Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Flying high (Toy Score part II)

As DonaldHelloStudio (who, by the way, is a great artist and has great art in his blog) correctly guessed a long time ago (remember that time when I talked about my uncle and the X-Men toys I found in his house?). The other thing I found was a complete set of Toy Biz Alpha Flight figures.



Yes, the one and only Canadian Justice League from the Marvel Universe. If you don't know who they are with that explanation, I really can't help you.

The set consist in three two-packs. The first one is Aurora and Northstar the two brothers that can fly and go really really fast and that also found out that when they touched each other (on the HAND!), they were able to shine like those vampires from Twilight, incestuous? Maybe. Cooler than sissy vampires? Definitely!



The sculpt is simple and pretty well executed. Their hands can twist at the wrist so they can touch. But, sadly, no sparkle action feature. This characters are kinda lame, but they do remind me of someone... I'm not sure who...



The second two-pack is Snowbird and Puck. Snowbird is a goddess of the northern nature. Strangely, I think she's dead now. How do you do that? The other half of the two-pack is one of my favorite Canadian heroes of all time: Puck. He has a cartwheel Action feature, that's cool, but he has no arm movement because of that, uncool. He still looks very good.



Snowbird's power is to transform into animals. So, they packed her with two, an owl and a wolverine.



The sculpt of these non articulated animals is very nice, and the playability of the idea is awesome. As a child (or an adult collector that plays with toys) when you get a shape shifter, you want the other shapes dammit! Plus, both animals are quite detailed and just a little bit smaller than Puck himself.



The last two-pack brings you Sasquatch and Vindicator. The leader of the team and the big strong... uh... guy.



Sasquatch is great considering the time when it was made, he's well articulated, but not in a way that annoys the sculpt. And the sculpt itself is very good. And he's big, just consider that for the "hot sister" comic up there I had to place Northstar in a little box, this figures are kinda little, but Sasquatch really towers over the rest.

Vindicator has an issue that strikes me in a personal level: I don't like toys with hair... Or cloth... But in this case, hair.



I just rather have sculpted plastic hair any day of the week. But since beggars can't be choosers. And these toys were free... Let me say that again... FREE!!!!! I can't really complain, now, can I?

Until next time.

(What? You want another comic? Oh, OK...)

Saturday, July 24, 2010

In the last place you look

OK, first of all, sorry for the lack of posts. I've been a little over-worked lately and I just couldn't find the time to write about toys, and I love to do that.

Second, I'll explain the title: You know I love Mattel's Action League line... And of the released figures I only needed a Two-pack to complete the set (more about this later), that set was Guy Gardner Green Lantern and Dr. Polaris.

But even in the US they are kinda hard to find, so I asked every friend I have in the Toy World to help me find them. I'm not kidding, I had an army of people looking for these. I had some South American toy snipers, they are great at finding rare stuff that pops out in their countries. I had several American toy troopers, they are in the middle of the mess looking for stuff where the shit hits the fan (usually Walmart). And I even ask some Australian toy commandos to keep an eye out in the other side of the world... And nothing.



"So, how did you get them?" you may ask.

As always this were in the last place you look. At a comic store in Buenos Aires, famous for having almost no toys whatsoever because "they only work with comics" (I know, stupid, right?), and I almost never go there, but this time I walked in with a friend, because he wanted to sell some old comics...

And there they were.



The sculpt is amazing, as always, but you have to like this line and this style to appreciate it. They are little, and silly, and fun. I was afraid this line was going to die, since the releases were kinda slow, but now thanks to Comic Con I know that the line is not only not dead, but is expanding to all the DC Universe.



This is the new official poster with some new releases I highlighted (I also totally stole this from TNI). There's also lots of characters not included in this poster.

Awesome!

Now I just need the new Deluxe Chemo & Batman set that's showing up in toy stores. This time I'll make sure to check everywhere, even those places that usually don't have Brave and the Bold toys...

Until next time.

(Next stop, the liquor store and a sex shop! Hey, I said "look everywhere", right?)

Thursday, July 1, 2010

Planet Birthday

As I mentioned in my last post, my birthday was the day before father's day. And it was quite an occasion in my life, a very important birthday, since I turned 30. I was so moved by this that my girlfriend got me a stripper.

What?

She did.



See?

This is, of course, Cherry Darling from NECA. Cherry was the main character in Robert Rodriguez' masterpiece (yes, there, I said it) Planet Terror. Cherry was portrayed by Rose McGowan and the figure, while is not nearly as perfect as it could have been, does have a pretty good resemblance to her.

The sculpt is great as you already expected from the good people at NECA but this again suffers from the non-articulation syndrome. This figure is so non-articulated that I'm a little uncomfortable calling it an action figure. Staction would be, perhaps, a little better. I know the word is horrible, but is better than "actatue" or "stagure"...

Cherry does come with a base, lucky us 'cause is the only way to get her to stand, and an interchangeable leg. Here's the leg with a couple of Justice Plastic Man legs for comparison (this also made me write the weirdest comic I've ever come up with...)



As I mentioned before in this blog, I have an arrangement with my girlfriend, since it's really hard for her to keep track of what Action Figure I'm looking for at any given moment, I promised not to buy movie related toys so she can get me those as presents. So far, this worked perfectly.

I loved Planet Terror and I love the idea behind Cherry Darling, a regular person that lost a limb to Evil and replaced it with... Wait a second! I've heard that story before in B class movies... She's not the first is she? I wonder if they have anonymous meetings to support each other...



Until next time.

(I got a stripper for my birthday, what did YOU get?)