All hail our new Robot Overlords - Part II

OK, OK, so apparently nothing happened in the date the movies gave and Skynet is not the ruler of the world... But hey, I'm didn't get to be the self proclaimed minister of Human/Robot relations by jumping to conclusions to fast. Not at all.

So I'll play it safe and keep saying that robots are awesome for some time, before shamelessly switching sides.

This time is the turn of the very cool MOTU Classics Roboto!



Since Roboto's pretty old and everybody did a review of already I'll just go through some basics:

1) Roboto is super cool.
2) His shoulders are reversed, I don't really care.
3) He's wearing purple underwear.
4) The gears on his chest rotate when you move his waist, his mouth doesn't open.
5) He comes with four hand attachments, a gun, a claw, an axe and a regular hand.
6) Purple underwear!
7) You can't store the attachments in his body. Lame.
8) He's got a heart-shaped chip in his chest to reflect his He-Man mini comic appearance.
9) Some parts are reused but there's enough new tooling to keep me quiet.
10) He's got purple underwear! Why are you ignoring this? This cannot be ignored! The robot is wearing PURPLE UNDERWEAR!!!
12) The paint apps were pretty precise with some minor bleeding hre and there, nothing important.
11) He looks great despite the choice color of some of his parts.
12) They are purple.

And that's about it. But let me explain why I love Roboto. As a little Freak, and a MOTU enthusiast, Roboto was the one that got away. I never owned one, but a friend of mine did. And I hated that bastard! At that point I wasn't that much into magic anymore, but was getting really into Science fiction, the literary genre my dad loved the most and the one he taught me to love.

Roboto was the perfect combination of my past and my present at that time and I really wanted Roboto. He was sooooo awesome. But I didn't have one. So I grew up bitter and twisted and never played with toys again.

Not really.

Actually I grew up as a toy loving geek and made sure to get every version of Roboto ever! Ha! Take that Universe!

That's a life lesson right there...



And sepaking of Robot parts, Stephen, the winner of our Bionic contest got his prize (a Bionic Bjoern from Hauke Scheer) already and he's showing off too! Hate him here.

Until next time.

All hail our new Robot Overlords

According to my calculations (based on solid empirical facts) Skynet gained consciousness a couple of days ago and yesterday launched a devastating nuclear attack...

So for you poor helpless survivors I'll start a series of posts so you can recognize and praise our new Robot Overlords.

Like this one:



This is Mecha Sad Bear by artist Luke Chueh, done for the series called Kaiju for Grown Ups. That series, started by the Japan based company called Wonderwall, got several artists to create (or recreate) Kaiju monsters.

My good friend Reis actually owns the Woodlands Monster and the Mothman reimagined by David Horvath, creator of Uglydolls.

Luke Chueh is one of the most interesting artists out there. His take on a terrible reality using mostly bears and bunnies is incredibly disturbing and at the same time quite funny.

This is one of my favorite pieces done by Luke:



It's called "Soundtrack to my life". I just love it. I'd love to have several of his prints to frame on my house.

Anyway, Mecha Sad Bear was released in 2008. Is 6" and has five points of (very limited) articulation. There are six colorways, the silver version that I have (because is the one that makes more sense to me) was limited to 200 pieces. But you can also find it in gold, black, clear, glow in the dark and, if I'm not mistaken, orange.

I'm starting to build a small collection of toys by Luke Chueh and Mecha Sad Bear is one of my favorites so far.

He also gave me an idea, a stop motion animation show like celebrity death match but with all the giant monsters from popular culture...



It's genius! Don't you think Skynet?

What?

OK, OK, I'll shut up now.

Until next time.

Now I know my ADD... No, wait... ABC, I know my ABC

Several toy bloggers decided to make a challenge in April called the A to Z challenge, meaning one toy for every letter in the alphabet before the month ends. I really don't know who started it, but I think it's quite cool.

I decided to enter too, but unlike some of my fellow bloggers (like Adrian from Little Plastic Man, Alex from Toy Heaven, or Leon from Open the Toy) who are making a terrific job covering one toy and one letter at a time with reviews and posts, I decided to go for the whole alphabet in just one sitting.

Trying to pay a little homage to the work of Edward Gorey, this is Freak Studios' Toy Alphabet.





























Until next time.

It's a miracle, fool!

One of the most interesting Mini Blind Box series of last year is Matt Jones' Lunartik in a cup of tea. For some reason the design of these little dudes is incredibly appealing to me.



I just love these tiny little things, and I really can't explain why. Maybe is the little cup, maybe is because they don't look like anything even remotely human, maybe is because they are so damn cute. I don't know, and I don't care.

As a line based purely on looks I don't need to have them all, just a couple is OK. Or so I thought, until I saw the "special" chase figures:



Yes! That one there is called "Mr. Tea" and it's a tiny Mr. T in a tiny cup of tea with the colors of the A-team van...

