A Claw is a Claw

Sometimes I wish I could go back to being a kid. Things were so much easier then - I didn't have to worry about things like making money, cooking food or bathing. Life was full of wonder when I was younger. I had so many questions and there were so many mysteries.

Little did I know back then, that in the future, there would come a day when there was something called a "search engine," and by using that "search engine" I could get the answers to many of my questions - deep, philosophical questions like, "What does Dr. Claw's face look like?"

For those of you who don't know who Dr. Claw is, he was a character on the television show Inspector Gadget, which had one of catchiest theme songs ever. The plot of each episode was pretty much the same: Dr. Claw, the villain, would make some horrible plan to destroy something or rule the world, Inspector Gadget would get the assignment to stop him (the message would self destruct) and then Inspector Gadget would fumble and bumble along while Penny and Brain would do the actual detective work. They would always stop Dr. Claw, but he was never caught. And you never saw his face during the show! All you ever saw of Dr. Claw was his chair, his arm, his computer and his cat.

As a young boy I accepted that this mystery of Dr. Claw's face would never be solved. As an adult, however, my curiosity peaked during a leisurely time when I was definitely not at work, and I decided to use Google to find out the answer. And I found it. Faithful readers, I have seen the face of Dr. Claw - and my wide-eyed childhood innocence and ignorance on this subject has forever been lost.

I found a website that claimed to reveal the face of Dr. Claw. My thanks to Mike Westfall, the man who did this research, posted it online and, let's face it, changed the world as we know it.

Apparently, back in the early 90s, the creators of Inspector Gadget released a toy version of Dr. Claw. Check it out:

Ingenious, no? They're completely playing off the fact that everyone wants to know what Dr. Claw looks like. And by covering his face in the packaging like that, you had to buy the toy to see what he looked like.

UNTIL NOW!









Faithful readers, I now present to you. . .








Without further ado. . .








The thing you've been waiting for all these years. . .








Yes, this truly is. . .








The face of Dr. Claw!

And here's a close-up.

I know, it wasn't what I was expecting, either. I mean, aside from the melty face, he looks like a normal human. I always imagined him to have an evil robotic-mask-type of face, similar to the symbol of his M.A.D. organization.

But I guess he wasn't a robot. I guess the live-action Rupert Everett version of Dr. Claw in the poorly executed Inspector Gadget movie wasn't too far off. I guess his right arm IS the only mechanical part of his body. I guess he is just a horribly mutated British aristocrat.

Huh.

Well, there you go. My childhood memories have forever altered and I don't quite know how I feel about that. At least we can still all remain innocent and ignorant in never seeing the full face of that one character from Home Improvement. You know. . .Tim's neighbor, whose face was always hidden by a fence. What was his name again? Hold on, let me Google it. . .

Aw, crap.