Toy Bender

While cruising the G.I. Joe message boards I noticed that there’s a lot of fans that don’t seem to like many of the G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra toys because they are based on what looks like a shitty movie and many of the figures don’t fit into their idea of a Joe universe. At first I didn’t think I’d buy any of the non-old school inspired Joe figures, but I’m warming up a bit to some of them. I must admit however, that it’s not just because they all look pretty cool. It’s been such a long Joe dry spell that I’d pretty much buy anything right now. My new strategy is that if it looks like it fits in with my other figures and it’s cool, then I’m getting it unless it’s highly overpriced like the Marvel Universe line.

Here are some of the figures I’m looking forward to:

1. General Hawk - If you don’t want a Dennis Quaid action figure, you’re a Communist. This movie now has allowed us to have a Mike Brody from Jaws 3D. Or the dad from Yours, Mine, and Ours. You’re choice.

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Today marks a milestone for both the internet and the toy collecting community as a whole, because this is the 1000th post on Toybender. Please join me in a round of self congratulatory applause. I’m also giving myself the cool stamp. If any post deserves it, it’s this one:

Back when I floated the idea of a toy collecting blog to the 451 Press Blogging Overlords way back in October of 2006, I never thought that this place would be as successful as it has been. Sure it’s had it’s downs, but the good times have been really good. I’ve had several articles hit big on social media sites like Digg, Stumble, and I’ve even it a few times on Fark, which is really cool. My greatest achievement though has been the Joes for Tots contest, which I’m planning on bringing back this year, even bigger and better than before. I can’t begin to describe how good it felt when I got pictures of you guys and gals helping kids out.

Speaking of you cats, the existence of Toy Bender has led me to “meeting” a whole lot of people that I’ve glad to have known. I’d make a big list here, but I don’t want to leave anyone out. I’m glad that I’ve had the chance to establish friendships through here that I never would have otherwise had. I also want to thank you if you’ve ever left a comment or sent an email my way. Seriously, when you leave a comment an angel gets it’s wings. So thank you my loyal supporters and legions of unquestioning followers. I believe someone has a word that describes you:

Thanks, Rick.

Other 451 Blogs that Have Hit 1000: Fiction Scribe, Food History

Today, I present to you a commercial for the little known 1980s toy property known as Centurions by Kenner. I recently became reacquainted with the Centurions when I found their cartoon airing on the Boomerang network:

I had Ace McCloud and my cousins had a couple of the other guys. The Centurions were each themed by a particular environment. You had your sea guy, your air guy, and your land guy. You know, all the dudes needed to get the job done. The Centurions were cool mainly because they were modular, meaning you could switch their weapons and armor bits around via the plugs on their suits or you could even swap weapons and armor with the other characters. You could even buy weapons packs that were sort of like their vehicles for the line. It was kind of like having different Barbie outfits to put on Barbie dolls, but for dudes.

The bad guys were pretty boss on their own, because they were evil cyborgs. Both of the ones my cousins had could be basically split in half, one half was their human side and the other was their robot. It was gross and cool at the same time, so it kind of fit into our whole boyhood worldview at that time.

Sadly, the Centurions never caught on. I’d imagine that their size alone didn’t help. In a world where 3 3/4″ scale figures were king, the Centurions were 12″ giants. It certainly made it hard to integrate them into my play world with Captain Power, Star Wars, and my G.I. Joes. Speaking of Joes, it would be neat to see a Centurion inspired Joe like they did with MASK, but that will probably never happen. Still, with all the tech that the Centurions had, it certainly fit in the world of the Joeverse. What do you say, Hasbro?

By the way, if anyone reading this has some Centurions stuff they’d like to get rid of, let me know. I’d like to fix up my old Ace McCloud as well as get my hands on some of the other cool weapons and figures.

If you want to check out an episode of the Centurions series, I posted an entire one on Robot’s Pajamas.

