Rock Krusher - Hasbro COPS n' Crooks

Summer is flying by but it's time for some more COPS n' Crooks. Today's video is about Rock Krusher the escaped convict. He's a generic criminal in Big Boss's crime syndicate. This vintage action figure is a lot of fun and I hope you guys enjoy my look at this line.

NJCC Vintage Toy Haul

Last weekend was the New Jersey Collectors Convention (NJCC). As usual I picked up a bunch of vintage action figures. Time to take a look at my haul! Power Rangers, Thundercats, COPS, Army Ants, and more.

Flea Market Finds Video #15

It's Spring! I'm hoping to start having some really good Flea Market Finds. This episode features some Power Rangers, Thundercats, Army Ants, and more. Any Ultraman fans out there? I found a Red King vinyl monster.

80's Ads (Toys and More)

Going through the files on an old hard drive I found some old ads I scanned to post on an old website I used to write for. I love these things. I hope you guys enjoy them. All of these were in some very old newspapers stored in the finishing room of the woodshop of the high school where work. I founds them during my first year as a teacher and brought them home to scan. I posted a few other ads a while back.

Hasbro Cops ('n' Crooks) Figures - Sundown, Barricade, Dr. Badvibes, and Big Boss.

Kenner Bone Age - I never had any of these dino skeletons as a kid.

 Children's Gift Slippers featuring Tonka, GI Joe, and Alf!

Power Wheels Battery-Operated Ride-Ons - Check out the GI Joe Tracker. It's a trike.

Moon Boots! Napoleon Dynamite eat your heart out.

Nintendo Entertainment System Action Set and Games

Mattel Hot Wheels Color Racers - I had this set of three color change cars.

Hasbro GI Joe Battle Force 2000 - I actually posted these two ads before, but since these scans were nicer I'm re-posting them.

COPS 'n' Crooks from Retro Con

I picked up some awesome stuff from Hasbro's COPS 'n' Crooks line from the 80's. I bought three carded action figures from the line. The cool thing is that these are 3 of the first four COPS figures I had as a kid. Two of the three cards are unpunched... which is kind of cool.

Rock Krusher - Crook

I always liked the card art on the back of he COPS cards. The little file cards at the bottom were written by Larry Hama the man behind the GI Joe file cards. I always thought it was interesting he didn't write the comic book. Doug Moench wrote the comic, which meant it played an important role in my child hood. I grew up playing COPS with Doug's son, Derek, my best friend.

Dr. Badvibes - Crook

Officer Bowzer & Blitz - COPS

I also picked up this huge lot of figures towards the end of the 2nd day of Retro Con for $30. I already have all these figures, but the lot included a ton of accessories. I need to sort out this lot and my collection to figure out what I can use. I think this Big Boss is in better shape than my childhood figure. The real selling point for me was that Buttons McBoom Boom has his chest guns. He was always one of my favorites that I never had. I used to always try to play with Buttons and Longarm when I'd play with Derek.

The Great Allentown Comic Con

 Yesterday I posted about meeting Walter Jones up in Allentown. Over the weekend I attended the Great Allentown Comic Con, which does live up to it's name by having lots of comics. The show also has lots of cosplayers and celebrity guest.

I went to a panel with Veronica Taylor who was the voice of Ash for the first 8 seasons of Pokemon. I faithfully watched the first season or two of the show, but lost interest when they continuously discovered hundreds of new Pokemon each season.

Veronica was very engaging and the panel was extremely enjoyable. She spoke in Ash's voice off and on which was fun. She  discussed the process of "finding" his voice. In the late 90's it was popular for little boys in cartoons to sound stuffy. She said she took a lot of inspiration from the voice of Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, specifically when he had the black cover on his nose. Eventually she backed off the stuffiness and Ash was found.

Veronica also talked about the ins and outs of the voice over industry.

Two years ago at Retro Con, I bought a few 4x6 prints from Geek Boy Press. I saw this one of Jim Henson's Dinosaurs and had to get it.

I really enjoyed the show, and even had a lot of toys from the series as a kid. They all got sold off when I was in middle school along with my X-Men and Ninja Turtles toys.

I also attended an Animation Panel that featured Carol "Cotty" Kilbanks who worked on Rocko's Modern Life and many other cartoons in the 90's. Carol and her friend (whose name slips my mind) brought with them many examples of their work including cels, backgrounds, and character designs. Carol spent a lot of time talking the various studios she worked at over the years. Carol specialized in painting backgrounds and doing character designs. She worked on Ninja Turtles, Ren & Stimpy, as well as Iron Man.

 

I picked up a copy of GI Joe 3D with the glasses for four dollars. This was one of my first comic book buys. There were many people wearing great costumes at the show. I sort of forgot to take pictures of a lot of the cos players. I asked the guy in the Putty suit if I could take his picture after the martial arts panel. Walter Jones (The Black Power Ranger) was walking by just as he was finishing putting on his mask and gloves. I asked Walter if I could take his picture with the putty, but he "had to get back to his table". Oh well, would have been a fun picture.

 I picked up a couple of super cheat quarter comics. Superman: the Wedding album and two issues of Detective Comics from the Knight Quest story line that followed Knightfall in the 90's.

