Swords and Spaceships

 I used to love this blog. I love bullshitting about toys. I love collecting toys. I'm sitting here listening to Michael Jackson thinking of ways to revive this blog, the TMNT Mutagen Man figure next to my keyboard being all "BLEH!" I'd have an image here but this laptop sucks. This may be harder than I thought.

Amazing how life gets in the way of something so simple as a silly little toy blog. Going to try and remedy that, again. Stay tuned.

So that's it then. Toys R Us went into liquidation today, effectively the end of the big box toy store in America. Apparently, in Canada the chain is staying afloat, but who knows for how long. I'm kind of saddened by this, but for other reasons. Mostly that my niece and nephew will probably never know what it's like to go into a store like Toys R Us and be overwhelmed by the size of it all. And that 33,000 working people lose their jobs. That's the worst part. And now the founder of the chain has passed away. I'm sure it's heartbreaking to watch a bunch of vultures swoop in and destroy the company you worked your entire life to build. I'm indifferent as to what this does for collectors. My local TRU closed after Christmas 2014, and though I made several trips to the Cedar Rapids or Des Moines locations since, I don't think I've actually purchased anything at a TRU store since the GI Joe 50th Anniversary line offered the Battle Below Zero set. Or...

Big Damn Barge Hasbro revealed this bad boy at Toy Fair this year, Jabba's Sail Barge scaled for your 3.75" Star Wars figures. 4 feet long, and enough space for all the Jabba's menagerie figures you've collected since 1983. It's incredible, and possibly could be another jewel in the Star Wars crown. It's an interesting experiment- Hasbro is seeking 5000 backers in the US only (so far) at $500 each to get one of these that will ship in April 2019. It's a Kickstarter model, and therefore Hasbro wants their money April 4th of THIS year. Otherwise, it doesn't get made. I can't blame Hasbro for mitigating their risk by asking for their money now. $2.5 million is a lot of money, and I'm willing to bet the tooling costs more than that. I'd love to have one, obviously. I think the window is too short, but if they made it too long, it wouldn't happen. If there was an option to split up payments, I'd be in already. The GI Joe Collector...

Just got back from the midnight release for The Last Jedi merchandise. I am sorely disappointed. Went to the two local Wal-Mart stores to find Jedi Master Luke, a figure I've been waiting 35 years for. I count myself lucky to find it at the second store, since Hasbro saw fit to pack this figure one-per-case of twelve. And these stores have received exactly one case of this series so far. There are going to be a lot of incredibly disappointed people this weekend. So I have to wonder- why bother with this super-hyped release date at all? The product isn't there, so why bother going for all this press coverage when nothing is there to be purchased? These last three launches have been awful. It's taking what little fun is left in collecting Star Wars toys and destroying it. Social media is blowing up with stories of scant product offering, unless of course you collect the Hot Wheels or Funko POP things. I understand Disney wants to make it an event and I appreciate the eff...

Here's some proof that Hasbro could get away with ANYTHING ten years ago. 2007 was probably the best year to collect Star Wars action figures. The stuff Hasbro was willing to try was amazing, the prices were reasonable, the vehicles were works of art, and you could, y'know, actually find the product. Around this timeframe, Hasbro began offering Comic Packs- two figures plus a reprint of either a Marvel or Dark Horse comic book, the figures featured in the package from the included book.The idea was incredibly appealing to me, since I read the comics as well as bought the toys. These pictured here are from probably my favorite series they ever released, based on the first six issues of the Marvel series that ran from 1977 to 1986. What sets these apart, obviously, are the absurd colors they're painted in. The strange shading on the Stormtrooper armor not to mention the red lenses on the helmets, the far-from-final Imperial uniform on Grand Moff Tarkin, a Chewbacca w...

or He-Man 2.0 if you prefer. Mattel offered this guy last year, and I missed it. I picked it up on eBay for a ridiculous markup, but so it goes, amirite? I always hoped Mattel would offer toys that looked more like the Filmation cartoon from the 1980s, and now their licensee Super 7 is going to town with that idea. More on that later. This figure went on sale around February of last year, and as I said, I missed it. Mattel sold these exclusively through their MattyCollector.Com website, and more customers went away empty-handed than acquired the figure. Mattel relied on forced scarcity to sell these, and since 2009 I've collected this line. I made more purchases from eBay, Amazon, and online retailers than I did Mattel, because they were so hard to acquire. Most of these purchases were well after the figure had been released, and I bought most for far less than what Mattel charged for them. (You can see why the Matty website has folded and a boutique toymaker called Super 7 ...

Finally acquired the Blu-Ray for Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Soaked the movie in again, so hey, time to write a bunch of words about it that four people will read. I think I'll start with Darth Vader, because why not. I was thinking as I watched it that the original idea was to save him for the end, where he ignited his lightsaber and took out all those Rebels while he was chasing down the Death Star plans. The meeting with Director Krennic seemed superfluous, though I guess it would have cheated us out of seeing Vader's ridiculously melodramatic castle on Mustafar, which has been something I've wanted to see for a while. Some concept art for Return of the Jedi featured an Imperial castle on a planet called Had Abbadon, and that was where all the stuff between Luke, Vader, and the Emperor was going to take place. Obviously, the idea was scrapped and all the action moved to the Death Star. Lucasfilm is well-known for reusing concepts later on, and I was stoked to see Dar...

