So there I was at our local toy store. I decided to look to see if there were any new Transformers (which there wasn't). All I saw were DOTM peg-warmers. Every time I walk by the Transformers in the isle, behind me there is a Light Saber display that turns on and makes Light Saber sounds. So friggin annoying. Well I decided to take a look at it after all these months of being bothered by it. It turns out they are actually really darn nice! The handles are made of metal. Really cool stuff. I thought to myself that it would be cool if they had Darth Vader's Saber. Lo and behold there was one. I didn't see a price but I had already seen them before for $119.99. Since these are shelve warmers due to their price, I decided to take a crack at checking out the price on their scanner... it was literally begging me, I was thinking that maybe even if they were on sale it wouldn't be much less. The scanner beeped and I was given a price of $10.99. It said something about a promo on the screen. I scanned again...$10.99. I looked around like I was guilty of robbery. I slapped that bad boy in my cart faster than the Millenium Falcon.
I went up to the register and again $10.99. I paid $10.99! I was so damn happy. My wife gave me the craziest look when she saw I bought it. Almost like a WTF? look. I said it was only $10.99!! woo hoo!. I saved over $100 dollars. So at home I looked at the receipt and it rang up as a 3.75" figure...how the hell? I decided to look at the UPC code. Looked ok except it said AT-AT commander or something like that. Typo? I tried peeling the code and then it fell off! Someone had CAREFULLY placed a UPC code from something else over it and maybe chickened out of buying it! I dont know what they used because once it fell off I couldn't stick it back on, there was no adhesive. How they did it I will never know. But I have myself a FRIGGIN LIGHT SABER. My 80's self would be SOO jealous.
When I said it was begging me to price check it, I wasn't kidding, OK it didn't say it, but I must have grabbed it off the shelf and placed it back like 4 times before I worked up the courage to scan it. Maybe it was meant to be.
So yeah it's beautifully made. Makes you feel like Darth Vader except without the black suit. This thing has heft due to the metal handle. It is soo nice. I've always wanted one but nice ones have always been expensive as crap. How does one convince their wife that a $120 light up sword is a good investment. I'm lucky enough to still have my collection. Thank God she likes robots.
What a massive fail this post is. The video is even worse but at least you get to see the contents. I got this in today but I don't have the Godam gokin ( <---wow, it almost reads like a curse word haha) on hand to show off the completed set. I mean I do have it...somewhere in the boxes I have. My free time is non existent at the moment, so the drop in the quality of my postings and reviews on youtube will be quite noticeable until things ease up. Anyways, here is the box. It's got the usual high quality you would expect from Artstorm. The cardboard almost feels like thin wood. It's darn thick!
Box front
The back shows off the set together with the Godam Gokin. It has a nice combination effect. Man oh man do I wish I had the gokin handy.
Hey guess what? I didn't try to go to sleep until 7am this morning...so guess what that means? I haven't slept. Once the sun is out I cant sleep. That doesn't stop me from posting to my blog. My posts are usually little spurts of info and today is no different. I got in a Masked Rider S.H. Figuarts figure. This is not my first in this line, but the first one I've opened. It's really nice and much better than the Ultra Act Ultraman figures which seemed to be based off these Figuarts designs. While I don't watch the show, I like the designs. Not so much the newer ones. I much prefer the older classic designs.
It comes in a nice little window box. (Which I somehow forgot to photograph). Here he is straight out of the box in a plastic tray.
Masked Rider with accessories (Alternate hands ans scarves)
The figure is very well articulated. All the paint apps are perfectly done. My favorite is the diecast feet. I believe even the kneecaps are diecast.
