DC Comics Multiverse - Wave 1

Today I was at Target and I found almost the entire wave of new DC Multiverse figures. The first was is based on the Arkham video games. The second wave will be based on the 70's and 80's movies. I picked up Mr. Freeze, Bane, Batman, and Azrael.. There is also an armored version of Batman and the villain Deadshot who I didn't see... but probably would have passed on anyway.

 They come carded in miniature versions of the same cards that the Batman Unlimited figures were packaged in.  Batman stands about 4" tall while Bane is much closer to 5".

 Bane is dressed in dark blue cargo pants and a leather jacket. He has some grenades attached to his belt. He's a nice looking figure with lots of details, but a few more paint apps would have really help make him stand out.

Azrael is dressed in a gray suit of armor with a white tunic. He has a red hood and other details. He comes with a sword and a sheath that can be held on his side. Azrael has a ton of nice details.

 Batman is wearing his gray and black suit. He has a yellow utility belt and a large batsymbol on his chest. He is similar to the figure from the Infinite Heroes line. This figure has better articulation and is a little taller. Multiverse Batman has much nicer sculpted details than Infinite Heroes. I also think the proportions of his limbs look better as well.

 These figures all have hip joints similar to the DCUC figures also made by Mattel This allows them to do kicks and splits that many other figures can't preform.

Mr. Freeze is wearing a large armored cold suit. He comes with a backpack piece and his freeze gun. His backpack and helmet from the back reminds me of the Space Marines from the table top battle game Warhammer 40,000.I really like he bright blue details and honeycomb pattern on his pants.

Everybody, chill out!

 

I will break you!

 

Retro Birthday Party Pictures - RoboCop

I'm getting very excited about the upcoming RoboCop remake. In honor of the this new film I'm posting some retro photos of myself at the age of six opening up a bunch of RoboCop and the Ultra Police toys.

These photos were taken at my "family" birthday party. When we were young we had both a family party and a separate one for our friends.

I know it's basically impossible to see, but I have unwrapped one of the members of the Ultra Police, Birdman Barnes. I was never a huge fan of the figure. He was dressed in a goofy yellow outfit and his helmet was asymmetrical. I also got RoboCop that year, but there aren't any pictures of him.

 

Here you can see I've just unwrapped the RoboCycle. Birdman Barnes is now laying on the floor in the foreground. The third and final photo shows me working on assembling Robo-1, RoboCop's car. I loved that toy. The blue chrome armor was awesome and I had a ton of fun with it.

The photo was a little fuzzy and washed out from the flash so I didn't worry about displaying it very largely. I bet my Dad was glad that I was finally old enough to put my toys together. I now he used to hate applying the stickers to my GI Joe vehicles.

Nano-Tech Monster - 200x TMNT

Several years ago I bought this figure  for a quarter at a thrift shop that I used to frequent. I knew just from looking at his that he was from the 2000's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line. I didn't know anything else about him, but for a quarter, how could I pass it up. It took some digging on the internet to find out he's the Nano-Tech Monster. The character started out as a bad guy on the cartoon but eventually changed sides.

 The Nano-Tech Monster is basically a junk robot. He's a bulking mechanical being made up of lots of parts and pieces. His face is a wheel of different "drama" mask. He's got more faces than just the comedy and tragedy masks. He kind of puts Man-E-Faces from MOTU to shame.

He originally came with two gray hands that can be removed and replaced by a brown pincher hand. He also came with several other "junk" accessories that be plugged into the holes on his body. Some of the junk includes wheel rims, a satellite dish, and a keyboard. My thrift store find came with one regular robot hand and one gripper hand. All his other accessories are missing. He's got an interesting design and I am glad to have him in my collection.

Gambit - Marvel Legends

Gambit has always been in my top five favorite X-Men characters. I had the original Toy Biz version as a kid. Later on I bought another version at a yard sale and used him in Action Figure Adventures, the series. Shortly after competing that series I bought this Marvel Ledgends Gambit at a yard sale. He was the first, and is currently my only Marvel Legends figure.

Gambit originally came with a display base, staff, blazing card, and cloth trench coat. Of course my second hand copy only came with the coat.

He's got great sculpting and tons of articulation. He would have been fun to use in the stop motion animation of AFA. The only problem would have been that he would have been even taller than the other characters.

Gambit has amazing sculpting. Just look at the detail in his wavy hair. The shading and washes applied to his chest armor is terrific.

