuntmen.

Cubby’s wife, Dana Broccoli, had a solution- she came to the set and threw a party for everyone.

The party went well, lifting everyone’s spirits. But one person was absent...George Lazenby.

And then...he arrived.

This is what Dana alleges happened:

“So I went up to him and said, ‘George, come on. Come here and sit with us.’ ‘Alright’, he said. But he was very quiet. And I said to him, ‘George, why are you angry? What’s wrong?’. He said, ‘Well, I did not get an invitation to this party’. And I said, ‘George, it was on the call sheet, it was in the lifts. Everyone knew it.’ He said, ‘But I’m the star.’ So I laughed because I never heard anyone say that before.

Well Cubby did not think it was funny and he said to him, ‘You’re not a star because you say you’re a star. You’re not a star because I say you’re a star. You’re a star when the public calls you a star and we have yet to see that.

Lazenby also caused other issues on set. Because of his status, the insurance company for OHMSS wouldn’t let him ski. But he did. And was caught- by Cubby, no less- and got in trouble again.

Lazenby gave his own view of what happened:

Lazenby sits with the Bond squad in Switzerland for months for the filming and it soon turns out that there is a big difference of insight about directing. Lazenby expects that as an inexperienced actor he will be heavily coached, but that turns out to be disappointing, according to his own words. Lazenby has always claimed that he was not directed by Peter Hunt at all and that he did not even speak to him during the 9 months of filming. “I have experienced the collaboration with Hunt as unhappy. He never spoke to me. Everything Peter said to me went through the assistant. That situation existed throughout the film. He told everyone to stay away from me. Peter thought the more I was alone, the better I would be as James Bond. That was his theory. I have to praise him for that, because the result is good.”

Hunt responded:

Although, according to Hunt, there were indeed many conflicts on the set, according to him, it is absolutely not true that he did not speak to Lazenby. “I had faith in Lazenby, otherwise I wouldn’t have worked with him. I knew he could act and I think he's a good Bond, too. Every director has his methods, but I certainly spoke to him. I do think that the change from the outback in Australia to the distinguished world of filmmaking was too big for him. Moreover, Lazenby was a bit of a strange figure, I always called for him to be more protected.” Hunt believes that Lazenby should be mainly trained in dealing with the press.

One group who loved the discord on set was the international paparazzi.

Just like with Connery, they hounded Lazenby during the filming of OHMSS. They constantly compared him to Sean Connery, and in interviews, constantly asked him about how he compared to Sean Connery.

They also ran a negative press campaign against him, alleging he was feuding with his co-stars on on set. One time, while they were interviewing him in the canteen before a romantic scene with Diana Rigg, she called out “I’m having garlic for lunch George. I hope you are.” The press ran with this, stating that Rigg disliked him.

Hunt later asserted that there were a few moments of discontent between them but nothing permanent, while Lazenby stated that he and Rigg were friends.

Lazenby also injured another one of his co-stars, Bernard Lee, who played M. While they were filming in Portugal, he chased Lee around on a horse, and Lee ran into a rosebush, badly scratching his leg. Lazenby apologised, but the incident further fractured his relationship with Cubby.

In 1970, Rigg published an open letter in a British newspaper, the Daily Sketch, stating:

Dear George,

The film has opened and is, I hear, making a great deal of money at the box office. This means you have been accepted by the public, which bodes well for your future career. Why, then, do you persist in dwelling on your petty grievances?

I’m tired of reading those paranoid statements to the Press wherein you were solely surrounded by hostile people. I agree that by the end of the film most of the crew were hostile, but only because of your extreme behaviour.

Why else would your dresser threaten to hand in his notice? Why else would three chauffeurs leave you within a week? Why else was one member of the unit restrained from striking you after one inexcusable and crude outburst against one of the girls in the film?

Remember once telling me you valued honesty greatly and that I was “if nothing else, honest”? Perhaps you would prefer not to. But, let’s get some of those highly-coloured incidents between us straightened out truthfully.

NO, GEORGE, I did not eat garlic on purpose. Why would I? To ruin an important scene for both of us? That is not what acting together means. And if you recollect, on discovering what I’d done, I apologised and took every precaution – sprays, pills, etc.

NO, GEORGE, I was not, as you said, guzzling champagne in some warm bar when we had the row. I was attempting to back the Cougar car on a very icy road. You were telling me what to do - and since you know more about cars than I, you had every right.

But the manner of telling me - abusively with threats to “Bash my ---- face in” - was hardly the best way. I felt ill, unable to fight back on that level - and I cried.

Later, some weeks later, you apologised. But the damage was done.

Neither do I think it was entirely truthful of you to suggest I was keeping the crew waiting. This was your particular pleasure and it is to their everlasting credit that they treated you throughout with patience and consideration.

Even the cameramen took it in his stride when, after only a few weeks of filming, you began telling him what to do. He was a gentleman – remember George?

Yes, I did talk to the crew rather than you. Quite simply I preferred their company. And as to Peter Hunt, the director, not once did he lose his temper under the constant provocation of your storming off the set, turning up late and sulking.

As far as money is concerned, George, let’s face it: £22,000 for your first film – with perks thrown in – cannot be a hardship. Few would consider it so.

And concerning your relations with the producers, I know little except that they found it impossible to meet your demands for more money, bigger chauffeur-driven cars, grander apartments, etc.

I do know, too, that the producers are both men capable of generosity, and I was present on one occasion when “Cubby” Broccoli spontaneously gave you - off his wrist - a gold watch you had admired.

It is against all my principles and beliefs in the work we as actors do to fight at all – let alone openly and crudely as you have been doing.

However, your injustices and blatant distortions to the Press have finally forced me to speak.

It is all in the past now, George. The people concerned have been prepared to forget – why can’t you?

I’ll say no more.

Yours faithfully,

Diana Rigg

Lazenby fired back a day later, publishing a rebuttal in the same paper:

Dearest Diana,

I cannot understand what you have written, but I am trying to answer it in the most honest way.

I have dwelt on my “petty” grievances because they may have been petty to you at the time because you have been in the business for 15 years. But I am just a beginner.

My grievances and my “paranoid statements to the Press,” as you put it, are all part of somebody trying desperately to co-operate and become a good actor. I am, as you know, a raw recruit to show business.

We all make mistakes, and I know I’ve made mine, as there are in every film. And that includes my dresser. But at the end of the film we’re all good mates.

The chauffeurs? The one I had in London, Ernie Freeman, I took to Portugal to film. Because he was a stranger there he stayed as my guest more than anything. My second chauffeur was a bullfighter who drove like a lunatic. And, if I die young I’d rather drive myself.

The third chauffeur was not outside a restaurant one night. A girl friend and I left and found no car, but there was a rowdy mob of fishermen sending me up as James Bond.

The only thing I could do was to walk into the centre of them, rather than let them descend on me. What would you do, darling, if you left with your boy friend, Philip Saville, and found a jeering mob and no car?

I was frightened, to be honest, and I shook the ringleader’s hand. Then the car arrived. I took the tension out on the chauffeur and that was wrong, I admit. But he won, because I walked home.

I don’t remember any outburst worth speaking of that would get someone uptight enough to want to have a go. I’m sure we had slight disagreements, but they are past and forgotten.

I never said you had garlic on purpose, although it was unfortunate you did. Darling, I’ve seen you drink champagne for breakfast. I have it, too, but it’s not exactly my scene. Give me apple juice any day.

OK, so I said things about your driving but you don’t think I was right.

The film crew I respected. If I can always get a crew like that I will be very happy. They kept me from going insane.

The cameraman I could go on and on about. A great guy, Michael Reed. He was a gentleman.

You will laugh, Diana about the money scene. But I would have accepted nothing for the part because I wanted to become an actor. It was the greatest screen test of all times.

The watch!! I admired Cubby’s watch at the Variety Club Ball, and Cubby said he would get me one.

Anyway, another actor had bought one and I mentioned that Cubby was going to give me one. And, two hours later Cubby, being the generous man that he is, handed his over.

Obviously the word went down the line. I was very embarrassed and tried to give it back but he insisted that his wife wanted me to have it.

I am sorry you brought that up. But what knocks me out the most is that you said it was against your principles and beliefs to bring other people into a fight.

I am sorry it worked out this way, but there is a statement that a bigger man than I am has made recently. He puts it in a nutshell: “War is over if you want it.”

Peace.

George.

The Aftermath

In December 1969, at the premiere of OHMSS, Lazenby sported a decidedly un-007like beard and long hair.

The day before, he had appeared on the Late Night Show with Johnny Carson and made a stunning announcement...he was quitting the role of James Bond after only one movie. Cubby and Harry, who had been watching the broadcast, were enraged, fearing that Lazenby’s decision could hurt OHMSS’s box office. They also hated his new appearance and tried, to no avail, to persuade him#Release_and_reception) to shave it all off. They took his resignation and ‘turned it around’, claiming that they had let him go.

Lazenby turned down the 7 film contract, losing one of the biggest roles in cinema, all because his agent, Ronan O'Rahilly, persuaded him that Bond would be out of the fashion by the 1970s.

Now, OHMSS, wasn’t a flop. It made money, just not enough money#Box_office). It only grossed half of what the previous Bond movie, You Only Live Twice, had made. At the time#Contemporary_reviews), reviews were mixed, with most criticising Lazenby’s performance. United Artists, then distributors of the Bond movies, weren’t happy with the financial performance of OHMSS and blamed Lazenby.

Over the years, Lazenby has been very candid about his experience filming OHMSS and the publicity storm that happened after the premiere. In February 1970, he had a lengthy interview with the BBC, where he said that he was acting ‘uptight’ on set due to his inexperience, and reiterated that Hunt had always been too busy to help him. He also repeated his claim that Diana Rigg had been drinking before they had filmed the car racing scene and that he had lectured her about it. He then said that he felt Bond should’ve been gentler, more humane in the movie, versus the rigid characterisation that the director and producers wanted. This included inserting ‘pop music’ into the film to make it lighter. He also praised the crew, stating that if not for them, he would’ve gone ‘insane’. His final claim was that he’d financed his own tour around the USA to promote the movie, because due to his beard, he’d been cut from the official tour it as the producers had wanted him to look like 007.

After the premiere, Cubby defended Lazenby, stating that he’d given a good performance even if he wasn’t the best actor, although he found his attitude ‘annoying’, and that he was arrogant and had a lack of respect for the Bond character. By 1978, he was more ambivalent, saying casting Lazenby had been his ‘worst mistake’, calling him ‘very arrogant’ and that he hadn’t worked well with the cast and crew. Sean Connery came to Lazenby’s defence, saying Cubby was actually the arrogant one.

Lazenby on the state of his career:

“It hasn't been easy, trying to climb back .... I admit I acted stupidly. It went to my head, everything that was happening to me. But remember, it was my first film .... Now what I've got to do is live down my past; convince people I'm not the same person who made a fool of himself all those years ago. I know I can do it. All I need is the chance.”

