Ellie Sattler - Jurasic Park

Ellie Sattler was the female lead in the 90's hit Jurassic Park. I only owned a few JP toy as a kid, and the humans were not my top priority. I'd rather have my GI Joes fight the dinos. I picked up this Ellie figure years ago at a yard sale. I though maybe I'd use her in a stop motion project as a generic female sometime. For a 90's female figure she actually looks fairly decent. I'm glad sculpting and molding have improved to the point that female action figures finally look attractive. Ellie came with a grappling hood launcher, a radio backpack, and a baby triceratops. I don't have any of her accessories, so none of them are pictured below. Don't forget to "Look for the mark of Jurassic Park!"

Dollar General Ninja Turtles

I've posted about recently available Dollar General GI Joe, Batman, and Transformer figures, but today I am posting about Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toys I bought there. Before anyone gets too excited, I bought all of these more than 10 years ago. Over the course of about a year I picked up Turtle Mini-Figures in three different styles.

 The first four figures I got were retro style turtles. These guys are based on the original TMNT figures. All four Turtles are identical sculpts with unique paint jobs. They have 5 points of articulation can came with no accessories. I bought Raph, Leo, and Mikey while I actually worked at Dollar General for a few months one summer during college. I don't know why Donny sold out first, but I was able to track one down eventually.

A few months after I purchased the first three retro style Turtles I found these 2000's style Ninja Turtles Characters alongside the Retro Donny I was missing. I picked up two Foot Soldiers, Shredder, April O' Neil, and Splinter. I didn't see any 2000's Turtles there. Again these figures have 5 PoA, came with no accessories, and are about 2" tall.

 

 On another trip to Dollar General I found three of the four Turtles from the CGI movie TMNT. I did stop back a few times at a couple of different Dollar General locations, but I couldn't find Leo. It's kind of funny because at the beginning of TMNT Leo has left his life in the sewer and the three Turtles below are left behind. Again these mini-figures have 5 PoA and are about 2" tall. This time around the Turtles have their weapons, but they are sculpted into their hands and can not be removed.

Just for fun here is  a picture of the standard 5" Shredder figure holding the DG Mini-Figure. This picture kind of cracks me up because it looks like Shredder is carrying a doll of himself.

It looks like Splinter caught a rat in the lair.

Feldspar - Crystar: Crystal Warriror

Over the Summer I bought a bunch of figures from the Saga of Crystar: Crystal Warrior line at the NJCC. I just recently picked up a second Feldspar off of ebay. Feldspar is the Uncle of the two fighting princes in the story for the toy line. He is half crystal and half lava and stays neutral to the war between his nephews.

 

 Feldspar came with three accessories. He has a crystal flail, and lava while, and a crystal scepter I wonder why they made Feldspar as such a short character. It seems like an odd design choice to me.
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Beast - Marvel Universe

I've mentioned in posts here on AFA several times about how I'm collecting the X-Men from the Marvel Universe line. I prefer them in their 90's outfits, but I'll take what I can get. This Beast figure is based on his Astonishing X-Men design. His black and yellow uniform features a bold "x" design. His cat-like face and clawed hands and feet have a ton of details.

 

The Beast is on the attack!

 

This figures has great articulation and very clean paint applications. It's pretty cool that they added an additional point of articulation in Beasts feet.

An old AFA picture

While I was in college, long before this blog existed, my buddies and I were writing for a site called Obscene Newg.com. This website was joint project containing lots of different articles, posts, and artwork. Newg was up and running while we were working on our two stop motion animated shows Animation Creation and Action Figure Adventures. AFA was a pretty ambitious project due to the sheer number of characters we had to find voice actors for and the amount of time it took to edit the show.

I made this goofy picture for the old website when I needed to do a quick reshoot involving Cobra Commander and some Vipers but couldn't find my tripod. In the background you can see Clutch and Barbecue sneaking off with a video camera and tripod. The two of them were important heroes in the show.

I had a lot of fun working on our old site and both the shows, unfortunately life and everything else gets in the way and my buddies and I don't collaborate anymore, but I still love looking back at the old episodes on youtube.

Green Army Men Rescue Helicopter

Recently there was a post about this Sea King Rescue Helicopter on Toyriffic. Eric posted about a set of tan army men he bought off Amazon and the tan helicopter that was part of the set. I was so excited to see the set because the Sea King is one of the numerous names that the Sikorsky S-61 Helicopter goes by. Depending on if it is a civilian model or what branch of the military the helicopter is from changes it's name. The company my Dad works for, Carson Helicopters, specializes in S-61 helicopters. So right away, I ordered a green set for myself and a tan set for my Dad. I try to get him some sort of S-61 toy each year for Christmas.

