Just stumbled across this yesterday on TLC’s marathon, and Lawd love a duck, it’s brilliant! Sheesh, I’m already talking like 'em.
Bowser from the Bodgers and Nosher from the Megalomaniacs are my new heros. Pity it was they had to go up against each other in the finals. How could anyone trust hydraulics from the scrapheap, though? Go for the simple design, luv.
BattleBots was my fave show before this, even with failed NFL QB Sean Salisbury and jerkface Bil Dwyer getting more airtime than the robots. It’s a US production copied from the UK original, with only KillerHurtz making the trip over to compete here (its pickaxe arm broke off in the quaarterfinals which it won when its opponent’s motor died, but it had no hope in the semis). My Wednesday nights are now full: Junkyard Wars at 9 (with Voyager on a VCR in another room, then South Park at 10 and BattleBots at 10:30. Life is good.
Now it’s off to practice my welding techniques, then a wet dream about Cathy Rogers.
Yesterday I had the house to myself. I could have watched any DVD I wanted, turned all the way up. Could have bounced between football and hockey. But noooo…
Instead, I watched six episodes and hardly moved. What an afternoon! My wife came home around 9 pm, groaned when she saw what I was watching and was hooked within minutes.
As for the “convenient” items, the announcer mentioned they were placed during one of the episodes (the one where they had to raise the submerged mini).
Couple of interesting things on that page I linked to:
“On Sunday 17 December the supreme Scrapheap Challenge champions The Megalomaniacs will face off to the winners of the equivalent American series, Junkyard Wars. Not only will this be a battle of the titans, but it will also last a unique 90 minutes – 50% extra!”
“Scrapheap trivia: The American series was actually filmed at the Scrapheap Challenge location in London’s East End!”
Terrific television, absolutely great, saw it for the first time yesterday and couldn’t take my eyes off it for four hours.
I’m posting to say don’t get caught up in the competition aspect, it’s just for fun. I twigged right away that there was more to this than meets the eye. It’s not a coincidence that the two teams usually work on different designs.
Tomas, the Harley riders may have kicked the Royal Navy’s best’s ass, but all the bikers had to do was weld, glue, and bodge flotation devices onto a stripped down land rover. The navy gang was assigned a tough problem, trying to whip up a wheeled swamp buggy. They didn’t get their “ass kicked”, it was a brilliant effort.
You must have noticed that there is always two quite different approaches to the individual problems. If there was not a lot of pre-planning and direction by the producers it wouldn’t be as much fun or as interesting. Back to the navy vs bikers example, logic says that both groups would have stripped down a motor vehicle and made it bouyant. It’s the smart thing to do. Obviously it was agreed ahead of time that the navy gang would have a much tougher problem.
Similarly - blimp vs model airplane, two sailed vs one sail land yachts, hang glider vs stiff wing (actual airplane wings!) glider.
I’m not criticizing the show, I’m just saying don’t pay too much attention to who wins and who loses. It’s just good fun. (Although it was a little disconcerting to see the army lads get badly beaten in the cannon construction. That one certainly had a bit of an ass-kicking aspect.)
I’m confused. I went to the Scrapheap Challenge site… and it listed all the shows from this season… all of which were exactly what I saw on what we know as “Junkyard Wars”… same exact thing. Same teams, same challenges, same results, pictures proved it was the exact same filming. Same announcers. However the above quote suggests they are two separate shows, and not the same show billed under two names??
Actually I saw The Nerds last week. It was the episode were they had to make a two man submarine. I felt sorry for their guest expert. The poor guy could barely get an word in edgewise.
I totally love this show. It is the only show I will actively schedule my time around to make sure I don’t miss it.
My favorite episode so far has to be the cannons.
The host was Kryton?!?
Whoa, that was a thorough make-up job.
What’s run so far in the US (as Junkyard Wars) has been the same as what was shown in the UK (as Scrapheap Challenge). But because it was so popular here, TLC paid for an entire season made up entirely of American teams. That’s what’s referred to as the “American series” on the Scrapheap website. Kind of amusing that they flew all those Americans 'cross the pond just to use a junkyard. TLC’s going to start showing this new set of episodes next Wednesday I believe.
Also, don’t look at the UK sight too closely. They have an ultimate battle between the winners of the UK and the US versions, and they already list the winner of the US one there!
I did like in how the NERDS couldn’t get their box open. What happens to make a box not be able to come open without it being locked? They were clearly the winner in my book because they were the ones that actually doused the flames tha quickest and had a boat the could move without paddling.
Junkyard Wars is a great show! I think they have to place “hide” reasonable items around the junkyard that can be used for each project. I get a kick out of the amateur and civilian teams when they create simple yet effective projects and beat the pants off the subject area experts and the military who complicate their projects.
So I figure the best way to utilize the time given is to bodge something together that is horrendously unsafe, but that has all the important bits in the right places. Like they shouldn’t have bothered with the roll cages in the dragster one. Because they will go and make them safe the next day if necessary, but they won’t make them work.
On another note, here’s the description of last Wednesday’s final episode in the 3rd season (UK teams).
And here’s the description of next Wednesday’s first episode in the 4th season (US teams).
Notice any similarities? We’re seeing the same challenge 2 weeks in a row! You suck TLC schedulers!
They don’t make it explicit, but it always seems to be a contest against a lightweight, underpowered design and a heavier, but higher powered design.
This was true for the firefighting challenge, the steam cars, the bridging machine, the drag racers, the airplanes, and several others. So one has to expect that they either brief the contestants or the experts before the competition.
It’s also interesting that they’ve never had a competition where one team just had immobile junk at the end of 10 hours. I suspect that if a team doesn’t finish in time, they must be allowed to do some overnight patching to get their device minimally functional.
I doubt they ever didn’t air a show because the teams are set up in a tournament. If one didn’t get shown then that would eliminate two teams and would mess up the whole tournament layout.
