#barbara stringband

[fauxfickle]

"Ladies and gentlemen!

Here's a beauty who is also a beast!

She sings like a little birdy and to the eyes she's a feast

Barbara Stringband's her name, the only lady of our band

So please, make her feel welcome with a great big hand!"

***

Since the full Major Magics showtape is being uploaded all through May, here's some Barba for ya, being the best as per usual. This piece was inspired by a note left on her design sketches. She was originally going to have full control of her legs, being able to jump, kick, and squat! Unfortunately, it never made it into her final design due to time and budget constraints, maybe for the best since I can imagine her breaking off the stage and falling onto some poor kid. I do like how the note also calls her "little", when she's probably at least 5'9'' and somehow weighs 280 pounds!

Also the alt with no sparkly sparkle

[purpletrashsnake]

Barbara Stringband from Major Magics perhaps?

I gotchu

[aoifeart777]

major magics tapes were found and are being digitized!!! So cool!

[dailyanimatronics]

[ID: a drawing of barbara stringband from major magic's rock n roll rebellion. her white neck fur is stylized to look like a goatee. she's wearing a white long sleeved shirt and a long rainbow striped vest, along with blue jeans and boots. she has a black and white guitar with white stars. she's standing on a record, with a rainbow colored musical scale with various notes on it behind her. the drawing has a bright tone. /end ID]

based on this instagram user's barbara !! just with her old guitar. she is gorgeous!

[mitziagainsttheworld]

intro post!!

hi, i’m mitzi!!

this blog is run by @clairyclue

this blog is part of my personal au’s canon- which means Mitzi is around 15, her mom is Mini, and she grew up in SoCal. when she auditioned for Rockafire, she moved to LA with her aunt Queenie (who was Mini’s stepsister, when Queenie’s mom Foxie Colleen was married to Mini’s dad. theyre divorced now.) she spends the rest of her teenage years living with Queenie (and later, Queenie’s girlfriend Barbara Stringband.)

concept unification is when Rockafire takes up a business deal with a shady manager, Chuck E. Cheese, to collaborate with his business and save their band after their previous manager Klunk quits.

things don’t go well.

anyway that’s the majority of it!!

this blog is a safe space, no NSFW, feel free to send asks!!

[animatronicoftheday]

today's animatronic of the day is barbara stringband from major magic's all star pizza revue!

[shoddities]

Audio from the Major Magics animatronic show featuring Barbara Stringband (One of my personal favorite animatronics) singing The Main Event and Stoney End. Both songs from her name sake Barbra Streisand!

[clairyclue]

Hiii Again! I'm just wondering if u had any more little tidbits about the animal crackers au!

I am OBSESSED with this AU :3

i do, i always do

-beach bears real name is benjamin

-dook was valedictorian of his high school coass

-contrary to what aaron says, fatz is a music teacher with a degree and several certifications, reading glasses, a house and a husband. the most street smart here is crusty

-crusty grew up in poverty and struggled to provide for himself and his alcoholic mother. when he was 14 chuck hired him to deliver packages. he got entrenched in the mafia for years until he was fired from PTT. knows how to kill a man, has seen it happen ^^

-billy bob and mitzi match costumes every year

-jasper and foxie get frisky on the couch during concept unification

-mitzi and queenie share queenie’s childhood bedroom during concept unification when they move to new york

-crusty becomes a school librarian after he’s fired from pizza time theatre. he never thought he’d be able to go to college

-helen’s family runs tbe record label that signed rock a fire

-barbara stringband (queenie’s girlfriend i feel like she’s so forgettable here) went to an all girls boarding school

[endoard1]

Hey everyone, sorry that I haven't been very active lately, I've been mostly maining Twitter but I really want to stop using it after this stupid rebranding they're making, they're only doing it because they know people will continue using the platform, so I rather not use it entirely.

Anyways, here's drawings I made of Barbara Stringband, Crusty the Cat and Lil Queenie.

[shcsneeker]

NEW ROBOT SHIP ACQURIED: QUEENIE X BARBARA STRINGBAND

happy pride to the mechanical lesbian vixens🩷🩷🩷🩷🩷

[ixirian-archive]

painting of (a) barbara stringband animatronic from (a) major magic's

[fauxfickle]

"Pizza parlor robots perform musical magic"

Detroit Free Press, Friday, Jan 21, 1983 (By Gary Graft)

Barbra Stringband has the Streisand schtick down pat. She’s got the narrow, mascaraed eyes and a wealth of nose. Okay, you do have to ignore her 280 pound frame.

