Favorite toy of the day

Toybiz's Lord of the Rings Defeat of Sauron Sauron.

Favorite toy of the day

Toybiz's Marvel Legends Galactus Series Bullseye Variant.

Mailbox Toy Run

UPS
-Toywiz

Received:
-SOTA Street Fighter 2 Evil Ryu
-TOMY's Disney Magical Collection Jasmine

Dr Doom Review

Dr Doom with Lightning Bolt Blast from Toybiz's Fantastic Four movie Series 2. Held back from previous shipments due insufficient lead time with the movie character's final design. Now shipping in solid cases(12x Dr Doom). Unconfirmed that he is shipping with new stock of Series 2.



Sculpt
Average. Perhaps it's because the movie design was so bland, but regardless this figure's sculpting doesn't sell the design. I tend to blame the character design by the moviemakers rather than Toybiz, because their level of sculpt for the four heroes of the movie has been some of their best work, and certainly their best work for a movie line. Still, this particular figure feels like a throwback to their X2 figure line in terms of detail and style. One nice detail is the lower half, which are sculpted to look like pants that have turned to metal. It has an interesting Tin Woodsman effect, and is a nice touch. This is evened out by the compromises that had to be made for the action feature though.



Paint
Decent. Even in this department Toybiz is taking a knock for the moviemaker's incompetence at design... the paint apps are faithful to the source and perhaps I should give them credit for that, but frankly I don't care to. The particular source of dissatisfaction for me is the left hand of Doom, the one not used in the action feature. The idea is that Dr Doom was human, exposed to radiation, and his skin has slowly been peeling off to reveal new metal skin underneath. This kind of detail is so subtle that it's hard to pull off, the best way being through sculpt(in fact that might've notched that score a little higher) but instead they chose to take the unsatisfying design of rendering it through paint. Since this is a mass-retail line with presumably hundreds of thousands of pieces manufactured, they chose to do it the simplest way, which is to basically smear the flesh colored hand with silver paint. It doesn't look bad for what it is, my issue is with the technique used. However, of the dozen or so examples I saw carded at the store the quality was essentially the same on each so I'm assuming I got a standard paint job, and I give them some credit for achieving their goal. I just wish they'd reached for something a little higher.



Articulation
Poor. This figure is hampered by an action feature which limits his mobility in his upper body. There's really no way around that, short of not including the action feature. His articulation consists of: Partial ball neck, shoulder swivels, hinge elbows, 1 bicep swivel(left arm), swivel wrists, knuckle hinges, waist swivel, ball hips, double-jointed knees, hinge ankles. The right shoulder, neck, elbows, and ankles have a extremely limited range of movement due to the sculpt and action feature.

Accessories
Very good. I'm a sucker for clear energy bolt add-ons. I love them in Street Fighter, in Star Wars, and this Doom has one of the best ones I've seen. He also includes a weird fire missile-launcher thing, but it looks more like an accessory meant for the Human Torch than for Doom. I'm not complaining though, it's a nice little missile launcher thing for what it's worth.



Action Feature
Very good. If you're going to ruin a figure with an action feature, then it better be a good one. And this is the best one so far in the FF movie line in my opinion. The light-up eyes and hand are extremely bright and colorful and make for a very cool effect, especially with the energy bolt add-on.

Overall
Okay. Tons of compromises due to the action feature would sink this figure if the action feature wasn't so cool. If this is the only Doom we get from this line, I will be very disappointed. Given the prior failure of Toybiz comic movie lines, I wish they'd had the courtesy to schedule a super-articulated version of Doom first. Kids like action features but they'd like ANY Doom they saw first, so there's no real excuse. Kids wouldn't hold out for some Doom they never heard of before. Mass-retail companies are slowly learning to balance the wants of collectors with the mass audience of kids but sometimes the learning curve is painfully slow.

