Toy Bender

Convention Exclusives are a strange beast. On the one hand if you get one you kind of feel a little special. On the other, it’s a huge rip off for anyone who can’t make it to the convention. The San Diego Comic Con exclusive toys seem to be the cream of the crop as far as exclusive toys go and after been through a few waves of them, I thought I’d try to predict which ones will be the hottest of this year.

5. April O’Neal with Mousers

The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic inspired figures from NECA was a hit with collectors, so I can’t imagine anyone who got them wouldn’t want an April O’Neal for their very own. Plus, you get Mousers!

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The following article originally appeared on the Wizard Universe website. Since they purged their archives, I’m mirroring it here.

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In the interest of getting money in my pocket, I’ve gone ahead and decided to let some pieces of The Collection go up for auction. So far I’ve only got a couple of items up for your consideration:

SDCC King Greyskull:

Click here to bid on King Greyskull (pretty please)

SDCC Lobo:

Click here to bid on Lobo (Oh God, I’m begging you!)

Basically, both of these items were procured by me on a sort of a whim and I decided that I liked them enough to keep them. Unfortunately, bill collectors don’t accept toys as payment.

Why am I telling you all this? Well aside from the fact that you might want a genuine collectible that was once owned by an important historical figure (ah hem… me), I’m also throwing in some goodies to loyal or unloyal Toy Bender readers who win. All you have to do is to send me an email after you win (at paul.toybender@gmail.com) and I’ll find some cool extras like kick ass comics or even some freebie toys to chuck in your box before it heads your way. Hell, I may even throw in a free puppy!* Awesome hey? Yeah, I thought so. Now go bid!

*There’s no way in Hell I’m giving away a puppy.

Here we are again with the rest of the Wondercon 2009 coverage!

Wondercon Pictures:

Since I’m both lazy and I have a crappy computer, I don’t have many interesting pictures to share. However, Savage of Old Man Musings was a picture taking maniac. You can check out his photos on Flickr here. Great White Snark is also showing off his pics and you can see some of them here with more to come in the future.

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This weekend was Northern California’s premiere comic book convention, Wondercon. Since I’m awesome and stuff I got in free, so it was a whole weekend of unrestrained nerdiery. Not all of what came out of it is nerd related, but I figured it would be an interest to most readers. In fact, there’s some really great stuff here. Read on!

The Fonz: I’ve had perhaps one of the most surreal and coolest comic convention experiences so far. Minutes into our first day at Wondercon my wife excitedly tugs on my sleeve saying, “Oh my God, the Fonz!” I turn and see Henry Winkler walking down the aisle looking at stuff. After he stopped for a photo, my wife makes eye contact with him. Not knowing what to do, she puts out her and and they shake. She says, “Nice meeting you” to which he replies, “You’re very beautiful” and he continues on his way.

Holy shit kids, the Fonz called my wife beautiful.

Henry Winkler, you totally get this:

How deliciously ironic.

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Hey, hey kids! It’s time for some more random links and thoughts. Today will be a bit shorter than usual because I’ve got to catch a train and I really can’t think of anything today. Yep, I’ve got blogger’s block.

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The 2009 Toy Fair had lots and lots of Star Wars news and since I’m only mildly interested in Star Wars toys these days, I decided to drop my thoughts (mostly) in one post. I’ve gone through Jedi Insider’s Star Wars coverage from the 2009 Toy Fair and commented on what interested me the most.

Mail-Away Figure For 2009

Wow, how stupid. Qui-Gon Jinn and the Eopie farting animal from the 10th anniversary celebration of that embarrassment known as The Phantom Menace. This is for all the Star Wars collectors that drive me nuts with their, “make this obscure character no one but four of us care about” and “why don’t we have a *insert retarded looking beast here* toy yet?” type of pleas.

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Mattel’s new He-Mans, I mean Masters of the Universe, are going pretty strong. At the New York Comic Con they showed of several new figures that certainly got me excited.

Man-at-Arms

I’m really digging this Man-at-Arms, because they did the fans a service by including both his “cartoon” head and the head that came on the toy. Man-at-Arms is one of those toys that holds a special place for me, because he’s one of the first action figures I remember getting and he as certainly my first Masters of the Universe figure. In other words, I hope this guy will someday be mine.