(I can't breath...)

(Wait for it...)

THAT IS SO AWESOME!!!!!

I also have a strong love/hate relationship with this line. The love part is easy to understand, the hate part is easy too. These things are absolutely impossible to get in Argentina. I even tried to order a case, just to get that Mr. Tea.

Only one problem:



Did you see it yet? Let me help you a little bit...



Yeah, the ratio of Mr. Tea is 2 in 160 blind boxes! That meant I had to order a minimum of 80 boxes if I wanted to get one, and not even then was a sure thing.

I might have cried a little...

BY the title of the post you might have guessed by now, my sister went to London and bought me 2 (two!!!) boxes. And guess what was in one of them...



Oh yeah!!! Mr. Tea, "Strong and black" as the label says. And he is all mine.

He's just as cute and awesome as I wanted him to be. But he's always feeling pity for me and doesn't trust me if I put milk in his tea... I might need to get some other minis to customize into the rest of the A-Team... Hmmm... That's an idea.

And the freaky thing is that the other box had this:



That's the Lunar tea, another one of the specials 1 in 40. The Lunar Tea might look simple, but glows in the dark. I'm not crazy about GITD like my friend Charles, but I sure do like 'em a lot.

Next time I'm going to buy some blind boxes I'm definitely taking my sister with me!



Until next time.

Silly rabbit, tricks are for geeks!

Apparently, The Trickster, a (not-so) notorious villain from DC Comics has taken over Stephen's blog. In order to release the hostages without any incidents he's demanding that you answer five (evil) questions.

If you do so, he might even give you something for your trouble. He'll probably make Stephen pay for it but there's really nothing to do about it, bad guys are bad guys, right?

So, enter the contest and watch how The Trickster makes Stephen pay for your stuff!

Oh, here's the bad dude himself...



(This image might give you a hint to answer one of the questions... What?... Trickster... You never told me I couldn't give hints... C'mon... It was a joke... NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO...)

The three "Rs" of toy marketing: (R)eboot, (R)efresh, (R)elease characters nobody wants...

Reboot.

I'm not just talking about movies, "reboot" seems to be a magical word that can be applied to anything these days. And it is a welcome word in some cases and it's a most feared concept the rest of the time.

Don't get me wrong, change is a good thing. It's a great thing, but only if timming is good. When Mattel announced that they were going to turn the Batman the Brave and the Bold - Action League line into DC Universe Action League I celebrated the idea. That meant more characters and less Batman variants.

But remember what I said about timming? In this case, Mattel, like happens to a lot of people in bed, started too slow and finished too early... Or so I've heard it happens... I mean, it never happened to me... Ehm... Moving on...

What I'm trying to say is that they never released the last wave of Brave and the Bold. And it was a good wave, thanks to the stolen factory samples we all know and love, we know we missed Robin, Solomon Grundy, Green Lantern Sinestro, Bronze Tiger, Deadman, Alloy and Ted Kord Blue Beetle. That sounds good to you too, huh?

Let's see what we got instead:



It's a pretty cool first wave anyway. Two very interesting two-packs and two semi-lame ones. That's six cool figures out of a total of eight. Not bad. Not bad at all.

(But don't worry Mattel haters, these numbers will surely change in the next, already announced, waves)



The Flash and Captain Boomerang was probably my favorite. I love both characters, and although I would have liked a classic Digger, I'm not against this brightest day redesign.

Flash (like Superman) came with a base to help the running/flying look. The base is small, stable and it fits perfectly on the peg. Flash's supposed to have his fist forward like he's punching something, but there's a lot of figures that have that pose. So I'll pose it like this.

Boomerang is the less stable of the wave, he doesn't fall but he's much more sensitive to strong vibrations than the others.



The Superman/Bizarro pack was the other great one we got in this wave.

Bizarro is very well done, looks a little bit like Quasimodo in this design, I like the fact that he's not just a copy of Superman but has so many distinctive features, like the longer arms and open hands.He also has the strange honor of being the second figure in the line with an accessory (I can't remember if any of the Batmen from TB&TB had any, so I'm just counting Gorilla Grodd and his removable helmet). A really big chunk of Kryptonite, he's supposed to hold it over his head, but if you have patience and a little bit of balancing skill you can find other ways to display the character.



I'm not a Superfan, but this line was deffinitely lacking in Kryptonians, so he's welcome and he looks good too.

Refresh.

What changed in this line from the previous TB&TB? The hands in the new ones are bigger and they have a little bit more detailed sculpt (now they have abs and ribs, for example).



Batman & Superman - Until Mattel releases a new Batman (and probably other Superman).



This is one of the Semi-lame packs, Firestorm is great, again, I like the character, the figure looks great and it is super fun. With that color scheme he really pops up on the shelf.

