Toy Bender

Shocker Toys revealed their line of independent comic book based heroes at the New York Toy Fair and since there’s no other hot toy news out there right now let’s talk about it, shall we? (Also, their showing has created both positive and negative buzz so as long as people are talking about it…) And if you don’t keep up on such things you might be asking yourself right now, “Hey, isn’t there an independent line already from Marvel Toys aka the ghost of Toy Biz?” Well there was and now it’s dead thanks to almost no one buying them.

The first wave from Shocker Toys consists of five figures with a couple of repaints. Here’s their proposed first wave:

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I realize that most of you probably don’t give a damn about Madman, but this is my blog and I want Mike Allred’s babies so I’m covering this. French toy company, Limited Design, is making a twelve inch version of Madman and damn, does it look sweet.

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That’s right, the Adventures of Spawn continues with a series two. Way back when the first series was announced I gave it the triple thumbs up approval and while I was slightly disappointed in the final product, I’m more than happy to see a return of the series.

This time the series sees the introduction of Commando Spawn with his strap on bandolier and patented overly sized gun.

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For those of you looking forward to the upcoming Marvel Legends style Independent hero line called Legendary Heroes, head on over to Toy News International for a whole mess of pictures of each of the figures including one of the greatest warrior of all time, Conan (pictured at right). Click here to get to all the pictures. While you are there, click on the links near the top of the screen. Yes, the design of that part of their website does kind of suck.

You can also check out their handy dandy compilation of Wikipedia entries for all the heroes so you can get to know them a little better. You can almost not tell that these entries come from Wikipedia. Check out this blurb from The Darkness, “Of course, because of the possibility of impregnating a woman causing his own death through the mysterious ways of the darkness, Jackie tries to refrain from sex, to his great frustration.” That’s like eight sentences jam packed into one glorious Conanesque orgy of awkward grammar. Anyway, you’d think a vasectomy combined with a Jimmy Hat would clear that whole “knocking a woman up will cause your own death” problem right up, but I failed Super Powered Gangsters Physiology in high school, so I can only speculate.

Toy, toy collecting, action figure, comic book, Independent Comics, Marvel Toys, Toy News International

Spawn Series 30, known as The Adventures of Spawn now has some nifty new stuff online. Head over there now and you’ll see the figures in better detail, including some alternate heads and changeable weapon arms. There’s also a QuickTime 360 view so you can spin them around to your heart’s desire. But wait, there’s more! In addition to the pics there’s also links to the online comic, wallpaper, and cool pictures for use as online avatars. (Note: I had trouble downloading the avatars using Firefox, but it works fine with Internet Explorer.)

This new online content has really convinced me I need one of these guys. It’s the first Spawn figure series that’s got me excited since… well… the first one.

Toys, toy collecting, Spawn, McFarlane Toys, The Adventures of Spawn

Like I’ve said before, I’ve never been able to fully dig the whole Spawn universe. However, I do make an exception with the Spawn 30th series, also known as The Adventures of Spawn.

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