The MANTA is the most viewed page on this site. It's not even close. It's been viewed more than 5 times more often than the 2nd most popular post. Even now, this profile consistently pops up in the top 5 of the week, 5 years since it was first published. I have ZERO idea as to why this is. Is the MANTA really that popular? Or, is it just a weird coincidence where that post happens to have a couple of fans who use it as a launching pad into the site? The reference data for the site offers no clues. So, I can not explain why the MANTA gets so much traffic.
All this aside, the MANTA is one of those things that, as a kid, I hated. It was kind of a crappy toy. It looked neat. But, when you tried to play with it, the thing fell apart if an eyelash brushed against it. As an adult collector, though, it's impossible to look at the MANTA other than a singular feat of toy design and engineering. The fact that that it could be broken down and put into a backpack is just amazing. And, the combination of plastic and vinyl to create a reasonable looking sail is inspired.
There's a lot of good content on the MANTA out there. And, you'll notice a lot of different names among the creators this time around. Hopefully, you'll discover someone new who does some cool stuff that you'll enjoy. So, enjoy this MANTA content. And, I'll continue to puzzle over why the MANTA is the single most popular spotlight I've ever done.
1984 MANTA blueprints at Joe A Day.com
Have you done a profile on the DEMON ? Would love to see one !
ReplyDeleteMe, too! But, sadly, I don't have one. The Iron Grenadier vehicles are some of the better and more interesting toys from that era. But, the only ones I've ever seen were pricey. (At one local store, a broken Demon was more expensive than a mint and complete BUGG with a Secto Viper!)
DeleteGreat pics! The MANTA concept and design are great. It's just something that has never interested me to acquire for my collection.
ReplyDeleteI have a similar experience on my blog, where a couple of random posts from a few years ago get far and away more traffic than anything else on the site. A brand new post may get negligible page views, but day after day after day, these same two posts get big numbers. However, they never get any comments or likes or shares. The traffic doesn't seem to be coming from any discernible referral source, and the alleged readers never follow any links on the pages to view anything else on the site.
ReplyDeleteThe conclusion I've come to, sadly, is that these aren't real "views" from actual humans reading my content. I suspect that various search bots have just honed in on something in the page metadata and keep pinging it over and over again, radically skewing my numbers.