The last Crusade

Hey, guys, do you remember this post?

What? You don't?

OK, it's all good... Go read it, I'll just wait here...

...

De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da, that's all I want to say...

Still reading? Man you're kinda slow... OK, I'll keep waiting...

... to you, De Do Do Do, Dee Da...

Oh, finally. OK, so you've read till the end when I mentioned Major Disaster from Toxic Crusaders right? Great, well, guess who can't control himself and it's not Bill Clinton? I'll give you three guesses.


"ME", the right answer was "ME".

You know those slow days when you start to wander on ebay just because? Well, I found this pretty nice auction for all the remaining figures I needed of the Toxic Crusaders line. Eight figures total some are awesome, some are good, all of them are really freaky.

These are the good guys:


(Yes, those are the good guys)

By now, you know Major Disaster, an eco friendly hero so much cooler than Captain Planet, and if you are among the select few that consider Toxic Avenger a work of cinematic art, then you are probably familiar with Toxie too. Lets get something out there from the beginning, you may notice that all of the figures have very noticeable paint stains, well those are not stains, it is, in fact glow in the dark paint sprayed on each figure, since this didn't follow a pattern, you can say that each figure is somewhat unique. I like that, plus it makes the figures look kinda campy, just like the movie was.



It's great to have a Toxie toy, although a bit of a caricature I just wanted one since I saw the movie for the first time (side geeky note: Marisa Tomei started her career in Toxic Avenger as one of the girls from the health club pool, true story that nobody wants to hear). Toxie's friend, and God's gift to women (check out that tongue!), is called Junkyard, it's your average mutated dog fused with a hobo thanks to the power of radioactive waste... y'know, the story of my life. Both sculpts are fun but I'd be happier if Junkyards tongue was retractable, you can store it in his mouth but the figure looks odd that way.

Since we are talking about 1990s Playmates here, all the figures came with a ton of accessories even with one that was in a plastic bag and said "SECRET GLO-IN-THE-DARK WEAPON: So radioactive, we've put it under wraps!", yes, that meant that every figure came with a GITD accessory and it was secret. I would have loved this as a kid, damn, I even love it now!

Junkyard GITD weapon was a rolled up newspaper with spikes (awesome), and Toxie's was this:



His own pet ghost, Blobbie.



The other two good guys are Nozone and Headbanger. Nozone is like one of those gimmicky characters that you might enjoy for some time, but then it gets kinda boring. Yes, he has a huge nose, and you can take his hat off and pour some slime so it will look like mucus. Funny... for, like, a minute. But the character design has some cool things, the wheel instead of his right foot is a great detail. Headbanger is the one I'm not thrilled about, he looks a bit out of scale and the sculpt in both the surfer dude and scientist is not Playmates best work. One cool thing is that one is called Fender and the other Bender... I laughed at that...



On to the villains, one thing I liked about this series is that both bad guys and good guys were monsters. And I liked monsters for as long as I can remember (that's why the Evil Warriors of Skeletor always defeated the normal He-Man and his normal boring Human Friends).



The main villain of the series was Dr. Killemoff, and I must say I respect a guy that can make the four arm / purple suit / gas mask combo work and, boy, does the good Doctor succeed. The figure came with plastic tubes to attach to the mask, but I think it looks better without them. The other figure is Radiation Ranger, this one really needed the tubes. He's the army builder of the series, the Rangers are like Killemoff Stormtroopers.



The other two are called Bonehead (lame name, cool figure) and Psycho (cool name, not so crazy about the figure). Bonehead is a punk biker that enjoys acid rain and polluting the Earth (all the line had a message about ecology that was a bit ahead of its time in 1991 but it would be really in right now... Toxic Crusaders remake anyone?). Another thing about cool about him is that all of his accessories are GITD. The sculpt is simple but effective. Psycho has something that I don't really like, but I can't put my finger on. Since the figure has great detail, as all the others, and has some cool design ideas, like the way his bionic leg continues from his knee, I'll say that what I don't like is the expression of his face.

Overall, a fun line to have and an easy one to complete (that's also fun). There they are, between Toynami's Futurama and Playmates WildC.A.T.S. on my display.



Until next time.

(Don't pollute and stay in school!)

Turtle (girl) power

You may or may not know this, but the first run of Playmates TMNT was very diverse in terms of animal species but didn't have a lot of gender diversity, for some reason the mutated guys were always... well, guys.