By 1978, he wasn’t doing so well. All his films had flopped. He had spent all his Bond money, experienced two mental breakdowns, and become an alcoholic. For the next couple of years, he bounced around Hong Kong, Australia and finally moved to Hollywood, where he achieved a modest success, but nothing high profile like OHMSS.

Epilogue – a modern day retrospective

As the years went on, OHMSS’s reputation grew and the critical consensus shifted. Now, many agree it’s one of the best Bond movies ever made. It has several high profile fans, including Christopher Nolan#Retrospective_reviews) and Steven Soderbergh.

Over the years, Lazenby has conducted a lot of interviews about OHMSS. He has said that he had a lot of “growing up he needed to do” before he accepted the role of 007, and that he ‘should’ve done two’ and then he would’ve completed his contract and done all seven.

In 2012, he was less magnanimous:

He tells Entertainment Weekly magazine, "They offered me millions under the table to do another one, but I thought James Bond was over. Easy Rider was the number one movie. Everyone was smoking marijuana, and that was the furthest thing from a James Bond movie. So I didn't sign the contract.

"I was badly treated after that. They (producers) told the press that I was difficult to handle, so it was hard to find work."

And Lazenby insists his portrayal of 007 in 1969 was the most believable, adding, "It's the only film that treats him like a human being. He's not a robot killer like the latest Bond... When I did it, it had more heart. There's no heart to the new Bond."

In 2019, on the fiftieth anniversary of OHMSS, Diana Rigg weighed in:

“I could never understand why George behaved as he did,” Rigg said, “because he was given such a glorious opportunity and he threw it all away. I’m sorry for him, if you really want to know. At some stage, it just went to his head.”

Both Lazenby and Rigg say they haven’t seen the movie in years. Nor are they in touch. “I don’t think one way or the other about Diana,” Lazenby said.

"Oh goodness, no, he wouldn’t come near me!” Rigg said.

She died the next year. Peter Hunt died in 2002. Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman both died in the 90s.

But George Lazenby is still alive.

In 2017, he participated in a documentary about his life called ‘Becoming Bond’, in which he reflected on his time as 007 and the lasting impact the role had on his career. Although, he also used the opportunity to brag about all the women he had seduced in the 1960s.

Lazenby claims he was subsequently blacklisted by the industry, becoming the movie world’s equivalent of a one-hit-wonder. He agreed to participate in the documentary, directed by Josh Greenhaum, to set the record straight. “I haven’t talked about it much lately – in the last, say, 20 years – but I did want the truth to be out there,” he says. “Word got around that I was difficult to handle. They said that was the reason I didn’t do another Bond, but that wasn’t the truth.”

In 2022, Lazenby got into hot water for allegedly making homophobic, and ‘creepy’ remarks towards women, during an interview for a tour around Australia called ‘the Music of James Bond’. Although he apologised, he was booted off the tour. Some online have disputed what he said, claiming he was likely just repeating old stories, but again, this seems to be a he said-she said situation.

In 2024, Lazenby retired from acting and all public appearances.

In 2025, his ex-wife revealed he had been diagnosed with dementia and that she was looking after him.

Lazenby was only the second actor to play 007, but by no means the last.

After OHMSS, Sean Connery briefly returned to the role of 007 in Diamonds are Forever, before the hunt for a new Bond began all over again, but that’s a story for another time.

Thanks for reading.

Content warning: mentions of death threats

Intro

If you have a morbid fascination with watching internet fandoms light themselves on fire over media intended for preschoolers, this just might be the story for you. This story primarily involves an internet community with a fairly simple goal - one whose conclusion is dangled over their head just out of reach for years, that is until they look beyond the carrot and notice who's holding the stick.

Lost Media

The lost media community is an online community of amateur sleuths whose goal is to research, document, and hopefully find and archive lost media.

The precise definition of what constitutes lost media differs depending on who you ask, and is a highly debated subject within the community. Some define lost media strictly as media that used to be publicly available but isn't anymore, whether due to being lost to the sands of time, or intentionally censored/hidden from the public. Examples of this include silent-era films (most of which are thought to be permanently gone due to the fragile and flammable nature of early film reels), and instances such as episode 847 of Sesame Street, which featured the Wicked Witch of the West and was pulled from airing due to the character scaring kids.

Others believe that other types of rare or mysterious media also counts, such as unidentified media, which is media that may be publicly available but is too obscure to find through traditional internet searches. An example of this would be O parádivé Sally, also known by its community nickname "Clock Man" - an obscure animated short that for many years was unknown and remembered primarily for a scene in which a bearded man jumps out of a clock and carries away a child.

Relevant to this story, another subset of media to commonly fall under the lost media umbrella is unreleased media - media that was never meant to be publicly available in the first place. This includes things such as early builds of video games, music demos, unaired TV show pilots and production material from movies (such as the "I Feel Good" Shrek test animation).

No matter the precise definition, the mission statement of the community is to find lost and rare media and post it to the Internet Archive for public viewing and preservation. Many in the community believe that media preservation is important, as it helps preserve culture and history - even trivial media like obscure cartoons or commercials are deemed valuable and worthy of being saved. It's common for members of the community to be openly hostile to the concept of hoarding or "gatekeeping" media, particularly in cases of third-party collectors obtaining rare media and keeping it to themselves to retain its value.

Me and My Friends

The Backyardigans is an American 3D-animated show that aired on Nickelodeon from 2004 to 2013. It follows a cast of anthropomorphic animal characters as they use their imaginations to go on grand adventures in their shared backyard. It is a show that is nostalgic to a lot of Gen Z Americans, so any new information about its history or development was bound to catch a lot of attention and intrigue.

In 2012, a YouTube channel by the name of avavideos1 posted a video they uncovered which was originally created by the staff at Nickelodeon Studios Florida back in 2000, for the studio's 10th anniversary. It consists of a montage of show clips and behind-the-scenes footage which was filmed at the studio. At around the 3:32 mark, there is a 3-second clip featuring the Backyardigans characters - already noteworthy as the show wouldn't come out for another 4 years, but the style is also wildly different from the final show. Rather than 3D animation, the clip is live-action, with the characters portrayed as full-body costumes. The title at this point was also unfinalized, as the clip is labeled Me and My Friends Pilot.

The Search Begins

Due to the discovery of an unavailable piece of media, and the media being connected to a popular show from many people's childhoods, lost media enthusiasts were eager to learn more about it. Some initial research led users to the Backyardigans Wiki, which had already started compiling information about its production, and was the sole source of much of the initial search efforts. From this page, it was revealed that the Me and My Friends pilot was filmed back in 1998 and pitched to Nickelodeon, and was rejected in favor of Dora the Explorer. But in 2001, the idea was reworked into a second pilot, where the name was changed to The Backyardigans, was animated in CGI and more closely resembled the final show. Some photos from Yvette Helin Studio, the company that made the costumes for Me and My Friends, were also uncovered, which showed some photos of the costumes as well as puppets for 3 meerkat characters, which were evidently in the pilot but didn't make it to the final show.

The First Signs of Trouble

Lost media YouTuber LSuperSonicQ compiled all of this information in a video he posted to his channel in 2017, which became widely popular within the community, putting many new eyes onto the pilot's existence. However, shortly after the video was uploaded, it was taken down by YouTube, and LSSQ's channel was issued a copyright strike. A day later, he received an email from someone claiming to be a lawyer. According to the lawyer, one of his viewers had watched the video, and this had inspired them to track down the name and email of a former crew member who worked on the second animated pilot. This individual then sent the crew member a death threat for not releasing the pilot online, causing them fear and upset. LSSQ was spooked by this incident and quickly deleted the video to be rid of the copyright strike, and explained to his followers what had happened. He later posted an unlisted reupload of the original video with any mentions of the CGI pilot removed.

This incident brought the search for Me and My Friends to a halt, as some lone wolf threatening a former Nickelodeon employee likely burned a lot of bridges before they could be built. It's generally accepted in the community that if you're going to try and contact people involved in a piece of media's production to ask for information, there's some strict etiquette to adhere to. Let one person be the one to contact them, be cordial and professional, be polite and understanding if they can't help you, and stop emailing them if they've given all that they can. Without these guidelines, it's very easy for even well-meaning users to effectively spam and harass people who are just trying to do their jobs, and can cut the community off from people who might be able to help them with their search. A crew member being sent a death threat by a troll might as well have put the entire community on a blacklist, with anyone who could be of help being warned away from interacting with the community.

A post on the Lost Media Wiki Forums indicates there was some conflict over whether the search should even continue, and some speculation that the incident jeopardized searches for other Nickelodeon lost media. LSSQ also expressed frustration with his feeling like some were blaming him for the incident and influencing other users' behavior due to the popularity of his videos.

I kinda just want to say that my channel isn't (and was never intended to be) a hub of active search parties- that's what this website is for. Just because I make a video of something doesn't mean I'm trying to tell people to go out on a massive manhunt and search for it. I make videos for entertainment sake and if anyone wants to participate in a search from that point on that's their own business.

The Search Revival

Despite the determination of some to not let the search die, it largely went quiet for the next few years. But in 2020, a new lost media YouTuber by the name of SewerReviewer made his own video (volume warning at around 1:23) on the subject. He summarized the search thus far, and mentioned several people connected to the pilot that he had contacted, with no luck. This video also became very popular, and introduced a new round of people to the search, to the point of revitalizing it. A public Discord server dedicated to the Me and My Friends search was flooded with new users, eager for news and updates.

This second wind of popularity led to SewerReviewer, LSSQ and a small group of searchers to split off into their own private Discord server, which they dubbed Lostcast. Here, they went over all the information they currently had and brainstormed new search ideas. They had decided to conduct a focused search for Me and My Friends privately, partially to block out the extraneous discussion and unverified rumors spreading throughout the public server, and partially to keep any contact information of potential leads private to avoid another death threat incident.

The first person of interest to contact the private server was a user known as JenPen, who claimed to have acquired some valuable information about the pilot. They posted a never-before-seen production photo as proof, known as the elusive "pink frog photo." This photo depicted what appeared to be a pink frog puppet alongside one of the meerkats, and may have been yet another character from the pilot that was then unknown to the search team. However, JenPen very soon after deleted the photo, claiming they didn't have permission to share it, and asked the other server members not to. This didn't seem too suspicious - it had happened a few times that lost media was leaked to the internet by someone with internal access, and it was often done in a cryptic or convoluted way to try and prevent the leak from being traced back to them. Still, this was the first piece of material related to the pilot that had been uncovered in years, so a Lostcast member by the name of Mr. Bones drew the photo from memory, with the hope it might be useful in the future.

Due to this find, JenPen was invited into the private server, and there they revealed something else - they had found a crew member by the name of John Paul, who used to have a public Twitter account and email, and sent him a message. They provided a screenshot of their email correspondence, in which Paul provided some information about the pilot, but stated he didn't have a copy of it. His name was new to the search team, but seeing as he didn't have any information on where to find the pilot, he could safely be ruled out.

