Commissioner Gordon - Batman: TDKR

When the new Batman movie figures came out I wanted to get all of them to build the Collect and Connect light up Bat-Signal. Unfortunately, I didn't get out much to toy hunt and pretty much missed them in stores. I did get Batman and Commissioner Gordon, but that's far from the complete set. Gordon uses the standard DC Universe suit body. He features a long  jacket over the suit and a good looking head sculpt with glasses. Gordon came with an axe, pistol, and damaged Bat-Signal parts.

 Gordon & Dent are going to clean up Gotham

When Batman becomes a public enemy, Gordon smashes the Bat-Signal

Monsters in My Pocket #1

Got up at 5:15 am today to go to a flea market with some friends. It's also the first day of the Hay Ride this year. So I've got limited free time today. Pre-photographed Mini-figures to the rescue. I had to go with some Monster in my Pocket (MIMP) since it's almost October. I loved these things as a kid. My buddy Derek and I had hours of fun playing with these little gummy monsters. We would incorperate lots of other toys with them.

Spring-Heeled Jack, Medusa, and a Witch

(I reread this before posting and I know the writing is not great. I used the 

word thing like 2 times in a row. what do you want for 5:25 in the morning)

Zoloworld Cases (bsw002) Super Powers

I recently ordered some protective cases from Zoloworld.com for carded figures. This video shows off their case model bsw002 which they sell for Super Powers, Wrestling, and Star Trek the Next Generation figures. I'm using them for some large card back GI Joes like Street Fighter and Armor Tech. I am also using this style case to protect my Club Lion Force Sven figure from Mattel's new Voltron collector's line.

Large Card GI Joes and Voltron's Sven

Cammy - Capcom Street Fighter II

I picked up this Cammy figure a couple of years ago at a flea market. I thought the sculpt on her pony tails were pretty impressive. I usually think of Cammy as wearing green, but all the Street Fighter characters have a couple of color options if both players pick to be the same character.

She has a really nice sculpt. The figure suffers from having very limited articulation. It is also unfortunate about the inappropriate paint wear on this particular figure. Almost anywhere else and it could just be battle damage.

I originally planned to cut off the two pony tails to use on custom figures, but never got around to it. So Cammy lives on intact at the bottom of a box of random toys.

Toys on TV #2

I know I already did a post for today, but I was thinking about some stuff and wanted to jot it down. There are three toy related shows that I have been watching regularly, Robot Chicken, Toy Hunters, and Collection Intervention.

Robot Chicken - If you've read this blog, you know I love stop motion animation. I have enjoyed Robot Chicken since it started. It had a big impact on the animated show my friends and I did Animation Creation. Our show started first, but you can see it's influence on A.C. if you watch the 10th episode on youtube. The first two episodes of Robot Chicken this season have heavily featured GI Joes and I love that. GI Joe: A Real American Hero is by far my favorite toy line. I know I haven't featured them much on this site yet, it's coming.

Toy Hunters - I love seeing peoples collections but I'm getting tired of  hearing Jordan shout "oh my gosh!" right before they cut to commercials. Tonight's Horror themed episode was interesting since I don't really collect that stuff. I do have some interest in the genera, since I work at a Haunted Hay Ride and Field of Fright.

Collection Intervention - Again, I like seeing peoples collections, but I get tired of watching these people in awkward and stressful situations as they get talked into doing things they are unconformable with. I don't think I'm as bad as the people on the show, but it does make me wonder if I should be in therapy considering I have toys in my Living Room, Dinning Room, Kitchen, Bed Room, and Toy Room on the first floor of my house. I fell like the one difference between myself and the people on the show is that I don't have a problem parting with toys. I buy things to give them away from time to time. I've donated several cels from my animation collection to a museum.

Spider-Man - McDonalds

During the mid-90's when the Spider-Man cartoon was on tv McDonalds offered Spider-Man toys in their Happy Meals. The toys features several mini action figures and a couple of character based vehicles.

 Spider-Man features neck, shoulders, and waist articulation. 

He has a decent sculpt and a nice paint job. He's a fun little figure.

 Peter Parker has a little action feature where if you raise his fist hand his head flips over to reveal his "spider-sense". This is represented by showing half his face and half of his costume face. His other hand has a camera sculpted into it. The cameras arm is his only normal articulation point. (We actually used this figure in the interview portion of Animation Creation Ep 10)

 Here you can see the "spider-sense" head. The feature is not spring loaded, but reminds

 me of the morphing action Power Ranger figures from the same era.

 Mary Jane Watson features no articulation, but it was nice that they included her in this line. 

The girl is often overlooked in a boys toy line. she came with a snap on alternate outfit 

and a briefcase, but I don't have them to show.

