Everything Must go Sale!

Selling a ton of my collection to downsize, create space and generate some scratch for the summer.  Check my ebay profile or the sidebar for some nice vintage and modern items.

Happy Memorial Day: Fun with Joes

Hooah!  Having some pictorial fun with my Tomahawk and some of the more realistically reputable Joe members.  Hope you had a great weekend!

 

League Assignment: Things I love

Write a stream of conscious post listing the things you love and hold dear. 


Things I hold dear... (in the respect of all things nerd)

I love...

 

Finding an unpunched figure on a toy shelf which just happened yesterday!

Completing a kitbashed vintage vehicle with that final perfect piece

Finding a long-lost missing lego and/or weapon to complete that long incomplete toy

Putting up a new display shelf

Getting an NES game to work without blowing in it.

Rearranging the collection

Perfect paint and tight joints on an action figure

Getting my wife to watch any Star Wars film

Dropping a nerd reference on my classes and having a student "get it"...they very often don't.

Putting fresh decals on a G1 Transformer

Finding out any classic kid property is getting a reboot AND finding out the reboot is awesome (Nickelodeon Ninja Turtles / GI Joe Resolute are nice calls)

Getting a really good nerd series in its entirity on a snow-day with the wifey...Spaced, Lord of the Rings.

Christmas specials




Watching On-Demand episodes of Clone Wars and Adventure Time with the son during 3 AM feedings.

Positive feedback on ebay



Fixing an O-ring on a broken Joe

THAT IS ALL... :)

Snowed in? Play a Board game!

As the house of Mr R was immobilized due to the 6 plus inches of falling snow all day, I managed to con my wife into watching the Star Wars: revisited edit that my uncle gave me.  Side note: it is absolutely amazing and makes me wonder how no matter how many "special" editions have been released and we never got a lightsaber fight between Obi and Darth that actually looked like a true duel or that the Battle of Yavin actually looked like a battle!!!  I cannot wait until Adawan remakes the ESB and ROTJ edits.  While we watched the revisited edit, we did what most of us do when the snow falls and you hunker down, we broke out the Monopoly Board.

 

Needless to say, Mrs. R. destroyed me and drove me into insurmountable bankruptcy as she usually does when we play that game.  But I started kicking around the idea to drag out the rest of the the board games to show off some of my old collection.

You gotta love the Rube Goldburg inspired workings of Mouse Trap...Honestly, I don't think I ever actually played this game but my cousins and I built and rebuilt this game to watch the workings spring into action.  The commercial has the same notoriety as the Grape Escape, Fireball Island and Operation.  (Btw, did you know that Lion-O from Thundercats was the voice that sings the Operation theme song???)

Take a look at Clue...the perfect whodunnit game which spawned an equally impressive movie.  If you notice, I'm missing quite a few of the key pieces but it is one of those games you can play round after round and have a blast. 

A must have for any CareBear aficionado!

Then there is a kiddy games I can't even remember playing...there's a Care Bears game I found that looks like a spin the wheel and move your Bear.  Nice artwork, simple enough and I put my Grumpy Bear and Care Bear cousin in the picture to frame the shot.  Chutes and Ladders was another childhood mainstay.  Up and Down, rinse, wash, repeat.  That and Candyland were two games I couldn't play enough as a kid.

This game called Labyrinth was amazing to me in my younger years.  The object was to collect treasures, avoid monsters all while you and your opponents could manipulate the path while you navigated the dungeon...very D&D Jr vibe to it.   Now if only I could get Key to the Kingdom...(too bad it's over 100 on ebay for an incomplete game)

Clearly my parents had a grand time to this before I was a twinkle in God's eye...They also were really into Yahtzee and Trivial Pursuits.

Mug Shots was a game my neighbor gave me to sell on Ebay yet I still have...nice artwork and seems like a very 70's answer to Guess Who.  Let's not forget the 70's answer to well...the 70's, Twister: America's Good Time Game...or was that Scrabble?  Eh, I always remember the "idea" of playing Twister was more fun than the actual execution of the game itself.

Merry Hiss-mas, everyone!

Just a little fun showing Cobra actually catching the arctic Joes off guard!  It snowed last night for the first white Christmas around here in 10 years but it's all cruddy outside however we are slated to get some more this week.  Cold Weather scenes will be in the future on the site of both the Joe and Hoth variety!  Got an amazing spread of great toys this year and will be talking about them in upcoming posts.  late December and January will def have a rise in activity here.  Hope you all had great Christmases and stay safe in the upcoming days!  christos razdajetsa!

League Assignment: Merry Nerdmas!

Merry Geekmas! Write or photograph something festive and pop culture oriented.

