Swords and Spaceships

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.

Got a quiet minute here on Christmas Day. Started browsing eBay and looked up the toys I used to get back in the day. More GI Joe and Masters of the Universe toys than you could shake a fucking stick at. I thought about picking some up, but I pretty much purchased most of them already. I guess I just got a little nostalgic, since the stuff I get for Christmas now can't possibly compare to the awesome stuff I got as a kid.

I've been wanting to read the original Eastman & Laird TMNT comic series for years. IDW started reprinting it recently. I think they have the whole run out in oversized hardcovers, but I didn't care for that format or the price. Then some sensibly-priced collections started appearing, but they contained random issues, and certainly not in order. Then came this- colored versions of the original issues, one at a time. I elected to go this route. I'm really ambivalent toward b&w comics, and even though the color in these is a little wonky in places, it seems the best way for me to go. Hopefully IDW gets all the original issues out- I'd hate to not see it finished.

I've purchased a lot of MOTUC figures in the last year. My love for this line never diminished, though I missed out on a bunch due to not subscribing or being late to the day-of sales. However, this did not deter me from August's sale, which featured this all-new character, Sir Laser-Lot. Something I always thought was missing from the original MOTU line was a dude in shining armor. Certain design elements of figures like Man-At-Arms or Extendar suggest knightly inspiration, but there was never a character in the toy line like this. Nor was there a dragon dude, something that seems so odd for a fantasy-based toy line, and is something MOTUC has rectified this year. SLL was designed by Geoff Johns, apparently for the ill-fated design contest in the late 1980s that Fearless Photog comes from. It didn't win back then, but since it's here now, and I dig it. The weapons are really neat. I always, always thought the lightsaber was the coolest fictional weapon ever c...

I had toyed with the idea of deleting this blog, but I got too up my own butt about it after rereading some of the older posts. (I'm vain, yes, but I do miss the passion I had for this stuff back then.) So I'll try to generate some new content. I really missed not updating this blog, so I'll give it a try again.

Ha, wow. No post yet this year. Again, wow. I just got a bunch of new stuff in the mail, like GI Joe Pursuit of Cobra wave 6, MOTUC Sy-Klone and Moss Man, plus I'm (regrettably) back on the Star Wars wagon part-time, so wheeeee. It's been tough to blog about this stuff working as much as I do. Hell, I got about five Transformers still in their packages because I don't really have time to open them, to give you an idea of how scarce my free time is.

Sy-Klone! Got tired of waiting for Matty to post this, so there ya go. Sy-Klone is April's Masters of the Universe Classics figure, and I think he looks great. 'Course, he was one of my top ten MOTU figures as a kid, so there's that.

An old news report from the day Return of the Jedi opened in 1983. Anyway, at the end, there's this older guy buying Star Wars toys, clearly ahead of the curve.

Picked up this bad boy a few weeks ago at Target. It's the Doom Cycle w/ Storm Rider from the new GI Joe: Pursuit of Cobra line. I like it. It's a new Dreadnok, which are few and far between, and he has a great look to him. The bike, however, is a little on the big side. I suppose it's a little big for safety and durability reasons, so I guess I can let that slide. It does look pretty intimidating, what with its size and pop-out blades and shotguns. The Dreadnoks are something I thought was missing from the GI Joe movie, so it's kind of nice to see them represented here. I also like it because back in the day, when the Dreadnoks made their debut in the line and cartoon, my mom would never let me have any of the toys, because she thought they were 'white trash.' At 29, I don't disagree with her, and the whole chocolate donuts and grape soda were obvious euphemisms I didn't get at the time, but now I make my own money so I can buy my trashy action figures....