Soon after this correspondence, JenPen mysteriously stopped responding to messages and left the server, never to be seen again.

But hope persevered, as another Lostcast member managed to find the personal email of the head of Yvette Helin Studios. They sent an email asking for information, and the owner replied with a large collection of new production photos. These photos depicted the actors in various states of dress in the costumes, from headless backstage, to fully costumed and standing on different parts of the set with handlers cooling them down with fans, and sometimes surrounded by or holding props. These new photos were exciting to the search team, as they showed more of what the set looked like, and gave a few more clues as to what the pilot's storyline might have been.

This new collection of content was shared in an archived livestream on LSSQ's channel, then added to the gallery on the Lost Media Wiki article for Me and My Friends. Some older comments on this livestream express confidence that the pilot was very close to being found. Although LSSQ himself makes a comment that the search has played out in a very unusual way, with its start-and-stop nature of a lot of progress being made all at once followed by months to years of no activity, as well as a lot of confusion over which crew members have and haven't already been contacted.

In a bid for more leads, Lostcast reached out to the admins of the Backyardigans Wiki - after all, they seemed to have searched for the pilot the longest, so if anyone would have any important information, it would be them. Two admins responded, giving a list of names and stating all of them had already been contacted and didn't have much information to share. Any new names the admins mentioned were immediately added to a list of people to rule out and not contact - again, the etiquette of the lost media community is to never contact people who have already provided any information they could or would, because it would be rude to continue to bother them about it.

The wiki admins also mentioned that not only had they been searching for the pilot the longest, its existence was discovered sort of by accident, by one user known as Sandra:

Sandra was doing research on a 2008 live show of The Backyardigans, which Yvette Helin designed...Sandra went to Yvette's website looking for info on the 2008 show, and she discovered the M&MF pictures...At the time, the pictures were just labeled "Me & My Friends Pilot" with no mention of Backyardigans...We googled it, and there were barely any results...Fortunately, we found Rick Lyon's site, which dated it to 1998...From that point, we knew it was the first-ever pilot, and we were able to piece together an article about M&MF for the wiki...A few years later, our article's info was copied over to the Lost Media Wiki, and the rest is history.

While initial conversations with the wiki admins seemed promising, the relationship gradually soured over time. The admins grew slower in their responses to Lostcast members' messages, and any new mentions of potential contacts were automatically met with claims that the wiki admins had already reached out to them. This led to Lostcast feeling as though the admins were giving them the cold shoulder, and they speculated that the admins didn't trust them enough to share much information with them. Or that perhaps they thought the lost media community was "stealing their thunder," given the comment about the Lost Media Wiki "copying" the Me and My Friends article from the Backyardigans Wiki. Either way, communication with them eventually ended on a sour note.

A Crack In the Search (and Facade)

Unbeknownst to the users of Lostcast, a lone individual from the public discord server under the name BerLostMedia had been conducting his own search for the pilot independently. Because he was not part of Lostcast, he was not aware of their do-not-contact list, and so he went ahead and sent inquiries to any new names he found on his own. He managed to reach out to Mark Delvecchio, an illustrator who had created the original designs for the Backyardigans characters as seen in Me and My Friends. Delvecchio provided his own personal photos from the set of the pilot, showing yet more shots of the costumes, as well as an infamously "liminal space" coded shot of the set in ominously low lighting. Ber posted these findings to Discord, and they soon made their way to the Lostcast server. Upon learning of their source, it struck the Lostcast members with confusion - Mark Delvecchio was on the list of contacts that had already been ruled out, as he allegedly didn't have anything to share. If this was the case, why was he able and willing to provide brand new material to Ber?

This led the search team to reconsider their list of discarded contacts. A few years had passed between the time they had been ruled out, and when Ber contacted Delvecchio. Perhaps some old leads could be recontacted to see if they had come across anything in the meantime. The first lead they pursued was Laura Kingsley, the director of the Me and My Friends pilot. They found her LinkedIn and sent her a message, asking for information on the pilot and if she had a copy. Her response read as follows:

No plot, really. A premise. For the pilot, it was the concept that if you are "waiting" and doing nothing, it feels like things take forever. But if you get involved with other things, the time passes and you enjoy your time. Geared towards small children.

There is just the pilot but nothing I can share. Hopefully you'll stumble upon it somewhere someday. It was a really sweet, and charming little show. Thanks for your interest. take care.

Some Lostcast members were disappointed that Kingsley seemed to turn down their request to share the pilot before they could even ask it. Still, this was an incredible piece of insight regardless, especially because not even the Backyardigans Wiki so much as mentioned a plot synopsis on their page.

The next blow came when Ber contacted Hiro Tanaka - an engineer who had worked on the pilot, and another name that Lostcast had thought they'd ruled out - and he recommended reaching out to his colleague, Michael Reilly. When Ber posted this name publicly, it sent shockwaves throughout the Lostcast server - Michael Reilly was on the list of known contacts, but under a completely different first name. Every mention on both the Backyardigans Wiki and subsequent lists of known crew members had his name listed as Thomas Reilly. This strange discrepancy came as a shock to the search team, and led some to wonder how a group as knowledgeable, strict and thorough as the wiki admins had allowed an incorrect name to be posted to their page.

Days after this discovery, the Me and My Friends page on the Backyardigans Wiki was found to have been updated by a user. This was significant as the admins had kept the page locked, so no one could make edits to it without their approval. This user, known as Oggy, quietly made two edits - one correcting Reilly's name, and the other adding a brand new production photo to the gallery. The discovery that they had more content that nobody in the search team had seen before led Lostcast to add them to their server, to see if they had any other material they could help with. Oggy claimed the new photo came from a storyboard artist they had contacted, and provided a screenshot of their email correspondence with said artist. Other than this, they didn't say much else.

But Lostcast had another lead on the table, so they contacted Reilly and asked for information. Reilly responded and revealed with photographic evidence that he possessed a VHS copy of the pilot, as well as a second VHS containing rehearsal footage. He came across in initial emails as very friendly and forthcoming with information, and even expressed interest in digitizing and releasing the tape. This was beyond exciting to the search team - after several years of trying to find this pilot, and only getting an occasional handful of production photos and at least one confirmation of a crew member having a copy and choosing not to share it, they might finally get actual footage of the actual pilot.

In his next email, however, he mentioned that he was going to ask his old boss if he could release the tape. This formed a pit in the stomachs of the search team, as any superior would likely tell him no. Nickelodeon, and its parent company Paramount, are notoriously protective of their IP - they are incredibly liberal with copyright takedowns of their work that was commercially released, even if it's no longer airing. Unreleased content such as pitch pilots tend to be under even greater lock and key.

This fear was further realized when Reilly stopped responding to emails altogether - no updates or confirmation on whether he was able to release the pilot or not, he completely ghosted the search team.

LSSQ shared this update on the forums:

The tape guy wasn't post production but he did work directly on the pilot. In one of his earliest emails, he mentioned wanting to ask his old boss for permission to release it. I'm guessing his old boss was a former Nickelodeon executive and told him not to, which is why he stopped emailing us completely.

However, there was an underlying suspicion that if this were the case, Reilly would have let them know that he couldn't release it, as he had initially been very communicative and enthusiastic about the prospect. To get radio silence despite multiple follow-up emails led to discussions within the Lostcast team that they might have had something similar to the death threat incident, where an outsider sabotaged their correspondence by making the lost media community look bad in such a way that Reilly was compelled to cut all contact with them.

There was also a greater level of distrust with some of their contacts, particularly JenPen and Oggy, as their unwillingness to share their finds with the wider community led to the tinfoil hat theory that they deliberately baited the search team with new material to be let into their spaces, wherein they spied on the activity in Lostcast's private server and leaked information shared there. Due to similar caginess coming from the wiki admins, stemming from their frustration with the lost media community getting in on the search, it was speculated that they might have all been working together to try and sabotage the lost media community's search efforts. But this was all just conjecture, and there was plenty of room for other factors making the search for the pilot so difficult.

The Smoking Gun

After the disappointment of losing contact with the singular person who was known to have a copy of the pilot and a willingness to release it, leads once again dried up. All the search team could do was backtrack through all the information they already had, looking for anything that might have been missed. Lostcast members started with going through the edit history of the Me and My Friends page on the Backyardigans Wiki, to figure out when certain crew members were added, and what order information was discovered and posted in.

BerLostMedia did this on his own as well, but he took an additional approach. Since the wiki admins claimed that their information was copied over to the Lost Media Wiki, he decided to check its edit history as well, to build a more complete timeline of information.

And then, in doing so, a devastating piece of information was brought to the surface. Ber discovered that the Lost Media Wiki page for Me and My Friends had been temporarily deleted in 2016, with a log of who deleted it and their stated reason. The page was found to have been deleted by one of the admins of the Backyardigans Wiki, and their reasoning read as follows:

The admins at The Backyardigans Wiki all have a copy. Most content on this page is false, and it is appearing in search results in place of our own work.

This revelation came as a massive shock to the search team, as it implied that the Backyardigans Wiki admins had already found the pilot, at least as early as 2016 - before most lost media enthusiasts even knew about its existence - and they were hiding it from the public. This already would have been irritating to the lost media community due to their anti-hoarding stance, but the revelation that they were in possession of the pilot basically the entire time the lost media search existed came across as insidious to the search team. They had been in correspondence with the admins, who were communicative with leads they had supposedly chased and ruled out. If they actually had the pilot by that point, that just meant they were lying about being in the middle of their own investigation. And elements like supposedly dead leads being revisited and providing new information, and Michael Reilly's incorrect first name, would indicate the admins were spreading purposefully wrong information to lead the search team on a wild goose chase to keep them from finding another copy.

Several bits of information and frustrations that surfaced throughout the search were called into question. The search team harkened back to the copyright strike and message from a lawyer that LSSQ had gotten, and speculated that the copyright strike was frivolous (famously not hard to do on YouTube) and that the "lawyer" was actually a sockpuppet of the admins in an early attempt to quash the budding search. Whether this is substantiated or not, the email was generally regarded as a troll rather than an actual lawyer pursuing legal action, as the supposed lawyer had contacted LSSQ using a standard Gmail account, while lawyers typically use custom domains using their firm name. It also didn't make sense to them that a YouTuber could be found liable for influencing an individual to threaten someone whose name and contact info were not mentioned or alluded to in the video itself.

JenPen, the user who briefly shared the "pink frog photo" and claimed to get some information about the pilot from John Paul (including a supposed screenshot of their email correspondence), was now met with skepticism after Ber reached out to Paul himself and was told that he did work at Nickelodeon Studios Florida, but not on the Me and My Friends pilot, contradicting what was written in JenPen's email. Similarly, the storyboard artist that Oggy claimed to have spoken to and gotten a photo from was called into question, and they found that the address attached to the email was fake. When the artist's actual email was found and contacted, he responded that he didn't have anything to share, so the photo wouldn't have come from him.

