Luke & Taun Taun - Star Wars PotF2

Well, we are off from school today for a snow day. It's really coming down out there. I'm warm inside watching Star Wars as I always do on a snow day. Today I'm watching Revenge of the Sith. I love the first 8 minutes of the movie. I really enjoy Obi-Wan in this film and the final lightsaber battle between him and Anakin is tons of fun.

Today's post is a photo I took last winter of Luke riding his Taun Taun. These are from the 90's Power of the Force (2) line. The Taun Taun has a great sculpt and paint job. The pose the creature is in is much more screen accurate than the vintage toy. This PotF Luke Skywalker in Hoth Battle Gear has additional articulation. Unlike just about every other figure from the line, Luke has knee joints to help him ride his beast.

Polar Battle Bear - GI Joe '83

In honor of all the snow we got over the weekend I decided I needed to post a snow picture. I actually photographed almost every arctic toy I owned last winter, so this wasn't taken over the weekend. The Polar Battle Bear is a small GI Joe vehicle originally released in 1983. I've owned at least three of these things in my life time. As a kid I had two Battle Bears that were missing a lot of parts. I sold them off at one point when I thinned out my vehicle collection. Later on I picked up this one in a lot. It's missing some decals, but looks pretty good.

If you have a Battle Bear or are looking to get one, take good care of the skis. They break easily so look them over well or treat them gingerly. Other easily lost or broken parts include the two grey missiles that attach to the skis. There are two thin laser guns on the front connected by a grey bar, There is also a small grey roll bar behind the drivers seat and a white engine cover tha is often missing.

Pictures above is my custom  Arctic Stalker driving the Battle Bear while Snow Job rides on the running boards.

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.