Toy Bender

It’s that time of the year again! It’s Christmas time if you’re a God fearing red blooded, meat eating, non-tree hugging American. The last few years of Toy Bender’s reign over the toy related blogosphere I’ve celebrated by being really lazy and posting holiday related videos. Guess what? This year is no different! Christmas Dog is back bringing his Christmas video picks in between his many, many naps!

I present to your our yearly posting of Swedish singing sex machine Gunther:

This is never going to get old.

(more…)

You know what’s awesome? Brian’sToys.com. Not only did they help sponsor the Joes for Tots contest, but they’ve got a lot of great toys. Plus, they’re from Wisconsin and I have some sort of odd state pride attached to them. Us Wisconsinites are a great people, like the ancient Vikings except there’s less pillaging and more beer drinking.

Let’s see what kind of groovy stuff they have at their store!

GI Joe 25th Anniversary Carded Wave 11

Face it, you can’t find these figures in stores and even if you could, they might not in a guarantied mint condition like you can get at Brian’s Toys. Hell, you might get trampled by a horse before you find these in stores. Why not buy them now and have some peace of mind?

(more…)

It’s Friday already? How did that happen?

Item: Sweet Chickens in heat, hrdwrkngxsoldier is a friggen machine. The WUMB regular has organized his workplace and several other local businesses to donate to Toys For Tots. So far they have 100 Joes to donate. I guess I inspired him or something. Thankfully, I’ve used my powers for good… this time.

Item: Also in contest news, it was featured as a news item on both Raving Toy Maniac and Toy News International. It’s really, really odd to see a link to ToyBender in any form on those sites. Odd, yet really cool.

Item: This is just plain weird. There’s a toy forum out there that deleted a thread I made letting them know about the Toys For Tots contest. I realize that they might have wanted to stop something that was spam-like, but they never deleted the SDCC Cobra Commander contest thread I made a few months ago. Out of the two, you’d have thought they’d have kept the one that ultimately helped a charity. I guess I learned my lesson!

Item: Finally on the contest front, please visit the sponsors if you haven’t already: Big Bad Toy Store, Brian’s Toys, Sideshow Collectibles, and 80sTees.com. I’d love to do this again next year!

Item: Poe Ghostal wrote an incredibly awesome article about how He-Man fans of the 2002 series are losing their shit over the new figures and how a few people actually like them. It’s the best article ever and I’m not saying that because he quoted me extensively.

Item: Great White Snark had a truly awesome wedding cake pic up the other day. Watch out for ninjas!

Item: I’ve been made aware that there’s a new toy blog in town called Articulated Discussion. I must watch it closely, for if it tries to challenge me I’ll crush it like a bug before they know what for. Muwahahaha! Oh yeah, he’s got a contest where he’s giving away a Batman Beyond DCUC figure.

On a routine stop at Wal-Mart last night I stopped in the action figure aisle and found a cart full of boxes. Since there were no employees around and the top box in the cart was opened and labeled “Hasbro action figures”, I figured that it was my duty as an action figure collector and the coolest toy blogger ever to see what was in this box. Much to my surprise, it was full of Indiana Jones figures with the first figure I pulled out being Dr. Henry Jones Sr. My excitement didn’t last long, because it turned into anger in seconds.

(more…)

I don’t “get” the whole vinyl toy craze and I don’t understand the love for the corporate attempts to cash in on the phenomena like Might Muggz, however any trendy vinyl toy that can bring out the creation of such wonderful Castle Crashers custom figures deserves the utmost respect in my book:

(more…)

After a score of bad luck that lead to not finding anything G.I. Joe related that I wanted, I finally came upon two vehicle packs that were quickly becoming frustrating. I finally scored a F.A.N.G./C.L.A.W. pack as well as a Firebat. Woot.

(more…)

Yeah, I’m pretty much running out of steam this week. I’m ready to buy some beers and take a long nap. To get you through your Friday, I’ve got a couple of commercials here for you to enjoy. The first is Japanese and somehow involves the V mini-series/TV Show:

Okay, I have no idea what is going on here. Were blowguns prominent in V? It’s been a long time since I’ve seen it, but I don’t remember any kind of blowgun and I definitly don’t remember that many Japanese kids in the show.

(more…)

This Ebay Madness we’ll take a look at an auction that is… a bit questionable. First though, let’s have some background. In 2007 Hasbro released a limited edition R2 action figure named R2-KT. R2-KT was made in honor of Katie Johnson. Katie was a little girl that suffered from brain cancer. Coincidently, her father is Albin Johnson, the founder of the 501st Legion (you know the guys that dress up like Stormtroopers and other assorted Imperials at conventions, parades, and what not). The R2-D2 builders club decided to build Katie an R2 unit of her own while she fought her illness. Katie eventually lost her battle with cancer and in her honor Hasbro made the action figure R2-KT as an exclusive, the proceeds of the sale going to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. In a really nice touch the packaging for the R2-KT is very similar to an exclusive 501st Stormtrooper Hasbro made at about the same time.

