Gigantor Revisited

This is a mindless post, so don't waste your time reading it unless you really want to know what Gigantor was. If you're still with me, then here goes.

If you are a late-stage Baby-Boomer (i.e., born between 1956 and 1962), you probably watched an eclectic and long-forgotten animated TV series entitled "Gigantor". I hear this word a lot these days---the latest word zeitgeist I suppose. In the recent comedic blockbuster, "Night at the Museum," it is an epithet Owen Wilson bestows upon Ben Stiller during a heated exchange in the diorama. "Gigantor" was also one of my nicknames as a kid because my last name pronounced in its native Ukrainian somehow reminded the local village idiot of the word. (Explanatory note: The local village idiot, whose last name sounded like, "lunkhead," but whom I shall simply call, "Moe"--cf. Calvin and Hobbes---of whom we had several in our neighborhood growing up, couldn't even pronounce his own two syllable last name let alone a three syllable name of Ukrainian origin. Anyway, the epithet turned out to be prophetic, because at my present height, I tend to tower over most people like Gigantor did. (Moe was not being clever. Moe did not have brains. Suffice it to say at the time I knew Moe, I was a peanut.) You can also find the word used in hundreds of internet sites, but try to find anything on the original animated TV series and you get zilch. Amazing. What happened to it? Anyone out there with that knowledge please feel free to comment with an answer.

So who or what was Gigantor? Well, if you're still with me, I'll continue. In the big scheme of things it's a pointless subject and maybe that is why it has been forgotten, but then again, so was Spiderman, but that hasn't been. In any case, I am setting the record straight for posterity. Besides, if people actually care about Anna Nicole Smith, Britney Spears, Paris Hilton, and OJ, then they have to care about Gigantor who is at least as relevant and ranks right up there in order of importance, and as history has shown has been as influential.

As mentioned above, Gigantor was an animated TV series that aired in the mid-1960's that featured a huge robot, named, you guessed it, Gigantor. The cartoon series had its own catchy theme song, the tune of which I have since long forgotten. The robot, which I have heard was green in color from spoiled kids who had colored TV during that era (a rarity then...most of us had black & whites), and it also had its nemesis, a black robot, the name of which I have also forgotten, was equally as huge and was always causing Gigantor trouble. I also recall there was this boy character who had befriended Gigantor and was always being saved by Gigantor...actually, they were more like a team. My nine year-old son tells me that idea of the series "sounds a lot like "Transformers", which tells me that Transformers was probably a re-make of the Gigantor series with a different name.

That's all I remember. Everything else is shady. After all, I was only three at the time. Maybe someone in Hollywood with more financial resources than me will make a non-animated movie version of the former Gigantor TV series. Although, I would be happy if Liketelevision.com would be able to find the series buried somewhere in an archive and post it for watching on the internet--for free. If you happen to find a link somewhere in cyberspace that can offer more details on this all-important subject, feel free to leave a comment. Now you can use the word, "Gigantor", with some knowledge of its origins. And you thought it was just a cool word that some surfer dude in California made up. Not.


Post Script: Thanks to CrewCon for setting me straight on Gigantor's correct spelling, and for bringing back memories that were long forgotten in watching a clip from the series on YouTube.