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Kitsa · #1

I bet you thought you'd heard the last of the WTF bus. Surely there couldn't be more out there. Surely there was nowhere else for this theme to go. Surely we've exhausted the possibilities for small green novelty buses with a badly-rendered and somehow inappropriate assortment of passengers.

Well, a few ladies and mostly gentlemen, I'm pleased and frankly astonished to inform you that my Fleet of the Damned has been expanded.

I got a package from Dextire. I'm including a partial scan of the letter because he needs credit for what he did here.

That's right, I give you the WTF Bus....in spaaaaaaaaaaaace.

Crack open the box, you say? Try and stop me!

At first glance, this incarnation beats the others hands down on execution. There may be lead paint, but at least it's quality lead. I probably won't get tetanus/hepatitis/hemmorrhagic fever from mishandling it. It's compact, it's shiny, and the passengers in the bus actually match the ones on the box...something I wasn't aware was possible. Plus....it's got a key.

That's right, this bus isn't just a little bewildering to look at. If it's going to defy the laws of physics, it's gonna go all the way. It....does something. With bumpers.

Right! Right! It will return when meets an object. The theory is that the front bumper will hit a wall and knock backwards, so that the bus will travel in the opposite direction. I can't see the specifics because this version of the WTF bus has a fully functional bottom to keep prying eyes away. None of your repurposed tin cans from Calcutta gutters here! Or at least, if that's what they are, there's a thick coat of lead paint over them. The lead has something to do with cosmic radiation.

We'll get back to the key, though. First order of business, wonder what the hell makes them think this thing could simply drive through space. These creators are operating at a level a few rungs under the Great Space Coaster people. I could bend my mind around the bumper issue, I guess...slightly. I wasn't a physics major. I was a biology major and I was thinking more of what's gonna happen when this redheaded kid gets off at his space-stop without a helmet:

I'm picturing something like this, only smaller and cuter. But with the same music.

As you can see, besides him you've got the usual group of cosmonauts, 50s b-movie extras, characters from M.A.S.K. and I think some guy who grew up with Rosie from the Jetsons.

Although, seeing the font in which they've scrawled "Space Bus" on the side, maybe they're just a shitty space-themed metal band and they're trying to do the gwar thing with the only stuff left at the costume rental place.

A passenger in a yellow tracksuit and flu mask is ready to give someone what-for with a transistor stun gun thingy, and the scuba diver behind her is just content to stare placidly ahead. She knows what's up. On the WTF Spacebus, you don't ask questions.

Especially about that guy.

This guy's name is Yuri and the woman behind him is Petra. I haven't fleshed out their backstory yet but it's coming. Something about a hot space affair and no-tell motels with self-contained gravitational fields, like the buses. And radio-knobs-for-eyes in front of him is in on it. He likes to watch.

DESTINATION: SPAAAAAAACE.

Here's something that to me was an immediate indicator of the jump in quality. Look how the passengers in the back window are (roughly) the same as the passengers in the back side windows. They didn't, you know, bother to make them point the same direction (because let's not be ridiculous here), but they are the same characters.

But what I think we all want to know is, will it return when meets an object?

Click below to see the WTF Spacebus in action.