Action Blast! (partially lost TV infomercial series; 2006)

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Action blast.PNG

Logo for the series.

Status: Partially Lost

Action Blast! is an American infomercial variety television series produced by the toy company Hasbro and Tango Pix that aired exclusively on G4 between January 2nd and December 29th, 2006.[1] The hour-long daily program was an attempt by Hasbro to secure television placement for their shows, as they had issues maintaining a consistent run on other broadcasters at the time.

Action Blast! featured edited versions of Hasbro library content, with new hosted footage, promotional spots for Hasbro products (called "BAMs") plus shorts from Kaiju Big Battel and Dr. Physics. Due to the series being paid programming, the episodes were presented with no commercial breaks and the only G4 channel identifications came at the half-hour mark due to company requirements.[2] Consequently, many TV guides at the time listed the show's 8AM slot under a generic "Infomercial/Paid Programming" label.[3]

The weekday slots contained time condensed versions of two different Hasbro shows in the one hour runtime (initially Beast Wars and Battle B-Daman, but later adding G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero, G.I. Joe: Sigma Six and Transformers: Cybertron) alongside the new live-action content. On the weekends, the five animated episodes were edited into seven-minute segments. The latter were then distributed on Hasbro's website (now offline) as "webisodes".[2]

The live-action segments were shot around the Providence, Rhode Island Boston, Massachusetts area between January 2006 and January 2007.[2][4] The series was hosted by Kaiju Big Battel's Jack Dourakos ("Louden Noxious") and an unknown actor as "Beav Wallace." Hayley Thompson-King played the role of "Dr. Physics."[5] The edited animation was done by Tango Pix.[6][7]

It's not known how many Action Blast! episodes were produced and the series has never been re-released after its run on G4. A promotional DVD was handed out at the 2006 San Diego Comic-Con.[8]

In 2009, Hasbro would later attempt a more large-scale attempt to rectify their TV placement woes, as the company entered into a joint venture with Discovery Communications to relaunch Discovery Kids as a new TV channel.[9] The new channel debuted on October 10th, 2010, as The Hub.[10]

Surfaced Content

In 2020, the official YouTube channel for Kaiju Big Battel hosted a live-stream where the company's Action Blast! segments were broadcast. On February 13th 2023, 8 full episodes were uploaded to Internet Archive, which can be watched here. It is unknown how many episodes there are therefore it cannot be determined if this is fully found or not.

Action Blast! clip featuring Kaiju Big Battel

Action Blast! clip featuring a Dr. Physics short promoting NERF guns

Kaiju Big Battel's Action Blast! stream.

External Links

References