I'd never heard of GOODBYE, SOLO -- thanks for the heads-up!

On WWW, because Red West was so often running backwards (after getting "punched") and INTO stuff, he had somebody make for him ... I don't know what to call it ... a big Fiberglas "piece of armor" that covered his whole back, so that he could run backwards into ANYthing and not hurt his back. One night after my brother and I went out to dinner at some restaurant with Red and his wife, we went out to his car, and in the trunk was the back protector -- he'd brought it along to show to us. First my brother put it on, and Red swung a tire iron good and hard and hit him right in the middle of the back, and except for taking a step forward, my brother had no reaction. Then I got to wear it -- same thing, I didn't feel a thing. Red felt that it really saved him at least once: In one episode, I think "Night of the Pelican," he ran back into some shelves with "aerial torpedos" on them, and the end of one of the torpedos DID take a gouge out of the Fiberglas, so he always wondered what it would have done to his back.