Probably if I ask you to name a girl from the Ninja Turtles world you will instantly think of April. That's because it turns out it was all in her head...


(I got that image from Cal's blog... And yes... I did it because of the cleavage)

Other girls from the top of your head may include Irma (if you used to watch the cartoon) and Venus de Milo if you're young enough to have seen the horrible live action show, and old enough to remember it.

But the original toy line had a grand total of... five female characters. Man, talk about the Smurfette syndrome!



These are two of those five. Kala, the Neutrino (or is it Neutrina) and She-Dragon.



You may (not) remember a post a did sometime ago about Zak the Neutrino, there, I called him and an angry elf rocker from space. Well, Kala is his friend from Dimension X. She was released in 1992 and does look a little different than the rest, because she's part of the sub-line called Toon Turtles that were directly inspired in the cartoon (Irma and other characters are from this line). I wasn't planning on getting any toon figures until I noticed that the Zak they used was the same as in the regular line. So, I decided to get the other two neutrinos.



Some of you may recognize She-Dragon as a character in Eric Larsen's Image comic The Savage Dragon. Those of you may think I finally snapped and that I'm linking two figures that have nothing to do with each other. But the truth is that in 1995 Playmates released a series of turtles re-imagined by Jim Lee. Then they made a crossover of these turtles and three Savage Dragon characters why? you can ask, I don't know... Maybe because Savage Dragon was green? These figures were packed with a divided mini comic, this is the one that came with She-Dragon:



As you may notice she has long blond beautiful hair in the comic, and also a mohawk. Two variation of the figure were released. Why did I choose the one with the mohawk. Two things: 1) These are figures from the 90s and in the 90s the mohawks were hot! 2) In the comic she gets her haircut when she pisses off Leonardo, so he cuts it... With his katanas! Can you say "awesome"? I know you can.

Back to Kala for a second. In the blister and, as the rest of this sub-line, it said that she has "real toon texture feel" this just means she's made of a more rubbery plastic than the rest. I wanted to point it out, because it's extremely silly.


(And also because if I didn't this comic doesn't make any sense)

I also got these:



I got them from a friend and TMNT collector from Argentina. He's a real hardcore collector that owns not only the figures but a ton of merchandise. His collection is a real pleasure to see. And I'm lucky enough that when he gets extra figures, I can call dibs on them.



Our last turtle lady of the day is Mona Lisa. Also released in 1992. I was really surprised with this figure, especially because of her name. TMNT names are usually as punny and lame as MOTU names. But Mona Lisa's name is actually pretty good and kinda subtle. She's a girl lizard of course, so I was expecting Mona Lizard... or at least Mona Liza... But no, nothing like that. The figure is pretty simple, but she's the only mutant girl in the whole damn line. So you better like her!



This is Dask, the last neutrino, I know this was a post about girls in the TMNT line, but I also got him in this haul and he was always kinda of a sissy character so, I'll talk about him too. He was also released in 1992, also in the toon line and also with "toon texture" I like his design way better than Kala's. she's actually pretty weak and not very well painted. Dask, on the other hand, looks sharp. If you can forget about the cartoony look for a second he does have something going on, with the hair, and the pants and the shoes... I just can't put my finger on...


(What's that you say? Brain Setzer? No, I don't know who that is...)

Still, I think they are going to get along nicely with regular-line-Zak...



I think...

But wait, there's more. I mentioned my friend for a reason, after I sent the money for the turtles he had some troubles with his local post office so the figures came and go for more than a month! After all of that he was so ashamed that he sent me a present:



This guy is Major Disaster from the Toxic Crusaders line, also from Playmates, released in 1991. Look at how awesome this guy is! he has ton of sculpted details like little vines and bark and spikes (he's supposed to be a nature based mutated, like Swamp Thing) and his arms have cool and unique textures. I just love this guy and the people of Playmates for doing this!

Actually I've been checking out the Toxic Crusaders line for quite some time. They are also made by Playmates and there were only nine figures produced so it's a cool line to start now that I'm finishing up with the classic TMNT (only three figures left)... But no, no I mustn't, not another line!

Until next time.

(Evil voice in my head) "But hey, guy, now you have one, so you just need eight". (Don't worry, I have a great answer to that evil statement)"... Uhm, yeah... I only need eight, right?"

Oh, damn!