Over the weekend, the family and I went to a 70s/80s retro toy convention. There were toys from Star Wars, GI Joe, Thundercats, Transformers, and many other television shows and movies of that time period. I’m a fan of many of them and one of the missions I had for the day was to find some old beat up G1 Transformers toys for my son to play with that don’t cost a ton of money. One dealer however distracted me from my mission. He had some promotional postcards that caught my attention:
The first card focuses on the Autobot Matrix of Leadership, which was featured in the original Transformers film back in the 80s. The cross is quite visible inside the Matrix. The second card brands the cross in the middle of the Autobot symbol. Personally, I think it would have been more appropriate to put it in the middle of the Decepticon symbol, but that would make the Decepticons out to be much more villainous that they actually are in the cartoon.
It really annoys me that Christians are putting this stuff out there trying to trick people into Jesus. Just about every table at these kinds of conventions has similar promotional postcards like these that are promoting their toys, art, etc. Unsuspecting people take these cards without looking at the details until they get home.
The back of both of these “promotional” cards have the same message trying to appeal to Transformers fans with quotes from the film and interspersing them with Bible quotes gerrymandered to fit the Transformers story. It’s pretty sad attempt too.
For example, the mantra for the Autobots during the movie and the third season was that the Matrix of Leadership would “Light our darkest hour.” The claim on the promotional card is that Jesus came to “light our darkest hour.” They quote John 12:46 which refer to Jesus as the light of the world. But Christians couldn’t stop there. They get pretty heavy handed on the promotional card talking about sin and how the “wage of sin is death.”
Then the message shifts. It starts talking about how Jesus is a “transformer.” Get it; they claim that the Gospel message “transforms” lives and these toys are called “Transformers.” How lame is that?
To be honest, I am actually surprised they didn’t try to claim that Optimus Prime was like Jesus. Optimus even came back from the dead… twice. But these Christians weren’t even that creative. In fact, they aren’t even creative enough to have their own website. The promotional card lists two websites.
The first is http://lookup316.com, which is a national website popularized by football personality Tim Tibow. The second website is a group in an already existing transformers forum. I actually went to that url and found that you need to be a member not just of the forum (which I decided to join), but also of the Christian group itself. The problem is that you need to be approved to join the Christian Transformers group in order to see any posts or interact with anyone there.
I attempted to join the group yesterday and have not yet been approved. This is kind of surprising considering that they were handing out these promotional cards which listed the group url over the weekend and yet they haven’t approved probably the only person who actually attempted to join them after their big promotion.
Maybe I start making similar promotional cards advertising reason, science, and godlessness for next year. The card would look like it is promoting Transformers toys, but in reality, it would be “more than meets the eye.”
What do you think, should atheists attempt to similar promotional campaigns linked to pop-culture and distributed at geek conventions? Post a comment down below.
