Swords and Spaceships

Yes, Ben can has them. Matt called me on Saturday, and said he found this whole wave at Pamida, which I'd never visited before, but might start to now. He picked me up Indy, Mola Ram, Short Round, and Willie Scott. I passed on the Thuggee dudes, since I wasn't too sure about owning them. Which I may regret, but I may yet not. First, the good stuff. I've been wanting Mola Ram since the line started, and now I finally own it. It helps that he's one of the crown jewels of the line. A truly fantastic figure, with all the right accessories, the flaming heart and chalice of Kali. Indy is great too. After the pathetic Indys from Raiders and Last Crusade, Hasbro truly delivered a good Indy here. This particular version is from the bridge scene at the climax of the film. The figure has the sword he used to cut the bridge, which is a nice touch. Willie is a pretty good figure too, and thankfully, she's a lot quieter like this. Hasbro chose to depict her in the sacrificial dre...

MOTUC Hordak carded images I love how his subtitle is 'Evil Leader of the Evil Horde.' Anyway, I'm just glad this character is finally being made as a modern action figure.

Enough of that nastiness about Transformers. I love the TFs, have spent thousands of dollars on them that I could have otherwise wasted, so I guess when it comes to movie years for these lines, I have to concentrate on what I like about the TFs. In all honesty, they really aren't making these live-action movies for fans like me, who grew up on G1. I should look at it this way- I may not like these movies or the toys from them, but they allow for things like the G1 cartoon to be released on DVD again, and for great toys like Smokescreen here in the off years. The Classics/Universe line has been good to the G1 fan. It offers modern takes on G1 characters, like HasTakTom saying "here's what character X would look like if made today." I will argue that these are a lot more complex in transformation than their G1 predecessors, but that's only obvious. The robot mode is much more, well, dynamic than the barely articulated vintage brick, a toy you could only really move ...

Clicky. They gave the motherfucker a cane. A fucking cane, to a fucking robot, so he can fucking walk. A fucking robot needs fucking help to fucking WALK. A fucking robot that has a fucking SR-71 as an alt mode has a fucking cane. I might be avoiding a big crowd on the weekend of the last week of June after all. I swear, in and by their desire to make something different, the producers of these films have completely lost sight of what made the TFs so endearing in the first place, and Hasbro themselves are complicit in this.

Poor Dolph Lundgren. He tries so hard. I watched this last night, the first time in a few years. I bought the DVD in 2001, and I've only watched it once or twice. This would be the third time then, I guess. I used to love this movie as a kid. It didn't bother me that most of the movie was set on Earth, and there were few tantalizing glimpses of Eternia. Of course, the best part of the movie escaped me then, which was Frank Langella's amazing work as Skeletor, a role which he still speaks highly of, even as recently as last year when he was doing interviews for the 'Frost/Nixon' hype machine. The movie does show its age in the special effects, which were pretty bad even for their time. This movie was made by the same production company that cheaped out on the effects for Superman IV, so you probably know what to expect when I say that. (Though I'll argue that Masters here was a better film in every way than Superman IV.) The movie does succeed in not having a dul...

So you've probably figured out that I'm not going to delete this blog after all. I spent too much time writing all this jazz, and a lot of people seem to drop by here (seems like at least 30 hits a day) so just as well keep it around. Then I can talk about stuff like this that I just bought. I've been holding off on buying any of these neat 3.75" Marvel toys. Sure, I made a sizeable investment in the ML and movie 6" lines, but I'd be more than happy to add a few of these new guys at this new scale to my collection, since I have tons of Star Wars and GI Joe figures that are in the same scale. I decided I'd take the plunge with this version of Wolverine, one you can find in the movie-related Origins packaging with Hugh Jackman on it. This is clearly a comic-based Wolvie, and it says so on the package. I have always liked the tiger-stripe costume more than the brown classic one, but that's due to the 90's X-Men animated series. Hasbro are the kings of...

"Bleh! I sold out in three hours!" Another MOTUC figure went up for sale today. I got my order in, and I've received confirmation from DR, so I'm good. Lots of other people, not so much. Faker here sold out in about three hours, which was shockingly fast, and yet, not shocking at all. Half the run was sold at NYCC last month, and the remaining stock went up for sale today. And, of course, the people who didn't buy are crying up a storm, saying that Mattel should have had enough stock for everyone who wanted one, not figuring on that Mattel likely made all their Faker figures before even He-Man and Beast Man went on sale in December, and therefore had NO FUCKING IDEA how well these would sell then. How long have some of you been in the game? If you were around back for the 2002 MOTU line, you'd know that this is a HELL of a lot better than fighting twenty local collectors for one figure out of one case, said case being all your local store will receive for anot...

Yes kids, UPS was cool and dropped off my Stratos from Mattycollector.com on Friday. I was unsure about buying Stratos, but I'm glad I did. Dude sold out in three days, which shocked pretty much everyone. I'm sure there was less produced of this figure than say, Skeletor, so that, coupled with the fact that this line is officially the hot thing of the moment, assured that he'd sell out. Nobody thought it would be that fast, but hey, you got to strike when you got the chance. Stratos uses the Beast Man body, just as he did back in the old days. He has his differences, of course. A new head, new left hand (meaning you won't be getting any accessories into Stratos' hands), and some new feet, which for some reason has some fans on the brink of suicide. Stratos also features his rocketpack on his back and red wings on his arms, completing the look of the weird winged monkey. I really think he could have used a better-engineered balljointed head to let him look forward a ...