Free ROM: Let the Revolution Begin!
Comic books and toys go together like peanut butter and jelly, or boobs and my computer screen. The most obvious connection is that both hobbies are pursued by similar types of nerds, so the crossover between the hobbies is quite expansive. I’m not as big of a comic fan as I am of toys, but it’s definitely in my nerd stable, as evidenced by my Toy Ads that Time Forgot posts featuring ads found in comic books. One of my favorite comic book blogs is Chris’s Invincible Super Blog, a blog that I’ve brought up several times before in the hopes that I might appear as a tiny blip on the radar of my personal comic book collecting hero Chris Sims. Chris has taken up the banner of an issue that hits me very close to home, the not so small matter of ROM The Spaceknight’s exile.

I discovered ROM comics a little over a year ago and immediately fell in love with the adventurous cyborg hero. (By the way: You can check out this post I wrote to catch you up to speed with Rom if you are among the unwashed masses who have no idea who ROM is.) I’ve got no real attachment to the toy, but therein lies the problem. Marvel can’t legally reproduce all their flipping awesome ROM comics because they don’t have legal rights to the character. It also means they can’t make new comics featuring ROM, which is perhaps an even bigger tragedy. Those legal rights are held by Parker Brothers, who is in turn owned by Hasbro.
I tried contacting Hasbro’s PR reps and have received no answer so far. I’ll keep you up to date on the situation as it develops.
toy, toy collecting, comic books, ROM, Parker Brothers, Hasbro


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