I’m already behind on Star Wars vehicles that I want need and Hasbro isn’t making it any easier. First up is the “Crumb Bomber“:

I’m really not hot on the name, but I love me some Gunship action. What’s great about this gunship, which will be a Toys R Us exclusive, is that it has been retooled a bit. It’s got doors that fully close now as well as new missile pods in the wings. I’ve never opened the one gunship that I have, so I guess perhaps it’s time to let that one go and get this one. Now that a battle pack is going to come out that comes with a gunner pod, I’m totally all about opening up a gunship and loading it with troopers for display.

By the way, does anyone know if someone is making repro stickers for Gunship art yet? I’m going to need to get rid of the Salacious Crumb and replace it with a sexy Twi’lek or two.

The other cool Star Wars vehicle due out is the Clone Wars style Y-Bomber:

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Toy Movies

It’s been awhile since I did one of these! Anyway, with the release of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen steaming up the theaters as we speak and G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra soon to lay a big on our our chests, here’s what some other movies inspired by toys might look like. Overall they’re pretty good, but I’m not sure if Alf really counts as a “toy” film, since he was more of a television show than a toy property. Out of all of them though, I think I’d pay good money to see My Little Pony vs. the Care Bears. That has a lot of potential right there.

Oh yeah, if the video doesn’t play just go to the Atom films website via the embedded video. That’s what I had to do when I first saw this thing. I like the video and all, but I’m not real fond of Atom films. There’s reasons why YouTube is so popular and one of those reasons is it’s not 99% ads.

And if you wanted to know my thoughts on Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen I posted my “review” on The Robot’s Pajamas.com, so you can check it out there if you’d like. Here’s the short version if you’re too lazy to click on the link: It’s not very good.

Okay, I got some links for you and if you don’t click on them you’re seriously not cool. Okay, maybe the peer pressure thing won’t work. Still, you might be interested in the links below, so check them out if you will.

Item: Speaking of cool things that I wrote on Poe Ghostal’s site, I did another Show and Tell over there showing off my super awesome AT-TE. I love his Show and Tell feature. Anyone can submit something, so why don’t you go over there and email him some pics of your favorite toy to show it off to the rest of the world?

Item: One of the winners of the Snarf Giveaway contest, a fine upstanding citizen named Newt, posted a review of said Snarf. It’s entertaining to see someone actually review these things.

Item: Hasbro has got some new Star Wars Wal-Mart exclusive three packs. I wrote about them on Poe Ghostal’s site, so if you’re interested in seeing what they are and what I think about them, then by all means check it out.

Item: Over on Robot’s PJs I ask, “What Will Suck More? Transformers 2 or G.I. Joe.” Check it out and tell me what you think. I don’t know when I’m going to see Transformers Revenge of the Fallen, but it will be reluctantly.

Item: Ten more Geek Arguments. Read and argue away!

A lot of people know Mark Bellomo from his work on the Ultimate Guide to G.I. Joe and his Transformers identification guide. They may simply think of him as an author, but he’s actually an uber collector. You see Mark doesn’t just write about toys, he owns almost every toy he writes about. If you’re a toy collector (and thank you for reading this blog if you’re not) you should really check out a series of videos called “Collectable Spectacle” that features Bellomo and his enormous collection of toys. If you’re not an uber fan of G.I. Joe, I’d recommend at least watching the parts where Mark is digging around his storage shed. Some of the stuff he pulls out of there is simply amazing, if you know how much some of this stuff goes for.

Just looking at another persons collection may be boring particularly if you’re not interested in the figures that the person has. What’s neat about this is Bellomo’s commentary on both the items and his thoughts on collecting in general.

What I came away from this is that while I want a lot of the stuff he has, if I ever need that much storage space for it I’m doing a massive sell off. If Mark didn’t have an outlet for these things like his books, I think it would be fair to say he would have a little too much.

I also learned that I like Mark a lot more through these videos than I do of the other, more famous toy collectors like Steve Sansweet who just comes off as pompous and/or smarmy. Mark appears to be a genuinely nice and down to Earth guy. It’s kind of nice to see, and I dare say, perhaps a bit rare in someone that has a huge mega collection of toys.

To see the entire series you can go to either YouTube or here.

