Toy Bender

It’s the birthday of the United States! On July 4th, 1543 Colubus signed some treaty with the native Americans or something. I suppose that I should know more about the history of my nation, so how about a little learning courtesy of School House Rock?

Okay, now that we all know a little something more about the founding of the U.S.A. let’s check out some real fireworks. There’s nothing else that says America like explosions… done by the British:

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I’d promised this before and here it is after a slight delay, a couple of the nerdy (and toy related) things having to do with my recent wedding for you to either think it’s cool or to use as fuel to mock me.

UPDATE: You can find wedding pics here. I’m always updating them, so if you are really interested in my life then check them out.

As you can see in the foreground there is a Grooms Cake that is being protected by an assortment of figures including a couple of clone troopers, Chewbacca, and C-3PO. The Grooms Cake was not crazy and shaped like R2-D2 or anything, but it was insanely delicious. This was because it was a German Chocolate cake, which we all know to be genetically superior to all other cakes.

And here’s the cake topper featuring Han Solo and Princess Leia:

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I got an email recently directing me to a internet based auction site that I hadn’t heard of before, Premier Collectible Auctions. What’s interesting about the site is that it is clearly an alternative to eBay for those looking to spend a lot of money on a rare item. I don’t see myself ever buying anything from the site, but it sure is fun to look at.

Some examples of draw dropping asking prices that I found on the site include a 1978 mint on card Darth Vader figure for 7,000 bucks. Even cooler than that though is the voodoo doll of Indiana Jones that was used on screen in The Temple of Doom. That will only set you back about 50,000 dollars. If you’re thinking about being frugal, there’s always the first 300 dollar Metroid game for the NES that’s factory sealed.

Sure you can find a lot of this kind of thing on eBay, but what’s fun about this site is that it has all the high end stuff in one place. You don’t have to wade through dozens of figures that just got dug out of someone’s old sandbox to find the gems. They’re all right here for you, tempting you to take out a second (or third) mortgage.

Since the entire world has stopped after the release of Grand Theft Auto IV except for those places where people have better things to do like starve to death, live under an oppressive dictatorship, or be lucky enough to experience both situations (I’m looking at you North Korea), toy news has seemingly ground to a halt. I haven’t seen a whole lot to report on and much worse I’m pretty apathetic, because I’ve got a vacation coming up so toys are the last thing on my mind. What better time then to share a YouTube video of cowboys fighting robots?

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I want to just put it out there that sometimes I have odd tastes in things that I think are funny, therefore this video is both funny and extremely entertaining to me. Since I don’t have much else going on this Sunday and I thought I’d share it if you are in the same boat:

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If you plan on attending the Philadelphia Wizard World convention and you dig toys (and why would you even be on this site if you didn’t like toys?), the first ever ToyFare Hall of Fame Awards will be held there. For the first year’s inductees include Randy Falk of NECA, Clayburn Moore, and the Four Horsemen. For details on who each of these folks are, I’ve included the press release below.

I think this is a cool idea, although I’d think for the Hall of Fame that there might be a few inductees who contributed to the toy industry less recently. Where’s the guy who invented G.I. Joe? Or the one guy that… okay I really don’t know much about the people that created the toys that we collect (or play with) today, but there’s got to be some figures from the past that could get a nice nod. I asked Adam Tracy, Creative Director Wizard World Conventions, if this is possible and he said that the Hall of Fame includes all of toy history, so chances are that past legends can be recognized. The recognition could even be given posthumously, so toy creators who are either zombies or have turned into vampires or werewolves are eligible. Not directly his quote, mind you.

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Word up, Peeps. Either toy news is almost non-existent or I’ve lost my passion for toys, which I find hard to believe. In order to keep up the best in free entertainment, I thought instead of not having any posts at all today, I’d share some link love with the rest of you. If you’re an interweb friend of mine and I missed you in this post, I’m sorry.

