Wolverine on the loose

I liked playing with my Toy Biz X-Men figures in the snow as a kid. I even had an Iceman break in he bitter cold snow one time. Wolverine is one my favorite "winter" X-Men. I think it's because of the classic art of him escaping from the Weapon-X facilities. Speaking of which, here is a photo of the Weapon-X version of Wolverine. This figure originally came with a belt, helmet, and some extra hoses.  I always liked that this figure had knees and elbow joints. Not all the figures from the line were as well articulated.

 Here Sabertooth and Wolverine battle it out in the snow. I was kind of going for the image from the 2nd series of X-Men trading cards. That series had a some cool battle images that could be formed when two cards were placed next to each other.

Comic Book Men Returns

Kevin Smith's Comic Book Men  has returned for another season on AMC. I wish it had a better time slot... I hate waiting up for it. I mean couldn't they move up CBM and replay the Walking Dead in the later slot? No, oh that's right, the Walking Dead is a "main stream" comic book show.


The show starts off  highlighting an old non-articulated Clark Kent figure. The figure was still in it's original blister card packaging and had terrible sculpting and horrible paint applications.




In true "reality tv" fashion, the customer reminds Walt that Superman is turning 75. So the staff of the Stash begin planning a big birthday bash for the Man of Steel.

The next customer to come in bought an issue of Lois Lane in which Superman uses a krytonian device to transformer her into a black woman for a day. A pretty wacky plot, but I guess over 75 years writers have explored pretty much every possibility. How many times can Lois fall from some place high and still have the book be interesting when Superman saves her.

Walt, Brian, Ming, and Mike all dressed up goofy half assed costumes. Walt was Jor-El, Brian was a Kryptonite Rock, Ming was Jimmy Olsen, and Mike was Bizzarro. The big celebrity guest for the Superman Party was Superman himself from Lois & Clark The New Adventures of Superman, Dean Cain. As a present they gave Dean a gift certificate to the Secret Stash. It seemed kind of weird. Then they had Dean cut and serve the birthday cake.

The celebrity guests can be fun, but I prefer when Comic Book Men (and Toy Hunters) focuses on the history of interesting toys and comics. I feel like they burn up so much time trying to build up suspense before revealing the guest, that they barely get any screen time.

Arctic Threat Doc - GI Joe ROC

My favorite part of the Rise of Cobra movie toy line was that after they made all the movie characters they gave us dozens of other characters from the GI Joe universe. Carl "Doc" Greer was part of the Toy R Us exclusive wave of figures. He's dressed in a brightly colored snow suit and came with dozens of accessories. His orange and yellow snow suit seems a little goofy, but the vintage Lifeline wore a bright red jump suit as well. As far as I know, military medics wear normal uniforms. I'm not sure why Hasbro likes to make these guys so colorful... especially for battling in the snow.

 Doc has a blue helmet (UN Peace Keeping Force?), a white satchel, a pair of silver ice shoes, a flare gun, an injector gun, a white stretcher, and a gray blanket. Doc also came with an opening blue backpack with a black stand. The accessories that fit inside it include a multi-tool, a stethoscope, a water tank, and a flashlight. I like that the word Rescue is stenciled on the backpack like on the vintage Lifeline figures uniform and med-kit.

Snailiens & Lunarticks

I photographed these weird little toys a while ago, but was recently inspired to post about them becuase they were just featured on the Travel Channel's show Toy Hinters. Snailiens was a 90's toy line of un-articulated rubber figures. Each character came with a hard plastic suit of armor and a rubber shell. The shell could be turned inside-out to launch little weapons or smaller mini-figures into the air.

I had one hero and one villain as a kid. Both of them were given to me for my birthday by my best friend Derek. I can't say we really "played" Snailiens much. I mean, I don't remember really acting out stories with the figures, but he had a ton of fun shooting the little satellite weapons at each other with the rubber shells.

I had Lincoln the green themed Snailien. He's an orange alien wearing a green wrestling unitard. He came with a suit of green spiked armor, a pink shell, and a pink satilite to lauch at the enemy. The shells can clip on the back of the Snailien armor. The Satellites attach to a protrusion on the inside or outside of the shell, depending on how you are going to launch it.