Me uncomprehendingly holding the coolest Transformer ever...I can imagine my mother
telling me "don't open this until you get home"

This week's assignment is pretty open ended.  I always tend to over think the orders coming in on the pop culture wire by immediately pondering how to set up my figures in a manger scene or something in a strictly literal sense but as I continued to think, it just came to me.   I'm going to try to highlight some of the best Christmas related memories I can that came from this special time of year.  It all kicks off with a great "midnight" (8PM) liturgy that truly is a celebration of the faith with an unparalleled feeling of joy that really cannot be matched.  Then its time for the mad rush home, setting up the house, watching St. Patrick's real midnight mass in NYC on TV and having some kielbasi, cheese and wine.  This is all after hanging at my aunts for her Christmas eve blowout.   I have an absolutely huge extended family with four dozen aunts, uncles and cousins.  Holidays such as this were always big time events with a lot of parties, games and of course, toys.



Spydor and Snake Mountain...hell to the yeah!

There were many years that I could sum up as Ghostbuster, MASK, Ninja Turtles or He-Man Christmases.  Being an only child during this holiday certainly possessed its perks.   Even befoer I knew what an action figure was, I was making out like a bandit and it only fostered and grew my passion for plastic and paint as the years went on up to today.  I must admit even my list (not that I have too many people shopping for me anymore) have a few amazon items with the Star Wars label on it and my wife earned her official "spouse of the year" award last year when she scored me a Cobra Moray Hydrofoil, Night Raven and Sky Striker AND got me a Tomahawk for my birthday...wonderful lady, honest to God.

Ghostbusters??? Who is this guerilla???

Besides those amazing toys and items, my best gifts I ever received were my G1 Jetfire with Macross logos I received when I was 4...(if only I still had that baby)...My Ninja Turtles Sewer Playset.....My Ecto-1 and Firehouse Playset and my vintage AT-AT Walker in box my dad snagged at a yardsale for 50 bucks.  Notice a trend here...I was a playset kid that's for sure...  The SNES along with Final Fight and Super Mario World was hands down the best system I ever received and I cried when it was destroyed in the flood of 2005...I did get a replacement but really it just isn't the same.

If you can only watch one thing this holiday season, make a trip to puppetland!

 

The Muppet Show, Fraggle Rock and Sesame Street For the Win!

You gotta admit, holiday specials were the bomb growing up as well...my wife and I make a point to do our rounds of the various 80's properties...I loved the Real Ghostbusters Christmas episode with the Christmas Carol Ghosts, the Garfield Special, Will Vinton's Claymation Christmas...hell, I just this second finished watching the Pee-Wee's Christmas Special!  To this day  the muppets medley at the end of the Muppet Family Christmas brings me to tears...(the overwhelming love and kindness of the muppets, Jim Henson and John Denver's music just bust my heart at its' seams, I'm sorry!)
Frosty is great in his horribly cheap and ridiculousness...Peanuts Gang always make me smile...until the "get me a dog, Charlie Brown" or whatever comes on right after or whatever hip poochy-esqu, crappy, Pixar junk gets shoehorned in for "today's kids"...whatevs.   Decorating is a blast as we decorate cookies..I suck at it so my gingerbread men rapidly turn into gingerbread zombies and victims...lotta red frosting if you get my drift while It's a Wonderful Life makes me misty in the background.

and Good Boy and Bad Boy and Oh Boy and Atta Boy...

Really...I love Halloween, Thanksgiving is a blast, Easter is the most important spiritually but Christmas just has so many positive factors, memories and traditions all wrapped into one.  Nothing else can duplicate the feeling I get during Christmas that makes all the preparation quite so easily worth it!  Now that we have a little guy on the way in January, I cannot wait to be the one to give out the experience to somebody new!  Merry Christmas, Merry Nerdmas, Happy Holidays to you all!

Check the Cool and Collected page for some more Christmas memories, stories and adventures!

League Assignment: Shelf Expression!

From the mind of Cool and Collected: Post a photo of a shelf of items that displays your love for pop culture.

Gonna focus on 2 shelves...wanted to do the Joes but it's about half the room so I decided to take a look at the Kenner Star Wars shelf (the first shelf I installed in the toy room/office) and my favorite on a personal level.   It's still a work in progress but is by far the one I'm closest to completing...only 9 '85 POTF figures left to get...11 counting Yak Face and Blue Snag

 

 

Next is my more Assignment appropriate shelves showing a bit more diversity...this little shelf gets the most rotation but is currently packed with video games, smaller G1 Transformers, Battle Beasts and Legos.  I threw in some closeups to highlight the small but growing set of BB's who actually have weapons...I swear, there's nothing quite like the feeling of reuniting a lone figure with a new accessory.  It's like having a full inventory in a Zelda game.

 Just added the Windcharger, Tailgate and Yellow Cliffjumper to the G1's yesterday!  Great new additions!  I also think Frodo and Sam fit well with my Castle Legos...and Landspeeder.

