Marvel Legends Dr. Strange

Another video. This is Dr. Strange from Toy Biz' Marvel Legends line. This particular wave of figures came packed with parts you could use to build a giant sized Galactus. I showed Galactus here a while back. He's still my favorite Marvel Legend figure, but when I started playing a bit with my old collection, I notice that I actually like these toys. Yesterday I opened Dr. Strange, and he's an excellent figure in some ways, and not so excellent in other ways.

The Top 10 Greatest Toy Lines Ever!

This is a list I've been thinking of for a good while, and now is as good a time as ever. If you read my stuff, you would think this list could be named "Top ten action figure lines", but that would actually not work. Sure, it's mostly dominated by action figures, but there may be a few entries that just happens to fall in a different category.

I have collected, played with - and ultimately considered a huge selection of toys for this list. Some of the toy lines were rather difficult to leave out, and I feel like mentioning a few of them (but not all, because that would ruin eventual surprises).

 I did consider the original, 1/6 scaled G.I. Joe, for historical reasons, and the great variety of accessories. They were before my time, but I enjoy them whenever I see them today. In the opposite category, when talking about toys that predate the 80s, are the Mego dolls. I just can't see understand attraction. 

A powerful contender was the Real Ghostbusters line. Creative monsters, solid build quality, all over fun toys. There have also been many great superhero lines, like Toy Biz' X-Men, and the various DC Direct lines. I'm also impressed with many of the contemporary toys, whether they're based on movies, like the Avengers figures, or the toys from the smaller, more independent toy companies, like Four Horsemen.

Japanese toys I considered included the various Valkyries based off the Macross shows (like the Bandai VF-25 in my banner), and the range of anime robots in the mighty Soul of Chogokin line.

While the top ten may be familiar to most of you, and in many ways be "obvious" choices, they were the toys that has impressed me the most and given me the most joy.  Essentially, these are my top ten toy lines. 

Agree, disagree, want to share your own list? Leave a comment below!

MOTUC Extendar in 2014

I couldn't be happier. 2013 has been an awful year for the Masters of the Universe Classics toy line. Filled with characters that people really didn't care for, it's clear that they needed to change things a bit to hold on to the subscribers. 2014 and 2015 will be nothing but the remaining vintage toys redone, and key characters from the 200x cartoon.

I'm glad I didn't subscribe in 2013, and I'm even happier I have signed on for 2014. The year starts off brilliantly, with Two-Bad (MOTU), Glimmer (Princess of Power), Hydron (New Adventures), and Modulok. The fan convention Power Con was held this weekend, and four additional upcoming Classics were revealed: We got to see Blade (MOTU Movie), Scorpia (She-Ra cartoon), and Battle Lion (200x cartoon). All look fantastic, and it's good to see that Toyguru has stopped with releasing self customs, d-listers and extremely expensive three-packs of random, obscure prototypes.

Of course, the big reveal to me was that we're finally getting an Extendar Classics figure. Probably my all time favorite MOTU character. I remember exactly where and when I got him. Extendar was part of the 1986 wave of Masters of the Universe, and

I had of course read about him in the comics, but I never found him in my stores. During a vacation in another country, I saw him lying in a bin in a regular department store. I asked to get him, but was told this was not the time. I can't recall if I became sad, but if my mother reads this, maybe she can tell her side of the story. Either way, Christmas was right around the corner, and as you would expect, I got Extendar.

Such an impressive looking toy, with a relatively simple play feature. He's a mechanical knight that can extend his limbs, going from a bulky, robust warrior, to the majestic "Tower of Power". Extendar came with a large red shield, the same shield that was revealed to us during Power Con. There's no question who owns that shield, and this basically Matty telling us: Extendar is coming next year.

I have gone several rounds with my self, whether I would be disappointed or not, should Extendar be a 2015 release instead of next year. Keep in mind, with the current reveals (which is roughly 40% of the entire 2014 subscription), next year is looking amazing, and significantly better than 2013. But I found myself eager, almost impatient when it came to Extendar. And now I know, and this makes me just that bit more exited for next year. This of course means that Rio Blast - the last remaining original Master, will be the 2015 draw.

Extendar will definitely have similar features to Meckaneck. He will have snap on extentions, instead of the sliding features of the vintage toy. I'm ok with this, it doesn't take away from either playability of display value. Sadly, Extendar is a regular release, and not an "over-sized" figure, like the impressive Ram-Man. This means extendar will be the same size as the other, regular figures. At least when he's not extended. I would have preferred him to be just a bit bigger than a normal figure.