The one evil Lunartick I had was named Drool. So the heroes are alien snails and the bad guys are ticks from the moon. He's a purple insect with black armor. Like the good guys, the villains also came with shells, satellites, and a little buddy mini-figure.

I always liked that Drool had a buzzsaw on the shoulder of his armor. He also has a little tick design on the torso of his armor near where his arms come out.

The bottom photo here shows off the little buddy/helper mini-figures. The blue alien is Drippy and part of the Lunartick army. The little green muppet-looking guy is called Charger and he came with Lincoln.

Arctic Assault Snake Eyes (v46) - ROC

I haven't featured a lot of modern GI Joe figures here on Action Figure Adventures, so when I was getting ready for my big snow photo shoot I made sure to grab a few. Below are two photos of Arctic Assault Snake Eyes from the Rise of Cobra Movie toy line. If you've been following my blog you may already know that I created a custom O-Ring style Arctic Snake Eyes before, but I love this figure.

Snake Eyes came with his parka, strap,  backpack  with grappling hooks, a sword, a pick, and a black gun. Yojoe.com says he came with a pistol, but I had mine bagged with the larger gun photographed above.  I also had my figure stored with a pair of black spiked climbing shoes. I'm not sure if I have gotten accessories mixed up between figures, or if there is a variation.

Toy Hunters goes to Comikaze

I watched this weeks episode of Toy Hunters as I always do, but I enjoyed this episode more than normal. Jordan and his toy hunting minors were busy buying up toys for Stan Lee's Comickaze Comic Convention.

Early on in the episode Jordan visits a Toy Biz toy designer who drew blue prints of many of the 90's Marvel Super Hero figures including the X-Men and Fantastic Four. Jordan bought a bunch of blue prints and then hunted around to buy MOC matching action figures to go with the blue prints. This was right up my alley. I love the behind the scenes aspects of toys and animation. I would love to own the original blue print to an action figure. (Need to add that to my toy collecting bucket list)

Later, one of Jordan's buddies bought the super rare Mego Wonder Woman. This figure is allegidly only one of four known to exist. They were only available in Autralia, because they released Linda Carter style Wonder Woman figures here in the USA.

One of Jordan's other helpers was rooting around in a toy/antique store looking to buy some of the Marvel toys to go with the blue prints. He came across some Snailiens figures.

I've been meaning to post about my Snailien and Lunatick figure for a while now. Here is a quick picture of Lincoln. I'll be sure to post about these guys in the near future. They were rubbery figures that came with hard plastic armor and a rubbery shell. The shell could be turned inside-out and launch little satellites.

I will never forget an epic Snailien battle we had at my buddy Brian's birthday party in late elementary school. For about a half hour every kid at his party and his Dad were shooting little satellites at each other and diving for cover behind sofas and chairs. It was classic!


I think my buddy Derek gave everyone who had a birthday that year a Snailien or two. I don't remember ever seeing them in stores, but I loved the two I had. Between all my friends we must have had the entire set. I also don't think any of us had any duplicates.

The craziest part of the episode was that a collector who I admire, and haven't seen in a while was actually on the show.

I've mentioned before that I am close friends with comic book author Doug Moench (my buddy Derek is his son). Doug has been friends with a comic collector by the name of Kelvin Mao for pretty much as long as I can remember. Kelvin was in college when Derek and I were little kids. I remember Kelvin coming to visit Doug one time after he moved to California. He brought with him photographs of his original comic book art collection. It wasn't a couple of pictures, it was a whole photo album. Some of the coolest pieces in his collection are of the DC Super Hero Ballistic who first appeared in Batman Annual #17. This issue was written by Doug and the character Ballistics's "real name" is Kelvin Mao. Are you getting the picture? So I know Kelvin has a high end collection, but I don't know what he collects beside comic art. 

Anyway, Kelvin shows up at Jordan's booth at Comickaze in the episode and inquires about the super rare Wonder Woman figure.  Apparently one of Kelvin' friends heard about the figure and asked Kelvin to take a look at it. Kelvin ended up buying the figure for $28,000. It was very cool to get to see my friend Kelvin on the show. Like I said, he's a collector I look up to. He's the collector that inspired me to track down the comic pages that feature the little kid Kevin, named after me in a couple issues of Legends of the Dark Knight.