 Along with the awesome, yet simplistic, toy helicopter the set came with a bunch of little army men. The army men seem to be pretty much the classic sculpts from my childhood. There is the crawling guy, the crouching guy, the grenade guy, the guy with a flamethrower, and the guy with a metal detector plus some others.

 There is a little door open on the side of the helicopter. The machine gunner guy can fit in the doorway. Some of the Helicopters fixed up by the company my Dad works for are being used by the State Department in Afghanistan. A guy I went to high school with who worked with my Dad for a while, gave up his job to go to work as a door gunner for these helicopters in Afghanistan. We all lovingly call him Meat Head and he's an ex-marine.

 Here's another shot of some of the army men. The set made by Tim Mee included duplicates of many of the figures.

I'm finishing off this post with some actual photos of S-61 Helicopters I took over the three summers I worked at Carson Helicopters. I had a great time working there, but it was just a job while we were off of school during the Summer. Now I actually work for the School District I teach at over the Summer.

Benzene Seijin - Ultraman Monster

Alien Benzene is a villainous monster from the Ultraman series. Some how my buddy Derek got two of these figures and eventually gave me the duplicate. Like all of these monsters made by Bandai, the figure's tag was all in Japanese. Through some online research I discovered his name is Benzene Seijin, but the Ultraman Wiki calls him Alien Benzene. Apparently he comes to Earth to steal gold to use as medicine for his chronic illness.

The alien is mostly blue with a giant silver head. Like the rest of these style toys his shoulders are his only points of articulation. Due to his small feet and lack of a tail, this monster frequently falls over. He was a real pain to animate in our monster movie, Godzilla Flick.

Orko - Vintage MOTU

Orko was my most desired vintage figure as a kid. He was in every episode... that made him important. For some reason I never got Orko. I was happy to have this one join my collection since I started collecting MOTU again as an adult. His character design is a little odd in toy form. Orko has all his important elements like his hat, scarf, shirt, and big eyes. Unfortunately his proportions are kind of off from his appearance in the cartoon.

 Orko originally came with a plastic rip cord that when pulled though his body made his spin around on any smooth surface. He also came with a yellow dish with coins. The coins had images of other MOTU characters on them and was supposed to be some sort of magic trick. Orko's main accessory is his removable hat. He looks really strange without it.

Rumbler - GI Joe '87

 Rumbler was the vehicle driver to the Radio Controlled Crossfire vehicle. Rumbler was made using no new parts. Hasbro just combined parts from several other figures to create this one. Rumbler has very minimalistic paint apps to boot. Rumbler is made using the head of Footloose, the torso of Heavy-Metal, and the legs of Bazooka. Rumber is armed with a brown helmet and gray gun, both of which previously came with other vehicle drivers in different colors.

 In 1987 my friend Will and I both got the Crossfire for Christmas. Our parents had talked ahead of time and got us the alternative versions.The Crossfire was released in two different versions that operated on different frequencies. I played with that R/C car for years and beat the crap out of it.

 As a kid I used to pretend that Rumbler and Footloose were brothers, considering they look so much alike. For a while in the early 2000's there were many jokes made about Rumbler's peach pants on the Joe Customs message board. They even sold t-shirts that said "Nice Pants" with a little 8-bit version of his pants.

 It would have been interesting if Hasbro had given Rumbler a different hair color. This would have helped to make him look less like Footloose. I had fun with him as a kid, but he's not one of the best Joes, and he's often forgotten about.

Arkham Origins Bane

Along with the Arkham Asylum 2-Pack I recently reviewed, I also received the Arkham Origins Bane figure. This toy is based on the third video game in the series. Origins is a prequel of sorts. For this appearance, Bane's design is much more influenced by his movie design. Bane is wearing military style webbing gear and combat boots. His stature is also not as beefy.

Bane is wearing a venom backpack that has bright green tubes that attach to different parts of his body. While this figure displays well, his articulation on the other hand is lacking. The tubes make it hard to move his arms. He has a grenade on his one leg that makes it impossible to move his one hip. I know these are for adult collectors, so they don't expect people to play with them, but I like to be able to pose my figures. Articulation is often an issue on these DC Collectables.

Here's a great shot for the family album: The Bane Brothers