Twilight fans, you know what sucks? Twilight. You know what sucks even more? Jerkholes like me making fun of it all the time. Holy crap has that got to be terrible if you love the book and films. I like some terrible shit, but it’s not popular (at this point) to bash it at the moment. So I’m going to take it easy on you. No more making fun of Twilight to get Twilight fans to make any comments on the post, even though I state I’m doing it to get angry comments from rabid fans, because clearly people miss that part.

The reason I bring Twilight up now is to point out these Twilight inspired Barbie dolls:

Unlike other internet bloggers, I will not make fun of them. I will talk about what I like about them. I really like the fact that Bella Barbie isn’t as Plain Jane as the actress that portrays her. In fact, she’s kind of cute which is a nice change of pace. I could actually believe a vampire would fall in love with this girl. I also like the fact that everyone’s favorite Dracular Edward Cullen isn’t as ugly as a rotten stump. I mean, he’s pretty ugly, but by far not as ugly as Robert Pattinson. Granted Dracular Ken is not the most handsome Dracular in the universe, but he’s not as hideous as his real life counterpart and that makes all the difference.

See, I can play nice and clearly not say mean things about something that has people rabidly defending it. Heck, I may even some day make peace with the ICP crowd and say something nice about ICP.

Heh, probably not.

I used to collect only mint on card toys. I did that because I get more of a nostalgia kick out of carded and box toys than I do for ones that are opened. I also think that a toy in the package can be art. But as much as I like carded toys, I would never spend the insane amount of money I’ve seen go for vintage toys in the package. Take for instance this He-Man with a sled:

The seller is looking for $20,000 for this puppy. Egad! You know what’s even worse, though? The fact that he’s still charging twenty five bucks for shipping. Seriously dude? You can’t throw in shipping when you’re getting the same price some people buy for a new car? What a cheap ass.

I know that there are some of you nerds out there with enough cash to drop on a really expensive toy for no other reason other than it’s rare, but I have to wonder about someone spending this much in the economy we are currently in. Holy crap, I could only imagine buying a He-Man for twenty grand and then losing my job. Of course, I’m looking at this from the perspective of someone who doesn’t have a lot of money. The world may seem a bit different if I’m taking daily dips into a pool of gold.

You may have noticed that I’m occasionally late with updates on Toy Bender lately. This is mostly due to the fact that I’m currently looking for apartments in Milwaukee, which is roughly two and a half hours drive away from where I’m currently staying. We (the wife and I) think we may have found a place today and the only reason I’m sharing it here is that I’m excited, because for the first time ever we may have a spare room. You don’t know what kind of joy this brings to me. Sure, it might be a shared room meaning the wife could have a study area, but the main reasons for having the spare room is for a place to display my toys.

You might not think this is a big deal, but consider this: during the last two years of living in California I only had a tiny area in my walk in closet where I had free reign for displaying my toys. Yep, here I was running the coolest toy collecting blog in the solar system and I didn’t have much of a collection for the world to see. This was due to the fact we had a roommate and I shared the other bedroom with the wife. The both of us had some stuff out, but I totally think that a main bedroom shouldn’t really be the place for all the toys in the universe when you’re married, it should be a sort of semi-neutral zone if you will. I dunno, maybe that’s just me.

By the way, I’d be interested in seeing what others could come up with to answer the question, “What toy is Virgina Wolf thinking about?” Here’s a pic of her with a blank thought balloon after the more tag:

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You know, I don’t mean to turn this into an all Star Trek blog up in here, but hot damn Dragon toys has got some great 16/th scale toys coming out based on characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation that are friggen awesome. I also feel justified in that Star Trek is a little cool again, so it’s okay to talk about it. Shewww. The last thing I need is jocks beating me up again.

First up is Captain Jean-Luc Picard:

Make is so, indeed. I think if I got this Captain Picard I’d carry him around the house and hang out with him My Buddy style.

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Well, it’s time to announce the lucky five winners of the uhh Snarf contest. I guess I didn’t name it so well. Here they are:

1. Goggles
2. Shogi
3. Shelly Wilkerson
4. Sam
5. Newt

Congrats to you and you’ll be getting your very own Snarf pencil gripper in the mail!