Black Lantern Firestorm or Deathstorm on the other hand, is pretty much "meh". I know he's now his own character, but I would have liked other characters more, like Killer Frost, or Plastique or Multiplex... Hell, I would even have accepted Doctor Double X, he was in the cartoon, in the episode that Firestorm was created and I'm sure he has more appearances than Deathstorm.



Finally my least favorite pack. And not because of Green Lantern, he's really cool looking (although he had a few paint marks on the chin). This is the year of the Lantern and I get that, but still this line is getting to be a bit too Lantern-Centric for my taste. Kilowog, John Stewart, Tomar Re, Low from the Sinestro Corps, Atrocitus from the Red Lantern Corps and some weird ball guy from the Red Lanterns have been announced. It's too much.

The third "R" takes us to White Lantern Sinestro. I really don't like this dude. I mean, I have nothing against him, as a Con exclusive, for example (I own one of the DCD exclusives). But a White Lantern Sinestro here is not the same, this one is taking the spot of other more deserving characters and even is taking the spot of even more deserving incarnations of himself. I would have taken Green Lantern Sinestro, Sinestro corps Sinestro and even blue/black Sinestro costume before this one.

Well, at least this line still made justice for one guy...



Until next time.

How do you call the love child of Grizzlor and Buzz-Off?

Fur-Bee!

OK, OK... Sorry.

I'm trying to pick up the pace in my MOTU Classics reviews, so I tried mixing to very different figures under one title.

But there are other thing that these characters have in common, for starters the Bio writers tried to be funny with their real names: Buzz-Off is "Tzzzzt zz zzTTTzz" and Grizzlor is "Gur'rull Gu'rrooowarrrk"... Really, Bio writers? Really? OK, nice try... But you should leave the funny part to guys like me. Why? Because the stupid joke I opened the post with will only last a post... And it will not be printed in every fucking package the figure is in... That's why!

Anyway, I'll start with Grizzlor.

I owned (a never truly liked) Grizzlor when I was a kid. He was like a fur ball with arms and legs and therefore, not very threatening. The lack of shape of the body was a turn down for me, because, let's face it, he didn't even look like a bear... He was more like the Pink Panther after coming out of the washing machine...



The 200X MOTU staction of Grizzlor improved greatly on the original design by adding shape and a shit load of weapons. The new one, sadly, didn't evolve as much.


(But he did rocked some serious Son-Goku hair)

There's not much to say about Grizzlor other than "he's the furry dude". The face sculpt is great and I like the added loincloth, a detail absent from the vintage and present in the staction that gives him some definition to his body.



But Grizzlor really kicks some serious ass in the weapons department, his got axes, machetes, knives and a Horde cross-bow! The best part is that everything can be stored in his back-pack. Each weapon is sculpted very well and looks great on him. I will display it with the little axe, because is different than the other weapons on the line.



At home, the one that got really excited with Grizzlor was my wife, because only she, with years and years of Barbie experience, was able to comb Grizzlor's fur into this stylish new hairdo...



Buzz-Off is a different story, I really liked this figure when I was a kid. He wasn't my favorite, not by a long shot, but I always had a soft spot for him.



The sculpt is great, I'm OK with the reused parts from Whiplash, the paint really gives him a new personality with no need for more extra tooling than what he has. He comes with his helmet and two weapons, but I'll display him without them.



I don't like the helmet for nostalgic reasons, I didn't really liked how the vintage helmet looked in the figure. Plus, the color of the eyes makes him pop on the shelf. I won't display him with weapons (he comes with two of them), because why would you need a tiny axe having razor sharp claws?

The sad part is that paint wise my Buzz-Off had some QC issues. The paint in the eyes, for example, wasn't very good.



The best parts of Buzz-Off (vintage and classic) are his wings. Casted in clear plastic and using ball joints in tha back, I just love how they look. And all the cool display options you have with them. He can stand easily even with his wings open, and that's great.



I said it before, and I'll say it again, I loved Buzz-Off as a kid because he was one of the very few monsters the heroic warriors had on their side on the first three waves of MOTU. In Argentina those were the biggest waves, the fourth with Sy-Klone, Roboto and Moss-man wasn't as popular as the others, and some characters were harder to find.

But I say this so often is time to prove my point, so here it is, a list of all heroic warrior from the first three waves:

He-Man - Magically altered human.
Man-at-arms - Mustache wielding human.
Stratos - Some sort of flying almost human creature? Flying ape? He looked human.
Teela - Hot human.
Man-E-Faces - Altered schizophrenic human.
Ram-man - Mutated and mentally challenged human.
Fisto - Altered human. Possibly chronic masturbator.
Mekaneck - Altered human with useless power.
Prince Adam - Sissy human.
Orko - Non-human. Annoying and useless in battle.
Buzz-Off - Honest to God monster.

Now I'll just have to think something else these characters have in common so I can close the review... Oh, yeah, this:



Until next time.