Breakfightin' Raphael & Collector's Case

In previous Ninja Turtles posts here on Action Figure Adventures, I've mentioned my Mom picked up a case of  "original 1988 Turtles" at a yard sale for me one time a couple years ago. When she gave me the case later, they weren't really wave one figures, but they were cheap. I paid her back for them and I've slowly been posting about some of the various Turtles that came in the collection here on the blog. Today's post is about Wacky Action Raphael and the actual Collector's Case all the figures came in.

Breakfightin' Raphael has a wind-up action feature that makes him "break dance" spin on a blue gyro disc accessory not pictured. His other two blue weapons can be held in his hands or attached to his feet. These weapons allow his to fight while spinning.

 One of his weapons looks like two cowboy spurs or throwing stars and the other weapon is two rats tied together. Both weapons have spiked knuckle guards.

On the back of his shell you can see the little port where the gyro disc can be attached to give him his spinning action.

This Raphael figure is also missing his ninja black belt. I pasted this figure on to a fellow blogger a while ago, but hadn't posted about him yet.

My good childhood buddy Brian was always mad that this was the closest he could get to a cartoon accurate Raphael when we were kids. He missed getting his favorite Turtle when the original wave was out.

Below is the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Collectors Case. Like many licensed toys in the 80's these vinyl cases were released with artwork depicting the toys on the outside. The case could hold 12 figures between the two thin plastic trays that fit inside. As a kid I owned a ton of toys, but never had any of these cases. Most toy lines I either had 2 figures or 25 figures, so the cases were never very useful. I always just kept my toys in shoe boxes. This case features art of the four Turtles on the front. The back shows off two of the smaller vehicles from the early years of the line. The Turtle Trooper (Parachute) and Cheapskate (Skateboard).

Here is a quick glimpse of the tray that hold figures inside. These trays weren't real great for keeping things sorted out. There isn't much in place to keep the accessories from floating around inside.

 Shredder (shirtless like his action figure) and Splinter are depicted on the two sides of the case.

 Geronimo dudes!

Han & Chewie hunting Probe Droid

Well we had another snow day yesterday. It snowed throughout the entire day, so  I didn't take any more pictures. Luckily I still have bunch left to post. Today features the Deluxe Probe Droid figure from the PotF2 line.

 I decided to play around with adding some laser blast. I photoshop them into pictures for animations on occasion, but they are on the screen very briefly when included in an animation. Chewbacca has lots of white detailing painted on him.

 Nice shooting Han!

I think it knows we're here.

Batman - Justic Leauge Unlimited

I'm always picking up action figures of Super Heroes I like at yard sales and flea markets. Here are two different Justice League Unlimited versions of Batman. The first figure features the standard 5 point of articulation most animated DC figures. His suit is black and gray and is an all around nice figure. The second version who is wearing black and blue/gray uniform, features an impressive 9 points of articulation. I'm not sure if these are two different single card versions of Batman or if one of them may have come from a multi-pack.

 I'm always conflicted between cloth and plastic capes. The cloth capes like the Super Powers line and the Batman: The Animated Series line have a nice airy feel, and were fun to play with. The sculpted plastic capes look nice for static display, but can get in the way for sitting and play poses. Both of these guys are displayed with about a dozen other Batman figures.

X-Men Business Class

 I hope the X-Men are wearing their thermal underwear under their spandex uniforms. It looks kind of cold out there. Iceman is in his element. I took some of my favorite Marvel Universe figures out to play in the snow last week.

 I flat out love these two figures. They perfectly capture the look of Cyclops and Wolverine as they apreared in the X-Men comics and cartoon while I was in elementary school. Cyke has a lot of really nice sculpting on his gloves and chest harness.

 Kitty Pride and Iceman are both decent figures. Kitty seems a little "developed". She was never really portrayed as a buxom bombshell. In fact I liked her best as a young teen in the series. Iceman is made out of clear plastic as he should be. He includes a light silver paint detail on his chest.

 Jean Grey is in her uniform from the First Class comics (have they made her in her 90's outfit?) and share the same body mold as Kitty. This Colossus figure is another one of my favorite Marvel Universe figures.