Straight out of tray
Posing
Not to bad for my first venture into S.H. Figuarts. Certainly not my last. These things range in prices depending on the character and accessories, but this particular one was 1600 Yen (roughly $23US)
I was itching to show you guys this little diecast car. It's 3am and I'm wide awake thanks to the new sleeping schedule set forth by my new daughter. So here I am to present to you this cool little car. It's from the Ultraman series. This it the MAT vehicle which I believe stands for Monster Attack Team if my brain is working properly. I just had to have this. I mean it's a beautiful rendition of the popular car seen in Ultraman. It is a Mazda Cosmos painted up to look like what you see on TV. It is not fair to compare Tomicas to Matchbox or Hot Wheels as the only thing they have in common is scale. Tomicas are so much more detailed. The tampo printing on this piece is spectacular. You also get opening doors! Really really nice. This is a 40th Isubuhaya edition which I believe is a reissue of the original. Tomicas now come in a white box but originally in black like this one if I'm not mistaken. I remember living in Colombia and my mom would buy me Tomicas and I love that they came in little boxes as opposed to blister packs. You may have owned Tomicas without knowing it. They were released here under the Pocket Cars name by Tomy. They were carded on what look like a jeans background to simulate a jeans pocket.
Box
Inside the box, the car is wrapped delicately in a soft flexible seaweed feeling tissue paper to preserve the car. Very nice that so much care is put into making these.
Protective wrapper
Just look at the tampo printing on this. for being so small, it has excellent graphics. Even the trim on the windows is painted. Eat your heart out Hot Wheels.
MAT Vehicle
Oh! what's this? Opening doors? YES!
Opening doors.
While this is superior to other mass produced diecast cars, this is a collectible so it demands a premium. I would speculate this cost about $7 when it came out in 2001 I believe, I am not really sure. Expect to pay $20-30+ today.
I just love Godzilla. I used to watch any low budget giant monster flick as a kid, but my favorite above all was Godzilla. I used to have nightmares where I would open the door to my house and in the horizon was Godzilla walking towards us. It was very scary to say the least. While I don't have those nightmares anymore, I still surround myself with Godzilla stuff. I mostly collect whatever is cheap. Godzilla can be expensive if you try to only collect the really vintage stuff. Thankfully Bandai still provides us which cheap alternatives. What's awesome is that you can walk into Toys R Us and still find a few pegs full of Godzilla stuff. You can even find the big vinyl too. What's the deal? these things never go on sale, yet they never seem to sell. Well apparently they are because a new wave of freshly done box art has made it's way into TRU the past year. I failed miserable for not picking up the small Mecha Godzilla when I had it in my hands about a year ago. I didn't wanna spend the 11 bucks to get it, now it's not sold and eBay prices SUCK. So to avoid this happening again, I pick up all new Godzilla vinyl I see at TRU. I have all of them now that I found these two (except the small Mecha Godzilla!).
Space Godzilla
Gigan - Final Wars 2004
I happened upon SpaceGodzilla and Gigan a couple of days ago. The only two I've seen. I go to TRU a lot. A LOT. I gotta buy baby formula at Babies R Us so I always stop by the toy section. They are really cool cheap fun vinyl that you can let kids play with when they come over.
Gigan's face
Space Godzilla's face
If you like these, you can grab 'em at TRU for about $12.99 each.
Since this is my blog I can post whatever I want, even if it's not robot related. I love Ducati's and I would love to own one some day. For now I have a wannabe Ducati Monster. It is a Suzuki GSF400. Here is my baby.
My 1992 Suzuki GSF400
And for comparison, here is a legit Ducati Monster that my bike is "based" off of.
2005 Ducati S4R
So until I can afford a real one, I've been collecting 1:12 and smaller scale Ducati diecasts. Here is one I got from a store that got me into drifting. I'll tell you a little story before I continue. I used to go in there to buy Japanese Option/Option 2 videos and in between the really cool Japanese race car stuff, there would be spurts of drifting. I always skipped through it because it was videos off ugly beat up cars sliding around the track. Needless to say, after a while I caught the bug. I would buy anything drifting related. Eventually events opened up locally and that was it my life was changed. Fast forward almost 8 years and here I am reviewing toys. The little stores name is Autofreak. I love those guys there. Its in the Mitsuwa market in Edgewater, NJ. Check 'em out if you're in the area.
So back to the diecast...sorry, I get sidetracked. It is a 1:12 scale Ducati 1198. It is beautifully made. It;s not an expensive scale replica, but it is wonderfully done. Usually the frames are diecast, but it wasn't immediately apparent what was made of the precious metal. it feels nice in the hand though. I didn't take the twist ties off because then I would have to find a place to display it. I payed $13 but I've paid anywhere from $6 to $18 for these so shop around.