His cloth trench coat is a huge upgrade over the crappy vinyl coat the original Toy-Biz figure came with. Gambit has a lot of nice paint details on his outfit under the coat.  I wish I had photographed him without it. Come to think of it, I've never had it off all the way.

If all the ML figures are this nice, maybe I should have collected this line. I'm usually into smaller scale figures. Masters of the Universe Classics has actually changed my idea of the ideal scale for action figures.

Imperial Agents on Hoth - Vintage Star Wars

Yesterday was brutally cold. The high was 10 degrees Fahrenheit. It was so cold they actually closed the school were I work. They were worried about the kids walking to school. I ended up babysitting for my niece for a couple hours and hanging out watching DVDs. There isn't really any snow on the ground, but it's so cold I figured I'd post about some toys I photographed in the snow last winter. Even though in The Empire Strikes Back two of these characters never step outside of the AT-AT, It's still fun to play with all of them in the snow. As a kid I always had a ton of fun playing with my buddy Derek's AT-AT Walker. I have the modern Really Big AT-AT, but I still don't have the vintage toy.

 The AT-AT Commander (General Veers) is the Imperial officer in charge of an AT-AT walker. In ESB we only see General Veers, but it can be assumed there is a Commander in each walker. The vintage figure came armed with a small blue "Bespin blaster". (blaster not pictured)

The figure is molded in gray plastic with this boots, gloves, and skin painted on along with a few other details. The sculpt on his helmet make his goggles appear a little to small to fit on his face. Maybe it;s just an optical illusion. I always disliked it when the Kenner Star Wars figures had very tiny hands. It makes it hard for them to hold certain accessories.



 Imperial Stormtrooper (Hoth Battle Gear) or as they are commonly known, Snowtroopers were the soldiers sent into the Rebel Base to flush out the remaining heroes. These figures do a nice job of representing the alternative armor of these troopers. They came with a vinyl skirt/cape kind of like the bottom of a long overcoat. (cape not pictured) They also came with long blue rifles. I messed around with my photo manipulation software a little trying to make the one figure not looks so badly yellowed... the picture is pretty much just black and white now.







AT-AT Drivers were to cool white Tie-Fighter Pilot guys driving the AT-ATs. I'm still not sure why they didn't just use this mold to make the Tie Pilot. It would have worked fine.

I had an AT-AT Driver as a kid whose legs were so loose that he could only sit. Eventually I found a nicer one and gave my buddy Derek the loosely-goosey figure. The driver is armed with a medium length blaster rifle with a shoulder strap. I think I might have on of those rifles, but if I do it wasn't around  when I was photographing these figures.

I occasionally liked to pretend that the AT-AT driver was a SCUBA diver Stormtrooper. His chest panel and hoses made me think of the Cobra Eels from GI Joe.

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If you like 80's toys you should be watching the Goldbergs on ABC. Last nights episode features Transformers, Thunercats, He-Man, and GI Joe. Some of the specific toys include Dinobots, Lion-O, Cheetara, Sgt. Slaughter, The USS Flag, Castle Grayskull and Stridor.

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Cy-Chop - MOTUC

As part of a mini-subscription of all new characters, Matty Collector introduced a bounty hunter to the world of Masters of the Universe in the form of a blue furry cyborg named Cy-Chop. Terry Higuchi who worked on the design team at Mattel got the honor of designing this all new character. Each of the characters created for the 30th Anniversary Mini-Sub were a mix of new and used parts.

Cy-Chop has a new head, belt, weapon hands, and maybe a few others parts. He is mostly made up of reused parts like Beastman's legs and Roboto's clear torso.  Inside of the clear torso are some newly sculpted internal organs.

Cy-Chop's hands are two gigantic scissor hands. Both hands are removable and can be replaced with any of the other "removable" hands or weapons from the line. Other characters that have interchangeable parts include, Hurricane Hordak, Trap Jaw, Horde Prime, and Spikor.

Cy-Chop isn't the greatest figure in the line, but he's also not the worst. I think as a kid I would have loved him. He's so colorful and interesting. The giant weapons and clear torso are all things that an 80's kid would have loved. If it were up to me, I would have included at least one "normal" hand but ideally two. He's like a 70's Marvel Comics Master of Kung Fu villain. How does this guy eat or take a shit?

Nick TMNT Chia Pet

Over the summer I was feeling kind of artsy-crafty to avoid spending a stupid amount . of money at the craft store I went to Toys R Us. In the clearance section they had one Ninja Turtle and a couple of Spongebob Chia Pets. I decided it was the perfect thing to get. I could paint it to get my arts and crafts on.