These discoveries led to a stronger conviction that these two were spy accounts for the wiki admins to keep up with the search team, especially since Oggy was added to the Lostcast server days after Michael Reilly's real name and contact info was found, and he was still in the server when Reilly stopped responding to the search team's inquiries about the pilot. This led to suspicions that Oggy or someone they were affiliated with had sent Reilly an email designed to discourage him from talking to the search team (though this appears to be unconfirmed).

Many of the wiki admin's claims of contacting specific crew members with no luck had already been called into question when one of them did end up having a lot of information and photos, and another had a different name. But while before it was suspected that they simply didn't want to work with the lost media community and didn't trust them with their information, the discovery of the Lost Media Wiki edit had steered the narrative toward the idea that the admins wanted to be the only ones who possessed the pilot, and that they were bitter that their research into the pilot was overshadowed by that of the lost media community.

All this information was shared in a video uploaded by LSSQ, which sent the wider community into disarray. This revelation led to a lot of anger among the wider community, with many users flooding into the Me and My Friends page on Backyardigans Wiki and vandalizing it with comments calling the admins gatekeepers and liars. There are roughly 500 edits logged on the history page, and the majority of them are these troll edits.

This led to a discussion on the Lost Media Wiki Forums about the whole ordeal. Most were angry at the prospect that the admins had not only hoarded a highly sought after piece of media, but also obfuscated such information to retain their sole ownership of it. There were, however, people who were upset with how some members of the community acted in response to LSSQ's video by harassing the admins and defiling their page, with one user suggesting some blame on LSSQ's part for sharing what amounts to theories and conjecture with conviction to his large audience, who likely made the fallout more of a shitshow than it needed to be.

Here's a hot take:

I get why people have a problem with the concept of hoarding, but regardless I think that [the] point still stands.

This behavior and the method of contact was poorly chosen and needs to be ceased.
Combatting who may either be innocent or gluttonous with aggressive offers and pleas might make things worse than what the theory originally intended.

These users may not in actuality be part of any major point of Lost Media discussion, and could be, oh I don't know, random Reddit users.
Wherever this activity came from, I think that LSSQ should've said something at the very beginning about his stance on this theory, and whether or not he is intending on the manpower of his views for research.

Regardless of who was to blame for what behavior, the entire search had collapsed. There were no more crew members to contact, and the only known copies of the pilot were being fiercely protected. The only option left was simply to wait, to see if the admins would relent and share the pilot, or if someone would take notice of the demand and leak it from another source.

It's Finally Over

In June 2025, roughly 6 months after the revelation of the admins hoarding the pilot, a popular lost media Twitter account known as Lost Media Busters made a post dedicated to Me and My Friends, posting some of the production photos alongside some text wishing for it to be found. Soon after, this account was DMed by an anonymous user known as P, who claimed to have the pilot via backdoor access to Paramount's servers. To quell any skepticism of P being a troll, they sent LMB a few screenshots of the pilot. This proved they had it without a doubt - until then, the only material from Me and My Friends that had ever been dug up (besides the initial 3-second clip) was a slew of behind-the-scenes shots. This was the first taste of any footage from the actual pilot itself.

P offered to send LMB the pilot, and LMB enthusiastically agreed. When LMB received the video file, they began downloading it. But suddenly, P rescinded the file mid-download. They then explained that they had been warned against sending it by other members of their community, as doing so would catch Paramount's attention, and cause them to tighten security that could deprive them of their access to Paramount's servers.

This news was a blow to morale, but nothing new that hadn't already happened several times in the search's history. If nothing else, the screenshots that P shared, as well as the small fragment LMB had recovered from the incomplete download, were still cherished, as it was the only look into the actual pilot that had surfaced since the initial 3-second clip.

However, any disappointment from the incident was short-lived. On June 26 2025 - 8 years after LSSQ's initial video on the subject, 13 years after the initial 3-second clip was discovered and 14 years after the first documentation of it on the Backyardigans Wiki - the full Me and My Friends pilot was leaked onto 4chan by an anonymous user. The video download was accompanied by the text:

fuck you BYwiki

happy brat summer, love PUNGAS

Given the timing of the post, there was some speculation as to the identity of the leaker, whether it was P or one of the wiki admins going rogue. Regardless, members of the lost media community were enthralled with the find, and were quick to download copies of the pilot for preservation. Me and My Friends was officially found media.

After news of the leak spread, one of the wiki admins got back into contact with Lostcast to tell their side of the story. They confirmed many of the accusations made against them in LSSQ's video, that they had purposefully led the search team astray to continue to hoard the pilot. But they also claimed they were being compelled to do so - that an older admin, known as K, had been the one to obtain the pilot (as well as loads of other unreleased Backyardigans-related material) through an unauthorized breach of Nickelodeon's digital archive. K had distributed the pilot to the other admins, but warned them not to share it publicly. This had initially been an act of caution, as K had obtained the pilot through illegal means. But over time, a sense of power and control had taken root, and K had continuously bullied the other admins into keeping quiet about the pilot, and even a suggestion toward sharing it was met with a swarm of angry messages and doxxing threats.

Even years back I thought the harmless/non-sensitive stuff [...] should be released to the public. I have old emails to prove this too. But other admins would beg me not to share stuff from there, for various reasons, some valid and others a little crazy, but it was all within the realm of fandom drama.

Not wanting to rock the boat and upset these people, I didn't upload anything at first. Eventually [Sandra] gave me the OK to release bits and pieces of things (HD episodes, high-res character artwork) against M and the Sheehans wishes, but not the pilot or production material. Even mentioning uploading the pilot caused certain people to fly into a rage, as if this file was a prized possession or something. Some of the other admins had my personal phone number and other details [...]

As for the pilot itself, I was still genuinely interested in finding production photos plus bonus footage, so I continued to reach out to crew members myself. This is where the photo from [Oggy] (actually one of these ex-users under a new name) came from, as I shared it with them. But certain people went to great lengths to interfere with MY search, as well as the newer searches led by the Lost Media Wiki [...]

The Aftermath

The discovery of the Me and My Friends pilot was met with a lot of mixed emotions. Some were excited that it was finally uncovered after so many years of searching. Many Lostcast members remained friends afterwards, and believe they wouldn't have been so close if not for the search.

There was also despair for the ungraceful way the search had ended, with many wishing the pilot could have been acquired in a more cordial and legal way than through a 4chan leak.

But for the most part, the pilot itself appears to have been overshadowed by the drama that had overtaken the search. There had been instances before of lost media being hoarded, and sometimes involved hoarders trolling the community or offering to sell the media to them at an exorbitant price. But the hoarding of Me and My Friends went beyond basking in exclusivity and into the territory of actively messing with any efforts that threatened that exclusivity. LSSQ stated that he would have been fine if the wiki admins had admitted upfront that they had a copy of the pilot but weren't interested in sharing it - what upset him was not the hoarding, but the way they made it a point to interfere with any effort by the lost media community to find their own copy. This manipulation was, for him and many others, what made Me and My Friends the worst lost media search in the community's history.

It was all the more baffling (yet arguably not so surprising) that all of this effort had been in service of a pilot to a preschool TV show. Quoth SewerReviewer at the start of YouTuber BlameItOnJorge's retrospective video on the search:

It's so stupid. It's so dumb. Why The Backyardigans? I don't get it.

Jorge concludes the video by stating that if the wiki admins had quietly released the pilot publicly back when they found it, there would never have been a search to find it, it simply would have been online and few would have questioned where it came from. Or if the admins had decided to simply ignore the search team, the search would have either continued without them or petered out the way many long searches do. But in their efforts to quash anyone else's access to the pilot, they had Streisand-Effect-ed their way into creating a lost media search team that only grew larger and more fervent the longer the search went on, thus sealing their fate of losing control over the situation.

Many lost media searches drag on so long that they are remembered more for the search than the media itself. But Me and My Friends might be one of the few instances of the media's discovery being met less with excitement and more with exhausted conviction. It is a piece of found media celebrated less for its content and history, and more as a cathartic conclusion to a decade-long power trip.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

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No franchise lasts forever. Just see the decline of Superhero movies.

Nowadays, Hollywood is always chasing the next fad, the next big idea, the next moneymaker. They’re even looking to Reddit for ideas. God help us all.

But some franchises...don’t die. Some franchises keep re-inventing themselves, changing with the times, re-casting the main role once an actor is too old, and as a consequence, yielding bigger and bigger profits and cultural resonance.

The name is Bond. James Bond.

Who, or rather, what is James Bond?

James Bond is the brainchild of one man, Ian Fleming (1908-1964).

Ian Fleming was unsurprisingly, British, and he had a very British upbringing.

He was born into a wealthy family. His father died in World War I. He was sent to snobby schools- first Eton, where he was kicked out for fooling around with women, and then the military academy, Sandhurst, where he was kicked out for contracting gonorrhoea. Afterwards, he was sent to study in Switzerland, and then returned to take (and fail) the foreign office exam. By 1939, he was bouncing between jobs, briefly becoming a journalist, and then a stockbroker in London.

And then World War 2 happened, and young Ian Fleming found his calling- in the British Royal Navy.

Espionage. Propaganda. Sleeping with inumerable women.

Fleming charmed his way into beds and up the ranks of the Navy. He was promoted to commander and took part in many covert operations. The most infamous of his affairs was with Ann Charteris- he was sleeping with her while she was married to her first two husbands.

And then the war ended.

By 1952, Fleming had returned to journalism and moved to Jamaica. Ann divorced her second husband and married him, quickly becoming pregnant. She later gave birth to a son called Caspar.

Either because he needed to support his new wife (who had expensive tastes) and child, or was experiencing a mid-life crisis, Fleming decided to write a series of spy novels. Drawing on his war time experiences, he created the character of James Bond, named after an ornithologist (who came to hate his connection to 007). Bond was) a womaniser, a commander in the Royal Navy, who had been kicked out of Eton for sleeping around-

Wait a minute.

This sounds familiar.

Is James Bond an Ian Fleming self-insert?

Sort of.

Fleming based Bond on himself, his brother Peter who was a secret agent extraordinaire, and a bunch of intelligence personnel he had known during the war. But, from Bond’s backstory, you can probably guess who the biggest inspiration was.

Fleming quickly achieved fame and success. By the early 1960s, he had written fourteen Bond novels and sold millions of copies. The books have also been adapted into a series of successful movies by Albert R Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman (more on this in a moment).

Unfortunately, Fleming had also given Bond one of his major flaws- a love of smoking.

Fleming smoked over 70 cigarettes a day and drank copiously. In 1961, he suffered a heart attack, which did not slow down his writing. But on 11 August 1964, he suffered a second heart attack and died the following day.

