ToyVey!

Oh, what a day.

We spent the bulk of our day travelling from shopping mall to shopping mall, getting clothing repaired and returning items and picking up items and buying the World’s Tiniest Unicron and hunting down the elusive Sector Seven Truck.

Yes, Sector Seven, the highly secretive government agency from the 2007 Transformers Movie had brought its Mobile Command Unit to Springfield to assure citizens that NBE (Non-Biological Entities) absolutely did not exist.

Locating the Sector Seven Mobile Command Unit was no easy task. The information we’d gleaned on the internet indicated that they’d be at a certain address in West Springfield. We arrived at a movie theatre, where the employees informed us that the Sector Seven truck was at “the ____ mall” “across the street”. She also told us that the event was from 6 to 9– my husband had thought it was from 4 to 9, and I had thought that it started at 5.

We went to the Riverdale Mall across the street and spent an aimless hour or so walking around and looking for the Mobile Command Unit. After shuffling between one strip mall and another, we decided to go back to the movie theatre and ask for detailed directions…

…whereupon it was discovered that the Mobile Command Unit was actually at a totally different movie theatre connected to a mall in Springfield.

We eventually made our way there and lined up outside of the truck to await our turn. Several groups of children and adult were ushered in, as others exited the truck with expressions of awe or heatstroke. A small adorable child joined us (despite a sign noting that parents had to accompany any children under 13) and was quite possibly the only person in our group who WASN’T an adult geek in an Adult Swim or 80s Nostalgia shirt.

As our group climbed the steps into the truck, a Sector Seven agent asked the little boy if he were scared. The child responded that he was “a little nervous”, whereupon the Sector Seven agent pointed to the numerous liquid nitrogen blaster-packs hung up on the wall and assured the tyke that “if anything happens, you can use those to fly away safely”. While this seemed highly unlikely from a scientific point of view, it was an unexpectedly cute suggestion from the normally stony-faced agents of Sector Seven.

We were given a briefing on how NBEs did not in any way exist. A fellow in a Dukes of Hazzard t-shirt was inspected for signs of Ear Fungus and asked if he had exhibited any flu-like symptoms of late. We were again reminded that NBEs did not exist and a cover-up was certainly not underway, when an urgent video message came through from Central Command… leading in to a 8 to 10 minute clip from the movie. Several times during the movie, our friendly Sector Seven agent quietly went into a back room, where a sinister Frenzy could be seen in a battered cage.

My husband pointed out Frenzy to the little boy, who then spent the rest of his time alternating between staring at the carnage on-screen and peeking through the sliding door at Frenzy (careful not to be spotted, of course!)

We picked up some posters with $5 off coupons for the Transformers Movie games and made our way home, keeping our eyes peeled for any NBEs that might or might not exist.