The Action Figure and Toy Collecting and Discussion Thread!

[cooleddie74]

Metallo? I'll ask Justin if his shop has one. DCUC, right?

I'll give him a buzz sometime later and see if he's got one floating around...I guess it doesn't matter if he's in the package, does it? Suppose not.

You said you want an Eradicator too? I'll ask. DCUC might not be something he carries right now but we'll see.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

Haha, I jokingly meant with the Star Wars.

The thing about the DCUC figures was meant to be unrelated. It was what I had actually come into the thread to post about. Absolutely no way he'll have them. It's a really old wave, and it was Wal Mart exclusive.

 

[cooleddie74]

Oh. D'oh! Well, I would have asked about the DCUC stuff if you had been serious about it. I don't mind. Least I can do for a fellow toy geek and Brony.

Any Vintage Collection figures you're looking for specifically?

 

[cooleddie74]

Just breaking on Sandtroopers.com...the first carded/packaged images of the upcoming San Diego Comic Con exclusive Vintage figures. They come on cardbacks that were originally designed but then rejected by Kenner all the way back in the late '70s.

These are the exact same figures that will be available in stores in the regular Vintage Collection line, but on special cardbacks that will only be available at the summer Comic Con(and, I imagine, online).

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

I finally decided to pick up a couple of the 3 3/4" Avengers figures today. What the hell, Hasbro? In this day and age there is absolutely no excuse for lack of wrist cuts. That's just standard! Iron Man can't do a repulsor pose, because he can't make his palm face forward. Seriously? An Iron Man that can't make that pose is no Iron Man at all.

 

[cooleddie74]

Hit the motherlode at my buddy's toy shop this morning after he opened up...picked up seventeen Vintage Collection figures for just a tiny fraction over retail apiece. He had been expecting twenty Vintage Wave 4(Evazan assortment) figures to come into the shop by the beginning of the week but they showed up a couple of days earlier than expected. He let me take first crack at the new stash and I pretty much wiped him out. Got every Evazan wave figure I didn't previously have and at least one of each.

My haul:

1 x Dr. Evazan(extra)
2 x Kithaba
2 x Aayla Secura
2 x Nom Anor
3 x 501st Legion Clone Trooper
2 x Wedge Antilles(2012 repack)
2 x Bespin Outfit Han Solo(2012 repack)
2 x Gamorrean Guard(2012 repack)
1 x Rebel Fleet Trooper(2012 repack with eye detail differences)

I left the Bom Vimdin cantina alien and the two Logray Ewoks. I already have two of each of those. I'm probably gonna be eating microwavable dinners and snack chips for a few days or so to make up for this massive haul(I also had to buy some groceries and gas for the car), but it was totally worth it. Now I'm completely caught up on the Vintage Collection line from figure #01(Dengar) straight through #96(Darth Malgus). Now I can just sit back and wait for the Grand Moff Tarkin wave to start trickling out over the next month or two.

What the hell, Hasbro? In this day and age there is absolutely no excuse for lack of wrist cuts. That's just standard! Iron Man can't do a repulsor pose, because he can't make his palm face forward. Seriously? An Iron Man that can't make that pose is no Iron Man at all.

I noticed the same thing myself when I was looking at all the AVENGERS figures at my local Toys 'R' Us a few days back. It's so profoundly lame that they couldn't have given the Iron Man you're talking about a ball jointed wrist or something that will allow a palm-forward pose. I was gonna pick up all the Hasbro AVENGERS figures at some point after I found all the most recent SW characters I've been wanting...but after looking at and hearing about some of the crappy tooling and articulation I think I'll pass on some and wait on the others. I'm not going to bitch about Hasbro like I usually do, but suffice it to say they could have done a lot better.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

I might not have picked it up at all, had I not been at Toys R Us. They were having a sale where if you buy $30 of Avengers stuff, you get a free figure. Fortunately for me, they were counting any Marvel stuff at all as Avengers stuff. I picked up a Crimson Dynamo and an Initiative War Machine from the Iron Man Classics line, and grabbed the Mark VII 3 3/4" for free. Then I had a ten dollar coupon for any order over $50, so I also grabbed Loki, and a DCUC Mercury. Five figures for $45, three in 6" scale, and two in 3 3/4" scale is not too shabby at all. Even if I do find the articulation wanting the Mark VII will look good standing with the rest of my Iron Man armors in that scale. Loki is going in with my Marvel Universe stuff. His articulation is pretty much the same deal. The thing that bugs me most is that his staff is at least twice the length it is in the movie.