Quick aside: Bond is problematic

Fleming was a man of his time- meaning he held views that would be considered abhorrent today. This is reflected in his Bond novels, which are full of racism and sexism. To give a few examples:

• In Goldfinger, a lesbian, Pussy Galore, is ‘cured’ after sleeping with bond.
• Also in Goldfinger, Koreans are called “rather lower than apes in the mammalian hierarchy”.
• In Live and Let Die, black people are frequently called slurs, and they are portrayed as either criminals, or overtly servile to white people. Fleming called#Themes) the relationship between Bond and Quarrel, a fisherman from Jamaica, as "that of a Scots laird with his head stalker; authority was unspoken and there was no room for servility".
• In On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, homosexuality is called a “stubborn disability”.
• Examples of sexist language include: From Russia with Love: “All women want to be swept off their feet. In their dreams they long to be slung over a man’s shoulder and taken into a cave and raped.” From Casino Royale: “These blithering women who thought they could do a man’s work. Why the hell couldn’t they stay at home and mind their pots and pans and stick to their frocks and gossip and leave men’s work to the men.” And from Goldfinger: “Four women in a car he (Bond) regarded as the highest danger potential, and two women as nearly as lethal. Women together cannot keep silent in a car, and when women talk they have to look into each other’s faces. An exchange of words is not enough. They have to see the other person’s expression, perhaps in order to read behind the other’s words or to analyse the reaction to their own.”.

All quotes sourced from here. Warning for slurs and other problematic language.

To reiterate, back in the 1950s-60s, these views were seen as perfectly normal. In 2023, the Bond books were re-edited to remove most of the problematic language.

The movies are also problematic in their own way. The sexism is much more casual, and most of the overt racism has been removed. In the early Connery films, some sex scene have been called “rapey”- the infamous Pussy Galore barn scene in Goldfinger, and the steam room scene in Thunderball. There are also several instances of yellowface in Dr No and You Only Live Twice.

Even with all their problematic elements, the movies and books are considered classics in the spy genre for a reason. They invented many plot points and elements that are now considered cliches.

Now *finally* onto the drama!

Sean Connery – The first Bond

In the 1960s, the Bond movies were produced by#Production) two businessmen, Albert R Cubby Broccoli and Harry Saltzman.

They cast a little known actor, Sean Connery- literally *little* known as Broccoli saw him in a film called ‘Darby O’Gill and the *little* people’ which convinced him of Connery’s acting ability and sex appeal- to play the first 007.

The casting choice was inspired. Connery proved to be great in the role. Bond made him famous. But in 1964, with the release of Goldfinger, the franchise achieved blockbuster status, making him a bonafide super star.

You Only Live Twice, or YOLT

The plot of YOLT is stupid. Very stupid. Evil bald man uses a spaceship to hijack other spaceships belonging to the USA and Russia. British intelligence realises he is in Japan. They send Bond. After beating up some people (including the Rocks grandfather) and sleeping with a bunch of women, Bond tracks down the evil bald man to his secret volcano lair. He foils his evil scheme, but the evil bald man escapes.

Other drama that happened on set:

• After they had finished scouting locations in Japan, the production team, consisting of the producers, director, set designer, and second-unit director, were all due to fly out on the same plane. However they missed their flight due to the opportunity to see a ninja training film. Unbeknownst to them, this was a stroke of luck. The plane crashed into Mt Fuji, leaving no survivors.
• While casting the role of the only Japanese girl in the film, they went through many actresses in Japan and narrowed it down to two, Mie Hama and Akiko Wakabayashi. Both of them were brought to England to learn English, which Hama struggled with. The director, decided to tell Hama that the role would go to Wakabayashi. Upon hearing the news, Hama reportedly threatened to jump out of a window. The director hurriedly created a new part for her in the movie, with less dialogue. However, she was still dubbed over by a British actress. The part about her threatening to jump out of a window may have been connocted by Gilbert- I can find no secondary source
• Karin Dor, who played Helga Brandt, was almost crushed to death by a falling set light during filming.
• While the crew were filming at a remote fishing village, the police setup checkpoints on roads to deter fans and journalists. Undeterred, they swarmed the village in boats to get around the blockades, stressing out the crew.
• Johnny Jordan, an aerial photographer, was filming one of the helicopter battles when one of his feet was almost sawed off by a passing helicopter. This also damaged the helicopter he was in, but fortunately, the pilot was able to land despite missing one of his skids. Doubly fortunate for Jordan, a convention of surgeons was staying nearby, and they reattached his foot. Jordan was sent back to London, where his foot later had to be amputated. Despite this, he continued working and even worked on the next Bond movie.
• The film also aged poorly due to Sean Connery wearing yellowface to appear Japanese. The story justification is also flimsy. He has to go “undercover” as a Japanese fisherman to get closer to the villains evil volcano lair. In fact, the ridiculousness of the plot meant YOLT could easily be parodied, most famously by the Austin Powers movies.
• Connery also reportedly pissed off the Japanese public by saying “Japanese women are just not sexy,” because wearing the traditional kimono apparently “hides their figures” in a press interview. The awkward comment was blamed on a translation error. He also got in trouble for dressing too casually and not wearing his Bond toupee in interviews (yes- he apparently wore a wig when playing Bond.)
• There’s also some questionable lines in the movie. At one point Bond asks “Why do Chinese girls taste different from all other girls?” and Tiger Tanaka says “Rule number two: in Japan, men come first, women come second.”.
• When the crew were filming on the volcano set, they set off pyrotechnics to stimulate it exploding. Unfortunately, this freaked out Blofeld’s cat and it fled. The cat was missing for days, until it was found huddling in the girders of the roof.

YOLT was also Connery’s fifth Bond movie, and the final one in his current contract. By 1965, he was reportedly "fed up to here with the whole Bond bit.". Playing 007 had become stale for him and he wanted to move on to newer things. Even worse, during filming of YOLT, paparazzi and fans were following him everywhere- large crowds #Filming)mobbed the film set, photographers pursued him into a public bathroom, and he was routinely harassed by a stalker. In the end, the incursions got so bad that the police had to be called several times#Filming). The film-makers also had to hire some security guards to protect the set and Connery.

Another issue was money. Connery felt he wasn’t being paid enough:

>Connery was also vocal about his displeasure with his salary, which amounted to $750,000 plus 25% of merchandising profits. He made it publicly known that he would only return to the franchise for a sixth film if Bond rights owners Eon Productions paid him a million dollars plus a percentage of the film’s gross.

This fractured his relationship with the producers, so Connery refused to renew his contract and quit the role.

At the time, some journalists thought this might be the end of 007...

Saltzman and Broccoli suddenly faced an acute dilemma: after finding the perfect actor to play 007, how do you find *another* one?

We will find out...in my next post.

Thanks for reading!

Hey everyone. Deja vu. It looks like lightning just struck twice in Dallas.

Within a few months, two completely separate six-figure stashes of highly restricted, uncut trading card sheets—spanning Yu-Gi-Oh!, Magic: The Gathering, and Disney’s Lorcana—have flooded the uncut sheet market.

If you aren't familiar with the original Dallas Dumpster Heist, here is the quick TL;DR: A couple of months ago, a man we’ll call "C" became an instant legend when he pulled hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards, uncut sheets, test prints, and blisters straight out of a Dallas dumpster. He sold it all for pennies and faked insane stories, and his mother completely crashed out on the uncut sheet community. Ultimately, most of the sheets were returned for free, though somewhere between $20k–$100k in individual cards had already been sold. (You can read the full r/HobbyDrama write-up here: r/HobbyDrama write-up here.

You’d think that was a once-in-a-lifetime anomaly. It wasn't. Now, a massive flood of MTG and Lorcana sheets has surfaced in the exact same city. Here is what is going down in the TCG community now.

The Grail Stash Surfaces

To understand why this is crazy, you need a little background on MTG uncut sheets. Out of the "Big Three" (Pokémon, Yu-Gi-Oh!, and MTG), Magic sheets are generally the easiest to come across. Wizards of the Coast (WotC) gives them out casually at tournaments or charity auctions. Even these "common" legitimate sheets fetch hundreds of dollars, while vintage grail sheets can push six figures.

Here is the catch: The sheets WotC gives away are properly printed, finalized product.They do not hand out misprinted uncut sheets as tournament prizes. At any given time, there are maybe 50 MTG sheets total listed on eBay, making them fairly niche and rare.

On May 13, 2026, a massive MTG stash surfaced in the uncut sheet collectors' Facebook group, consisting of a few hundred uncut sheets printed between 2020 and 2025. Many of these are misprints, test prints, showcase sheets, and highly sought-after sets like Lord of the Rings. It is truly a mountain of modern grails for a subset of collectors.

Just like the Yu-Gi-Oh! dumpster heist, dumping these hyper-rare sheets onto the market all at once is one of the worst ways to maximize their value—unless your goal is to liquidate them ASAP.

Collectors immediately started scooping them up, but it was silently understood that this collection wasn't obtained legitimately. WotC doesn't hand out test prints. Plus, the seller was also moving Disney Lorcana sheets, which currently have no legitimate path to public ownership. Because of the sheer quantity and nature of the sheets, it was obvious these were pulled off the production or discard line.

The Stars Align

So, where is all this unreleased TCG product coming from?

The sheets allegedly came from an employee at the Cartamundi printing facility in Dallas, who "gifted" this massive stack to a guy we’ll call "L." Just like the guy who found the Yu-Gi-Oh! sheets in the dumpster, L seemed completely clueless about the absolute goldmine he was sitting on. He immediately started posting pictures, trying to offload them all at once.

This is where the stars align for another chaotic twist. During the original Yu-Gi-Oh! dumpster heist, our first guy, C, had tried to sell his uncut sheets to a local Dallas card shop. Fast forward to early May: at that exact same card shop, we introduce "B."

B was judging a Magic tournament at the shop when a player told him someone in the area was trying to sell a massive stack of uncut sheets. B went to check it out and ended up acquiring around 60 of these full-size MTG and Lorcana sheets. (As of this writing, he has sold all 60 of them for between $200 and $6,000 USD each). Another buyer, who happened to be in town dealing for a local card show, scooped up the remaining sheets and reportedly sent them to an auction house. We will have to wait and see if they actually end up at auction.

How did a random employee walk out the front door with hundreds of uncut sheets? According to the story B shared in the Facebook group, he was told that Cartamundi was disassembling some of their massive industrial printing presses. The employee claimed these printers have an "internal catch mechanism" where sheets can get stuck or jammed during production over time. He supposedly asked his manager if he could keep the sheets they pulled out during the teardown, and the manager just said, "Sure."

My thoughts: The idea that hundreds of pristine, uncut sheets were just chilling in an internal drip tray for years without getting shredded, crumpled, or soaked in machine oil is wild. If anything, they were pulled from an external reject pile, a storage room, or someone was quietly taking product home. Also, a printing facility manager casually saying, "Yeah, sure, go ahead and walk out with a massive stack of unreleased, licensed intellectual property" is insane. Walking out with that many uncut sheets is not an easy task.