But she is a real fox — in the fur, pointed ear sense of the word. And most nights she belts out the theme song from “Main Event” while a few seven and eight-year-olds do their version of slam dancing in the aisles.

Her band? A crocodile playing piano, a lion on drums and a walrus on saxophone.

And when Barbra and gang take a rest, the crowd is entertained alternatively by a pair of singing bears and a quartet of instruments equipped with arms, legs and faces so they can play themselves.

That motley crew makes up the house entertainment at Major Magic’s All-Star Pizza Revue. Two of the eateries are open now, with a total of five due to be operating by June. The idea is to offer anything the average family could want on a night out, including lots of diversions for the kids. But even though the pizza isn’t bad and the video arcade is kept up to date, the real attraction at Major Magics is the robots.

“I think this is significant,” says Bob Sapp, an independent programmer who helped design the Major Magics project.

“We’ve tried to literally imitate human movement; you can’t appreciate how complex human movement — something as simple as trying to bend an elbow — is until you’ve programmed into a character,” he says. “We want them to sweat, to cry, to move across the stage.”

“I don’t say that this is the best it’s going to be, but it’s the best around”

Major Magic’s president and found is Grosse Pointer Bob Rashid, 31.

The inspiration for it all came from Major Magic’s major competitor: Chuck E. Cheese’s. Rashid visited one in 1979 in San Jose, and though Rashid liked the concept, he wasn’t totally enthralled with the way it was working.

So Rashid hooked up with Ken Acton, president of Los Angeles-based Acton Animation, who had been with robots and animatronics and subsequently with Sapp.

“We’re head to head with Disney,” says Sapp, who now helps program the robots here. “They’re not doing anything new with their characters. We want ours to really progress; we intend to make it as elaborately lifelike as possible. We look forward to the day Disney looks at our characters with fright.” With good reason — Sapp pirated three Disney technicians to develop new technology for him.

The 11 characters included in the Major Magic’s floor show are not something you’d like to have dropped on you. Made of clay, fiberglass, plastic, latex skin and individually implanted strands of hair, a character like Burly, a giant grizzly bear complete with tree stump, weighs about 500 pounds.

The Binary Toning Coding System — the computer which controls the robots — is named Carl after it’s founder, Carl Jacobson. Inside the computer room behind the Major Magic’s stage, more than 8,500 miles of wire snake between the characters and the system.

The basic operation works like this; each motion, from an eye blink to a head nod is programmed on a computer disc, then switched to tapes and then into a microprocessor, which feeds the information through the computer and triggers electronic and hydraulic equipment inside the characters, making motion.

“I freaked out when I came up here the first day,” says Dean Natsuti, a technician.

Sapp and Dennis Tonich [sic], the entertainment directors at Major Magic’s and former drummer for the MC5 rock band, don’t deny that it’s a complicated process. They first spend several weeks of after-business-hours work programming the characters and adding their own personal touches to the show. Tonich programmed the drum-playing lion himself and [poured?] through hundreds of Beatles, Streisand and other pop music albums to come up with appropriate music, while Sapp put his voice on tape as Singin’ Sam, a sidekick to Burly the bear.

And, as far as they’re concerned, there’s no need for too many people to understand exactly what they’re doing; the idea is to entertain and not necessarily provide a complete robotics education.

“The kids just love it,” Tonich says. “It’s a fantasy made real for them.”

“My every robotics fantasy has been fulfilled now,” Sapp adds “They’re here and they’re performing; there’s a personal relationship between the robotics and the audience that hasn’t been done before this.”

“It has allowed us to spend money on the technology,” Sapp says “Come back a year from now and you’ll find that we got rid of all but maybe two tracks of music. They’ll really be playing their instruments, performing for people.”

The innovation has paid off for Rashid, annual sales projections for the locations — which he says cost $850,000 to build — are $1.6 million based on the first eight months of operation.

But despite the success, both Sapp and Tonich add they don’t feel there’s a danger of their robots replacing live human entertainment.

“‘Move over humans’ — that’s a long way off,” Tonich says. “I think the public gets a bias against robots, a fear of temporary job replacement. That’s not what we’re after.”

***

I was reading this FB post on Major Magic and thought I'd might transcribe for you guys since it was a bit blurry and hard to read. As a funny sidenote, the drummer for MC5 isn't named "Tonich", it's Thompson. Not sure how they spelled the harder last name.

All photos sourced from the MM archive on IG

[animatronic-described]

[ID 1: The cropped picture of the white cat donned a pale blue scarf knot, the member of Collegiate Quartet, is from America Sings. She is looking to the left and winking. The wolf and another white cat's parts are visible in the background. End ID 1.]

