Toy Bender

Bloomberg.com is reporting that Hasbro is going to increase prices on our favorite toy lines for a second time this year to overcome the rising costs of production… just after announcing they’ve had huge increases in profits. Oh well, they’re a business and they’re in it to make money, so it’s up to toy collectors to tell them when enough is enough.

(more…)

Remember that big lawsuit where Barbie maker Mattel was suing MGA? Well, Mattel won. A court ruled that the inventor of Bratz, Carter Bryant, was an employee of Mattel when the thought of the idea for Bratz and therefore Mattel was the one in the wrong.

(more…)

I’m not a huge fan of Kevin Smith’s movies with the exclusion of Clerks, which I absolutely love. That’s why I find it crazy that I’m obsessed with Kevin Smith’s weekly podcast called Smodcast. While at times it does got a little too much into the “poop is funny” kind of stuff, his candid stories and takes on the different news items are intriguing and highly entertaining. I can’t count how many times I’ve laughed out loud at work because of something said in a Smodcast. In a Smodcast I recently listened to Smith and one of his cohorts and manager of one of Smith’s comic book stores, Walter Flanagan, discus toys in great detail, specifically how their comic book store called Jay and Silent Bob’s Secret Stash would employ the tactics of scalping in order to stock their store.

(more…)

Due to recent circumstances (i.e. a wedding) I’m left with a wallet that produces only miniature tumbleweeds when I open it. I’m not telling you this as a ploy for sympathy or pity; rather I wanted to delve into an issue I hadn’t really thought of before: What do you do as a collector when you have no cash with which to make purchases?

(more…)

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?

(more…)

So you’ve probably figured out by now that I’m giving this Poe Ghostal guy a chance in the high stakes world of internet blogging. Sure, I could crush him like a bug like many others before him, but for some reason there’s something that keeps me from smiting him. I guess you could say I’m like Q and he’s like Picard… if you’re a huge geek.

After Poe interviewed me, I thought I’d return the favor. About a month and a half later I finally got around to sending him questions. Here is the result of that epic exchange:

(more…)

Tis the season for everyone with a parenting blog to write a list of shopping tips for idiots that don’t know how to buy gifts for children. I mean really, if you’re online reading about how to buy a gift you might want to consider not voting… ever.

Regardless, I don’t want to miss out on any of the searches for “safe holiday buying tips” or anything like that, so I came up with my own short list of toy buying tips for those desperate souls in need of guidance:

(more…)

Word up, peeps. If you’re reading this it must mean that you’re probably either bored of your annoying relatives or are in a food induced stupor. Either way, I welcome you. I figured that I’d skip the usual ballsack jokes and do something I did last year at this time, I would write what I was thankful for in the toy related world in no particular order.

(more…)

The title of this post is a bit of misnomer. I don’t mean, “Why aren’t Joes 12 inches tall again with Kung Fu bears?”, but why isn’t G.I. Joe more popular than it is right now? I can’t seem to grasp why the figures are almost impossible to find and fans are on the whole pleased with the new Joes, yet G.I. Joe doesn’t seem to be very big. Every toy collector undoubtedly knows about the Joes and is either buying them or not, but what about in the mainstream? Chances are, unless your average parent just happens to be in a toy aisle and sees some Joes in stock then they might not even know that G.I. Joe is back in any significance.

(more…)

I rarely ever point at a fellow collector and laugh, criticize, or otherwise look upon them negatively. That’s why I’m going to host a few videos here without judgment… Okay, I can’t do it. I tried for a minute there but I couldn’t get past the first draft of this post. There is no way I can be impartial in this matter and respect myself as an opinionated blogger blogician, so if I hurt any feelings I apologize ahead of time.

The following videos were made by a fellow I’ve alluded to before in my post “Collecting: When is it Too Much?“. I’m sure he’s a nice person, but the sheer size of the collection and the fact that it’s all over the internet makes it impossible to ignore without comment. If he didn’t want the world seeing his stuff and talking about it, he’d never have joined every forum in existence with the intent on posting images of his collection for everyone to see, much less putting videos of his collection on YouTube.

(more…)

I’m going to be frank. I’ve had a lot of awesome stuff on Toy Bender in the past, but I think this is the most awesome and mind blowing thing I’ve run across so far. Oh yes, your eyeballs did not deceive you. I’ve run across pics of the coolest Lego set ups in the history of Lego. It’s a massive aircraft carrier of almost unbelievable proportions. This thing is so massive that the nerd who built it is dwarfed by his mad creation:

(more…)

At the end of the 90s I ran into a huge problem. I was buried in Star Wars toys. My father had generously built a pegboard wall to hang my Star Wars figures on and it was quickly filling up. The toy collection had also expanded and exploded, engulfing the rest of the room. Not only was my childhood room packed to the gills with toys, but I’d started living on my own and I was quickly getting a secondary collection apart from the main one. Originally I had planned on buying ever single figure that I could along with all the vehicles, but as the years wore on since the rebirth of Star Wars toys I realized that the sneaky devils in Hasbro Castle were going to make Star Wars figures until Armageddon and beyond. Something had to be done to stop the madness, because Hasbro wasn’t going to help me at all.

(Here’s the not everything, semi-outdated, but what most of it looks like that’s not in storage post)

(more…)

It’s been awhile since I’ve covered anything Battlestar Galactica, but to be honest I haven’t liked a lot of the toy offerings. I’m not a big Minimates guy, and I’m not a huge fan of the highly non-posable figures due out from Diamond Select. I also feel that Battlestar Galactica as a series went completely off the rails during season three so I’m a little less than apt to report on BSG toy news. Who knows, maybe Razor will bring me back to the BSG fold. Anyway, I recently ran across an ad in Previews for these new figures that I found quite disturbing:

That Cylon in the middle looks great, but what the frak is up with Starbuck on the left?

(more…)

Back when Mel Gibson was still cool, undoubtedly the coolest film he ever did was The Road Warrior. I ran across a listing for a model of his signature Interceptor from the Mad Max films on Big Bad Toy Store that completely blew me away.

(more…)

Time marches on and once again another round of questions from around the web smacks Hasbro in the face with varying degrees of social awkwardness. I really wonder how long I can keep doing this before I piss off the entire toy collecting population on the internets… sigh someone has to do it though, and that someone is me.

(more…)