Favorite toy of the day

TIE:

Hasbro's Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith #6 Clonetrooper (repaint)

and

Hasbro's Evolutions: The Sith Darth Sidious

Sunday Toy Run

Stores covered:
-Walmart(local)
-Walmart(out of town #1)
-Walmart(out of town #2)

Interesting Stuff Found:
-Lots! Looksie:



Bought:
-Star Wars ROTS #54 Turbo Tank Driver(Local Walmart)
-Fantastic Four movie Series 2 Dr. Doom(Local Walmart)
-Star Wars ROTS #6 Repaint Quickdraw Clone x2(Out of Town Walmart #1)
-LOTR Defeat of Sauron Boxset(Out of Town Walmart #2)

Favorite toy of the weekend

Hasbro's Evolutions: The Sith Darth Tyrannus.

Mailbox Toy Run

USPS
-Big Bad Toy Store

Received:
-Hasbro's Evolutions: The Sith
-Toybiz's LOTR SP Helm's Deep Aragorn

Favorite toy of the day

Hasbro's Star Wars Episode Three: Return of the Sith #54 AT-RT DRIVER (Missile-Firing Blaster!).

Favorite toy of the day

Hasbro's Star Wars Episode Three: Revenge of the Sith #55 Obi Wan Kenobi Red Leader Pilot.

Is it just me...

or does the Figure Factory mystery figure of non-flame-face Human Torch look like a Cheetoh?

Thursday Toy Run

Stores covered:
-Walmart(local)
-TRU
-Target
-K Mart
-Suncoast

Interesting Stuff Found:
-Tons of new Star Wars basic figures at Walmart.

Bought:
-Star Wars ROTS #54-56(Turbo Tank Driver, Pilot Obi-Wan, Mustafar Sentry)
-LOTR SP Strider

Favorite toy of the day

SOTA's Now Playing Nightmare Demon.

Favorite toy of the day

21st Century's Xtreme Detail US Marine Corps Sgt "Zippie" Burns.

Tuesday Toy Run

Stores covered:
-Walmart(local)
-Toys R Us
-Target
-K Mart
-Suncoast

Interesting Stuff Found:
-Lots of Anakin to Vader Evolutions

Bought:
-21st Century 1:18 WW2 Marines x4
-SOTA Now Playing Nightmare Demon

Favorite toy of the day

Johnny Lightning's Enterprise 1701 refit.

Aptom IV Review!

Aptom IV from Max Factory's Guyver Biofighter Collection Max series. Imported from Japan.

Sculpt
Exquisite. More a piece of art than an action figure, the detail captured here is all the more amazing for how much invisible articulation they packed in.



Paint
Very good. Would get higher but most of the figure is the actual color of the plastic and thus very little of the plastic is painted. What painting there is, however, is well done and artistically rendered.

Articulation
Perfect. Max Factory's Guyver BFC Max line is the answer to the tired claim that articulation ruins sculpts. Not so. Here, there are over 30 points of articulation that I counted before giving up, and very little is easy to spot at first glance apart from the arms.



Accessories
Excellent. Well, just look! The wings alone are great, without the spine missile armor attachments.

Overall
Tricky. These figures cost a fortune. You have to order them from Japan or an American company who imports them(and jacks up the price). On the other hand, these figures are so limited, and so finely made, they're almost worth it... Basically if you have one, you're part of a limited fraternity of a few hundred Americans who own one. Still, if you find yourself scoffing at buying Marvel Legends for more than $10, you'd probably be better off looking, not touching.

My JLU part 2

Favorite toy of the weekend

Toybiz's Superhero Showdown Spider-man.

Favorite toy of the day

Max Factory's Guyver Bio Fighter Collection Aptom IV.

Berserker Wolverine Review!

Chase figure of the first assortment of the Superhero Showdown Booster Packs by Toybiz. Others in this wave are: Ghost Rider, Punisher, Doctor Octopus, and Black Costume Spider-Man.

Sculpt
-Excellent. The sculptor here managed to match the physique on the Two Pack Tiger-Stripe Wolverine pretty well, without it being a carbon copy. The musculature is similar but if you look close and compare the details are slightly different, such as muscle placement, veins, hair, etc. Nice work. Also the claws here are very nice, a noticable improvement on the Two Pack Tiger Stripe Wolverine's claws. Much stiffer, and made to look like the bone claws the character sported at one time.