[ID 2: Beulah from Country Bear Jamboree, the animatronic figure is from Tokyo's Disneyland, and the outfit is from Country Bear Vacation Hoedown. Zeke, Fred, and Tennessee's part is visible in the background. End ID 2.]

[ID 3: Same as franchises as white cat; Stork, the member of the Rock Group, tilted his head and held the guitar, and the rooster's part is visible in the background. End ID 3.]

[ID 4: Barbara Stringband from Major Magics All Star Pizza Revue; she did not have a white fur on her chest, and she is wearing a hot pink jumpsuit. There's the person who crouched down behind her, and the background is an arcade. End ID 4.]

[ID 5: Lucy from Circus World Jamboree is sitting on the metal swing, and the background is a dark pink curtain. End ID 5.]

[ID 6: Lola from the Circus Playhouse as she's holding a tambourine, with Charlie's part visible. The background is the circus. End ID 6.]

[ID 7: Elsie the animatronic cow from Borden Dairy, the background small farm with its accent as red. End ID 7.]

[ID 8: Miss Cheese, a member of Mr. Dairy Goodz and his Stars of the Milky Way, from Kitchen Kabaret. Miss Yogurt's part is visible, and the background is glittering curtains in the kitchen. End ID 8.]

[ID 9: Same franchises as Miss Cheese; Bonnie Appetite in her showgirl attire from Act 1, and the background is red curtains. End ID 9.]

[PT: "Cunties animatronics I could find", followed by emoji of red heart and fire, and the word Cunties has been emphasised as uppercase and the letter u replaced with lipstick emoji. End PT.]

C💋NTIEST animatronics I could find ❤️‍🔥

[aoifeart777]

[dailyanimatronics]

[ID: a drawing of barbara stringband from major magic's rock n roll rebellion. her white neck fur is stylized to look like a beard. she's wearing a yellow bandana and long sleeved orange shirt. both are shiny. she has yellow fabric wrapped around her waist and white pants. she's holding onto a microphone and grinning. /end ID]

she's so pretty ...

[itskazinhaa]

Hey guys! I so wanted to talk about it. Today I'm going to list all the animatronic characters that make me uncomfortable.

As an animatronic fancier, I really like many animatronic bands, (including some that are even lost media) animatronic characters, attractions with animatronics, EVERYTHING WITH ANIMATRONICS IN GENERAL!!!! And as always, I have a few that I find strange in my eyes, or make me uncomfortable to a certain extent. I have automatonophobia and impressively I'm not afraid of animatronic bands, (even my dream is to see the rock afire play in person), but there are some excesses that make my automatonophobia leave my anxiety to the extreme. either because of the strange way of the character OR because he tries to "imitate" a human form and fails miserably.

1. 𝐵𝑎𝑟𝑏𝑎𝑟𝑎 𝑆𝑡𝑟𝑖𝑛𝑔𝑏𝑎𝑛𝑑

firstly, Major Magic's Barbara Stringband. I don't hate her or anything BUT this very old version of her in this dark room gave me the creeps. I LOVE her old Version,style and her vibe, but today she doesn't give me that vibe anymore.

2. 𝐴𝐿𝐿 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶ℎ𝑎𝑟𝑎𝑐𝑡𝑒𝑟𝑠 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝐶𝑜𝑛𝑐𝑒𝑝𝑡 𝑢𝑛𝑖𝑓𝑖𝑐𝑎𝑡𝑖𝑜𝑛 1- 𝑆𝑡𝑎𝑔𝑒 𝑓𝑟𝑜𝑚 𝐶ℎ𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝐸. 𝐶ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑠𝑒

i hate all stages of concept unification, i have a bad memory for it, and those are BAD animatronics. I hate how they had these little pupils that made me feel like they're afraid of something. and they had a weird dark stage which doesn't help with the animatronic vibe, I think they're VERY dull. I don't think I could stay in a room with these animatronics. (srry who likes them)

3. 𝐹𝑎𝑚𝑖𝑙𝑙𝑦 𝑎𝑙𝑏𝑢𝑚- 𝐶ℎ𝑢𝑐𝑘 𝐸. 𝐶ℎ𝑒𝑒𝑠𝑒

Did i need to say something? Just Look at those BIG arms, and those BIG EYES. they’re terrible. Just to Look at them my Heart skip a Beat.

they are the worst thing i have ever seen

(as the limit of images arrived, I'll leave more for a part 2, if you like it, I can extend these posts)