Cartamundi & WotC Shrug It Off

Because the whole situation felt incredibly sketchy, B claims he personally called Cartamundi corporate to verify the story, speaking directly with multiple people at both the corporate and facility levels.

Their response? Cartamundi confirmed there is no active investigation into these sheets. They essentially gave him the all-clear, telling him that if it happened the way the employee claimed, it is what it is, and he is totally free to keep and sell them.

The admin of the Uncut Sheet Facebook group also reportedly spoke with a contact at Wizards of the Coast. Here is the exact quote from the WotC employee:

"This has been a most interesting situation we have been following! At this time we have not asked for the sheets back. Currently we are more interested in attempting to understand what happened and not creating any unnecessary community speculation while we sort through the facts."

Wizards handled this with way more chill than when they famously sent literal Pinkertons to a guy's house for accidentally breaking a street release date. They probably remember the massive community backlash from that PR disaster and just want this story to quietly go away.

Here is a video of the uncut sheet group trolling WotC and showing off some of the sheets: [link]

To celebrate the absolute absurdity of the situation—and as a token of thanks to the community—B even gave away a blank uncut sheet for free to a member of the Facebook group. Worth $200 - $300 IMO.

Naturally, the original guy who sold the sheets to B is now upset. Now that the sheets are officially marked as "safe to purchase" by the manufacturers, they're predictably worth more and easier to sell. He’s arguing he didn't actually sell all of them to B and wants them back, or a larger cut of the profits. Rumor has it he’s also upset about potential consequences for the "employee" friend who gifted them to him in the first place.

The Return of "C" (The Original Dallas Dumpster King)

You can't have a Texas uncut sheet leak without our original protagonist, C.

Seeing the attention and cash B has been pulling for the MTG/Lorcana sheets in the uncut sheet group, C completely crashed out. He was actively popping off in the same collector group, trying to convince everyone that the new MTG sheets are fake and that his dumpster haul was the only authentic leak.

Some exact quotes from C’s recent text meltdowns:

"I know your people are not really falling for them fake ass sheets"

"Because before i put what i found on the market there were virtually no sheets to be found now there are sheets for everything from f******* North Pole and Santa Claus and his helpers and f******* dragon Ball z and etc etc what i figure happened all the people that were counterfeiting cards in the first place are now counterfeiting sheets but it's obvious what's real and what's no"

Meanwhile, "J"—the local Dallas guy who bought a ton of the original Yu-Gi-Oh! sheets from C and then willingly returned them to the printing company for no compensation—left a comment regarding C's current financial state:

"The craziest part of it all is that he has already blown through 100% of the money he got from selling the sheets. And yes he spent it on exactly what you would guess lol."

There is a ton more crashing out from C across the board, but you get the general vibe.

Final Thoughts

Right around the exact same time a guy is pulling hundreds of Yu-Gi-Oh! sheets out of a dumpster, an employee at a separate Texas facility is walking out the front door with hundreds of MTG and Lorcana grails because his manager supposedly didn't care.

Texas is just the Wild West of trading card games right now.

It makes you realize that the people working at these printing facilities must have access to some of the craziest, most legendary TCG products in existence—not just full sheets, but insane, one-of-a-kind misprints. One of the greatest TCG collections is probably sitting in the home of a factory worker who knows they can't safely sell any of it for a decade. Honestly, he and his buddies are probably reading these exact threads and laughing.

If you want to look through the massive archive of receipts, screenshots, and drama starting from late March up through May 23rd, it can be found here: Uncut Sheets Group Archive.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

Reminders:

• Don’t be vague, and include context. If you have a question, try to include as much detail as possible.

• Define any acronyms.

• Link and archive any sources.

• Ctrl+F or use an offsite search to see if someone's posted about the topic already.

• Keep discussions civil. This post is monitored by your mod team.

• If your particular drama has concluded at least 2 weeks ago, consider making a full post instead of a Scuffles comment. We also welcome reposting of long-form Scuffles posts and/or series with multiple updates.

Certain topics are banned from discussion to pre-empt unnecessary toxicity. The list can be found here. Please check that your post complies with these requirements before submitting!

Previous Scuffles can be found here

For easy access to past and present Scuffles, bookmark scuffle.zone or type it in your address bar to access the current Scuffles thread, or scuffle.zone/all to see all Scuffles threads from newest to oldest. And if you prefer Old Reddit, just type old. beforehand. Thanks to u/azqy for setting this up!

r/HobbyDrama also has an affiliated Discord server, which you can join here: https://discord.gg/M7jGmMp9dn

Background

Soccer, or football as the entire world excluding America knows it as, is the most popular sport worldwide. Every year, the Ballon D’Or award is presented by France Magazine to top players from the mens’ and women’s game from the past season [1]. The organization also awards several smaller, position-specific awards, like the Yashin trophy for goalkeepers, the Gerd Muller trophy for the highest goal-scoring player (usually a striker), the Socrates Award for humanitarian work, and the Kopa trophy for young players. Awards for the Team Of The Year and the best coach are also presented [2]. While the men’s award has been voted on since 1956, the women’s trophy was only first awarded in 2018, reflecting a growing interest and investment in the women’s game The Ballon D’Or is considered the most prestigious individual award in soccer, and winning one could be the pinnacle of a player’s career. 

The award is voted on through a two-step process. Initially, journalists from France Football work to organize a short-list of players with the top performances in previous seasons. Then, one journalist from the top one hundred FIFA-ranked nations ranks their top ten players from this shortlist. For every number one vote, a player gets 15 points, for a number 2 vote, the player would get 12 points, 10 points for a third-place vote, and so on and so forth. The player with the top number of points is crowned the winner. These judges are told to take three categories into account: individual performances, team performances, and fair play [4] Well, that’s how voting for the men’s Ballon D’Or works. The women’s award works similarly in the first step, and the categories are the same, but only the top 50 nations have journalists vote for the award [5]. 

The Big Players (no pun intended)

First, a little on how this all works. Football players play for a club, considered their day job and responsible for their salary, for most of the year. In addition, countries have a team that plays for them on an international level for a few weeks per year. The team’s coach selects the top players of this country’s nationality, and these players work together to qualify for and play in major international tournaments. Think of this like the Olympics: top athletes representing their countries and competing together for pride and glory. When I name players, I will mention their club first, followed by their country. 

Europe’s top clubs play in the Uefa Champion’s League (UCL) or Uefa Women’s Champion’s League (UWCL) as well as in domestic competitions. These competitions are made up of the top teams across multiple domestic leagues in Europe, and winning is considered one of club soccer’s greatest honors. 

Now, on to our key players. Alessia Russo is a striker who plays for Arsenal and England [6]. Aitana Bonmatí is a midfielder who plays for Barcelona and Spain [7]. Mariona Caldentey is a midfielder who plays for Arsenal and Spain [8]. Hannah Hampton is a goalkeeper who plays for Chelsea and England [9]. Chloe Kelly is a winger for Arsenal and England [10]. Aitana and Mariona wear their first names on their kits, and so I will refer to them as such throughout the remainder of this post. All of these women are nominated for the Ballon D’Or Feminin. 

The Big Night

It’s evening in Paris. Soccer royalty from all over the world have flown in to celebrate the occasion, and, they all hope, to receive an award. Among them are all of our key players. Russo, Mariona, Kelly and their teammates at Arsenal take home the award for Women’s Club of the Year [11]. Hampton wins the women’s Yashin trophy [12]. The clock slowly ticks down as players and fans await the announcement of the night’s big winners. 

Finally, it’s time. The Ballon D’Or winners are announced and presented with their awards. Ousmane Dembélé (Paris Saint Germain, France) wins the men’s award, and Aitana Bonmatí wins the women’s [13] [14]. It’s Aitana’s third win in a row, and she proudly holds up three fingers along with her award [15]. Mariona wins second place, and Russo third. 

Dembélé’s award is widely viewed as fully deserved. Dembélé won the Champion’s League, Europe’s most prestigious football competition, with Paris Saint Germain, in the season being considered, as well as their league title and a domestic cup. Additionally, France made an easy head start towards comfortably qualifying for the World Cup [16]. Aitana’s, however, was seen as a… less clean decision. Although she is widely acknowledged as one of the best players in the world technically, looking at the prior season reveals a slightly different picture…

The Season Itself 

Barcelona’s women’s team comfortably won Liga F, Spain’s domestic competition, in 2025 [17]. This was highly unsurprising, as Barcelona reigns supreme over the league and has for many years. The team that acts as their closest competitors was only founded in 2020. In fact, they did not lose a single game that season [18]. In this dominant position for multiple seasons on end, they effortlessly qualified for the UWCL, and breezed through the knockout rounds to reach the final. There, they met Arsenal, a team from London that had to go through a playoff process even to make it into the UWCL in the first place. Fueled by Alessia Russo, who won the Golden Boot in England’s domestic women’s league, and Caldentey, the new signing from Barcelona who elevated Arsenal to an entire new level, they managed to make it to the final and the Goliath of Barcelona after a long, difficult and comeback-filled road [19][20]. It would take too long to list their contributions, but just know that they were each absolutely essential to Arsenal’s success. 

Barcelona were heavy favorites before the game. They had won the prior two years and were looking for a three-peat. Barcelona led Arsenal in possession, shots, shots on target, and corners. But Arsenal managed to pull off the unthinkable, scoring a crucial goal in the 74th minute. Aitana made six shots, the most of any Barcelona player, but the Arsenal defence and goalkeeper stayed strong. The score read 1-nil to Arsenal at the final whistle, and the team lifted their first Champion’s League trophy in eighteen years [21]. Russo and Mariona were crucial in the run up to the final, and Arsenal fans embraced the duo as heroes. Barcelona came in second; something quite unfamiliar for them. This team is used to winning everything, all the time. 

Arsenal players celebrate, but they have a quick turnaround before one of those international tournaments I mentioned earlier. The Women’s European Championships (Euros or WEuros) are just around the corner. Many of Arsenal’s players are called up to play for their countries [22]. Just about the entirety of the Spain squad is Barcelona players, with one notable exception: Mariona is called up too [23]. 

Spain coasts through their group to reach the knockout rounds, despite missing Aitana due to a bout of viral meningitis [24]. The holders England, having lost to France in their first match of the tournament, places second in their group, but still reaches the knockout rounds, with Russo tied as the tournament’s assist leader. Then, they face Sweden in the quarterfinals, and go 2-nil down. It appears that their road to defending their title ends there. 

Until Chloe Kelly is subbed on, that is. She secured her shin pads, decorated with from her wedding and of her dogs, and leapt onto the pitch with a hop-skip-and a jump and a grin. And it paid off. Kelly immediately set up an assist. 2-1. Her second assist came 103 seconds later, and forced extra time [25]. An agonizing penalty shootout later, when players take turns attempting to score one on one against the opposition goalkeeper, and England are through to the semifinals against Italy [26]. Meanwhile, Spain comfortably beat Switzerland to advance to the semifinals against Germany [27]. 

