Scott - normally you Advisory Board guys are pretty much on target, but you missed on your “Eigth Man” answer. I’m sure that the Japanese manga and anime are awesome, but you might want to think twice about alienating us South Park fanatics. . . there are a lot of us out here!
Anyway, keep up the good work but check the editorializing at the door.
And the link is: http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/m8man.html
It’s requested that when replying to a column (Either Cecil’s or Mailbag) that a link be provided in the op.
Saves people like me the trouble of searching.
Maybe now that attention has been brought to this item, perhaps someone might fix the vB/html codes on the answer to remove the bolding. Let’s see if anyone is paying attention…
Thanks, dtilque.
And thanks, Tengu.
BTW, if you see somethings screwy with the fonts, you can email me or Tubadiva, and we’ll see to it that it’s handled.
And, Dave? If we didn’t put editorial comments in the Mailbag Answers, we wouldn’t get any discussion!
Dex, I just want you to know that you are officially my hero for dissing South Park and liking Mary Jane and Sniffles. You are the wind beneath my wings.
Er, thanks, Don, but 'twas Straight Dope Staffer Scott who wrote the Mailbag answer and took a jab at South Park.
Actually, there’s a kind of parallel between South Park and Eighth man.
Both could be accused of marketing adult material for kids.
The one, cigarettes, the other, itself.
Scott nails South Park for its gratuitous violence and foul language, but technically South Park is rated for mature audiences only.
Of course, the South Park movie made it fairly clear that they are well aware where their fan base lies.
All I know is it’s a good thing I didn’t see that cartoon when I was a kid, at one stage I really would have tried smoking to see if it gave me superpowers. 
Or I can see me and my friends role-playing. I mean, if we used to use BB guns when playing G.I. Joe… chain-smoking to one-up each other in super powers?
“No! I win! I smoked four, you only smoked three!”
Oops! I hate making mistakes. You must bask in shared glory. Maybe I heard you thinking about SP that way…
And, please, call me Jaime.
Resorbitos? Que quieres decir?
- Jill
I was trying to say “sniffles” in Spanish, and failed. I never have figured out what the baby-talk term for a head cold is.
How scary is it that I recall most of the lyrics to the Eighth Man theme song?
[something to start it off, and then . . .]
The FBI is helpless,
It’s 20 stories tall.
What can you do?
Who can you call?
Call Tobor! The Eighth Man!
Call Tobor! The Eighth Man!
OK, well, in this case, please read “most” as “some.”
I can hear the melody as well, but I don’t know the HTML for that. And it starts to degenerate into “Car 54 Where are you?” as it plays back in my head.
Geez, I’m frightening myself here. Paul Oakenfold, take me away!!
Jaime, you might try “con moco tendido” (with hanging snot); “mocoso” or “mocosuelo” (snotty); but I suppose that’s not exactly it either.
From the column:
Well, the DC Comics character of Robot Man, of The Doom Patrol, pre-dates 8-Man, so maybe there was a connection there? RM was a police officer saved by a brillant scientist (known only as The Chief) who placed his brain into the body of a robot. He got his power from an atomic battery, IIRC. He worked for The Chief out of gratitude, but also because there really wasn’t a place for him in society as a robot with a human brain. (Sort of like The Thing of The Fantastic Four.)
In fact, there are so many similarites between 8-Man and Robot Man, you gotta wonder…
One detail the column doesn’t mention was why exactly he was called Eighth Man. IIRC, Peter Brady was so damaged that all the scientist was able to salvage was one-eighth of his human body (his head??). So Tobor was one-eighth man, and seven-eighths robot.