Toy Bender

Wow, this set is something I’d never see from Lego as an official release. It’s the Lego Gunship/Dropship complete with a AT-OT Walker:

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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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I meant to post this awhile ago and then I realized I was posting Lego news almost every day. Since I realize you guys and gals can only handle so much Lego, here it is today.

There were a few Lego sets shown at the Canadian Toy & Hobby Fair held a few weeks ago that were notable for Star Wars fans in that one set gives us the first ever Lego Tauntaun. What? What?!

Now that is totally awesome balls. I’m pretty sure my wife would divorce me if I didn’t do whatever I could to get one. After all, she is sporting a nice collection of Star Wars themed animal buddies at this point, which includes a vintage Kenner Tauntaun that I picked up for a whole two bucks at a toy show.

Another set that I’m going to have to sell my kidney to get is the Endor bunker:

Why do I love this set? Well it’s the perfect excuse to get Ewok mini-figs and a great piece to display figures. Having vehicles is fine and all, but I’d like a more of a playset for my figures and this would be perfect. It would go along great with the now pricey set I forgot I had and then opened up about a year ago during my Lego-mania that temporarily gripped me.

For the rest of the coolness, I’d recommend clicking on this link right here.

There’s some interesting pictures that have surfaced showing off possible upcoming Star Wars Clone Wars tie-in products that are worth sharing. Out of the group of pics, the Clone Turbo tank box mock up is the most interesting, because it is smaller than the AT-TE, but larger than most Star Wars vehicles made these days. Does this mean that the big vehicles sold enough to warrant making more? Oh Crom, I hope so. If big vehicles sell for Star Wars, that would only encourage Hasbro to make them for other lines like G.I. Joe.

Note: I swear he had a better picture of it, but this was the only one I could find where it was pictured when I came back to the site. It’s the box under the ARC-170.

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It’s not often that I get a toy tip from my father, but here it is anyway. There’s a toy that’s being marketed as a Force trainer because it allows kids the chance to move a ball with the power of their mind. In reality the ball moves with the power of science and not so much with the Force, but the creators of this thing did the smart thing realizing they’d sell a billion more “Force trainers” than they would “thing that moves a ball up and down.” Way to go marketing geniuses.

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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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The winners of the 2008 Joes for Tots contest have been chosen and I’m pleased to announce them!

The first Grand Prize Winner is: Sean Hayes
Second Grand Prize Winner is: Chuck Topley
Third Place Winner is: Andrew Swan
Fourth Place Winner is: Miles Akins

Congrats to all! Watch your mail box for the incoming loot.

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One of the greatest joys that the internet brings me are elaborate Lego sets done in Star Wars themes. This set I ran across is no different and is perhaps one of the best Lego dios I’ve ever seen. It’s a depiction of the Hoth battle from The Empire Strikes Back and it is simply stunning:

According to Brothers Brick, this set is 5 feet by 10 feet and contains 55,000 to 60,000 Lego pieces and over 50 working lights. One of the coolest features is a remote mechanism that deploys troops from the custom AT-ATs. I know this word doesn’t get used much, but I feel I should say, “zounds” to that.

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Well folks, Christmas is almost upon us and that feeling of joy that the season brings has infected my household like a nasty virus… or maybe I just have a bad cold. Anyway, I thought I’d take a moment to post the long delayed image of all the awesome prizes you can win with ToyBender’s Joes for Tots contest:

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You know what’s great? Helping others. This time of the year is the perfect time to help the less fortunate, because there are a lot of kids out there that might not be able to have a good *insert religious or secular holiday here* this year. That’s where Toys For Tots and ToyBender come in. If you donate a toy(s) to Toys For Tots, you’ll have the chance to win some fabulous prizes!

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If you collect vintage toys you’ve no doubt run into the issue of yellowed toys due to the plastic used in them changing over time. It’s a scourge that hits many lines from Star Wars to Transformers and there’s never been a sure fire way to get rid of it.

It looks like the riddle has finally been solved. Astute reader PJ has sent me a a forum link that shows the solution, it’s a 30% Hydrogen peroxide solution. It’s really quite amazing. The only downside is the pictures are so large that they may just crash your computer if it is as pathetic as it is mine, so here’s a sample of the fellow who investigated if this stuff would work:

Before:

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If you think you’ve seen cool T-shirts and you haven’t been to 80sTees.com, you’re a damned fool. Let’s take a look at some of the awesome found on 80sTees.com, a generous sponsor to the Joes for Tots contest.

Superman: Kiss Me I Have Superpowers:

If I won the contest, I’d buy this shirt and put a Post-it note with an arrow pointing down on the bottom, which is the universal sign for, “In my pants.” I’m all class.

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It’s been awhile since I had a good old fashion Clone Watch, especially since I’ve been trying to change the direction of the blog from “toys I want to buy” to “toys other people might want to buy.” Still, these clones might be of some interest.

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There’s an “app” (what the cool kids call applications) on Facebook that is both infinitely useless and kind of neat for toy collectors. The app is called, “Star Wars Figures” and it’s pretty much what the name implies. It has a bunch of pictures of vintage Star Wars figures that you can “give” to your Facebook friends.

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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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