Congrats on the Star Wars haul. I visited two Toys R Us, a Wal Mart and a Target today and still the only thing I found was the Episode I wave.

 

[cooleddie74]

Thanks, my friend.

I have to confess...Wedge isn't AS badass and epic looking in person as you think he's going to be thanks to his near-legendary status as the most elusive action figure of 2011...he's just a generic Rebel X-Wing Pilot body with a Denis Lawson head(a quite good one, I must say...they nailed Lawson's neutral facial expression and hairstyle pretty well) and a Wedge-accurate flight helmet. But I'm just glad to get a couple of this bad boy just to mark him off my list after all this time. The Bespin Han is really nice to get my hands on as well...it's not a bad take on Harrison Ford from the second film. As recently as about a month ago the 2011 version was still going for as high as $99.95 on eBay. Wedge and Han were the gold and silver medals of Vintage Collection hunters up until now. With both being rereleased and in hopefully wider numbers the asking prices on both are starting to drop pretty sharply.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

It's Wedge, I really would never expect it to be anything more than that. Every Wedge made has been a head slapped on a previously used Rebel Pilot body. Frankly, the character deserves a bit more respect than that, but oh well.

 

[cooleddie74]

I have the 2012 Wedge as well as the 2004 OTC Wedge(online exclusive) and the 1999 figure from the "Rebel Pilots" Cinema Scene three-pack. I must say, recycled parts or not this Vintage Collection one is head and shoulders better than the other two versions. No pun intended. Frankly, most Rebel pilot figures these days are usually a mishmash of parts from other figures so Hasbro can save time and tooling dollars. The new Mon Calamari Pilot(Deleted Scenes wave) is actually the first all-new Rebel pilot figure in about, oh, four years. Not a single recycled body part on that guy so far as I can tell.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

I have the 2004 version. While a decent figure for its time, it does need an upgrade. It was just Wedge's head on the (correct me if I'm wrong) Dutch Vander body. We've come a long way since then.

 

[cooleddie74]

I have the 2004 version. While a decent figure for its time, it does need an upgrade. It was just Wedge's head on the (correct me if I'm wrong) Dutch Vander body. We've come a long way since then.

Yep! You nailed it.

The 1999 Cinema Scene head and helmet on the 2004 Dutch Vander body. Nothing more complicated than that...but it worked for a while. I mean, at least Hasbro actually produced a single-carded Wedge Antilles and that was quite a gigantic breakthrough at the time. Every Wedge before then was either packed with something like an action figure carrying case as added value for your money or he was part of a multipack with other figures. The 2004 Wedge was the first time in the character's history that you could buy him separately in his own packaging. Not bad. I think his OTC cardback is pretty sweet.

ETA: Oh, I was curious about your opinion of the limited-edition "Lost Line" cardfront designs I posted on the last page. These will be available at the San Diego Comic-Con in July and will be in stores as chase variants shortly thereafter. The figures on these cards are Vintage Collection figures that will also be sold in regular, standard Vintage packaging, so you'll have two different versions of each to look for(if you're so inclined or even care).

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

Well, I'm an opener, as you know. Cardbacks tend to just end up in the trash for me. Try not to faint. While I appreciate a good looking card, they could slap the figure on a blank piece of cardboard and I really wouldn't care too much. I completely understand the appeal of MOC collecting though, and I'm happy for those who are enjoying the vintage style cards.

Now, that being said: Those are some damn cool looking packages. Such a shame one of them is being wasted on Jar Jar. I would not buy them, though. Those are exclusives that are made for MOC collectors, and if I buy them I'm just being an asshole.