The last action figure from this line is Dr. Octopus. He has articulation at his head, shoulders, and each of his mechanical arms. He is the best of these mini figures for sculpt and articulation. Doc Oc was a lot of fun.

I also had the Scorpion Vehicle from the line, but it doesn't fit in the scale of these figures and wasn't stored with them so it's not pictured. The other vehicles in this happy meal line (which I never had) were based on Spider-Man, Venom, and the Hobgoblin.

Muscle Men!

 I've photographed a lot of mini-figures from various toy lines to use as quick updates when I have limited time. Tonight I traveled with a friend of mine up to my parents house, which is about an hour from where I live. We loaded up the table saw my parents gave me when I graducated from high school and brought it to my house. Now I can really get started on setting up the shop in my garage.

So today's mini-figs are from the M.U.S.C.L.E. (Millions of Unusual Small Creatures Lurking Everywhere) toy line. As a kid we always called them Muscle Men. I had one trash can pack of figures and all the rest I picked up at yard sales.

 The green guy's head looks like it was whittled from a stick. The orange figure's arm features wood grain. The blue guy looks like he is wearing a pharaohs hat.

 

 These are some of the weirdest MUSCLE figures I have. They each feature a strange head.

All three of these figures are very similar. Each one has a cylindrical head with a skinny ponytail coming out of the tops of their head.

Mekaneck - MOTUC

I just got my subscription figures from MattyCollector.com and had to review Mekaneck right away. He was always one of my favorite vintage figures, and they knocked him out of the ball park. He looks spot on the vintage figure and comes with his mace and mechanical neck extensions. Check out my animated review below.

Front and back views of Mekaneck

Here is Mekaneck with both his short and long neck extension

Mr. Sinister - Toy Biz X-Men

Mr. Sinister was a pretty cool action figure in the 90's. He features a removable hard plastic cape and light-up eyes and chest. I also really liked that his one hand was sculpted open. Many 90's figures features closed hands with a hole throught them to hold weapons. The open hand works well with many X-Men characters for spell casting/mutant power using.

As a kid I never had an issue of the comic that featured him. I mostly based all my play action off his trading card  and an appearance on the X-Men cartoon from FOX. It was nice to have another big bad guy to work into stories. I had been beating up Magneto, Apocalypse, and Juggernaut from Wave 1 over and over again. Mr. Sinister and Ice-Man where the only two figures I was able to pick up from the 2nd wave.

There is a switch on the back of the figure that activates his light-up features. It sticks through a small hole in his cape. For the time period, I think Toy Biz did a great job on his cape. In the comic it is a series of individual pieces, which would be impossible for a toy. 

Mr. Sinister is the only X-Men figure I ever owned with a quality control issue. There is a red finger print on his groin. Someone at the factory must have gotten paint on their hand from his belt.

Glo Worm & Glo Friends

Glo Worm (Glow Worm or Glo-Worm) was a popular Playskool product in  the early 80's. The original stuff animal / night light had a vinyl head like a cabbage patch kid and a stuffed body that contained a battery pack. This light up toy was so popular is spawned a cartoon and series of mini figures.

These smaller characters were called Glo Friends. They were made of glow in the dark plastic and each came with a little cloth sleeping bag.

 

My sister and I always enjoyed this franchise together, much like the Care Bears. I have very vivid memories of playing with these figures in our Grandparent's house in Connecticut. They moved to Florida when I was pretty young so I was really little then. 

One thing that was really cool about this line is that I was able to get the characters I actually wanted. With many toy lines I would be missing an important character from the cartoon and it would kind of drive me crazy trying to find that figure.  

I had Glo-Worm who was based on the original toy and was the main character. Glo-Grannybug was the wise older member of the group that took care of everyone. Glo-Bug was an adventures character who could fly.

Glo-Grannybug, Glo-Worm, & Glo-Bug

These figures are one piece with no articulation. They have a decent amount of paint apps, and their paint held up well over the years. The figures are hollow and so are fun to play with on your figures tips as a kid. I'm not sure where the other sleeping bags are, and which figure goes with which bag. I think I had also had a light green and a light pink sleeping bag.

Darkseid - Super Powers

Darkseid is one of the coolest figures from the Super Powers line by Kenner. He is massive and included two action features. I bought him at a local thrift store (Care & Share - it supports Mennonite charities) as a kid. He didn't have his cape, but that never bothered me. When you squeeze Darkseid's legs together his arms move. I always loved using that feature to have him punch stuff with his closed fist. His open hand is just large enough you can have him hang onto a hero's ankle and dangle them upside down.