What I'm hoping for now is either extensions that will let Extendar be ridiculously tall, or maybe some extra accessories. Since he looks like a knight, he should have a sword, or a lance. Maybe a sword that can extend to a lance?

Extendar may not be everybody's favorite, but then again, he wasn't used to sell the 2014 subscriptions either. I'm at least sold, and I'm counting down till we get the Tower of Power, the mighty Extendar.

Marvel Legends Nick Fury

I'm almost to the point where I think that the coolest Marvel characters are those that lack super powers. I've written about Hawkeye in the past,and this time, it's the spy above all spies, Nick Fury's turn.

Read on!

Nostalgia and the Reason We Collect Toys

Let me apologize immediately for the pretentious title. I don't plan on writing a scientific article on nostalgia and toys, but I want to put into words something that has been on my mind. I've tried to figure out why I have this fascination for vintage toys, why modern toys fail to bring me the same excitement, and I'm not alone in asking these questions, and for the outsider, it can be very strange that grown men and women still purchase, store, display, and sometimes plays with toys for kids.

Basically it can be boiled down to "Why do we collect toys?", but it's not that simple either. Read on for a rather long article on collecting. Agree, disagree, additional thoughts, personal similar stories? Leave a comment below!

What's DC doing, really?

I just got around to watching Man of Steel, DC/Warner Bros' latest attempt at making a Superman movie. For all the explosions, and impressive destruction, the lasting impression is not of the movie itself, but the lack of direction from DC. It just doesn't seem like they care.
I will try to explain, but first let me just say that while I am a Marvel fanboy, I also enjoy the comics from the Distinquished Competition. Titles like JSA, Green Arrow and Teen Titans have usually kept me interested. But it doesn't stop with "interesting". Some of the best comics I have read have had the label "DC". In fact, one of my top ten favorite storylines was a Superman comic.

So I always enter the theater with somewhat of an expectation. You can then imagine the result when I was watching movies like Green Lantern or Superman Returns. There was preciously little positive about either of them. The new Batman trilogy is ok for what it is: Action movies with cool tech, crazy villains and needlessly complicated storylines. But it's not Batman to me. There's a point where they forgot to sit back and realize that they were making a superhero movie, not an action movie set in the real world. Why is that a problem? Well, picture a Superman in the Dark Knight-trilogy universe. Certainly not superpowered. And this is the problem for me. The times WB have managed to stay true to the comics (for instance Superman Returns), they have made awful movies, and the times they have made good movies (Batman Begins) they steered so far off track from the source material that the movies barely have anything in common with the comics. And in either of the cases there is certainly no room for building towards a team-up.

Maybe it's unfair to expect a Justice League movie, and it's definitely unfair to compare single-hero movies like Iron Man and Thor to Batman and Superman. After all, Batman is more recognizeable than the entire Avengers roster put together. But it's not unreasonable to expect more from WB, and it's not unfair to compare the dedication from Marvel Studios to the lack of a plan from DC/WB. You have to marvel at the way Marvel Studios seamlessly combined the different themes of Iron Man, Thor and Captain America to build towards The Avengers, and then seriously push all the right buttons. The single-hero movies felt different, but similar. They were different because they obvously had different plots, took place in different times/worlds. But you still got a sense that it all took place in the same universe. Obviously reinforced by characters appearing in all the movies, but it was more than that too. It was the feeling that these were superhero comics, just translated to movies.

I will be honest, Man of Steel had its good moments (And some embarrasingly bad ones, like the forced relation between Lois Lane and Superman). We finally saw an all out brawl between Superman and a villain of equal physical strength, which was cool. The Krypton tech was neat and the costumes were nice. But the plot was bland, and you just didn't feel for any of the characters. Why spend that much time telling background stories when you still don't get any sympathy for the characters? Look to the two new Star trek movies. Both had villains similar to General Zod. All were exiles simply trying to get even, but were you you feel for Nero and Khan both good and bad, you end up feeling nothing for Zod. He's just there as something for Superman to hit. Same can be said about the main character. Where is the adversity he has to face, for us to see him as the deserving hero? Here it is easy to compare him to the Thor movie, which really got that part right, a hero who has to prove him self trough a series of trials, and ultimately make the right choices regardless of his powers. And this is not just about writing, but about movie making. Iron Man, Thor, The Avengers (and Star Trek, since I mentioned it) go out of their way with the right combination of camera angles, music, choices of actors, and so on, and the results are epic.

