Jonah Hex - DC Universe

Of all the DC Comics characters Jonah is one of the last figures I would have ever expected to own. I just don't care for western comics. I'm not even a huge fan of western movies, although I've seen a lot more of them than I've read western comics. I still haven't read the first five issues of the New 52 All-Star Western I bought months ago when I got the first five issues of each of the New 52. I didn't see the Jonah Hex movie and I see just about all the comic book movies.

Anyway, Jonah Hex was part of the DC Universe wave that I needed a complete set of to build the Collect and Connect Bane. He's a nice figure. Good articulation and nice paint apps which make him look dusty. He comes with two guns, One can be holsters on his hip and the other gets slung over his back.

 They did a nice job with the sculpting details on the scared side of his face. It's very gross and nasty.  From what I read about  the character he was branded with "The Mark of the Demon" by an Indian tribe he was an honorary member of and then angered. Did the branding go wrong? I don't see a "Mark", I see an f*ed up face.

To date, I think the only book I've ever read that included Jonah is Crisis on Infinite Earths. I read online that after his death his body was taxidermied and he was part of a traveling show. How bizarre and disturbing. I'm not a fan of dead bodies.

Jonah Hex: Hey Dent, starting interviewing plastic surgons.

Harvey Dent: Why?

Jonah Hex: Trust me your gonna need a good one.

GI Joe TV Table Tray

A buddy of mine, Paul (who is one of the Tiger Force Flunkies in Action Figure Adventures) called me from a yard sale to ask me if I wanted the GI Joe table tray for ten bucks. I told him yes and he picked it up for me. I had seen this back in the day at least once in a store, and of course on yojoe.com.

 The top surface has plenty of space to eat or draw or place a laptop. It features a cool battle scene that features a number of GI Joes and their vehicles. The legs are kind of short it is clearly designed for a child.

The main focal point in the artwork is Recondo, Chuckles, and Lt. Falcon. In a way it is an odd miz of characters. In 1987 when it was released Chuckles and LT. Falcon were new, but Recondo is a much older figure. All there of these characters are based directly off their packaging art.

If you look carfully at the solders behind them in and out of the Tomahawk you man notice that none of them are acutal GI Joes. These "Green Shirts" are generic characters the artist created, Their apearnaces do not match or even really clostly resenble any specific GI Joe character. Other than to say that most of the original group of Joes wore green outfits and helmets.

The Tomahawk Helicopter is one of my all time favorite toys. If I had to part with everything in my toys collection but one item, it be this awesome helicopter. You can just barely see the pilot, but he is based on the character designs for Lift Ticket. He has the red helmet, red shoulder pads, and dark green uniform.

 

Flying above the Tomahawk are the GI Joe Conquest Jet and Dragonfly Helicopter.

 The last little piece of art that makes up the top of the tray shows off the USS Flagg Air Craft Carrier and Sgt. Slaughter's Triple T Tank. It's kind of a shame we can't really see Sarge the way the painting is composed. It is very clear that the artist was looking at the toy of the tank. Notice the clunky hitch that most GI Joe land vehicle have as well as the white tabs sticking thought the black engine cover at the back of the tank.

Griffin - MOTUC Review

The first time I saw a Griffin in the 200x MYP version of the He-Man cartoon I was blown away. They were huge and menacing. Naturally I was very excited when Mattel announced that they were making one for the MOTUC line. When I heard they were using the Battle Cat buck I was a little disappointed. There is just no way for it to be as menacing using that buck. The body just isn't tall enough. I understand their need to keep costs down and reusing some of the part helps. I also understand that a lot of fans wouldn't want to pay even more for a Griffin, so this is what we have to work with.

 I'm just going to say that even though it's a little smaller than I'd like, the Griffin is an awesome toy. It features an all new head with an articulate mouth, Swiftwind's wings, new armor,  a new double tall, and chicken feet for it's hind legs. This is a really cool creature.  I love how angry the Griffin looks. With the little eyes and the hair on the top of it's neck standing up. The shading and colors on the body and wings are great.

I had to include a picture of Beastman riding the Griffin. Without him Skeletor could have never harnessed a fleet of Griffins to transport his evil warriors into battle. The Heroes really have no defense for flying creatures this powerful. Beastman is able to control the Griffins and all wild beasts. Beastman fits nicely on top. I wish the saddle fit the Griffin just a little bit more securely. It moves around just a little bit more than I'd like.

Here is an other angle of the Griffin's nasty looking face. It's ready to tear some heroes apart. The Skeletor figure on top the Griffin is from the Lex Luther vs Skeletor comic 2-pack with the Alcala head form Demo-Man. The front of the saddle is shaped nicley, you can make it look like the rider is holding on.

I liked this angle also, so I'm throwing in this photo also. Skeletor's sword almost looks like it is glowing.