As a kid, I dropped him off the dinning room table while playing with him and his fist arm broke off. Luckily it still kind of sits in place. Just the way the pin in his shoulder broke I can rest it in place and the action features still works. If you move him around to much or are rough with him it just falls off. My favorite thing about him as a kid was his Omega Eye Beams. If you hold him in the light right, his eyes light up. I though this was so cool. Later in the 90's this was used on several Star Wars figures including Jawas and R2-D2.

Special Post - MOTU Fan Video Winners!

Mill Creek Entertainment has just posted information about the winners of the MOTU Fan Video Contest. Guess what... I'm a winner! Our videos (or clips of them) will be included in a Fan's of He-Man Documentary on the upcoming He-Man DVD set.

MOTU Fan Video Contest Winners

Check it out!

Man-At-Arms - Vintage MOTU

I have posted quite a bit on this blog about the Masters of the Universe Classics line, but today I figured  I would post about a vintage toy. Man-At-Arms is from the first wave of figures. He features the standard MOTU body molded in green. He has a molded on helmet and three removable orange armor pieces.

I got into He-Man and the Masters pretty early on in life, but I was born in 1982, the same year the first wave was released. So any figures from that wave I had as a kid pretty much came from a yard sale. Although a few of them I was able to get as reissues in the store as a kid. I remember getting Man-At-Arms at a yard sale along with the Windraider and loving both of them.

I really enjoyed the figure, but always wished he was more Filmation cartoon accurate.. For the cartoon the designers added a mustache to make him look older than He-Man as well as giving him symmetrical armor. This allowed the animators to flip drawings. The action figure came with an orange mace that was rarely, if ever used in the cartoon.

From the back of the figure you can see all the little clips and snaps that hold his armor in place. If I could ask the designer of this figure one question, it would be... Why green?  I'd love to see someone do a head swap with a He-Man body and slap this armor on that figure to see what he'd look like with flesh tone skin.

Fire & Ice - Prelude to Doomsday

Here are two good looking DC Super Heroes that were included in the Prelude to Doomsday box set. I decided to post these two ladies after reading issues 1-5 of Justice League International from the New 52.

Fire is made out of a translucent green plastic. Her head sculpt is awesome with the flying/flaming hair.  The only bad thing about clear figures is that their joints and connection points sometimes look weird.

Ice is a little more bland looking., but still cool. These figures don't have a ton of articulation, but it's neat that they are small and compact. The figures in the line do not have a lot of details sculpted in, but they do try to give them nice paint details.

Sy-Klone - MOTUC

Sy-Klone was never one of my favorite vintage He-Man characters. His head sculpt was to close to He-Man's and his action feature kind of ruined his arms. You couldn't really pose him at all because they were too floppy. I never really minded the fact that I missed getting him for the MOTUC line. Eventually he was reissued, and I decided to pick him up because I owned so many of the figures from the line.

He comes with his classic yellow shield and his lenticular sticker radar dish on his chest. As an additional accessory and a nod to his 200x figure Sy-Klone comes with a giant red disc weapon that attaches to his back.

His ab-crunch joint is very odd. due to this radar dish chest, Sy-Klone can lean back farther than he can lean forward. It's almost like the joint is backwards. It is understandable why he could not bend forward. One of the most interesting parts of his sculpt include the blue fins on his arm. They are well sculpted to look like his vintage figure without interfering with his articulation. His large red disc weapon can be held in his hand or clipped to his back.

His name is so oddly spelled.  I have seen him listed in many ways online including: Sy-Klone, Cyclone, Sy-Clone, and Syclone.

Fright Feature Winston - The Real Ghostbusters

As a kid I had a lot of Ghostbuster toys. Some how I was only able to get one of the Ghostbusters themselves from the first wave. So when the second series came out I made sure I got the rest of the team. The second series was called 'Fright Feature' and all the figures has an action feature that made them look scared.

I really love their normal jumpsuits in the movie and the cartoon. Winston's outfit is close to that look. He has long purple gloves and some extra yellow pads but he still pretty much looks like he's wearing the jump suit.

When you squeeze his arm into his body his head spins around 360 degrees. As his head spins the top of his head raises up exposing the inside of his mouth making him look like he is screaming. It's very cartoony, but was fun as a kid.

For accessories, Winston came with a green gun and an orange ghost. The ghost could fit over his head or rest on the end of his ghostbusting gun.

I took a bunch of my Ghostbusters to a friends house one time in elementary school and accidentally left two of their guns behind. On the next school day I told the kid that I left two items there and described them to him. He claimed that I didn't leave them there. I never went to play at his house again.