All in all Man of Steel just wasn't as epic as it should have been. And you didn't leave the theater anticipating the next move/movie from DC. Keep in mind, movies like Iron Man 2 or Captain America are not masterpieces by any measurment, and as individual films they are quite possibly surpassed by Man of Steel. But they felt like parts of something more, and that made them not only better, but also more true to the comic. A key word here is "continuity". I said it before: It was deliciously apparent that Marvel were in control of their own characters. It doesn't feel like DC is in full control over theirs. And when corporate people and executives think they can do better than actual comic book people, all we will get is re-make after re-make.

There are Toys in New York

But it's not a Mecca for toy collectors.

And that may actually be a bit strange, because New York had literally everything you could imagine, and lots of it. Shopping in NYC was an amazing experience, and if you were looking for shoes, clothes, jewelry, food. I hoped the toy stores would match the quality of the other stores. I guess they did, it's just that my expectations to the toy stores were significantly higher than those towards clothing stores. There's also the fact that I know where to find toys in abundance: online. The online toy stores and forums are the best places to buy toys, and that's not even a secret. I assume this "new" market has more or less destroyed the potential for having truly great toy stores in New York.

But when completing my excursion of the toy stores on Manhattan, I may have discovered what the point of toy stores today should be. It's about presenting a selection so great, and in such a way that you'll want to want something. It's about giving an experience greater than the price reduction you'd get from buying online.

I had a blast visiting these stores, so much in fact that I decided to take a couple of pictures and write a few words on the various stores. I guess you can see this as a review of the toy stores in New York, but it's definitely not complete. I know I missed out on a couple of stores (like Midtown Comics), and I'm sure there were some I don't even know about. And we were only sticking to mid/lower Manhattan. But for the stores we actually did visit, you can look at this article as somewhat of a guide.

So come in for more, and leave comments if you want!

Caution: This is a long article with many pictures, and the gravy is all the way at the bottom.

Fantrstic 4 trading cards

That's not a typo in the title, by the way. One of my young students brought me a gift back from a holiday trip in the Canary Islands. Tenerife is particularly well known for having an abundance of knock off items. You can buy counterfeit anything for almost nothing by just walking on the beach.
Me myself bought a real Rolex for $9, last time I visited the island with the lonely mountain.

This student shares my interest for superheroes, and recognized the ridiculousness of this KO item: Fantastic 4 trading cards, with a Sue Storm keychain.

Fantrstic 4 "game" cards

The cards look delightfully home-made, complete with shoddy lamination and spelling errors. Notice the weird code below the logo.
The outside of the pack said "game cards", but I'm not sure how this game would be played. There is no information about the persons pictured on the individual cards, and the packs seemed to contain a mix between promotional pictures from both movies, and artwork from the comic around the same time. I do like the artwork by Mike McKone, who did an awesome run on the re-made Teen Titans from 2003.

The key chain is obviously the star price. It's just the right amount of hilariously awful, and is a prime example of why I adore knock off products. Is Sue concealing something behind extreme make up? Is she wearing sunglasses? Or is she just missing her eyes? I don't know, but I do like this silly gift, and the way it's presented.
Enjoy your weekend.

Merry Christmas!

Enjoy your holiday as much as possible. I'm taking a few days off, no long articles the next week. Hopefully the new year will hold some pleasant surprises for us all!

Earl Norem Art, Classics Castle Grayskull news

I was chatting with a friend, a fellow fanboy. He's heavily into Conan the Barbarian, and fantasy in general - among other things. He showed me a link to a fan page for artist Earl Norem.

Norem is the one that did several of the greatest comic book covers of Conan, and he also made artwork for Mattel during the heyday of Masters of the Universe. In fact, only last month I showed a few of his Masters of the Universe posters.

Here are the Conan covers. So many epic pieces, it blows my mind. Conan getting jumped by frozen dead soldiers is a great example of Norem's style.
http://earlnorem.com/conangallerypage.html

And here's the link to the MOTU part: http://earlnorem.com/motugallerypage.html

A piece that fascinated me was this one:

It says "the jungle is the setting of this battle between He-Man and Skeletor". Clearly. Except it's not really a jungle, more a savanna. Crazy as it may seem, this image actually makes sense. They are the Masters of the Universe, are they not? It makes sense that they do battle all around the universe, not only on their planet, Eternia.