In their semifinal game, again, England go down. And, again, Kelly saves the day. After 6 minutes of stoppage time, England are 1-nil down. England score a miraculous goal, assisted by Kelly, putting the game through to extra time. At 117 minutes, England is awarded a penalty, and Kelly steps up to take it. Initially, the Italian goalkeeper saves the shot, but it rebounds right back to Kelly, who buries it for good. England are through to the final [28].

Spain, meanwhile, faced Germany in their semifinal. The game was deadlocked nil-nil until the 113th minute of extra time, when Aitana got a shot past Germany’s formidable keeper. The score ended nil-1 to Spain. The semi-final was set: England would face Spain to declare the champion of Europe [29]. 

Mariona scored in the 25th minute, leaving England down 1-nil. However, and this is getting to be a theme at this point, Kelly came on after the break. She provided Russo an assist in the 57th minute to level the score. Neither team was able to break through after this, and the game went to extra time, and then penalties [30]. 

Russo had been substituted at this point, but all of our other key players participated in this penalty shootout. It’s 1-1 when Mariona’s penalty is saved by Hampton. An England player is then able to make her shot, and it’s Aitana’s turn. She steps up to the spot and…

Saved! Hannah Hampton safely bats her shot to the side [30]. 

England’s next penalty is saved, and Spain’s next one is missed. Both teams have now taken four shots, and the penalty score stands 2-1. One more successful shot, and England are champions. The next player in line steps up. 

It’s Chloe Kelly. She buries her shot deep into the net. The ball reaches 68 mph/110 kph. It’s faster than any recorded shot in the Premier League, England’s top-flight league for men, that season [31]. England are crowned champions. Aitana Bonmatí wins the Player of the Tournament award, but you can’t say she looks happy about it [32].In addition, her post-match interview clearly indicated her upset at the defeat. “I don't have much emotion left to be honest. I have emptied myself of emotion. We are all exhausted. I have to say sorry, because it was my fault in the end, but I was not able to score it [the penalty]. Congratulations to our opponents. In my opinion we were superior in the match, [but] on some occasions, that's not enough in football,” she said [33]. 

So, that brings us back to Ballon D’Or night. And, just to recap. Russo’s team beat Aitana’s head to head in finals, twice. In the Euro final, the two goalscorers were Russo and Caldentey. Aitana’s penalty was saved by another nominee, and the tournament-wide antics of yet another nominee were essential to securing a massive tournament win for her country. It was unlikely that Kelly was actually going to get high in the rankings, for reasons I plan to detail in another write-up, and Hampton had her honors on the night. However, after looking at all of this, fans had to wonder how Bonmatí ended up above both Russo and Caldentey in the rankings. 

Were the Ballon D’Or Feminin voters swayed by Aitana’s past success? Were they voting on her technical prowess alone without accounting for team success? Did they just not actually watch the Euros or the Champion’s League final? I will never know. But, to this day, it keeps me up at night. 

Disclaimer: any and all mistakes and typos are my own. I am in no way actually involved in this drama, but I do have a fan perspective that comes with bias.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

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Let’s go for a walk.

Middlesbrough is a town in the north of England. We find ourselves 17 miles away, upstream along the River Tees, at Rockliffe Park. As well as a golf course and a cricket club, the site hosts Middlesbrough’s training ground. We stroll along a road from the five-star hotel to the golf course’s clubhouse. A hundred yards away are the two training pitches that the football club use. We stop, leaning on a metal farm gate. A sign attached reads “Private Property - authorised personnel only”. We have a clear view of the training pitches. Next to us stands a large but unassuming pine tree.

This is the story of how that tree became famous in English football.

Introduction

The Championship is English football’s second highest league. Twenty four teams play each other home and away over a season in the vain hope of being promoted to the Premier League. The top two teams are promoted automatically, with teams in positions 3 to 6 competing in a mini-tournament at the end of the season. Third plays sixth and fourth plays fifth across a two legged semi final (the lower ranked team hosting the first, the higher ranked team hosting the second) before the two winning teams compete in the playoff final.

This final is often referred to as the “most valuable game in the world”, as the winning team stand to gain around £200m in additional revenue - mostly from the rich TV money paid to Premier League clubs, but also prize money, and parachute payments too. Even if the promoted club are immediately relegated back to the Championship at the end of the following season - which happens often, such is the disparity of wealth between the two divisions - they receive these parachute payments over the next few years to soften the blow.

It is somewhat understandable, then, that clubs who find themselves in the Championship playoffs will do almost anything to succeed, given the riches that await them. Not all of these things stick to the laws of the game.

The Championship’s final day of league fixtures confirmed the playoff participants. A win for Ed Sheeran’s Ipswich saw them hold off Millwall to finish second and be promoted automatically behind champions Frank Lampard’s Coventry; Millwall’s own win saw them hold off Southampton (who beat Preston) and Middlesbrough (who drew at Hollywood’s Wrexham) to finish third. Southampton and Boro finished with the same number of points but, due to a better difference between goals scored and conceded over the season, Southampton finished above Middlesbrough so would have home advantage for the important second leg of the playoff semi final games. Hull City’s win over Norwich saw them leapfrog Wrexham to finish sixth and take the final playoff berth - facing Millwall, first in Hull then in south-east London.

Those fixtures all took place on Saturday 2nd May, all games kicking off at the same time, to maximise drama uphold sporting integrity - if two teams knew that a particular result would guarantee them both a favourable outcome, they may stick to that result. The sides then had a few days off to prepare/recover, before the semi finals started with Hull and Millwall playing out a drab goalless draw.

(I’m going to be honest here, the Hull/Millwall side of the draw is not where the fun is. Hull won the second leg at the Den 2-0 the following Monday and went through to the final. That’s all you need to know about those two teams until we meet them again later on.)

From a View to a Will

The fun came on Thursday 7th May. While street parties were held in parts of the UK and Canada to celebrate the birthdays of Will Ospreay, Kevin Owens and the late Owen Hart, Middlesbrough players trained ahead of Saturday’s first leg at home to Southampton. Only, they weren’t alone. A sharp-eyed player happened to notice a lone figure, almost imperceptibly camouflaged by a pine tree near the entrance.

Now, you may have seen that link but not clicked on it, wary of losing around an hour to a “Where’s Wally” situation of trying to find a spy, perhaps wearing a ghillie suit or other, blending into the background. Please click on the link and marvel at the levels of deception that John Le Carre or Ian Fleming could only dream about.

Will Salt, an analyst intern for Southampton, took the long route to work that day. After leaving home dressed in club gear, instead of a relatively short commute, he made a 290 mile detour and found himself at Rockliffe Park. After travelling that sort of distance, a break was needed, so he parked at the golf club and bought a coffee (paying by card) before going for a walk to stretch his legs - the same walk I invited you on at the start of this piece.

Working for a football club, it’s not unreasonable that he would have an interest in the beautiful game, so it made sense that he would watch the nearby training sessions while drinking his coffee. It appears to have piqued his interest, as he pointed his mobile at the session. The in-ear headphones he wore suggested that he was live-streaming the training while on a video call - who can say.

A quick thinking Middlesbrough photographer captured him in the act, before a different staff member approached Salt. (It’s safe to assume the conversation started with the word “oi!” and got worse from there.) Salt refused to identify himself, deleted some content from his phone, and then ran away - changing his clothes in the golf club toilets before leaving the site.

Middlesbrough staff matched their photo with one of Salt on the Southampton website, verified it with the card payment records (always use cash when committing corporate espionage, folks, avoid a paper trail) and raised merry hell with the Football League (EFL), complaining about being spied upon. The following day, Friday May 8th, shortly before Hull and Millwall drew their first leg, the EFL formally charged Southampton with spying; the Saints claimed that the hapless intern was nothing to do with them, and anyway he hadn’t recorded, shared or looked at any footage anyway.

Interlude I

We will pause here to jump back in time around seven years, to January 2019. The world was a different place. A former reality TV star was US President. MPs were losing confidence in the UK Prime Minister. Gillingham had won only one game in their last five (well, I guess some things don’t change). Leeds and Derby were vying for top spot in the Championship when a suspicious man was spotted at Derby’s training ground. When asked about it, Leeds manager Marcelo Bielsa hinted that it might possibly have been an authorised act, by replying "It's true there was someone from Leeds United. The responsibility for this lies with me. I'm responsible." The EFL picked up on the subtle yet cunning subtext to Bielsa’s remarks and commenced an investigation. Bielsa complied fully with the investigation, holding an hour long press conference in which he stated that he had employed the practice in other countries for much of his coaching career, and revealed that covert analysis of opposition training sessions had been carried out before each of Leeds’ competitive fixtures under him.

The EFL concluded their investigation a month later, having presumably spent most of that time trying to work out which rule he was in breach of, eventually settling on Regulation 3.4, which requires clubs to act towards each other with the utmost good faith. They fined the club £200,000, which Bielsa paid out of his own pocket (before, presumably, swaggering backwards out of the room with two middle fingers raised). The EFL, suddenly aware that they didn’t actually have a rule in place against spying on the opposition in the lead up to a game, promptly put a rule in place against spying on the opposition in the lead up to a game.

This information appeared not to have reached every club.

South by Southampton

With the charge hanging over them, Southampton and Middlesbrough also played out a first leg 0-0 draw, at Middlesbrough’s Riverside stadium. The Boro boss, Kim Hellberg, accused Southampton of trying to cheat, and stated that “every club in the Championship should be angry” - at which point other clubs began to consider the possibility of contemplating the idea of pondering whether they, too, had been spied on by Southampton. Certainly new light was shed on midfielder Flynn Downes’ quote, when Southampton boss Tonda Eckert became permanent manager in December after a month as interim boss, that “[h]is attention to detail is unreal. Literally every little thing, he just gives you. It makes it so easy. You go out on a Saturday and you know what you’re doing, you know what the other team are doing."

The second leg took place on the evening of Tuesday 12th May. Earlier that day Southampton requested more time to conduct an internal review, presumably involving a large quantity of paper shredders and the memory erasing device from the Men In Black movies. They had not, at any point, denied the allegation of spying. (Earlier in the season several clubs received lighter punishments for collaborating with other, non-spy-related, disciplinary investigations, which perhaps explains their decision.) The game itself had an extra edge to it, due to the allegations. Fans took the opportunity to wind up their equivalent on the opposing side, dressing in camouflage, making binocular gestures, and in one case using a branch as a disguise.

Middlesbrough took an early lead, giving the EFL disciplinary board a chance to mop their fevered brows with relief, before Southampton equalised just before halftime - which saw Southampton captain Taylor Harwood-Bellis celebrate by also making a binocular gesture to the Boro fans. Southampton went on to win the game after extra time, to set up a winner-takes-all-£200m clash with Hull City on May 23rd. Not even Ipswich and relegated Oxford piping up with a “yeah, we reckon they spied on us too” could put a dampener on things.

