The other day was fathers day. At home, fathers day usually implies a family Sunday lunch. No, I didn't get any presents, I don't have kids therefore I'm not a father. I did get some toys the day before fathers day because it was my birthday, but I'll leave that for another day.
So, it was fathers day and my family got together for a Sunday lunch and after the meal my uncle, sitting on the couch says to me "So, you like them toys don't ya?" (By the way, that's the worst impersonation of my uncle ever, for starters, my uncle doesn't talk to me in English). But he basically said that, so I rolled my eyes, 'cause my uncle is from the side of the family that thinks that toys are for kids (the other side of the family thought that cartoons were for kinds until I started to get paid for watching them).
But after I finished rolling (it usually takes 3-7 minutes, I'm kind of an expert), my uncle says "Why don't you come over and watch our old boxes, we have tons of toys that belonged to your cousin". I open my eyes and ask: "so, what do you have in there?". He stares at me for a few seconds and goes: "I don't know, some of them Ninja Turtles I guess".
Now my eyes were open all the way, all I could say is I'll be there as soon as aI can. And I went. My cousin is a little younger than me and caught the TMNT wave with full force, plus, my aunt and uncle always got him really cool stuff, so I wanted to know if there was perhaps a little hidden jewel in there.
False alarm with the turtles. They were some but were completely destroyed. But then I opened one last box, my cousin was never (ever) into superheroes, no matter how hard I tried, but for some reason my uncle didn't know this. And I got several, never played with, old Toy Biz X-Men!
I know it may not seem like much to some of you, but when these figures came out, I wasn't really into toys, just X-Men comics and the 90s X-Men cartoons, so finding these was extremely cool for me, and a bunch of fond memories showed up. SO much that I forced my girlfriend to watch a 90s X-Men marathon that night.
I never really got involved in Marvel Legends, the over articulation and the hideous (yeah, you heard me) ball jointed legs were a pain to look at. Yes these are not nearly as nice sculpted, or painted or whatever, but I like the fact that they are clearly toys. Cool toys.
Morph, for example, was in perfect shape, and all of his three different heads were there. I like characters that are created just to die, so I like Morph quite a bit. I chose the bad Morph head for the display (oh yes, I'm displaying these!).
Cyclops is quite cool, doesn't have neck articulation because his eyes light up. And the light still works! Nightcrawler is also a light up toy, but only his sword lights up, his sword looks kinda silly, so no light for you! But I think he looks great, he has the smile that the ML one missed, he was too darn serious. And Wolverine is just Wolverine being Wolverine.
I couldn't believe when I saw inside that box, because up to that moment most of the toys, TMNT, He-Man, Mazinger Z, two Ghostbusters and several Transformers were beaten up beyond repair. And made me real sad, but these guys were perfect!
Archangel's wings look very good, I even like this version of the character with the halo in the chest and the blue skin. I remember that episode when he wanted to destroy Apocalypse so bad that he became obsessed with it. That was a great superhero show. There was also a Gambit figure, I actually did like Gambit a lot during that era, now I'm not so fond of him, but this figure is better than the other version with a cloth coat, I like the rubber one better. Then there's Sunspot, from X-Force sub-series. He looks cool I guess. And then there's Random, a character I never knew a lot of, he was like a bounty hunter and never an official member of the X-Men, I think. So was like in the line of good and bad all the time. Also he was not a born mutant, but mutated afterwards, like Deadpool. If I'm not right with this information, Marvel geeks, correct me! He does look super bulky and cool, has pretty rad tats too!
It was really great to find these toys in an old box in my uncle's house. As I said I'm going to display them proudly and, since X-Men from Toy Biz are relatively cheap, I'm going to see if I can find other characters. After all, Marvel Super Hero Squad is killing me, nobody works that line in Argentina. And I always liked the X-Men.
Until next time.
I also got more toys there, see if you can guess which ones with these clues:
1) Same company
2) Not a US based group
3) Complete set with just six figures.
First one to guess wins... I don't know... My respect or something. Start guessing!