Indeed it's He-Man vs. Skeletor, the World Tour.

He-Man has found a stand-in for Battle Cat, and Skeletor has found suitable minions. All though I suspect the IQ level of his new horde are a significant improvement over his usual gang of losers.

In related news, Mattycollector got the satisfactory amount of pre-orders for Classics Castle Grayskull. Their nifty thermometer may have been a clever marketing trick, but honestly, I found it exciting and fun.

Now we wait. Rest assured, for the price we're paying, enthusiast will be ready to complain over every single detail that gets revealed, up until release late next year. But at the same time, it's good to see so many fans be really happy about the news that we're getting Castle Grayskull. It's safe to say that it's been the highest demanded toy in this line, and I'm sure it will please almost all of us.

You can pre-order Castle Grayskull over at mattycollector.com up until January.

Lego Hawkeye

I had initially planned for an exciting recipe today, but since we're actually celebrating the 80th anniversary of Lego (the 22nd), I felt it was more appropriate to do an article on Lego.

Most of my readers know I really like the superheroes. Even if I don't collect that many superhero action figures, they're my main interest. It also goes without saying that I like the bricks. So when Lego decided to start the Superheroes theme, you can imagine how excited I was.
I have a few of the bigger sets on their way from Lego's online shop, so I can't show those yet. But I managed to get hold of a promotional sample of Hawkeye. I felt this was very adequate, as Hawkeye has been featured a few times before here in this blog, and he's probably my favorite Avengers character.

Read on for a few more pictures.

Misc.

As I leave this world (for a few days), remember to eat healthy and open your toys. I will have an update on Wednesday and Friday, but they will be extremely simple.

Honey roasted nuts. Perfect in cakes and chocolate

Inside today is a really varied selection of pictures. Some just doesn't warrant an individual article, some can be considered teasers for future articles and some were leftovers from other articles that I still wanted to share. Enjoy.

The Avengers - A review, among other things

I have returned from the premiere of The Avengers (in 2D yay), and I would like to share my thoughts. While I know there already are several reviews out, this will perhaps be slightly different. Because this is a big deal. Marvel has stepped outside the comfort zone, and courted their loyal fans, yet done it with the elegance, action and humor that will please the casual movie goer.

I have tried to keep the review spoiler-free, but obviously you should be careful if you want to go into The Avengers without any prior knowledge.

Either way, read on for my thoughts on The Avengers!

G.I. Joe Month: Conclusion

I initially did this full month of G.I. Joe related articles because my collection returned from the museum. In the process of storing them away, I took hundreds of pictures of them, and wanted to share both pictures and stories. But I also found my self playing with the toys. Not necessarily in the way I did when I was a kid. I wasn't lining them up and "playing war" with dialogues and action sounds. It was more looking closely at them, noticing new details, contemplating about paint and sculpt. I posed them in their vehicles, put on their accessories. I talked with fellow collectors about it.

In essence, it was playing with toys.
And it made me realize that these were - and continue to be - amazing toys.

I'll end the G.I. Joe month not with pictures, but with a story. I have many stories of experiences as a kid, and almost anything I write can be considered stories of how it's like to be an adult collecting these toys. This story is neither: It's the story of how I got back into collecting G.I. Joe.

This was when I was in high school. during my years in junior high, I had abandoned any ideas of collecting toys. Willingly? Not really. I had just stored away all my toys. It was just socially impossible to be interested in toys as fourteen year old boy. Some will say it's similar as an adult, but I'm fairly confident in my self. I know what I like, I have some extremely weird interests, but they are my interests. They are a part of me, of who I am. And collecting toys is one of the greatest things I know of. I am glad it's not my only interest, nor is it the only thing I collect.
But I am proud to be interested in toys. And it didn't really start at childhood - I was just being careful with any toy I was given. It started when I finally left junior high, and could start being myself. You see, where you would commit social suicide by admitting to such childish things in junior high, no one cared in high school. It was ok to be different, and in my school it was actually expected of you.