Asgardian Soldier - Mortal Clash Review

Today's post in an Animated Review of the Asgardian figure from the Mortal Clash line.I saw this guy on Zoloworld.com and thought he looked kind of cool. I originally didn't really know anything about the toy line. I have since found out it's based on a Manga and Anime series that is not called Mortal Clash. Some times the series is refereed to as Saint Seiya or Knights of the Zodiac.

  

 The Asgardian figure came in a plastic tray inside a window box. The back of the box featured nice photographs of the action figure inside.

The Asgardian comes with three sets of hands, ax, shield, and helmet.

 The guardians of the North European God, ODIN. The Asgardian soldier is always ready to fight with Athena and the Saints! - I still don't understand this statement. Maybe I need to see the show. Why are Norse warriors fighting for a Greek Goddess?

Action Figure Adventure Ep 6

This weeks installment of Action Figure Adventures is one of the most exciting episodes in the series. The heroes have been trapped for too long. Scarlett, Barbeque, and Clutch are bored as usual and desperate to escape their current prison.

 After a flashback of their life before they were brought to the dorm room they kick developing escape plans into high gear. Lady Jaye presenters her fool proof plan to a group of heroes. It's nice to see all the factions working together. We've got GI Joe, Star Wars,  Superheroes, and Ninja Turtles trying to make this work.

Eventually another GI Joe, Outback, steps forward with his plan to "Ride the Giant". Another promising idea, but how will they know if it works?

Chuckles' crazy adventures in the ceiling continue again this time calling on the help of some Star Wars robots to help. He wasn't around in the dorm room to see how unhelpful the droids were to Han Solo and Luke Skywalker when they were trying to hack the bad guys' computer.

...and now, on with the show!

Action Figure Adventures Ep 5 Eggs

Time for this weeks installment of AFA Easter Eggs and Notes on Episode 5. This is all the stuff we would say about these episodes if we recorded DVD commentaries for them. So hopefully you've checked out this episode. Here are a couple of things to look for on a second viewing.

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The dumping toys sequence in the opening has been sped up quite a bit this time.

Is anyone surprised the toys are laying around bored at the beginning of the episode?

1:57 I bought a VHS tape online in college called "Kate's 8 hours of 80's Commercials".
Off and on my friends and I would watch the tape for a half hour or so at a time. There are a lot of clips from it in the dream scene, and watching the Animal commercial on the tape gave birth to this plot device.

I owned the yellow Animal as a kid but sold it at a yard sale. The red Animal in the show is Derek's.

4:13 I didn't want to wreck my Construx man but Derek had scripted that they pull his head off.
We went to the Q-Mart (a local flea market and farmers market) and hunted around for another figure to damage. We reference the destruction of this figure in the 10th episode of our other show Animation Creation. We were working on both shows simultaneously. AC was at the end of production while AFA was starting.

5:11 In Crazylegs' presentation he shows Leonardo, Scarlett, Snake-Eyes, Luke, and Han cheering for him.

5:33 I love that Derek has Leonardo break the fourth wall and mention the amount screen time he's had in the show. The Turtles (Especially Raphael) did this all the time in the TMNT cartoon. I find this extra funny because Derek was one of the only kids I knew in the late 80's  and early 90's that wasn't into the Tutles

At the end of Leonardo's rap we see most of the remaining hero figures. There are several of them that still will not make it to the end of the series.

10:14 Barbeque's question, "What kind of a GI Joe are you anyway?" Is in reference to Scoops anti military remarks, but also a comment from Derek about the figures I chose to use in the series. The Battle Field Photographer and the Firefighter are two of the main characters. The GI Joe in a Hawaiian shirt also got a big role.

10:32 Here we see the Lego versions of Barbeque, Scoop, and Clutch have not chosen sides in the battle and are hanging out with Chuckles.

10:56 The Lego guy with the Shovel is an homage to William H. Macy's character in the movie Mystery Men. The Shoveler. "Lucille, God gave me a gift. I shovel well. I shovel very well."

11:33 When the Lego Islander get chopped in half it is reveled that the Lego people have constructed a statue of Chuckels.

12:00 The Triple A batteries Clutch and the Flunkies are carrying were from my Graphing Calculator.

12:40 This is the first time we see outside the window since the first episode. While the show seems to happen over the course of a couple of days we can see that production took a long time. The grass is all dead and the Tree outside the window has lost all it's leaves. The seasons changed a lot during the past few episodes.

13:11 For the shots where it looks like the camera is outside the room looking into the window the toys were lined up against the edge of a black 3 ring binder to represent the window sill.

