Swords and Spaceships

Something a little bit newer, this time. Chirrut here comes to us from the first Disney-era spinoff movie, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. (Let us not forget there were Ewok movies in the mid-80s. Rogue One is not the first spinoff!) Chirrut Imwe seems to be the most popular character from the movie, if my Twitter and Facebook feeds are any indication. Possibly due to his prayer, and wicked martial ability. I really liked the character myself, finding him my favorite from the flick which was full of great characters. Was that a great flick or what? This figure shipped in the second wave of figures, and I picked this one up just before the movie came out. I find it somewhat disappointing, since the character in the movie had a lot of martial talent, and this figure is stuck at 5 points of movement, and it seems unlikely we'll get a nice, articulated version any time soon. There's the six-inch Black Series figure, but I find myself really uninterested in those, since I have t

I was suffering some pretty wicked insomnia a few weeks ago. So I decided to get out my box of repaint-era (2000-2006) GI Joe figures and started kitting them out. Then I got out some vehicles, and next thing I knew, my dinner table was covered in Real American Heroes and a ruthless terrorist organization. Took a few pictures, because most of this stuff resides in boxes. I really like Wet Suit, so another pic...

I figured I'd start this blog off with what is probably (ok, definitely) my favorite figure from Kenner's Star Wars Power of the Force line from the 1990s, Luke Skywalker from the Dark Empire comics. Distribution of these figures was spotty, at best. I remember coming across these at the dearly-departed Waterloo, IA Toys R Us during the after-Christmas clearance purge in 1998. I also picked up the Clone Emperor, Spacetrooper, Kyle Katarn, and Mara Jade. I was just happy to find new figures, since the last waves of this line were getting super-hard to find, and I had already found the follow-up Flashback wave that was supposed to tie into Episode I: The Phantom Menace, which was coming out the next summer. (Was that a long time ago or what? Back when that movie was bigger than the Second Coming.) I eventually found the rest (except Leia) the following spring at Kay-Bee Toys (again with the departed store... what a lousy leitmotif, amirite?) at a premium. I'l

Welcome! I wanted to start a blog to share my thoughts on (mostly forgotten) Star Wars toys, but considering how much other junk I've collected over the years, I decided to open up the scope a lot more to share gems that many longtime collectors may have forgotten about, or to show newer blood some of the great stuff made over the years. I started a little thing at Wordpress, but I don't care for the software, so here we are, trying to make this blog relevant again (if it ever was...). I myself have collected Star Wars, GI Joe, Transformers, Masters of the Universe, superheroes, and other toys for several years, and my collection includes vintage (dating back to 1978-nothing older) and modern toys. This is hardly a unique blog, but it's all in fun. The picture above I took one freezing evening, going through a few of my boxes of Hasbro's Star Wars toys. It became the inspiration for this blog, since I find Hasbro's newer efforts in the Disney era (