Not far from my high school was a store that sold used comic books. At this point, I was reading all the cool stuff that came out on Image. Then there came a day, we had a no scheduled class, so me and a friend decided to head over to the store and look for comics. I wouldn't say I was a regular, but I had been to this store quite a few times, and knew what to expect. They had the usual selection of locally produced comics, translated international comics and the occasional US/UK release. I wasn't expecting anything else this day.

"What's this? Where does this come from? Are there more?" I asked the lady in the store, as I had gone through a few comics. I had noticed something I didn't expect to find, and I can safely say that I panicked. It wasn't fear, it was more urgency, feelings I couldn't really describe.

Hidden under a few irrelevant comics was G.I. Joe #1 - US release. From 1982. Dead mint.

And #2, #3, #4, #5, and so on.

Relevant to the story is this. G.I. Joe didn't arrive in my country until mid 80s, when the line - both toys, comics and cartoon - had already been going with full strength in the country where it originated. The comics I had read (under the name Action Force) were only part of the entire story.  We got to read the story from US #44-90, so any stories before that was virtually unknown to me. But I knew of them. I knew I was missing something.

And now I suddenly found these comics. Every single one of them.

What had happened: a person - obviously one who subscribed to these comics (as well as certain superhero comics) had stopped caring, and turned them into the store for... I don't know, store credit? A small amount of cash? Definitely not worth it.
I was rambling at this point to my friend, and to the lady in the store. I bought every issue I could afford, and told her to hold on to the rest for me. I came back every day for the next week, picking up 5-10 issues at the time, and I would sit home reading the beginnings of G.I. Joe. I have mentioned how good these comics are in many previous articles, including the very first Figure Friday. And all though I'm not sure I'm entirely objective, I still argue that they are just as good, if not better today than they were to me as a kid. That obviously goes without saying for the comics I didn't get to read until I found gold that day in high school.
At that point, reading #1-43, it occurred to me that I still liked G.I. Joe, so I dug out my toys from the closet and started sorting them out, categorizing and structuring the collection.
This was where I went from being a kid who had many toys, to becoming an adult collector.

Figure Friday: Scoop

It's interesting to notice that such an important aspect of war is neglected in the G.I. Joe toy line. At least until 1989, when the underrated, and often ridiculed information specialist debuts for the G.I. Joe team.

Jump in for the scoop on Scoop!

The 100 Best G.I. Joe Figures

This is the hundredth article I have written for this blog. And to celebrate, I've chosen to create a list of the hundred best G.I. Joe figures!

Naturally I want to make blog entry number one hundred something special. All though it feels strange to leave out the food part, I have been wanting to make a list of my favorite toys for quite a while. This is the right occasion. Now, I had initially planned on it being the top ten toys I own. But as soon as I started sorting my favorite toys, I realized it would be all Joes anyway. And I would never be satisfied with just ten. Or twenty. Or fifty.

So here's the hundred best figures in the G.I. Joe - A Real American Hero toy line (that I own). Also, this marks not only blog entry one hundred, but also the start of G.I. Joe Month here in Toys and Bacon. I'll make sure to get some food related stuff in as well, but every article for the next month will have a relation to Joes.
Now on to the list...

Figure Friday: Galvatron

Galvatron is such a bad ass.

Most people don't know this because the only time they saw him was in Transformers, The Movie, and the following season of the cartoon. Admittedly, he is very cool in that movie, for reasons I'll explain. But he was so much more ruthless and intense in the comic.
Of the movie characters, he was by far the most impressive toy. In fact, I have G1 Galvatron as one of the best Transformers in the original line.

Read on for the evilest of the evil Decepticons, Galvatron!

Conan the Barbarian

I finally got around to see the new Conan movie. It wasn't the worst movie I have seen. The girl was cute, and Bob Sapp was playing a villain. And that's about the best I can say about it. I obviously made the right choice not using any money on it. In fact, I see no reason why they made this movie. They already made the perfect Conan movie, back in 1982. And I can say this, because I'm a Conan fan. The old comics Marvel made in the 70s is something I like to read, and re-read.
There has been made quite a handful great Conan statues, but a year ago, we finally got a great Conan action figure - all though in a slightly different format that we had expected.

Read on for more!

Toys Spotted on Fringe

Nothing out of the ordinary really, and certainly something most toy collectors spotted right away, as it was somewhat of a plot element in the episode. Never the less, it's always fun to see toys you know, and in this case, toys you own on a TV-show you follow.

Read on for more