 Some rank and files Beasts looking sharp.  Haven't even thought about the Laser Beasts yet and I think that's for the better...for now.

Take a look at some fellow Leaguesters who caught my eye...

Dork Dimension blows my mind with Aliens, Zombies and MAD BALLS!

Reis at the Lair combines Big Boy and Rat Fink...a wonderful combination in any respect.

Random Nerdness has a nice MOTU setup...there's a series that absolutely needs to be set up right to look good and this guy does it well.

Oh hell, stop by the League and check out the rest.

Star Wars figure review and compare: AT-AT Commander - General Veers

Today we're taking a look at a true evolution in all forms of the particularly short-lived but immensely popular Empire Strikes Back character, General Maximilian Veers.

Originally released in 1980 under the cardback name: "AT-AT Commander" with no particular nod to the only AT_AT Hoth Commander we ever see in the film, we can only assume this commander is based on the likeness and character of General Veers, one of the only ranking officers who isn't killed by Darth Vader in the Empire Strikes Back.

The end of "General Veers"

Clearly this was a character whose original figure simply lacked in giving a proper treatment.  The fans knew better.  He has an extensive backstory and made it into numerous novelizations including the Clone wars, the Thrawn saga and finally meeting his untimely demise when forced to conduct a suicide mission in the Dark Empire II series where his apparent closeness to the later despised Lord Vader leads him to be demoted to the rank of Captain and to be forced to carry out the insane orders of Executor Sedriss.

They gave some random alien you barely see in the film a toy likeness with the size and color wrong but didn't include ME????  Terminate them, immediately!


If you think about it, Kenner really had no love for the Imperial officer corps.  You never see an olive uniformed naval commander.  You never get a Grand Moff Tarkin (A New Hope's main villain!) or the popular characters of Admiral Piett, Admiral Motti, Moff Jerjerrod, Chief Bast, Captain Needa, or Admiral Ozzell.  I'm not looking for a swarm of officers but one or two would have been nice. Instead you get rather generic personifications of a black uniformed (ANH) commander or the likes of the above mentioned figure.  Some is better than none I suppose.

 

Figure wise, he's kinda bare bones basic.  Blank expression, tiny disproportionate head inside a tinier helmet with molded on goggles, armor that is also way too small with a way too dark paint job and a Bespin model blaster.  Considering the detail we see in some other ESB figures, this guy could have used more work and he seems very "cranked out" production-wise.  I never even owned him as a kid and he was a later buy to complete the set.  I'd much rather the AT-ST driver figures with the sleek jumpsuits and to scale panzer inspired helmets.

Anyway, he's done let's move on.  Luckily, Hasbro did not continue in this line.  Granted, their late 90's POTF figure was a little ridiculous as most of them were.  By 2006, they got their act together by the time the Saga edition of the properly named "General Veers" was released.  He is a great figure with some great artwork on the cardback, a nice domed bubble  and flat, sturdy bottom to display him properly on card with a great production still of the AT-AT on the attack in the background with a good shot of Julian Glover in the costume in all its glory on the forefront.  (Side note: Did you know he was also the Nazi Party member Walter Donovan in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, and his character was also voiced in the game "Force Commander" by Guy Siner who played a Nazi Officer on the BBC comedy "Allo, Allo!")

Included in this figure is a removable helmet and molded on black goggles as well as a removable breastplate.  I love this figure the most because he comes with a normal Imperial uniform and has a peaked officers cap molded onto his head so you can have him for the scenes on the Super Star Destroyer or in Vader's ready room. Also included is a nice blue holographic Veers figure which can be used for the holographic communication scenes.  Bravo, Hasbro for doing some homework and giving proper attention to the fans.

Hasbro comes back at it in the Vintage Collection Wave 1 with another incredibly hard to find figure.  Again titled "AT-AT commander" in 2010, Hasbro reverts back to making this character more generic and gives him more of a Captain Needa looking face with a pointed chin and younger facade.  The early 2006 Saga figure looks way more like Julian Glover.  Then again, this figure may have been intentionally made to look generic as to promote buying multiple figures to command multiple AT-AT's...hell you could always switch heads with a clone trooper and make him a clone AT-AT commander since the helmet and armor is again removable.  (Great touch, can't say that enough). He has more ball jointed (16 points of articulation) features than his 2006 counterpart (I think 5 or 6),  In the painting department, he is well painted but I feel not a single figure nailed the true colors based on the promotional shots. In the classic shot, he has a very light uniform and a darker chest-plate.  For that shot, I feel the 2010 model nails the uniform and the 2006 model hits the armor properly.  In his film clips where his uniform looks much darker I think the 2006 version is closest while the 1980 version is way too dark and the 2010 version is way too light.

No matter how you slice it, for display purposes, the 2006 edges out the competition but all three are great additions to any collection especially if you are a fan of the creator of the AT-AT.