He-Man pulls Whiplash's Tail - MOTU Cartoon Cel

This is a cel from He-Man and The Master of the Universe. It's from the 78th episode, titled Betrayal of Sratos. This cel depicts a battle between He-Man and Whiplash. He-Man is very large in the frame and pretty much fills the entire cel.

Here is the pencil sketch that goes with the cel. He-Man is holding a bar from a prison window in his other hand. Later in the scene he used the bar to tie Whiplash's tail to a rock formation. I donated both the cel and sketch to the Toonseum in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

Movie Profesor X - Custom Hair

Sometime after the first X-Men movie was out of theaters I was in Toy R Us and they has a lot of figures from the line on clearance for $1.99. I picked up a few characters, and most of them were to be customized to use as generic civilians in my animations. I actually picked up to Professor X figures.

The figure came with a wheel chair, and his knee and hip joints were super loose. He was actually unable to stand. It makes sense for Professor X, but I need him to stand. I injected hot glue into his joints and then broke them free. This gave him nice and tight leg joints. Then I sculpted hair on him, hoping to make him not instantly recognizable as Charles Xavier.

At the time I wasn't sure if he'd be used as a politician or a businessman when I customized him. In our animated show, Animation Creation, he was used twice. First (and briefly) he was a bank manager in a Millersville Campus Police video. The second time he appeared as a hard nosed reporter named Xavier Roberts. This is both a nod to Charles Xavier and Cabbage Patch Kids creator Xavier Roberts.

Animation Creation Ep 10 (Public Relations Segment)

Nosferatu - Silent Screamers

Originally I planned to work on another animated review tomorrow, but they are behind on getting set up at the Haunted Hay Ride (Sleepy Hollow - video) I work at during October and called me in tomorrow. So, I may be building some stuff or painting, not sure which yet. In honor of the hayride I decided to post about a toy I was saving for next month.

Count Orlok from Nosferatu is the original movie vampire, and for an old silent film villain he's damn creepy. My buddy Paul, who is a video game and toy dealer, gave him to me carded a couple of years ago with a few other toys he was tired of dragging to shows without a sale.

He's got a weird lanky sculpt with a creepy face. He came with a rat covered base (not pictured) and his skin changes color in sunlight. He's unfortunately a little hard to stand up. His legs are sculpted into an odd stance.

Thinking Like a Scientist

This year my workload at school has changed somewhat. For the first time I'm using my second certification. I went to college to be a Technology Education Teacher (used to be called shop, but has evolved and now includes engineering). With the way the economy is and all the cuts to spending on education there were a lot of threats of lay-off and myself and many of the other "special subject" teacher went out and got additional certifications to help with job security. This year in addition to teaching 8-12th grade Technology Education, I am also teaching 6th grade science.

During a get to know you activity on the first day I told the 6th grade students I like to make stop motion animation videos. They asked to see a video, and I told them I'd show them something at some point. I originally thought about showing them the Woodworking Safety video I made for my high school kids. Later I decided to make a video that I could show them that related to their curriculum.

So, along with all the craziness of the first two weeks of school I wrote, animated, and edited a video for them based on section 1 of the first chapter of their text book. The video features an action figure of the Mad Scientist from Robot Chicken. I haven't show it to them yet, so I'm waiting to hear what they think.


During the same get to know you activity, one of my students told me he and his father collect action figures. I've got to talk to this parent at Back-to-School Night.

I'd like to do other videos for school (and have been thinking about one my digital photography class) but they take even longer to make than the ones I do for fun, and are less fun to make. I keep the script loose for the toy review videos, but they have to be well scripted if I'm trying to teach specific topics or definitions thought the video. So only time will tell if I do more educational videos, but I do plan to keep doing animated reviews.

Bane Bust & Statue - Dark Knight Rises

I've mentioned before that I'm friends with comic writer Doug Moench. His son (Derek) became my best friend in first grade many years ago. To this day I have stayed close to the family. Over the weekend I got a chance to visit Doug and he gave me a pair of Bane Statues for the recent Batman movie. DC Direct sent Doug the pair because he is one of the co-creators of Bane. Doug was writing the monthly Batman title during the Knight Fall story arc.

The first piece is the Bane Bust. This stature is rather small, but very well detailed. It's 6.5" tall including the rocky base. The sculpting details on the face are really nice. Bane looks pissed. The Dark Knight Rises logo is sculpted into the rocky base below the bust. The paint app on the logo is a little funky.

The Bane 1:12 Statue shows the villain holding up Batman's mask as a trophy. This statue is nice, but the details are not quite as good as the bust because the figure is so small. Bane stands around 7" tall  and is on a cool looking bat-symbol base. It's kind of neat how his fingers come though the eye holes on the bat-mask.