Toy Bender

Diamond Select has got a figure two pack coming out for Battlestar Galactica fans.

Battlestar Galactica is one messed up show. I used to love it, now I’m mostly compelled to watch it just so I know how the hell it ends. This Leoben and Starbuck two pack pretty much sums up everything I don’t like about the show. At first Leoben was a really great villain and then he just became an annoying and even more cryptic weirdo. The last time we saw these two together was on Earth and I think it went something like this:

Starbuck: “Oh my god, I have crazy visions and stuff and now it looks like I’m dead! WTF?!”

Leoben: “I’m freaking out!”

And then everyone moped around on the ship.

Thanks to: Toy News International

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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There’s been a lot of buzz about the upcoming lines of Star Trek toys, hell USA Today had a story on them. Freaking USA Today! Unfortunatly not all of the buzz is good. In fact, the stuff from Playmates has been getting slammed for looking not so hot:

It was feared that Playmates wouldn’t have the experience to put out a product of the kind of caliber seen in other toy companies that are used to making toys for collectors with high standards. So far those fears look to be correct. The Terminator Salvation figures revealed by the company looked decent, but weren’t up to the current toy standards collectors expect and get from many other toy companies.

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I feel like I’m one of the five people that has played Resistance 2 for the PS3. Yeah, I know there’s more gamers out there that have played it, but compared to a game series like Halo or Gears of War it certainly doesn’t have the word of mouth or love that those games get. I happened to like it a lot. Sure there were things I didn’t like, so it really doesn’t rank among my beloved Halo, but I liked it nonetheless. Did I like it enough to want action figures based on it though? I’m not so sure.

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Michael Crawford of mwctoys.com has posted the winners of the 2008 Poppies. In case you missed the announcement, the Poppies are toy awards that Mr. Crawford started which are voted on by a wide range of expert judges in the toy field among who included me. Now excuse me while I adjust my monocle.

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McFarlane Toys has announced that the anticipated Halo tie-in figures from the upcoming Halo Wars video game are due to hit retailers in February. Not all stores are going to get them, in fact their websites only list Toys ‘R’ Us, GameStop and Blockbuster as their current retail partners. The figures will come in packs of three 2 1/2″ scale figures that will be either be multicolored UNSC troops or Covenant bad asses.

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I realize that this news is fairly old, but I’d wanted to talk about it before and didn’t get the chance. Mattel released info a few weeks ago on their upcoming figures in the Infinite Heroes 3 3/4ths inch scale figure line. While some of the picks on the list found at Action-Figure.com have already been announced or released previously, there’s some tantalizing figure choices in the selection that I’d want including Black Canary, Dr. Fate, The Spectre, Black Adam, Mary Marvel, and The Brain (not of Pinky and the Brain). This is of course with the attached “Why oh why did they make the male figures so sucky? This line would have been so much more spectacular if they would have given the figures normal hands” clause.

Fun Fact: Mallah the giant ape there and The Brain (the robot) are lovers, which caused some people to be upset thinking they were a gay couple. Think about that for a moment.

via Topless Robot

Not only was this week bad for me personally, but Geekdom in general lost some pretty big icons in a short period. The first is Ricardo Montalbán and if you haven’t heard this news you must have been living under a rock. I really can’t say a whole lot more than what hasn’t been said already so I’m just going to show three instances where Montalbán touched my geeky life:

Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan

Of course I’m a hack that thinks that Wrath of Khan is the greatest Star Trek movie, so what? It rules.

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Mezco sent along news that one of their Notorious B.I.G. action figures was brought along on the set of some BET show that I’m sure you’ve never heard of by the guy who plays Biggie in the movie based on his life.

I’m not really a fan of rap and if I had to choose between Tupac and Biggie, I’d go Tupac any day of the week, but there’s just something sweet about this figure. I do enjoy Biggie though, because he’s one of the only rap stars that I’ve heard that really captures what it’s like to be super fat purely in audio waves. I swear my Mom got diabetes by accidentally hearing him on the radio once.

If you’re interested in your own Biggie Smalls aka Notorious B.I.G. action figure, check him out here.

(Director’s Commentary: Okay, now let’s give this post about six months before insane Notorious B.I.G. fans start ranting and raving in the comments like our good pals the Juggelos.)

Gears of War 2 was one of my favorite games of last year, until Left 4 Dead and Fallout 3 took over my life. Still, I can burn away hours on Horde mode, the multiplayer extravaganza that has you and your friends mowing down wave after wave of enemies, very easily since it’s so friggen fun. This upcoming two character set from NECA captures the brutal fun found in chainsawing your enemies to death, something that happens quite often in the game:

Oh that’s some sweet sauce. These figures are part of series three which also include a new Marcus Fenix, a COG soldier, a Theron Palace Guard, a Grappler, and a Cyclops.

Personally, I still need to get Cole before my life is complete. Oh sweet Cole, you complete me.

Thanks to Kotaku

I haven’t posted a lot of new Star Wars figure info in quite some time, because frankly there really hasn’t been much exciting coming out of Star Wars figure selection in awhile. To be fair, they’ve made almost every single character that appeared on screen for at least a split second, so there’s no much left that’s really newsworthy. The new batch of figures in the Star Wars Legacy Collection Wave 6 have a couple of neat picks though.

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So a couple of G.I. Joe Resolute comic two packs have been revealed on the internets and they are bringing Joe fans two most requested figures Tunnel Rat and Shockwave, but there’s a problem here. Take a look at this picture:

Now I know that Tunnel Rat is Asian, but don’t you think this is a little over the line? Maybe this is just a guilty white man alarm that’s being tripped for no reason or maybe this is a sculpt that really is a little too… um how to say this… racist World War II era caricature? You decide!