He-Man Fan Video Contest (Entry)

Mill Creek Entertainment asked fans to create videos and submit them to possibly be included in a bonus feature documentary on their 30th Anniversary He-Man box set. They offered some suggestions of things to include on their website and other than that the only real rule was to keep it under three minutes. To sum up any fans experience with He-Man and the Masters of the Universe in three minutes or less is a challenge. I recorded all the different stories and topics I wanted to include in the video and it was over ten minutes long. So I had to decided to drop some stuff, and abreviate other things. I hate that I had to use title cards in the video, but some of the stories didn't have an intro after I cut them down to the important parts. Check out my entry and lets hope I end up in the documentary. Below the video, in text, I will expand some of the stories a little bit that got hacked down.

  

In the full lenght video I pointed out in the pictures from my  He-Man party you can see I got Night Stalker, a MOTU puzzle, and a MOTU metal lunch box.

 

When I showed off my Cel Collection I cut down how many were in the video to speed things up.

 

In the section about the Toonseum, I cut out pictures of some of the other cels I donated as well as explaining that their exclusive Power Swords are cast from the mold used to make the props for the 1986 Macy's Day Parade float. There were only 20 of these swords made.

When I talked about the posters in my dorm room I talked about how I had taken two MOTU posters to college. Later my room was featured in a campus tour video so one of the He-Man posters ended up in that promotional video. (This room is the mirror image of the room I had previously where I shot Action Figure Adventures the Series - although a couple of missed shots were filmed in this room)

 

In a manufacturing course I took at Millersville University we were learning about mold making and had to bring in an item to create a mold from. I wanted something fairly simple and I thought of the old He-Man shampoo bottle I have had since I was a kid. I brought it in and made the mold and a couple of He-Man ceramic figurines. One of them I hand painted and turned in as the final project. One I spray painted gold to look like an Oscar and gave it to a friend of mine in college at the preminer of his student film. (He was a communication major and made a super hero movie based in Lancaster City called "The Warden")  I also have a weird one that flopped over in the kiln before it was fired. (As you can tell most of this story was cut)

 

At the end I wanted to include a little bit of  stop motion animation. I feel like it's one of the more unique things about me and my toy collection. I had the clip still on my computer from my Slush Head review, so that one made it into the video.

There were a few other He-Man collectable type stuff that I was going to include in the video but they just didn't make the cut either.

4th of July

Hey, I hope everyone had a great 4th of July. I worked on a future Animated Review this morning before going to a picnic at my sisters. After lunch and a game of "Ticket to Ride" (I won), we headed out to see "The Amazing Spiderman".

I enjoyed the movie quite a bit. Although I don't think I had as much fun as I did when Toby's first Spiderman came out. Some of that had to do with the fact that now we've had three modern Spiderman movies. Ten years ago the live action Spiderman blow me away. It was so great to see my favorite Marvel hero in action.

I was impressed with the star power they had with Uncle Ben and Aunt May. I hadn't heard who they cast. I thought I was going to dislike the lizard because he didn't have the crocodile face. He looked pretty good. His mouth opens very deeply giving him the reptile/lizard look that he seemed to be missing in the still shot I saw.

The story blends the old comics with the Ultimate Spiderman as well as brings in new elements. They did a nice job of retelling the origin but twisting it just enough I wasn't annoyed I was watching the same plot line.

Over all, it was very enjoyable and I liked it a lot. I'm looking forward to the 2nd in this series. I hoping for "The Astonishing Spiderman".

Action Figure Advetures 100th Post!

Wow, this is the 100th post on AFA. We've had over 2,000 views already and our average number of hits per day seems to be crawling up slowly. If you've recently stumbled upon this blog feel free to check out some of the older posts. If you are a regular reader, thanks!

This is a promotional image I created for one of our stop motion animated series(Animation Creation). It features custom figures of myself and Derek that were used in the show. The opening sequence to the show also features the magnetic alphabet letters. Derek and I are playing with all our toys. The toys are mostly Micro Machine Star Wars toys. There a some army men in there to represent GI Joes along with a robot, Godzilla, and the Batmobile.

If you haven't watched any of the episodes of Animation Creation or Action Figure Adventure, you really should. They are both fun and feature lot of toys. Based on the names you can tell that AFA more heavily features toys.

Since I have off tomorrow I'm going to try to work on another Animation/Review. Perhaps I should come up with a name for my style of toy reviews that include animation in the title. Maybe "Action Figure Adventures Animated Review" is a more descriptive name.

Wonder Bread MOTU Trading Cards

When I was a kid one time my Aunt gave me a couple of Wonder Bread trading cards featuring Masters of the Universe characters. On features Hordak looking more like his Filmation cartoon appearance than his toy version. The other card still have is Lazer Bot with He-Man. This card is in kind of bad shape because my mom told me they were stickers and I tried to peel it off, I just ended up damaging the lamination on that card.

I swear at the same time my Aunt showed me a He-Man toy she mailed away for (she was saving it for my cousin) though Wonder Bread. I remember thinking he was weird because He-Man should have blonde hair. I wish I knew more or could prove this, but it happened forever ago.

The bottom of the cars say, "TRADING CARDS FROM WONDER" the copyright is 1986.