While this is just a bunch of links, you’ll really miss out if you don’t click on the more button!

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This is the coolest thing you’ll probably see… ever. It’s a fan made scene from Tron involving stop motion, cardboard, and a metric shit ton of awesome. No this is not related to toys, but I’d be doing a huge disperse by not sharing it with others. It’s like Christianity. I’ll go to nerd hell if I don’t force you all to check out what I know is sweet:

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The following post is brought to you by fellow blogger and part time friend (he’s part time because he never invites me to any of his fancy society parties in San Francisco), Great White Snark. I wrote a post over on his site, so go over there to read it, but only after you finish his post here and eat your meat. How can you have any pudding if you don’t eat your meat?

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This month I’ll continue our look at the mighty toy collecting magazine known as ToyFare, because you demanded it! And by you, I mean Tripper McGee. Oh yeah, her and whoever strayed here by accident looking for Popeye porn (and by that I mean Esbat). Crack open your issues of ToyFare, because we’re going for a ride!

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HANQ is back! After a bit of a bit of an absence (read: I got tired of writing this feature) I thought I’d revisit the nerdy questions hurled at Hasbro like a convict throwing man mayo at a visiting FBI agent. I’ve searched for some of the most interesting/annoying questions of round 47 and have got some great ones. Now let’s get down to it!

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When you’re down one Clone Watch it seems like you get hit by a few so let’s take a moment to catch up on the clone action that slipped through the cracks recently.

In more recent news, StarWars.com revealed that German fans that go to the Jedi-Con in Düsseldorf, Germany from March 21st through 23rd will get to see the debut of a really cool looking pair of clones in an Order 66 style cylindrical package (what I also just happen to call my wiener).

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It was brought to my attention by Poe Ghostal that my spam filter may have become overly aggressive. I did the best I could and dug through a few pages of the nearly 2,000 comments in the spam filter and pulled some out from you guys. However, I had to clean out the folder. I can only take so many links to computer viruses disguised in what promises to be super awesome porn before I have to clean it all out and start over.

I won’t be able to resurrect comments that you may have left, but this might be a problem that I will have to bring to my blogging overlords for them to fix. So please, please let me know if you’d had problems lately.

UPDATE: It seems that all comments are being marked as spam and it’s pretty much happening to everyone on the 451 network. The Overlords are aware of the problem. I’ll regularly check the spam folder to make sure that I don’t miss your lovely comments. Sorry for the inconvenience.

I don’t usually write about things that don’t fit under the “boys toys” or “man child” category, but this article I ran across the other day is a great look at the behind the scenes world of the toy industry. The article is on Boston.com and it details the creation of what could be called the ultimate girl’s toy, Butterscotch the practically life sized, three hundred dollar, robot pony. If you haven’t seen it yet, then I’m not sure where you’ve been. It’s in almost every large retail store and it’s usually surrounded by little girls that are not at all put off by the Pony’s non-life.

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A long, long time ago a company named Super Rad Toys sent me a press release talking about a contest where the winner could get their hands on some of their merch. I appreciate getting notified of such things, but this was one of the toys you could win:

Sometimes… the terrorists have a point.

This is by far the most hideous toy in existence and I never thought I’d say that after seeing the ICP figures. I’d almost believe that Super Rad Toys was trying to give me a heart attack by sending me an image of this thing. If you somehow brought this back in time and showed it to HP Lovecraft he would have immediately stopped writing and gone into gardening knowing that nothing he could create in his literature would even compare to how monstrous this thing is.

Who the hell would want to own this thing? Is there a big following for angel clown gangster merchandise? I have never once thought to myself that what I really needed was a gangster combined with a biblical deity and a children’s entertainer.

I realize that there are a lot of small companies making their own toys for a niche audience. The vinyl toy craze has become popular and has led to some pretty great stuff, but at a certain point you have to take a step back and ask yourself as a designer, “Am I doing the right thing?” In this case I’d have to put a big no on this one and start over.