Box
New-Ray 1:12 Scale Diecast with Plastic Ducati 1198
I had mentioned that you can easily find the series of the RTS legends if you have a Five Below store locally. They cost $3 plus tax there which is a bargain. I found all of them except Optimus Prime. Here are my two favorites. I have to say, the Megatron figure is really really nice for a teeny figure. Only nitpick is the orange tip on the barrel. I guess we don't want people confusing a teeny tiny gun for a real one. Not shown is Bumblebee, Trailcutter and Prowl.
I have maybe a casual passing interest in South Park. Sure sometimes they play them back to back and I end up glued to the TV, but I dont consider myself a big fan. However, today I found something sort of robot related in Mezco's South Park line of figures. This is A.W.E.S.O.M-O. I think it's a play on the name of the Honda ASIMO. I believe there are several series of these A.W.E.S.O.M-O figures. Some have more accessories than others. It seems I got shafted with mine. It only came with two shopping bags as accessories. The other series have spare arms, an anal suppository, a toothpaste tube and shopping bags.
Package
I think the story goes like this, Butters finds a video of Cartman dressed up as Britney Spears or something and Cartman is determined to get it back before his friends find out about it. So Cartman has the idea to dress up as a robot using cardboard boxes to get into Butters' house. Apparently it works. To make a long story short, Cartman has to play the role of a servant robot. There is much more craziness but I'm only here to show off the toy. For a PVC toy based on a 2D cartoon, it's pretty detailed. It has some real nice airbrushing details on the "cardboard" box.
Front
Back
I was psyched when I was opening the package because I wanted to check out the accessories, but I was bummed out when I found out that my version only came with shopping bags.
Shopping bag accessories
The cool part is the fact that you can remove the top box to reveal Cartman's head. He doesn't look like he's feeling really well. Nice details again.
Cartman's face
If you like it, I sure did, you can grab one for $12.99. I've only seen them at Toys R Us and eBay. Guess which one is cheaper.
Yeah I know Takara is re-releasing the G1 Devastator, but I bought this before the big news. It's a G1 Devy knockoff. I will say however, that it is wonderfully made. It's beautiful. Nothing says knockoff at all...except maybe the stickers which are not known to be good on KOs. So I turned once again to reprolabels.com.
I ordered G1 Stickers for Devastator, Prowl, Wheeljack and Sideswipe. All stickers will be going on KO versions of these figs. I cant afford genuines...especially when the KOs are friggin nice.
So anyways, pardon the crappy pics. I was so antsy about getting started with the stickering that I didn't get a chance to properly photograph everything. Here is my Devy with Reprolabels sticker. I gotta say. The quality of their stickers is top-notch. Very nice to know there is someone out there making very nice repro stickers. These stickers cost $11. Good thing is that for every $10 you spend you get a small sheet of aluminum faction logos.
It took me a good hour to hour and a half to place these on ( I am a perfectionist). This is the end result. I forgot to take a pic before I put him in the case. I would take him out but that would result in all my other figures toppling over. I must say, it came out pretty cool.
My only complaint is that the instructions on reprolabels.com isn't very clear in parts. So I had to google and watch youtube videos to see where they went. I'm not 100% sure where some of the faction logos went as the instructions weren't clear on that, but I think I did OK. The Reprolabels do not come with rub-signs although they can be ordered through them. The KO came with rub-signs but I am not a fan of em. Not even sure if the KO rub-signs work.
Stay tuned for more reprolabels stuff when my other KOs come in.
Ok, so yesterday was the big day for Voltron fans. It marked the date subscriptions became available to purchase the set. I jumped on it of course. The damage came out to $75.55 including shipping for subscription fee, the Red Lion and Lance the pilot.
Well, now that I'm thinking about it, it does seem really really pricey. Granted $15 was for the sub fee (probably the payment for the Exclusive Sven figure too.) and $10 was for shipping. Still, I slapped down money without knowing if it's really going to turn out nice. I did bad mouth the SDCC Blazing Sword Voltron and it actually turned out to be a pretty badass fig. I'll be taking a look at that figure here on my blog soon. Anyways, back to the 23" Voltron. So get this, you pay the close to $80 and you have to wait until the end of January to get the first set?! WTF? Wow, we must be funding the production in advance. Look, as long as it turns out good and faithful, Im good. I'm just not happy at how expensive it will turn out to be.
