Swords and Spaceships

AFA graded GI Joes at Hasbro Toy Shop Henkei Thrust and Dirge Great. AFA is a blight on the hobby IMO, forcing certain collectors WITHOUT trust funds (like me) out of the vintage MOC game. Now they're doing it to toys that haven't even made it to retail, in fact, that came from their manufacturer? I know Hasbro can do what they wish with their own product, but it just stinks of unmitigated greed. And then, Hasbro won't sell me a set of Thrust, Dirge, and Thundercracker, thinking the Botcon set was good enough and that nobody would buy them now, yet, you can get a stupid Seeker repaint on shelves now and in a month or two, you can get a repainted Starscream. It's things like this that make me want to give up toy collecting for my other love, vinyl albums. At least those are meant to be collectibles these days. I do get tired of people treating toys like gold buillion.

I received my case of wave 10 this weekend. In it was a variant Wraith. I'm not sure how I feel about that one. I wasn't going to bother hunting the variant, I just wanted the regular one. I bought the case so I wouldn't have to hunt this wave, and here I am, having to chase its most popular figure anyway. Le sigh. The variant seems to be selling for about $30 on ebay, and I haven't opened mine yet, seeing where it goes. If the bottom falls out, I'll just open it. If not, I'll see what happens. Odds are I'll just open it since selling things on ebay is a bit of a pain. The rest of the wave kicks ass. While I didn't find this wave as appealing character-wise as I did the last wave, it has some high points. The Cobra Bazooka Trooper is a real winner to me, having the RPG and the web gear on his torso just makes it an interesting to look at figure, and one I might get a couple more of. The Para-Viper is an instant classic, a figure that could only be improv...

America, FUCK YEAH! Unlike most fans on the interwebs that I read, when I first heard the announcement of the Rattler and Conquest being issued as Target exclusives for the modern GI Joe line, I was looking forward to owning the Conquest more. Firstly, I have the hideous orange Rattler Hasbro issued in 2002 for the GvC line. Secondly, since this was a post-1985 vehicle, it was a little more recognizable to me. I didn't buy the 2002-3 Sound Attack version, so this is an all-new vehicle to me. Well, not technically. A friend of mine had this back in the day, and I was very jealous, you see. But then I got the Night Raven and the skies over Casebeer Heights (kudos if you know which town this is in) were dominated by Cobra. However, the Night Raven was big, with many small, easily-lost parts. The Conquest was trim, sleek, and only had a removable canopy and missiles. All that is pretty much the same with this new release. It even has an updated version of Slipstream, even though he doe...

I have a huge backlog of toys I'd like to review and other things I'd like to blather on about, but man, I just do not have the willpower anymore. I've bought several GI Joe vehicles, lots of Star Wars and GI Joe figures, many TFs, and still, a lot of them are sitting in their boxes on the floor waiting for me to open them. I wonder what happened to the days that I'd tear into a brand-new purchase with gusto. Mayhap this weekend I'll get something together. The Conquest and Rattler jets from GI Joe might be up first, since I can't put them down.

Clicky! Forgot to post about this. Man, I can't wait to own these toys. I've been dying for new MOTU action figures since 2003.