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.

Castle Grayskull Parts

I was at my friend Paul's house today. He does a lot of buying and selling of vintage video games and toys. He had a box of He-Man and Thundercats stuff he wanted me to look though to see what was complete. All the He-Man guys were complete so that was good for him, but the Thundercats had very few accessories. He gave me a bunch of Castle Grayskull parts for sorting out the toys for him. As a kid I used to buy and sell Grayskulls all the time. I'd pick them up, take off the parts I need to complete mine and then later sell the other castle. I probably bought and sold 6 or 7 Grayskulls during my childhood. Eventually when I got out of MOTU stuff to focus on GI Joe and Star Wars I sold my complete Castle Grayskull I had worked hard to complete. Years later I picked up a Grayskull shell again. Paul knew I was looking for parts to it.

 

Paul has vintage He-Man, Battle Armor He-Man, Modulok, Hordak, Beastman, and Man-At-Arms to name a few complete figure.

Action Figure Adventures Ep 5

Here we are at episode 5 of Action Figure Adventures. The story is going to start moving towards the finale, but not without a few more figures attempting a crazy escape plan. In the past couple of episodes the events in the dorm room have focused on the Star Wars characters, but in this episode we shift back to the GI Joes. Clutch has a crazy dream that may help the heroes with their escape plans.

Later on Crazylegs explains his plan to free the toys from their current prison. Will his presentation to a panel of heroes have everyone on board? As I look at this screen shot I can't help but notice that the Marvel Super Heroes and the Ninja Turtle haven't done much in the show yet.

Oh wait, I spoke to soon, Leonardo (TMNT) speaks for the first time. Leo's rap was written by our head writer Derek Moench, but is voiced by Don Lansdorf. During one of the recording sessions for Cobra Commander, Don started rapping and imitating the style of different early rap artists. It became clear that he was the man for the job. Don took a copy of the script with him and months later sent us a recording with his beats and vocals.

I wanted the show to feature a lot of different toy lines, but since my collection at the time was predominantly GI Joe and Star Wars they got the most characters. I also didn't want to put in too many different hero factions if we only has three villains. I originally was going to have the Joker be a bad guy, but with Batman and Robin being eliminated in the first episode it seemed odd to have the Joker left with no real adversary.

This episode also wraps up Chuckles' adventures with the Lego people. This is Chuckles most developed subplot to the main story, but I'm not sure if it's his weirdest story.

Action Figure Adventures Ep4 Eggs

It's Friday and I have to post some Easter Eggs and Notes on the show. I hope you are checking these episodes out. We spent a lot of time on them and I think they are pretty fun.

So if you haven't seen AFA Ep 4 yet, what are you waiting for? If you have, thank you and here are a few little hidden gems about this episode.

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 2:00 More screen time for the Villians as the capture Chewbacca story line continues.

2:54 There are two different Masters of the Universe posters in the dorm room, but no MOTU figures in the show.

3:29 Like the Dental Floss in Ep 3, the Pop Tarts box was the only little box I could find around campus. A lot of things in the series are made out of Pop Tart boxes including the "Computer" from an earlier episode and the stretchers in this one.

3:45 The last three Lego people were put together to be reminiscent of Clutch, Scoop, and Barbeque. Clutch wears all green has black hair and beard and holds a wrench. Scoop has
brown hair, green vest, yellow pants, and is holding a video camera. Barbeque is the weakest resemblence, but the guy is a fire fighter.

4:09 I drew that face on that Lego head as a kid. The real face had rubbed off. I think a pack of blank Lego people would be fun.

4:32 Wow can the ceiling above the drop ceiling be another drop ceiling?

6:39 How useful is a Lego drill when you are building things out of Legos?

8:06 There is a major continuity error in this scene. We see Cobra Commander push on the back
of the statistis text book but the front cover falls towards the camera when we hear him scream.

9:56 Can you spot the custom Han Solo Lego person I made years before Star Wars Legos exisited?

11:10 The Scoop and Clutch Lego people are off to the side again.

11:39 In the 80's I never had to cool Construx Purple Astronaut. I only ever had the guy in a blue sweater and pants. He seemed like a good arch-rival for the Lego people.

13:10 Magneto is using a MRE (Meal Ready to Eat) in his trap. As I mentioned before, my college roommate was in ROTC.

15:56 The town fool is another custom Lego face I did on a old head that had lost it's details. I made him have his tounge stick out.

16:29 The Solders are doing most of the rebuilding this time while the civilian Lego people are working out with chuckles. Later the Solders are involved in weapons training

17:44 The solder is wearing Big Boa's boxing gloves from GI Joe

17:47 Get it... Rock' em, Sock' em robots.

17:56 The knights build a battering ram.

18:47 The Lego people saying "hut, hut, hut" is a reference to the National Guard guys in the Blues Brothers movie.