First issue release of the Mattycollector.com Voltron
If you want to sport a transforming 23" Voltron with 3.75" figs, make sure to visit mattycollector.com. Or you can try your luck at buying it without a sub but you run the risk of not getting the complete set. And you can forget about getting Sven as he is a subscription Exclusive...no doubt he will end up on eBay for big bucks.
BABY
Ok, so I've been gone a while. Just had a beautiful baby girl, so all of my attention has been centered on her. I'm trying to get her to play with Ultraman toys but she's not having it. She can't really control her movements so I will have to wait til she develops more coordination. 16 days is probably too young to play with anything. Now that she's getting some rest I figured I would try and catch up with some stuff here on my blog.
TRANSFORMERS
So what's new? I've picked up some new Transformers figures. I finally found Wheeljack and Warpath. I really like Wheeljack. In fact I did a review of it. I haven't taken pics of Warpath. Hopefully I will soon cause it's a darn nice figure.
He is basically a repaint of Turbo Tracks, however, I've read that this mold was designed especially for Wheeljack. There are enough changes on it to simply call it a repaint.
Still havent found the Reveal the Shield classic Legends transformer figures? Don't wanna pay ebay prices? What if I told you you can find all or most of these for only $3? Well if you have a local Five Below store, hit em up. Seems they bought a crapload of these and they want to get rid of em at this price. I managed to get 5 out of the six for me and some friends.
VOLTRON
So today is the big day...for Voltron fans. Mattel is issuing a 23" Voltron! Each lion can hold a 3.75" figure! Awesome. It looks pretty loyal to the classic series. It can be purchased today on Mattycollector.com for the scary price of $290 plus shipping. The good news is that it's a subscription. Meaning, you only get charged when each individual piece gets shipped out. The perk of the subscription is the safety of being able to get every piece without having to deal with the secondary market and the fact that you get an exclusive Sven figure. You can opt to just buy the pieces, but you risk having them sell out and having to hit up eBay or the like if you don't complete the collection.
Picture is from http://sdcc11.figures.com
With each shipment you get a piece to complete a Blazing Sword with light effect as seen at the base of the pic above. This is what the figures will look like.
Also shown at the 2011 SDCC is the new Voltron that is catered to kids. While the mech design is acceptable, the cartoon is pure shit. Pure garbage in my opinion. Granted, watching the old Voltron gets really corny because it was a watered-down version of Golion, the grandness and magic for lack of a better word is severely lacking. Voltron is still going strong to this day due to us older collectors because it was special. If the only Voltron that ever existed was this new one today, I highly doubt it would carry on as strong. If they had plans to keep it strong for a while, they should have done the animation better. The drawing style and look is straight off a generic kid's cereal commercial. Simply horrid. The old animation was done with love and care. At least it's drawn like it is. The later Korean made Voltron episodes that were commissioned due to Voltron's popularity were still worlds better than this new crap. OK, the mech is passable, but OMG, the animation sucks and their effort in using cool-kid words like "sweet" to describe things is really cheesy. Check it out below, see what you think
Anyways, like I was saying, they showed a figure of the new Voltron from the kid's show. It's obviously a rough prototype, but I want it.
MORE
Just ordered a vintage Takatoku Mugen Calibur figure so I'm stoked. Can't wait to show it to you guys. I also ordered a Vintage Destroid Monster to go along with it. So stay tuned. I got a bunch of stuff lately that rolled through here but since I don't have much room here it goes to storage. It either gets reviewed for CollectionDX or I take a quick look at it and put it away. I really wish I had some money to make a really nice display room. Maybe some day.
Check out my reviews for these:
Ultra Act Alien Magma (Magma Seijin)
SOS-1 Haruhi Robo
Kamen Rider 000 TaToBa Combo
Robot Spirits Victory Gundam
Robot Spirits Gundam RX-78-2
Hot Toys' Golgo 13. One of my most popular reviews to date.
Stay tuned for more. I have some new Transformer stickers from Reprolabels.com. I'll be showing you guys how my G1 Devastator knockoff came out.