 

[cooleddie74]

Oh, I understand man. This hobby's all about whatever floats a person's boat. Whether a person opens all his stuff or leaves it all MOC or MIP(or their collection contains both a whole lot of packaged and a whole lot of loose like mine), it's the joy of collecting that brings us together. I just wish the last couple of years had been a little kinder and easier on we collectors. I'm already starting to hear some people refer to now as "the New Dark Age of Star Wars toy collecting" because of the endless repacks and repaints of figures that kind of sucked when they were brand new. Outside of the Vintage Collection, the current SW toy market is a complete and blithering mess, and even Vintage is affected by awful distribution so no branch has gone unscathed.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

It's been a dark age for DC and Marvel collectors, too. Mattel has been mishandling the line for several waves now. The distribution has been so terrible that prices are to the moon. I have a box of incomplete BAFs because I just can't find figures, and refuse to pay the ridiculous secondary market prices. Then of course, there's the recent fiasco with the new DC All Stars line, where they showed us a bunch of upcoming figures and then cancelled them all. These figures included some pretty furiously demanded ones like Larfleeze, Red Robin, and Superboy Prime. The subscription line at least is getting us some greatly wanted and needed figures. Can't wait for Jay Garrik, Metron, Atrocitus, Platinum and Tin, Poison Ivy, and Black Mask. The downside of course being that you either have to buy the subscription or take your chances with day of sales (a perilous proposition with how awful a website MattyCollector is.)

As for Marvel, the 3 3/4 inch lines are a mess. Iron Man 2 stuff still warms pegs for crying out loud. Marvel Universe is now just a wave of reuse and repaint. The new Avengers figures are a drastic step backwards. The return of Marvel Legends (one of the greatest toylines ever) looked like it could be the light at the end of the tunnel, but instead idiotic distribution has killed enthusiasm. Wave 1 and 2 were released within a month of each other. Store got exactly one shipment of wave 1. One. As such, most collectors never found them. Ghostrider especially was impossible to find, creating a lot of armless Terraxes. Not to mention that we've heard squat about wave 3, and the first two waves have been out for months.

 

[cooleddie74]

Toys and action figures in general are suffering right now. A lot of adult and kid collectors have switched over to video games and other electronic forms of diversion and entertainment and drifted away from collectible figures and other toys. When a kid has a PSP, new XBox 360 with Kinect, a smartphone with a zillion cool apps and spends half the day on his or her computer he or she just doesn't think as much about action figures or maquettes or dolls the way they would have before the current high-tech revolution. When you and I were kids nobody had smartphones, 3-D high definition televisions or the slew of startlingly realistic video games we see now. It was easier to get both kids and adults motivated to go out and buy toys to entertain themselves. The current toy market is under constant barrage and it doesn't help that some of the companies seem to have lost direction and focus in the middle of all of this. Repainted or repacked(or both) waves of action figures that almost nobody wants is just one symptom of the current morass in the industry. It ain't 1982 anymore, baby.

 

[OdoWanKenobi]

With the new stuff I got yesterday, my armory photo is now out of date. Here's a new one:

 

[cooleddie74]

^
Wow!

And I thought your Iron Man lineup was incredible before! That's just badass. Totally badass.



My friend will be getting at least one of both of these by next weekend, so I'll have them by then. These new Movie Heroes Wave 3 figures are light years better than the archaic crap and junk in the first wave...it's not even a fair comparison. This Vader has amazing body sculpting to match the character's appearance during the Cloud City lightsaber duel in EMPIRE, and though the Luke is just a tweak of a slightly older mold from 2009 or 2010 it's the best Snowspeeder/Hoth Pilot Luke ever made and this release has a quite good face and head that improves a little on the original.

These are two of the three new figures in Movie Heroes Wave 3(the third is a light-up Episode III Anakin Skywalker) , which hasn't officially hit retail yet in the U.S. But since peg walls are still jammed to obnoxiousness with the turds that are Wave 1 and the infinitely better Wave 2 has shown up only very infrequently in most places it's probably going to be a good while before this newest wave shows up in stores. Best to get them now for just a little over retail and save a ton of gas driving all over the place to try to find them to no avail. Toy hunts these days are more often than not a dreary annoyance and with gas rapidly approaching $4.00 a gallon and the recent figure distribution crap it's just not worth as much trouble as it used to be.

Here's the Anakin Skywalker from this wave...my friend isn't going to be getting one of this figure, at least not yet. I'll have to wait a little longer for my shot at this one.

 

[Shazam!]

Left-handed Anakin?

 

[Unicron]

Not exactly action figure specific, but I decided to make one last splurge on Magic cards before I retire from the collecting aspect. I have way too many cards. The new set is pretty decent, though it has a mix of stuff that seems really good and stuff that seems really broken.