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It seems like every franchise is getting both small and cute after the success Hasbro has had with the format. First up is Dr. Who and if you’re not at least a little in Dr. Who, I must question your nerd credentials (I’m looking at you Poe Ghostal).

I’ll admit it though, I kind of lost interest in Dr. Who when David Tennant came aboard. I loved Christopher Eccleston. There I said it. I’ve been holding it in for years, but I really don’t like David Tennant. He’s facial expressions just drive me crazy.

Anyway, Hellboy also joins the rank of cute baby like characters with it’s BPRD Buddies by Mezco:

Sweet ass.

By the way, if you are interested in checking out some cool Dr. Who sites I recommend this one and this one.

If you’re into toys and reading about them, then there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Micheal Crawford. No, not the guy who is in Phantom of the Opera, the other Michael Crawford. This fellow runs mctoys.com and every year he has a bunch of people who are “in the know” judge the best toys of the year. It’s called the Poppies and I’m pleased to say that this year I was a judge.

Here’s the press release thingy that I have that gives a lot more details and how you can vote in the People’s Picks. No, I really didn’t have much more of a point rather than wanting to brag it up that I’m a judge.

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I’m pleased to announce that the contest to benefit Toys For Tots is now over. All that’s left is getting the winner picks from the official number picker. In the meantime, I’d like to thank everyone who participated and anyone that linked to the contest in order to help the tots out.

One contestant that I’d really like to thank is Sean Hayes who goes by the name hrdwrkngXsoldier on several different forums. Inspired in part by the contest, Sean took it upon himself to organize a drive to donate to Toys For Tots. He first enlisted his work place and then got a local comic shop Comic Evolution to match donations. Overall, they gathered about 10,000 dollars worth of donations!

I asked Sean a few questions about his efforts:

TB: What kind of items did you gather? Anything other than G.I. Joes?

Sean: I actually tracked all of the GI Joe Stuff, we got 15 Vehicles, 10 DVD packs, 20 Comic Packs, 6 combat heroes, 40 single carded joes, 2 sigma six 10 inch style Vehicles, 10 Sigma six figures, and a complete set of the Walmart exclusive 12 inch joes, 2 Dusty 12 inch and 1 Snake eyes versus red ninja. 2 Firefly vs Green Suits, 1 Air command Set. There were also donations of sports equipment, barbies, Hannah Montana stuff, even some Army Men. (I did see 1 Corps figure) Comic Evolution in Puyallup that matched us with our donations included more single carded Joes, tons of Spawn Figures, Marvel Legends, Spider man, Iron Man, DCU, and Hulk Figures. He also had some cases of Polly Pocket playsets and Dolls for the girls.

TB: Was it hard to find others to help you toward your goals?

Sean: It wasn’t hard to get support at all. When I was looking for a local shop to match my clinic, I called a couple of the owners I knew and Chuck at Comic Evolution was very glad to have his customers and his store participate. It all started with just my small clinic, but the word had gotten around to everybody in the department and we gained the support of the rest of the Dept of Family Medicine Clinic.

Sadly here in the Seattle-Tacoma Area we had a bit of a snow storm that made it hard for people to get around. We aren’t used to snow up here and don’t have the equipment or crews to maintain the roads. Many people also take leave for the holidays. I think if we had started earlier and the weather was friendlier that we could have done at least twice as much.

TB: Do you think you’ve made anyone into new collectors?

Sean: I know for sure I did. This whole thing started because I was a collector and desperately wanted to have a chance to win the GI. Joe Extreme conditions sets. So I have GI Joes in my office at work here on Ft. Lewis. I just decided that I could do something bigger. I remember when my co-worker was helping me make the donation boxes people asked us about what was going on. I would take a minute and explain that GI Joe has come out with a re-release of most of the 80’s toys in a super articulated style and that I think the less fortunate people of our military community would like to have a GI Joe at home, especially with so many children in the area that wont get to see their life size Joe during the holiday due to deployment missions.

I would bust out my Snake eyes, Breaker Para-Viper and custom Peyton Manning to show them off. There was a great consensus among the soldiers I serve that they needed to get some for themselves or for their children. I know on Special Forces medic that I work with went out and picked up some Lt. Falcons for his two kids. Two to keep sealed and two for his kids to play with. I’ve even had people ask me what figures are out there with their MOS (military specialty) and inquire about customs.

Lots of stores here had shipping problems due to the weather, but the PX, all the Wal-mart and Targets are still pretty empty in the GI Joe section. I created competition for myself that is for sure.

That’s some awesome work by Sean and Comic Evolution and it’s more than I could ever hoped for when thinking up this thing. If you combine Sean’s amazing effort and the other entries I received, I’d have to say that this was all worth it and a lot more kids had a good holiday season because of this. I’m hoping I can do this again next year, only bigger and better. Oh yes, I have plans…

I also want to thank the sponsors again, 80sTees.com, Big Bad Toy Store, Brian’s Toys, and Sideshow Collectibles. Without their prize donations there wouldn’t have been any prizes to give to those kind hearted souls out there.

Finally, be sure to check out the following links if you haven’t already. I promise the sponsor spotlights are actually entertaining to read as opposed to painfully boring like you’ll find on lesser quality bloggidy blogs.

80sTees Spotlight
Big Bad Toy Store Spotlight
Brian’s Toys Spotlight
Sideshow Collectibles Spotlightt
Pictures of Some of the Contestants