Paint
Okay. Weak point of this entire line is the paint applications. This one is okay, but as you can see from the pics they didn't apply it very exactly. It's about on par for any figure line this small though, so I can let it pass - at least with the regular figures you can compare and contrast before you buy.



Articulation
-Almost perfect. These figures truly are among the most articulated figures in the scale, but they could still add on a few more points here and there. This particular figure has a problem that has plagued the entire line to this point excepting the Two Pack Spider-man: no wrist or forearm swivel. This prevents you from getting some nice fighting poses, but it's still a very playable figure.

Accessories
-Okay. All of the accessories for this line are given over to the game that's sorta-kinda-basically the reason/excuse for this line to exist. Most of it is useless if you don't play the game(I don't), such as the gun launcher thing, and the cards(which are nice though). However the stand the figures all come with are quite nice, they resemble the flying stands with some Marvel Legends, and are very useful in creating action poses.



Overall
-Recommended highly. If you like the line, then you need to buy this figure the moment you see him. He's incredibly rare, I've never seen him at retail(lucked out and ordered him from amazon). Probably one of the two or three best figures in the line so far, and if this is the quality we can expect in future waves, this may become one of my favorite lines. All of the flaws are fixable, and the potential is huge. The $7.99 price is a bit steep for the scale, but not as much as people would have you think - Microman(admittedly which are imports) go for from $10-15, Star Wars MSRP is only a dollar less at $6.99, and BBi's new line of 1:18 WW2 Paratroopers is hovering around the $8 mark as well.

Ragin' Thing Review!

First review on the blog here. Going to eschew the usual format of telling about the history of the line, my thoughts on the movie the figure is from, etc etc etc and just get down to basics. Here's my review of the Fantastic Four movie series 3 Ragin' Thing figure.




Sculpt
-Excellent. I'd waited on getting a Fantastic Four movie Thing action figure mainly because the first two were pretty bland. This one has a great personality on his face, he really looks like he's about to clobber someone.

Paint
-Good. Better in person than in my pics for sure. If you don't like Toybiz' usual paint apps you won't like this, it's not quite artful but it's a nice job for a toy that's designed to be *played with* in my opinion.

Articulation
-Good not great. He's missing some points that would make him a truly exceptional figure. Mainly, the lack of any articulation between the waist and neck I don't mind, but no boot cuts or cut wrists hampers his posability a bit. Otherwise he has the usual Toybiz hinge & swivel neck, ball shoulders, bicep swivels, hinge elbows, hinge wrists, swivel waist, ball hips, double knees, swivel ankle, hinge toes.

Accessories
-Excellent. Here you get a whole extra figure, a wire frame figure of Mr Fantastic. His paint and sculpt are somewhat poor, but hey, he's a pack-in.





Overall
-Recommended. This is easily the best figure of the Thing released in the movie line so far, and I don't see any coming down the pike that will beat it. Well worth the $7.

Favorite toy of the day

Toybiz's Superhero Showdown Berserker Wolverine.

New DCD Board colors... finally

Just writing to mention that DCD finally got rid of their awful red and grey color scheme that was blinding me daily. Now it's pink and white - not perfect but it's like turning the light on after trying to read in a darkened room. Such an improvement. Maybe people will actually be pleasant there now....




....nah

Thursday Toy Run

Stores covered:
-Walmart(local)
-Toys R Us
-Target
-Suncoast
-KMart

Interesting Stuff Found:
-Star Wars Jedi vs Sith Battlepack x10 (Target)
-ML8 Storm (Walmart)
-500th Figure Darth Vader x10 (Walmart)
-18" NECA Gandalf (Suncoast)

Bought:
-Super-posable Boromir LOTR figure (Walmart)
-Spider-man 2 movie Spider-man (super-posable)


Received in mail:
Superhero Showdown Berserker Wolverine (amazon)
Fantastic Four movie series 3 Raging Thing (amazon)

Review to come on last two.

