Walter Peck - Ghostbusters

Walter Peck was the environmentalist from the EPA who shut down the Ghostbuster's containment unit in the first film. Walter believes he's doing what is right for the environment, but the Ghostbusters and viewers of the movie know he's going to cause the end of the world. Mattel sold Peck through Matty Collector.com a few years ago when they were releasing Ghostbuster toys on a regular basis.

I don't have all of the Ghostbuster figures, but Walter seemed like a decent figure to have if I need a generic suits for a stop motion video. In addition, I love the film and like the fact that he came with a piece of the containment unit. I bought him on sale during one of Matty's promotion.

 I like the fact that the trap that came with some of the other Ghostbuster figures can be inserted into the containment unit. "When the light is green, the trap is clean."

Hammer Strike the Joker

This Joker figure is based on the cartoon series entitled The Batman. Joker, like many of the character from that series, has a non-traditional design. Joker has a green dreadlocks type hair style. He's dressed in a straight jacket with wild sleeves. Joker has fingerless gloves and no shoes. He came with a large mallet that shoots spring-loaded missiles. I don't have his weapon because I picked him up at a yard sale.

Storm Shadow v1 - GI Joe '84

As a kid I had a lot of early GI Joe figures because a neighborhood kid gave me a lot of his toys as he out grew them. My first brand new Joes were from the 1986 line. The cartoon made me aware of a lot of the older characters, and I really wanted to get them, Storm Shadow was one of the figures I was dying to find. Sometimes you could luck out and find an older figure warming a peg at a grocery store. I never was so lucky. I found a Storm Shadow head and front half of his torso in the bottom of a box of loose toys at a comic store when I was in late elementary school. I put the head on a spare Hooded Cobra Commander body and pretended that Storm Shadow wore business suits while acting as Cobra Commander's body guard. Later (once the Internet was a thing) some offered me $35 for my custom suit wearing Storm Shadow, so I sold him. I eventually bough a loose Storm Shadow of a toy dealer and then slowly acquired all his accessories from yard sales and other dealers.

 Storm Shadow wears an all white ninja outfit including a mask. He has a black belt and sash. Stormy has a red Cobra logo on his chest and a few sculpted on weapons tucked into his belt. One of the coolest things about Storm Shadow is that his backpack can hold all of his accessories. He has a black back pack that serves as a quiver (holds arrows). The back pack has slots to hold both his long and short swords. His bow can clip to the outside of the backpack and his nunchucks can be placed inside.

When I was picking out figures to include in the main cast of my stop motion animated series, Action Figure Adventures, I knew I wanted Storm Shadow. He got the most screen time is episodes one, three, and eight of the series. He's a pretty straight forward character in the series and has a cool ninja battle with Snake Eyes in episode three.

Echo Base - Action Figure Set Up

As a follow up to yesterday's post about Luke Skywalker X-Wing Pilot, here is a photo taken back in the day. My buddy Derek and I used to love to arrange our toys and take photos of them. We called this practice "Set Ups". This was taken in the early 90's. Almost every weekend Derek would bring a ton of Star Wars toys over to my house and we would play in my basement. Here the GI Joe Mobile Command Center is standing in as Echo Base. All of the snow trooper GI Joe and Cobra figures are bolstering the ranks of the Rebel Forces. We used a lot of elements from the movies but never really played out the exact plot of any of the Star Wars films. You can see here that all the Rebels are on Hoth, including the Ewoks and Bespin people.

I mentioned yesterday that our Star Wars collections were all 2nd hand. Check out Derek's Millennium Falcon. This thing was just a shell. The only two removable piece it had were the ramp and top hatch (cover). There is no windshield, no chess table, no gun, no radar dish. We didn't care and put a ton of miles on that hunk of junk.

All that other rambling aside... The reason I posted this photo is so you can all see how I solved the problem of not owning an X-Wing Fighter. I built one out of Constructs. These were an 80's building toys more similar to K'Nex than Lego. I eventually built two Constructs X-Wings for myself. I built an AT-ST out of Constructs at Derek's house one time.

Luke Skywalker X-Wing Pilot - Vintage Star Wars

I missed Star Wars figures being in retail stores as a kid. I was born in 1982 and by the time I was playing with action figures and had seen a Star Wars movie, the figures were long gone. My entire childhood Star War collection came from yard sales and comic shops. Due to my heavy involvement with the GI Joe brand as a kid I assumed that the pilot figures came packaged with the vehicles. I was shocked to find out that the X-Wing Pilot didn't come with the X-Wing fighter. What would you do with this figure if you didn't have his fighter?

 As you can see, Luke Skywalker X-Wing Pilot is a hard character to find with good paint apps. The white of his vest rubs off his back. The gray of his boots rubs off and the logos on his helmet show wear very quickly as well.

My buddy Derek and I used to both collect 2nd hand Star Wars figures and we had a deal that if one of us got a second copy of a figure that the other one didn't have we'd give the duplicate to the other person. I bought a lot of toys at yard sales, and Derek's Uncle Bobby in Chicago would mail him 2nd hand toys a lot. So I was the first to have an X-Wing Pilot. When I got a 2nd one at a yard sale I gave him to Derek. Later on I picked up a third which stayed in my collection to bolster the ranks of my Rebels.  I eventually (in Hiigh School) got an additional X-Wing Pilot who has been on my work bench for a while. The plan was to make a custom of an alien X-Wing Pilot. I was going to do a head swap with a Walrus Man or Admiral Ackbar.  Out of the three in my collection, only one has a halfway decent paint job.