Back in 2011, the GI Joe Collector's Club offered the first series of their Figure Subscription Service, a little thing intended to get into collector's hands those figures that Hasbro had no interest in offering. I've been a member for years now, since the Club offered Dial-Tone as a free membership figure, so that has to be 2010. The Service costs around $400 for thirteen figures, so it's HUGELY expensive. I never bought in again after the first series, since the value to me isn't there. (I have no desire for repaints of Hasbro-made characters in international repaint colors, and that's what far too many figures are in each year, in my opinion.) The only reason I bought in was for Cover Girl and Big Boa, since I figured (rightly) that those two would be the most expensive on the secondary market. A cursory glance a eBay just now shows carded examples of these two at around $300 for the pair, which is damn crazy, but that's how it goes. As a figur...

I received Kup for Christmas in 1987. Pretty sure it was then, because I had the Targetmaster version pictured here. This is the Takara reissue from 2005, from the Transformers Collection. #20, to be exact, so one of the last ones before Takara started yet another reissue series in 2007, Encore. Anyway, back to Kup. Kup was one of the new characters introduced in 1986's animated Transformers: The Movie, one of the high points in Transformers (from here, that's going to be abbreviated to TF) history, and still the only TF movie worth your time. My mother took me to see it after much pleading, and I'm sure it was the only weekend it played here locally. Not only did Optimus Prime die, the movie bombed so terribly that plans for theatrical releases of the GI Joe and My Little Pony movies were called off. I can't tell you what happened with My Little Pony, but GI Joe was released on video and broken up into pieces and aired on TV in 1987/88 with intros and outros (if...

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 (...

Here they are: some of my favorite GI Joe: A Real American Hero figures. These come from my extensive museum-quality collection that I've been working on since 2000. I've managed to acquire most of my favorites, yet some remain. (The nature of collecting, amirite?) Let's start with Cobra. Out in front, we have the mail-in hooded Cobra Commander, a classic. In back, left to right, are the Alley Viper, Ice Viper, Range Viper, and the Toxo-Viper. I always wanted to acquire the Alley Viper and Toxo-Viper when I saw them on the back of the Night Viper's card, but I never did find them. Paid a bit for the Alley Viper, as that is one of the big army builders these days, but the Toxo-Viper isn't as popular, so I got him relatively cheap. The Ice Viper came with the Cobra Wolf vehicle, an item I had as a lad. That was one of my favorite figures, especially with his odd weapon choice, a pair of sai. The Range Viper I always loved because of his awesome helmet. A grim sk...

My local comic shop, The Core in Cedar Falls, IA, has recently begun to offer a small assortment of vintage Star Wars figures for sale. These are the figures I've purchased there in the last month, the genesis of my new vintage Star Wars collection. I had to start with C-3PO and R2-D2, since those are the cornerstone of any Star Wars collection. Then Anakin Skywalker, because he was super cheap. Then Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker, my favorite action figure of all time. And finally, and couple of Ewoks, notably two I had back in the day. Used to be, you couldn't throw a rock in a department store without hitting one of these two Ewok figures.

 And, here they are: the rest of my junk Star Wars figures. Dudes I picked up at various garage sales and antique stores in the late 80s/early 90s. Spent about 25 cents to $3.50 each on these figures, junk I wouldn't have otherwise bought if I had money back then. Buying these is how I learned to be a wiser collector, in that I wouldn't even look at these now. On a side note, even figures in this condition will have someone out there on craigslist or ebay thinking these are worth a fortune just because they're Star Wars toys. Check your local craigslist page for insane people trying to get a fortune for junk. I remember seeing the blue elephant dude Max Rebo and having to have it. Unfortunately, I never located the rest of the band at that garage sale, so just 50 cents for Max. I remember seeing this set at JCPenney, and my mother wouldn't buy it because it was $12, which was pretty steep back then. This is the Max Rebo Band as they originally appeared in Return ...

I dug out my box of vintage Star Wars toys that I have left. My original, beat-up, basically junk Star Wars dudes that I loved probably more than I've loved any woman I ever met. Kind of wish I still had my X-Wing and ISP-6 mini-rig, but those are long gone. And now, anecdote time! Darth Vader. Man, how many of these I owned. C-3PO with Removable Limbs, R2-D2 w/ Sensorscope, Boba Fett, and Darth Vader. I bet I had an average of three of each, with R2-D2 probably being my most common purchase. Those damn stickers just couldn't hold up to the bathtub, man. And Vader- every time I lost his saber or ripped the vinyl cape, I had to have a new figure. Of course, by the time I was old enough to own these, they were on mega-clearance, and I was able to get them for like 3 for $1. I was a Jedi baby, one of the last of the original Star Wars Generation. Hell, I remember getting Admiral Ackbar and a couple other guys at Kay-Bee in January of 1987 when my youngest brother was born-tha...

I guess I just needed a hiatus from this blog. Anyway, lots more stuff coming yer way, so be on the lookout!

Well, we're done here. Rap at ya over at The Greatest Blog Ever Written.