Collecto-monofranchise-tosis is like aspergers but without the cool mutant powers

It seems like this is a fantastic year for so many entertainment franchises. It's the year Transformers got a live action movie, Star Wars and G.I. Joe are celebrating major anniversaries and G4 is constantly calling this the biggest year ever in video gaming. There's plenty of opportunity for me join in these consumptive pop culture celebrations thanks to the multiple retail outlets here in Rapid City that stock all the latest popular materialisms in sufficient quantities for the legions of 30 year old hardcore fans (and the children they're meant for) to buy them. And so, as it is the obligation of anyone born in the seventies to give thanks and praise to the fictional characters that have artificially prolonged our childhoods and stunted our ability to function in society as mature adults, I have gleefully joined in the consumpty trinket orgies. Or have I?

It's not my Vault! It's not my Vault!

I know this is the thirtieth anniversary of Star Wars and I should be Star Warsing hard, but I haven't really Star Warsed at all. I have looked through the awesome Making of Star Wars book and equally impressive Star Wars Vault at the local Borders bookstore but I haven't bought either of them. Hell even Marvel Comics released a Vault format book. These Vaults are awesome but each time I go I just look through them like a vault looker. I should be eating this stuff up! If it were the Transformers Vault, I'd own the hardback, the paperback and the super deluxe edition with a lock of Peter Cullen's pubic hair. What is wrong with me?

I like to fool myself into thinking that I'm some sort of videogamer just because I bought a Playstations3 back in May, but in reality I only bought it because of the Transformers game and Need For Speed Carbon (which I wanted because the cars look like Transformers). Here's a confession-video games really do nothing for me. When I was a kid I never really got into video games. I am the last generation where toys were cooler than video games. NES and Atari 2600 graphics really couldn't compete with toy robots cartoons when I was little. I never had an NES and honestly I only bought a Super NES, Turbografx-16, Gameboy, N-64, Gamecube and PS3 to try to fit in with the normal people. But it was all a lie. All those fighting games with scantily clad muscley guys fighting sexy monsters was a bit too homoerotic for me (except if those sexy monsters were sexy robots). Again, is something wrong with me?

Fighting game? I thought it was a robot/caveman buttsex simulator!

The answer is no. In my young impressionable years I chose robots over Star Wars and video games and it kind of stuck, defining my likes for the rest of my life. I have only a finite amount of attention to pay and sentimentality to attach to things. Once chosen, my likes became hardwired into my DNA. The best way I can explain it is it's analogous to the way chestbursters from the ALIEN movies take the physical characteristics of their host organisms. I had one period in my life where I was susceptible to the influences of one pop culture franchise and I chestbursted out of Transformers. And it pisses me off because the Speilbergs and Nintendos and Stan Lees of the world want all my "like". What I'm trying to say is, damn it, there's only so much "like" to spread around here, George Lucas.

This is the Roboplastico-Collecto-monofranchise-tosis gene molecule magnified 10 times

Maybe I'm the exception and other people have the ability to adopt multiple intense leisurely devotions, but I am blind to the allure of plastic Princess Leias and virtual video game guitars. I just cannot attach on a sentimental level to robotless fictions. If I had to give it a name, I'd call it Collecto-monofranchise-tosis, the condition of being devoted to one specific pop culture franchise to the exclusion of all others. I guess I would have a certain modified version of Collecto-monofranchise-tosis called Roboplastico-Collecto-monofranchise-tosis. I can only enjoy plastic robots.

However, I am at worst only a moderate case of RCMFT. In my collection there is an assload of Transformers but there's also a few droids, Spawns, Evangelions, and Care Bears and Lynn Minmei blow up dolls. So I'm not totally entirely consumed by Transformers. The key to diagnosing extreme cases of Roboplastico-Collecto-monofranchise-tosis would be assessing the overall ratio of robots to non-robots in a person's collection. RCMFT intensity is independent of how many robots you have. If after thirty years all your collection consists of is a 1984 Bumblebee and a 2007 movie Bumblebee, then that's chronic Roboplastico-Collecto-monofranchise-tosis. My recommendation is take two Ewoks and call me in the morning.

CMFT is a socially debilitating, virginity inducing epidemic that's a terrible thing unless you're George Lucas. It kinda works in his favor. Pop culture franchises need millions of people to be infected with their particular strain of CMFT in order to survive. CMFT is the geek disease and its embarrassing affects can be found in all walks of society. We need to be sensitive to those suffering with Collecto-monofranchise-tosis because it affects millions of nerds we know. Well, maybe not that many. Okay it just affects me. But at least now I have a name for why I write these retarded 900 word essays on toy robots.