Evil-Lyn - MOTUC

Evil-Lyn is Skeletor's right-hand woman. She's helped him out in a pinch on several occasions, and kind of screwed him over a few times as well. I'm not a huge fan of the yellow skin-tone, but it is vintage figure accurate. I first bought the Battle Ground version of the character, but later picked up this vintage style Evil-Lyn when Matty Collector had a sale a while ago.

 Evil-Lyn shares her entire body sculpt with Teela, except for her head. She came with her bird Screeech including his armor and stand. Evil-Lyn also came with her magic wand with two different length staffs and a knife based on her 200x figure.

 I love that the top piece of Evil-Lyn's wand is molded in transparent plastic. Like the entire Masters of the Universe Classics line, she's a great action figure.

Weapon X - X-Men Origins Wolverine

To go along with the first Wolverine movie, Hasbro produced toys based on both the movie and the comic book series. The year the movie came out a buddy of mine got me two of the figures for my birthday. I was pretty excited to receive Weapon X because I had the Toy Biz version in the 90's and really liked him.

 Weapon X is the secret government program that created Wolverine, Sabertooth and many other crazy super mutants. Weapon X is also the name Logan aka Wolverine went by for a while after the experiments were conducted on him that gave him his adamantium bones and claws.

Weapon X has a very angry head sculpt featuring matted down hair. His chest has several electrodes sculpted on it. Both hands have his claws extended and this guy is ready to tear his way out of a top secret government instillation.

One of my favorite details on the 4" figure is his arm hair. It's a small detail, but really helps capture the look of the character. Weapon X comes with a belt, helmet, and shackles.

Wade Shaw's A Comic Madness Christmas

Over the past year I have transitioned from one local comic shop to another. As a kid comics stores came and went frequently, but Cyborg1 in Doylestown had staying power and I bought Magic: The Gathering cards, Warhammer 40,000 table top miniatures, and comics there for a long time (around 15 years). When I bought my own home and hour from where I grew up is got harder to stop by Cyborg. Kids from the school I work at would talk about Wade's Comic Madness. I checked the place out once or twice, but didn't really buy much other than an occasional back issue. I actually got involved with the "Comic Madness Community" when I walked in the Levittown St. Patty's Day Parade last year. I kept my monthly pull file and Cyborg and eventually started getting books pulled at both stores. I kept all my old titles at Cyborg (Batman, GIJoe, etc) and when I started reading Superior Spider-Man and All New X-Men  I had them pulled at the Madness. I am loyal to a fault and after living down here for over 4 years I finally broke official ties with Cyborg. I still love that store, and really like the owner, James. It's just so much more convenient going to a shop 10 minutes away instead of 40.

The owner of the Madness and the manager have been making very funny promotional videos for Holiday Sales and Free Comic Book Day for a couple of years. They are all very entertaining and make Wade out to be a larger than life "Super Hero". Wade and Jon put together a Christmas Special as a sort of fairwell video. Jon is moving to the West Coast and leaving the store after 10 years of employment.

I know that part of the charm of the video is that I know a lot of the people in it, but I think the story is fun even if you do miss a few of the in-jokes.

Christmas Haul - 2013

Well, I hope everyone had a nice Christmas. My immediate family (Mom, Dad, Sister, Brother-in-law, and Niece) were all at my place today. We had a good time opening presents and eating desert. My Niece had to take her nap in my bed today, and at first she was a little nervous. She didn't like the looks of my Masters of the Universe Classics Granamyr, so I had to move him off the night stand before she'd lay down.

This pictures shows off some presents I got from school. One of the  girls from the Senior class got me the "Build R2-D2 Kit". It' a 12" tall paper model with a speaker and LED lights. It's going to take some time to build. One of the boys from the Senior class bought me the Ewok ornaments. The Darth Vader ornament and the Wrench and Bowling ornaments came from co-workers.

 All the stuff in the picture below came from family members who were at my house today along with Captain American and The Avengers both on DVD. There is a plush Spider-Man Ball, two Star Wars books, two Star Wars puzzles, a plush Darth Vader, a how to draw comic book heroes kit, a 90's Darth Vader Electronic Bank, and two Batman wash cloths.

I hope everybody had a great holiday.

Castle Grayskull - MOTUC

The vintage Castle Grayskull is one of the greatest playsets ever made. I was so happy to hear that Mattel was going to product a new Castle for the MOTU Classics line. I jumped on the pre-order band wagon and even made a video promoting the pre-sales. I was very excited when I received my Classics Castle a few days ago.

The Castle is massive and full of great details. The paint applications and sculpting are incredible. The Four Horsemen did an incredible job. This toy sports three levels to play on, a working drawbridge, and a trap door!

There are a few people that complained that they wished the new Castle Grayskull was bigger. If you use the new Castle with the Vintage figures it works out even better. Check out my view review for details on the inside. Perhaps there will be some interior pictures in a post after the Holidays.

Merry Christmas!