Cross-Pollination #1

It's weird the little cliques toy fans seperate themselves into online. I regularly participate in numerous toy message boards covering tons of different niches(more than I have listed on the right, even). It's really like two concurrent hobbies, toys and something else, and the toy collectors for one subject matter gather together, and shun the others. Like sports action figure fans, superhero figure fans, movie figure fans, japanese figures, military figures, sure there's some mixing along the fringes but not that much.

This is the first of a series of brief forays into one of the niches I find interesting enough to keep track of a daily basis. If anyone bothers to read this blog, I hope they might learn something about a niche of toys they ordinarily don't give a second glance.

In this case, 1:18 scale military figures and vehicles. If anyone is reading this, they probably think this begins at G.I.Joe and ends at the execreble The Corps figures. Not so. In fact I'm going to entirely overlook the kiddy military figures, since they're held in general disdain to the military buffs by the audience of the two big names in historically accurate military toys.

The two main companies I speak of are BBi and 21st Century. The combination between these two is pretty fierce. 21st Century is reputed to have the edge in the field, with a headstart in terms of number of planes and figures produced, and level of detail and accuracy achieved. Currently they have out WW2 Japanese and Marine figures in Walmarts, as well as many vehicles.

BBi has made some strong strides in only the past week though. One of the most-wanted planes among fans is the World War 2 Japanese Zero. 21st Century made a big splash by announcing one at San Diego Comicon, for release in 2006. Unfortunately for them however BBi beat them to the punch, with the just-announced plans to release one next month! This in addition to the rather well-made WW2 paratroopers now at TRUS has given them a brief advantage.

My personal preference at the moment however is to 21st Century. I started with BBi when I started exploring this niche, and their figures are very very nice figures in the 1:18 scale, but 21st Century with their swappable arms, better headsculpts, and better attention to detail have won me over. I don't have any room for the vehicles but one day I hope to get one of either company's P-51s.

Frankly, for this scale and for this field of interest, it's a great time to collect. The competition between these two companies is really heating up, and lots of great toys are being made.

My JLU thus far

Started collecting this line over the summer and loving it. Great design, great character choice.

Favorite toy of the day

Tomy's Magical Collection Kim Possible.

A lotta talk for a little girl...

So the biggest controversy right now with Toybiz' Marvel Legends, one of my favorite lines, is the selection of the character of X-23 for series 12. Here's what the figure looks like:

The main problem with her selection seems to be along the lines of her not being of "Legendary" status, which is quite the load of BS, in my opinion. All this talk of "legendary" is, in geekspeek, "I don't read her comic, I don't know who she is, I know all, how can this character be?!! Remove it from my sight!." Yet many of these same people ignore the inclusion of Maestro Hulk in the same wave. This character is just a thinly veiled excuse for a new Hulk figure. Though I happen to like the Maestro Hulk incarnation, where's the outrage over this? Of course, I know why - they read the comics Maestro was in. All what, 6 issues? Or at least were aware of the existence of them. Hulk is "legendary" no doubt. But this incarnation? It was a one-or-two-storyline variant. X-23, on the other hand, is a member of the X-men currently.

I see this tendency of collectors a lot, to want all the best, most-longstanding characters to be figures RIGHT NOW. It's common to all of us. But if a toy company blows their wad, so to speak, with these characters, people will stop buying the line and it'll die. Is that what we want? If SOTA released Dhalism, Zangief, E Honda, etc in the second series of their Street Fighter line, who'd they release in series 3? How about series 6? If they even got to that point. Because like it or not Toybiz, by saving characters like Psylocke or Loki etc for down the road, is getting us figures that we would never see otherwise, like Man-Thing and Deathlok. And though people wondered why they were even made at the time, I guarantee by series 20 people would be screaming for the more obscure characters.

As toy fans we've been taught by bitter experience that most of our favorite toy lines are not long-lived. I don't think Marvel Legends is one of these. Here we are, at series 10, and series 9 reportedly had the highest sales of the entire line. They've earned a little faith from us. We'll get everyone we want, in time.

First post!

Being generally bored and spending so much time online talking about toys, I figured I'd try and create a repository for my thoughts on toys, collecting, the industry, etc. Hopefully you'll enjoy what I add to the ongoing debates of articulation vs McStatues and whatever fan-drama happens to be the talk of the day.