I decided it was my favorite Turtle Mikey, so I got out some paints and painted him up. I used light green for his skin and orange for his bands so he's match the Nickelodeon cartoon.

His eyes and teeth were painted white. The wrappings on his hands and his belt were painted brown. I painted his front shell bright yellow. I think he turned out well. I've never had a bare Chia Pet before, but this one seemed to sweat a lot. Maybe that was because the paint sealed the ceramic surface.

I did not paint the shell because I wasn't sure if it would mess with the plants growing. I was going to post this once I got some good plant growth, but I never got a very good bush growing. So I never bothered to take a photo. Maybe I'll try again... or I'll just put him on a shelf as a little bust.

AD&D Mini Figures - LJN

In the the early 1980's LJN had the license to make toys based on TSR's Advanced Dungeons and Dragons role playing game. There were a series of toys and a Saturday morning cartoon to go along with it. They made figures in several different scales. Today's post features two articulated mini figures.

Kelek was the evil Sorcerer form the series. He's a old man with a bald head and long white beard. He's dressed in a black robe with red trim and carries a green staff. The paint work and sculpting is very nice on this figure for such a small 80's toy.

Elkhorn was a heroic dwarf fighter. He is armed with a sword, shield, and elkhorned? helmet I've always thought it was funny that his beard is blue.He wears a brown tunic and green pants. It looks like he has some chain or scale mail armor on his arms.

Matchbox Track Burners Puffy Stickers

Back in the day, everything had a line of puffy stickers, and Matchbox cars were no different. I got a pretty large set of stickers as a kid. Many of them ended up in my sticker book (those are photographed and contained in the post. I gave a few away to friends as a kid and to this day there is one I gave my Dad stuck on his tool box. My interest in cars died off when I stopped playing with Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars... so I can't elaborate to much on these stickers.

 Sticker Set Title Sticker, Chevy Pro Stocker, CorvetteT Roof, IMSA Mazda, and Maxi Taxi

 Porsche Turbo, Ford Sierra XR41, Audi Quatro

This Audi isn't exactly the same as the sticker, 

but as a kid I thought it was cool to have matching stickers and cars.

 

 IMSA Mustang

IMSA Mustang Matchbox Car

 

'57 T Bird, BMW M1, and Red Rider

 

Good Vibrations and Dodge Challenger

 

 Good Vibration Matchbox Car

 Orange Peel

Sun Burner and Formula Racer

 Cosmic Blues

You can see that the cars were well loved. The paint is especially worn on the Sunkist Car.

He-Man Cel - The Littlest Giant

Over the past couple of years I have collected quite a few original animation cels from He-Man & the Masters of the Universe as well as several other shows. Below is a cel of He-Man holding his sword out in front of himself as if he is about to attack. His one foot is not drawn or painted in the cel. This indicates that something on another cel overlapped He-Man's foot in the finished scene. The MU92 marking tells us that this is the 92nd episode or Season 2 Episode 27. The episode is titled the Littlest Giant.

Here is the original production sketch that the cel is based on. Basically the artist draw the image on paper. Once the drawings are checked and approved they are Xeroxed on to clear plastic sheets and then they are painted from the back.

 Here is the cel along with several other elements on other cels and the background as scene in the show. In the episode, one of the Widgets (kind of like Hobbits) asks Sketetor to make him big and strong like his hero He-Man. The little guy is tricked into giving He-Man a present that contains a cloud of dust that puts He-Man and Battle Cat to sleep. That's what's happening in the exact scene this cel is from. Later in the episode the Widget rescues He-Man from Skeletor with the help of Teela and Orko. The littlest character is the hero  of the episode.

 Bonus Cel! Here is a stock cel of Cringer. This green and yellow tiger is the cowardly pet of Prince Adam who can be turned into the ferocious Battle Cat with a Power Sword and a few magic words. This cel is labeled as a Stock cell which means that when they were creating the show, artists created artwork of the main characters doing common tasks like walking and talking. The Story Board Artists were then encouraged to us as much stock animation in each episode as possible to save on production costs. This cel of Cringer may have been used in dozens of episodes.

Both cels that appeared in today's post are cels I accumulated over the past couple of years. Once I framed and hung  my favorite cels I donated most of the remaining art work to the Toonseum in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania so that others can enjoy the artwork. I hate to horde this kind of stuff if I can't display it. No one gets to enjoy it's stored in a box under my bed.