I was shocked to see a copy of Interplanetary Lizards from the Texas Plains on a table at the show. As a kid when I went to Wizard World (Philly Comic Con) I had dozens of artist and writers sign a little autograph book. One of the artists that signed my book drew a picture of a lizard in a cowboy hat. Well, it turns out he's still plugging away at making comics featuring his Cowboy Lizards and so I told him about meeting him years ago, and he was pretty amused. Another interesting feature of the show was that they created a set of collector cards specifically for the show, The gave one two you when you paid admission, and then you had to ask around to get the others. Some of the guests and vendors handed out random cards if you asked them. The only card I got was for Bonnie Piesse, who played Beru (Luke Skywalker's Aunt) in Star Wars Episode II & III. I felt kind of bad for her. I didn't see to many people talking to Bonnie. She had a pretty minor role in the films so aside from being attractive there wasn't a lot of reasons for attendees to go talk to her and get autographs.

Aside from the Power Ranger, the guest I wanted to meet the most was artist & inker Scott Hanna.  He is know for his work on Spider-Man, Batman, Iron Man and Green Lantern. I knew Scott was from near were I grew up, but never had the opportunity to meet him before. I took issue 1 & 2 from the New 52 Green Lantern Corps. to be signed. I also took some 90's Knightfall issues that I've had for a long time.

Here are two issues of Detective Comics that Scott signed for me nine years after writer Chuck Dixon signed them. Below is another issue from Knightfall, this one is from the monthly Batman book. Scott signed the cover, which was I has signed by artist Jim Aparo years ago, and inside (right)  was signed by writer Doug Moench. There are very few comics in my collection signed by writer, artist, and inker... but this is one of them.

 I also bought the first 20 issues of Shogun Warriors. This comic was written by Doug Moench to support the giant robot toyline out at the same time. I owned a few random issues already, but I've been wanting to read the series, so I figured it was a good pick up.

The Great Alllentown Comic Con is a small show, but was a good time. A lot of my collector convention friends were there. The show was held at Merchant's Square, which is a blessing and a curse. The good thing about it is that there are many vintage toy, model, video game shops there.. The down side is that there is little room for the event to expand.

Jail Bird Speeder & Skyborg Jet

Today's post is about two recent toy show purchases. The first is the Jail Bird Air Speeder from the Cops 'n' Crooks toy line by Hasbro. I bought it loose at the Wayne NJ toy show a few months ago. The second vehicle in today's post is the VR Trooper Skyborg Jet. I bought the Skyborg at Retro Con because I had never seen this vehicle before and the fact that it reused the molds from Hasbro's Cops toys. The guy who sold it to me said it was a Power Rangers vehicle, and he was close. It is actually from the VR Trooper toy line. Both the Power Rangers and VR Trooper were produced by SABAN. These two vehicles are very similar, but have slightly different tooling in a few places.

 The Jail Bird was an air speeder used by the Crooks in Hasbro's late 80's futuristic police toy line. I loved playing with it at my buddy Derek's house when we were kids. He had all the wave one toys because his Dad (Doug Moench) was writing the comic book. It's a small one man craft that is armed with a couple of laser cannons and little bombs that can be drop from the wings. My Jail Bird is missing the back rest, handle bars, and stickers.

The Skyborg Jet reuses the parts from the Jail Bird, but all the maroon parts are molded in black. The tooling has been changed slightly. The slots in the wings for the little bombs have been changed to holes. From what I found online, it looks like there were guns that shot spring-loaded missiles that clipped into those holes. The other major tooling change is that all the engine details on the side of the vehicle (under the silver wings/hood) has been removed. I think this is to accommodate the hip articulation on the VR Trooper toys. Cops figures had  80's GI Joe style hips that can open wide, while the VR figures had vintage Star Wars style hips, which are very straight legged. I know my Skyborg may be missing a few parts like the guns and missiles. I thought it was fun to see the reuse of molds from other toy lines, so I'm glad I picked it up.

I knew that the Cobra Firebat from GI Joe was retooled for VR Troopers, making this is the second Hasbro toy to be reused in the VR Trooper line. Now I need to track down that blue retooled Firebat.

Wayne NJ Haul

So in addition to Helen from Bionic 6, I did pick up a few other toys. For $7 I picked up two vehicles from the COPS 'n' Crooks toy line. I have quite a few COPS figures and as a kid I played with lots of these toys because but buddy Derek's father wrote the COPS comics. Both vehicles are Crooks vehicles. The first is the Crooks Roadster. This green speed demon was always a favorite of mine as a kid. Derek had this and it was one of his favorites. My Roadster has a little wear on it's stickers and is missing the safe and silver bricks. It still looks good and will work in my collection for at least a while.

 The second vehicle is the Jailbird Air Speeder. I used to love playing with this toy at Derek's house. The one I picked up in Wayne isn't complete, but it still displays nicely. My Jailbird doesn't have any stickers. It is also missing the handle bars and the silver part of the back rest. It has many small pieces that are often missing including the landing gear and little bombs from under the wings.

 The final items I picked up are from the Kenner Ghostbusters line. I bought two broken Proton Packs for the Ghostbusters. I didn't quite realize how broken they were when I bought them. I knew the one was missing the proton stream, but I didn't notice the handles were bad on both guns. I thought these would be useful for displaying with my figures. I plan to glue the gun from the pack that doesn't have the steam.