(more…)

It’s time for more contest entries from the SDCC Cobra Commander contest that concluded a few weeks ago! This time let’s take a look at a few of the poetry submissions and some of the illustrations I received.

There were a few poems that knocked the later Joe mythos:

Scott Rosenberg

Untitled Haiku

Burgess Meredith,
You deserved a better role.
La La La La La

But it could be worse.
Golobulus became a toy,
Big Lob is AWOL

Matt Semmler

Cobra Commander
Leader of the Masked Legions
Serpentor’s a Douche

(more…)

I’m man enough to know when I’m licked and I’ve been licked hard and often. I’ve recently discovered a site, and by happy chance gotten a few comments of the perpetrators of said site, that is so awesome I’ve contemplated both suicide (albiet a hilarious suicide involving horseradish and a monkey) and retirement. The blog I’m referring to is called Broca Blutch and it deals with G.I. Joe and how awesome they are. It’s mostly character centric pieces with pics of the toys thrown in. Here’s an example of their most excellent post discussing the best couple in G.I. Joe:

The real key to success here, though, is Lady Jaye, and I’ll let you in on a secret: Lady Jaye is probably like the best G.I. Joe ever. You have so many guys who are just like ‘well I have a machine gun and love cooking,’ ‘I have a stretcher and am from Massachusetts,’ ‘I’m a firefighter and the Vipah is coming,’ blah blah blah. Lady Jaye has a baseball cap and power javelins. That’s right: POWER javelins. If you’re firing your gun up at a Cobra Rattler and glance over to see this girl huck a big stick up at it so well that the plane explodes, well, you’d probably feel like a real piece of shit, I bet.

Not only are they dead on of their assessment of Joes, there’s comedy gold going on like it’s the California gold rush. I’d recommend checking out Broca Blutch if you’re a Joe fan or just would like an extra laugh or two during your work day.

So as you can probably tell, I don’t have a lot for you this week so I’m digging into the old ToyBender vaults for some goodness you might have missed. This time we uncover a Toy Ads That Time Forgot that features everyone’s favorite transforming robots, the Gobots! Okay, so they’re almost nobodies favorite transforming robot toy, but they were kind of popular and there were a few decent ones.

This reminds me of something funny. When I was working at Wal-Mart a few years ago in toys, this fellow employee brings this little kid over to me and says, “He’s looking for Gobots, do we have any?” The other employee and I both thought that this kid was insane. I mean, Gobots? In the year 2002? I told the kid we didn’t have any and shared a laugh with my fellow employee. It wasn’t until later that I realized Hasbro bought the maker of Gobots, Tonka, and had put out a line of kid friendly Transformers with the Hasbro label called Gobots. Ooops.

And If you’re wondering about the title of this post, check out the classic post. There’s a video from the cartoon that’s freaking hilarious.

Mattel semi-recently let He-Man fans know that both the new He-Man and Beast Man figures will be delayed. The reason is quality control. In order to provide a sculpt of the new He-Man line that is reminiscent of the old lines, they had removable armor. Apparently it sucked, so they are now re-engineering the He-Man figures to have armor that clasps on their backs.

I also saw that there’s a poll up on He-Man.org asking collectors when or if they’ll buy the figures. It seems like there’s a segment of the He-Man collecting community that isn’t happy with the current state of the He-Man revamp. They want more of the 2002 He-Man line styled figures and not the vintage. Personally, I welcome back an updated vintage line and not the over-the top 2002 line, but what do I know? I’m not really in the target audience since I’m very selective with my He-Man purchases.

Anyway, I’m interested to hear what you guys think. Do you like the updated vintage line or would you want to see a more 2002 look? Or do you not care at all?

Hey everyone, if there’s one thing that we need more of in our lives it’s Alf.

While on a search for toy commercials to write about I discovered one of the coolest toys that I never knew existed… a freaking talking Alf toy! Story Time Alf talks via cassette tapes much like the highly successful Teddy Ruxpin did. So yes, he’s just a rip off, but he’s about a million times more superior than Teddy Ruxpin. This is simply one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.

(more…)

NECA recently reveled images of series four of it’s Aliens vs. Predator toy line based on Aliens vs. Predator Requiem (one of the greatest films in the history of cinema). This series features “Wolf” as a battle damaged Predator in both a masked and unmasked version. The figures are due out “this fall” so keep on the look out for them at fine toy retailers everywhere… and Toys R Us.

(more…)