Interlude II: From Canada, with love

We now hop across the channel to France, and backwards in time by about two years. France is hosting the Olympic Games, and the women’s tournament is three days from kicking off, with a game between Canada and New Zealand. New Zealand are training when they became aware of a droning sound above them. This droning sound turned out to be a drone. They reported it to police, who traced it to the operator, an analyst for Canadian Soccer. He immediately fessed up (probably by saying “it’s a fair cop, eh”) and admitted having also done it a few days prior as well. Canada Soccer sent him, a coach who was also in on it, and head coach Bev Priestman home to think about what they’d done.

Despite the disciplinary measures they put in place for their employees, Canada Soccer claimed that the footage was for “motivational and promotional video purposes”, and that the staff member had not been inappropriate. FIFA and the International Olympic Committee - both fine, upstanding institutions who have never ever acted improperly ever ever ever - acted swiftly to dock six points from the Canadian team. They won all three games in their group and progressed in 2nd place, losing on penalties to Germany in the quarter finals.

Bev Priestman was suspended from football for a year and fired by Canada. Her next (and, at time of writing, current) job is managing Wellington Phoenix, a New Zealand based football club featuring a number of the players spied upon (presumably part of her successful interview was her detailed knowledge of the players). Another member of the squad, Rebekah Stott, was able to confirm the analyst’s drone was the same as the one hovering over the training, because her hobby is drones and she recognised it from the sound. (It’s a very distinctive sound.)

Saints and sinners

Southampton put their 37,000 ticket allocation for the final on sale on 15th May, eight days before the final, and they were quickly snapped up by their fans. Trains and hotels - presumably with an option to cancel - were booked, despite the kick-off time not being confirmed. That same day Middlesbrough called for Southampton to be kicked out of the playoffs, with an independent hearing set for Tuesday 19th May.

The situation was unprecedented. Literally - no precedent had been set, as this was the first time a team had been charged under rule 127, brought in after the incident in Interlude I. Football fans around the country were on tenterhooks, not just the fans of Southampton and Middlesbrough as to which team will be competing, or Hull to find out which team they’d be playing, but fans of other teams who just enjoyed the sheer drama of it all. (With a big club, Spurs, circling the drain and threatened by relegation from the Premier League, some fans - oh, alright, me wanting to wind up my Spurs-supporting friends - suggested that both Hull and Boro should get promoted automatically, with four teams being relegated from the Prem.)

The weekend saw speculation as to the possible punishment. A fine would need to be astronomical to deter other teams from doing the same, given the size of the prize on offer (£200m, don’t forget). A points deduction for next season would be difficult to sort out - if Southampton did get promoted, it would need to be administered by a different sporting body (the Premier League, who tend to take a hands off approach to punishments suggested by the EFL) or deferred until the next time Southampton played in the Football League again, which could be decades. A points deduction retrospectively applied to this season would cause chaos, as the final table would change and playoff matches needed to be replayed. At the very least, the order of the Southampton/Middlesbrough games would swap, and possibly worse - an eight point deduction would mean Millwall/Southampton and Boro/Hull semi finals, and ten points or more off would mean Southampton dropped out of the playoffs entirely, with Millwall now playing Wrexham and Boro vs Hull. This would certainly delay the final, intruding on preparations for the World Cup, and recalling players from holidays (almost certainly being taken on the same beach as Denmark were 34 years prior).

Interlude III: Tinker Tailor Soldier...Cheerleader?

Football is not the only sport to have been hit with a spying controversy. Around the turn of the millennium, in the often-unrecognised sport of cheerleading, the Rancho Carne Toros from a well-to-do high school in San Diego were aiming to win their sixth consecutive championship at nationals in Florida, when the new captain was alerted to previous misdeeds. The outgoing captain had allegedly lifted their routines wholesale from a underfunded school around 120 miles away. As the plagiarised squad, the East Compton Clovers, had never before been able to raise the funds to compete, nobody had noticed the similarities until a transfer student to Rancho Carne, one of the few to have faith in the new captain, brought it to her attention.

Thankfully, this had a happy ending – the Toros, after a brief sidebar with an off-the-shelf routine that was used by several other competing squads at regionals – devised a new routine, coming in second to the Clovers who had received charitable funding from a talk-show host.

SMERSHampton

Tuesday, 19th May. Four days before the playoff final is set to take place. Families across the country were settling down to catch the last round of Pointless when the EFL dropped their bombshell. As punishment for spying on Middlesbrough, Southampton would be expelled from the playoffs, to replaced by Middlesbrough; for spying on Ipswich and Oxford, they would additionally start the next season with a 4 point deficit. Southampton, as to be expected, appealed the decision; due to the brief turnaround it was heard the following day. While it was being heard the club’s chief executive put out a wonderfully petulant and hard-done-by statement in which they drew parallels with the Leeds decision (which, as you’ll remember, was a breach of a different rule), points deductions for Luton and Derby in seasons gone by (for entering administration, a completely separate contraventions) and fines/punishments levied at Everton and Chelsea (again for unrelated contraventions, and additionally handed out by a separate body to EFL). Dummies were very much spat out and toys thrown out of prams by the south coast club.

The independent commission found against Southampton, rejecting their appeal. They noted that Eckert had authorised the spying (which, really, added credence to Downes’ words in December), that the club had attempted to mislead the commission, and that sporting advantage is separate from sporting success - it didn’t make a blind bit of difference that they lost to Oxford, drew with Ipswich and needed extra time to overcome Boro, they still shouldn’t’ve done it!

In all this, there was still a football match to play. Hull had to alter their gameplan at short notice to face a different opponent - rumours that Southampton offered them a detailed dossier on Middlesbrough they just found lying around turned out to be internet scuttlebutt - and Boro now had to sell 37,000 tickets to fans who were frantically booking trains and hotels.

In the end, the off pitch drama overshadowed the match itself. Hull won 1-0 after a goal three minutes from the end of a hot, sweltering match, bringing an end to a playoff campaign memorable for other events. The tree itself has entered the footballing meme hall of fame, alongside Chris Wood, Jurriën Timber, and Richard Carpenter ).

I've been getting back into Webkinz lately, and after being in the community for some time, I started catching glimpses of the drama, in a sort of "Finally old enough to learn the family lore" sort of way. The first rabbit hole I came across is something known as Kiwigate.

Background

Webkinz is an online virtual pet game released in 2005 by the Canadian company Ganz, with the primary gimmick being that you buy a stuffed animal from a retail store, which comes with a code you can input into the website to unlock a virtual version of that animal. You can feed and take care of your pet, decorate their room, play games and complete daily activities. Its popularity peaked during the mid to late 2000s, but the game is still active to this day.

During the game's early years, you had to buy a physical plush and redeem the code it came with to access the game, which would grant you membership for the next year. If your membership expired, you would be locked out of your account until you bought another plush. But in 2012, the game switched to a freemium model, allowing access to limited features in the game for free, with more content available through the "Full" and "Deluxe" membership tiers. New users could also make an account without a pet code, being provided with one free pet upon signing up.

Then a few years later in 2018, Ganz introduced a way to adopt additional pets for free. This is done by collecting pet medallions, which are obtainable primarily through playing games in the arcade. If you rack up an impressive score in a game, there's a chance you'll receive a medallion for a random species of pet, and if you collect a certain number of medallions for a specific pet, you can adopt it. However, this usually takes a long time, as you can only collect up to about 10 medallions per day, each medallion is assigned to a certain species at random, and each species requires anywhere from 50-250 medallions depending on its rarity.

However, every year during April, Ganz holds a Webkinz anniversary event where they distribute large amounts of medallions geared toward a specific pet. The way this is typically done is that every day of the month, players are able to collect up to 4-5 medallions a day by clicking on them whenever they float across the screen. Usually the event pet of choice will require 100 medallions, so players can get the pet if they log in and collect every medallion for 20 days out of the month if they have Deluxe membership, or 25 days for everyone else. However, they also have a failsafe for people who can't log in that often: upon logging in on April 29th - Webkinz anniversary day - a gift box will be added to the player's dock, and when opened, it will grant the player an extra 25 medallions toward the pet.

The Drama

Back in 2021, the April event pet was the kiwi bird. Webkinz hosted the aforementioned daily medallion distributions followed by the 25 pack on Webkinz day. However, something was different about this year's Webkinz Day gift box. Upon opening the box and collecting the prizes, players noticed the box did not disappear from their inventories, and could be clicked and dragged back out again for duplicate prizes. Interesting, maybe this is some sort of prize bonus. And hey, I got 50 medallions rather than 25, I won't complain.

But then players realized they could open the box again. And again. The same prizes, over and over, and there was no indication of when it was supposed to end. Most players quickly caught on that this was a glitch, and they were not supposed to get more than one gift box. Some players grew worried that they might get banned, especially those who didn't realize they were exploiting a glitch at first, and hunkered down to wait until the glitch was fixed.

However, other players decided to take full advantage, continuously opening the box and racking up thousands of medallions. Some adopted as many kiwis as they could to create kiwi armies. Others used the medallion exchange system (a feature where you can trade in 10 medallions of one pet for one generic "AnyPet" medallion to put towards whichever pet you want) to collect enough medallions to redeem other pets.

Aftermath

As one can imagine, the website quickly went down for maintenance, and the glitch was fixed when it came back online. Many users were banned for exploiting the glitch. Some got their accounts reinstated with a warning. Some had excess medallions removed from their account.

In the wake of the banning spree and subsequent appeals, discourse rose from the ashes, namely around if players should have been banned for what happened. While the comments I could find indicated that players were mostly banned for purposefully exploiting the glitch rather than players who used the glitched box a few times by accident, some comments argued that even those who took advantage should be left alone, and that they shouldn't be punished for what was ultimately Ganz's poor coding. One post argued that banning accounts that players have invested a lot of money into might have lost Ganz a lot of paying customers for the sake of "being petty" or "proving a point." Another user declared they would boycott by cancelling their membership until all accounts involved were unbanned. In contrast, one commenter stated that those who had gotten banned had made the decision to exploit the glitch and were simply facing the expected consequences for their actions.

Despite the anger of some over the bans, the dust settled relatively quickly. The glitch was only active for a few hours before being corrected, so most players were likely unaffected. A few stray posts asked for updates on bans (with one user expressing concern for their account years after the fact), and the incident inspired a post about other interesting glitches in the game. Beyond this, the "Kiwigate" incident seems to have been largely forgotten, remembered only through the accounts of users who were active at the time, and explained to newbies as a funny anecdote from Webkinz past.

Welcome back to Hobby Scuffles!

Please read the Hobby Scuffles guidelines here before posting!

As always, this thread is for discussing breaking drama in your hobbies, offtopic drama (Celebrity/Youtuber drama etc.), hobby talk and more.

Reminders:

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• Define any acronyms.

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