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So after seeing the beauty and majesty that are the Marvel Universe figures, the New York Comic Con had some more DC Infinite Heroes figures on display. Sadly, they again don’t look as good as Hasbro’s Marvel line. Somehow I still manage to find them serviceable enough for me to want to purchase them. What is wrong with me?!

It’s nice to see the Joker finally joining the line-up. I’m digging the cane accessory. I also like the effort they are putting into the packaging to show that they can be a little bit more dynamically posed.

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This couldn’t be a worse year to be broke. First there’s the Ghostbusters toys and now there’s the upcoming Marvel Universe 3 3/4ths inch scale figures that I want so desperately. Aside from the figures that have been shown off before, I was most impressed by this trio of figures in the right side of this image:

By Crom, it’s the Spider-Man and his Amazing Friends! The only figure missing is their stupid dog! It’s like someone at Hasbro has somehow tapped my brain for all the cool things that I like and decided to make a toy based upon those things.

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After getting super excited about Mattel’s announcement the other day that there would be Ghostbuster toys, I’m more than pleased to see how fantastically awesome they actually look. The three main Ghostbusting crew were shown off at the New York Comic Con and hot diggidy damn they are amazing:

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If you’ve resigned yourself to buying DC Infinite Heroes because they’re okay enough, but wished they were better then you no doubt have collected a few “anti-monitor” points. What could you get for these points? Possibly some cool mail-away offer? Nope, Mattel revealed you can only redeem them at the San Diego Comic Con.

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While digging through my old picture files, I found a set of pictures that had been taken at Wizard World Chicago some years ago. The pictures are of a rather large G.I. Joe diorama that had been set up of Cobra attacking what looked like an oil refinery. The thing was fan-friggen-tastic and would have been a super cool piece to have in any toy collector’s home. Sadly, the pictures don’t do it justice as they are old and crappy, but I thought I’d share them here just for fun:

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It’s time for part two of my toy haul from the San Jose Toy, Comic, and Record Show!

Star Wars Micro Collection Bespin Gantry - $12.00

This is one of those purchases that was totally spontaneous. When I was a kid my Dad bought me the companion piece to this rare-ish Star Wars toys wayyyy after they should have been in stores. It was flipping sweet. The only reason I got this one was that I picked it up and asked how much the dealer wanted for it. He said twenty bucks, which was out of my price range since it was at the tail end of my spending and I wasn’t that interested. I put the box down and the guy then tells me he’d take fifteen. I said I’d have to think about it and he suddenly offers it to me for twelve. This guy must have been desperate the way he talked himself down so quickly. I bought it at that moment, but man I wonder what he’d have offered if I would have turned that down. There was probably a free puppy that I missed out on. Damn it.

Shawn managed to get a huge deal from the guy with virtually no effort as well. I’m wondering if this dealer should rethink his line of work.

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One of the few local events I look forward to in my adopted Northern California home is theSan Jose toy show. It occurs twice a year and is a great place to find a lot of toys that are hard to find or at a discount (and there’s no shipping costs involved). The event is also a comics and records show, but the main attraction is the many toy dealer booths.

While the event takes place in a fairgrounds that 1953 has forgotten, it’s not like it’s in an unsafe, just kind of ugly looking. It’s interesting to note that while we were there there was an announcement over the intercom saying that the city is putting it up to a vote to demolish the fairgrounds to make way for new development. Hopefully the event will find a new venue if it does get paved over, because the fairgrounds are a pretty big eyesore.

Anyway, I thought I’d share my purchases with you in two installments mostly because I know you have short attention spans and will be bored reading a giant list of things someone else bought. I also love to unreasonably stretch my updates. Yay!

Robocop Bubble Bath Container - $1.00

I’ve been on a bit of a Robocop kick after my latest article dealing with him, so this was an immediate must have. Sadly, this did not contain bubble bath, but the dollar purchase was well worth it in terms of kitschy value. It doesn’t hurt that it looks like an Academy Award either. Seriously though, how did an hard R rated icon get turned into a bubble bath? This is like having a Scarface electric toothbrush.

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