I also kind of went outside of the contest and decided to give reader Thundercat78 a Snarf. While I enjoyed all the comments, something really struck me about Thundercat78’s comment. Here it is:

“I am a HUGE ThunderCats fan and far and away my favorite ThunderCat is Cheetara. As a youngin’ I used to run circles around my house as fast I could while holding whatever pole or stick I could find to be my Cheetara staff. I would even try an imitate the brisk sound FX you hear on the cartoon when she runs! I loved the fact that I was blonde and had freckles because I felt maybe I would one day grow up to be a cheetah-like Thunderian myself. Instead, I just grew up to be a slightly nerdy, but agile and fit, gay man! I still love ThunderCats, and draw them all the time. (I’m an illustrator and I am sure the ThunderCats cartoon had a very large impact on me choosing this career path). I’d LOVE a mint Snarf pencil topper to adorn my pencil while I sketch more ThunderCats. Thanks for the great blog. HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!”

Great stuff. I just love the idea of this kid running around pretending to be Cheetara. What does this go to show you? Well, that in a contest where you leave a comment do your best because you never know if you might get something extra. I also think that we learned that I’m totally ball droppingly awesome.

And remember this contest was sponsored by Dinosaur Toy Vault! Where you can totally buy your own Snarf if you didn’t win! We’re also now featuring more G.I. Joes and hopefully in the future it will feature even more toys. Speaking of which, is there any toy you guys would like to see on there?

Playmates released images and details on their new Star Trek figures and I’ve got to admit, amazingly some of them don’t look like total crap!

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McFarlane Toys keeps surprising me with their Halo line. In amongst all the things I don’t want to buy like the stupid Halo helmets, they sneak in something that just begs for my unemployed dollar. First there was the in-scale (to their line) Hunter and now they’ve got an in-scale Mongoose!

Better yet, I checked on Big Bad Toy Store (sponsor of the 2008 Joes for Tots contest!) and the Mongoose is only going to cost twenty bucks. Yeah it’s a small vehicle, but considering prices on toys these days it’s not too shabby. This is especially true for a toy that’s got some neat features like a folding rear seat so you can have some capture the flag action in toy form. Sweet.

I hadn’t heard that McFarlane was planning on making vehicles for the five their five inch Halo line. I’m thinking that the Mongoose and possibly the Covenant Ghost might see the light of day, but its hard to imagine that their are enough people buying these toys to support bigger vehicles at this point. Maybe a few years ago an in scale Warthog might have been feasible. Remember when those huge vehicles and accessories were coming out for twelve inch Joes? Perhaps in the right time something large for the Haloverse could have been a reality, but its doubtful to me that there would be one now. Then again maybe this is a test. Buy as many as you can Halo fans!

The Mongoose is due out in October, so maybe it will cash in on the release of the new Halo expansion game, Halo: ODST.

Item: Are you going to the G.I. Joe Convention in Kansas City this year? Or how about San Diego Comic Con? I’m looking for some photos and possibly news stories to put on Toy Bender. I can even pay you a little for your efforts (no, not in Snarves). Shoot an email to Paul.toybender@gmail.com if you’re interested.

Item: If you don’t read Poe Ghostal’s blog, you’re a bloody fool. Not only is it a great blog on it’s own, but I’m trying to semi-regularly post there. That’s right, you get bonus Paul! Fairly recently I shared a couple of my favorite toys on his “Show and Tell” feature that you should check out. I’ll be sharing more as time goes on, so be sure to keep checking out his blog.

Item: Are you on Facebook? Are you a fan of the Toy Bender Facebook page? If not, by all means please become a fan. I’m keeping it as a place to update you on all things Toy Bender as well as a repository for interesting pictures that you might have missed on here in the past. Also, in possible future contests fans of the page will get extra entries.

Item: The “other” blog I write for, The Robtot’s Pajamas, is humming along nicely. It’s the home of all the non-toy (and sometimes toy) related posts that don’t fit here. Please drop by if you haven’t seen it or been there in awhile.

Item: If you haven’t put your entry in for the free Snarf yet, be sure to do so soon. I’ll be picking the winner this next week.