Friday, December 12, 2014

Ali Bombay - Motorcycle Racer (M.A.S.K.)

Back in the 80's, a popular trend on cartoon shows was to include "foreign" characters to the cast to encourage diversity (I guess). Usually, this mean adding a character that was pretty much a walking bundle of stereotypes for a culture. For example: El Dorado from the Superfriends cartoon or John Thunder from the Centurions.

M.A.S.K. had several characters like this, such as Indian immigrant Ali Bombay.

Ali Bombay was a little stereotypical in some ways, with his head wrap and Ali Baba facial hair, but honestly it could have been worse. He could have been dressed like Aladdin, with just a vest, poofy pants, and no shoes. Instead, he's wearing what looks like Motorcycle racing gear.

It's unfortunate that his mask kind of looks ridiculous. I always thought he kind of looked like a shark with his mask on. That might be appropriate since he came along when the M.A.S.K. had jumped the shark to be a racing cartoon instead.

For Ali Bombay, I used the Star Boy miniature and added his Vortex mask with green stuff.

The pose for this mini looks like he's saying, "Hey, check out my awesome ride! Taa-daa!"

-c

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