Have yourself some...

Wishing all the Eclectorama readers Happy Holidays and a Prosperous New Year! Plus, I hope everyone gets the toys they asked Santa for!

I'll see you back here after the new year as I start the blog rolling again after the annual Eclectorama Holiday Hiatus!

Be good to each other!

Beam Them Down!

I would be remiss in my duties if I didn't post about a sale at FAO.com including the whole set of EMCE Star Trek figures up to the recent Mugato and Uhura release. FAO sells them in sets, so you are basically getting one for free since the retail for around 20 bucks each.

So if you are looking to fill out your collection or get the latest release I think it's a pretty good deal. Hurry and you might be able to get some Mego Like Goodness by Christmas!

Live long and prosper

Surprise it's Snake Eyes!

Okay so he's a little purple, but this is fast becoming my favorite of the Snake Eyes in the collection. The color comes from the cartoon that accompanied this guy. Snake Eyes is shaded in a dark purple color, I'm guessing mainly because black would obscure the key lines.



This version of the GI Joe Ninja came packed in the DVD Battle set "Pyramid of Darkness". The concept is kinda cool, a pack of figures, some accessories, a BAF (Build A Figure, for the non geek) in this case a piece of the M.A.S.S. Device, and a DVD with the eighties cartoon that the set is based on.



I'll admit I haven't yet popped this new DVD in the player yet, I did check out an earlier set I picked up and didn't make it through the whole cartoon. One reason it was getting late the second was I didn't remember these being as cheesy as they are, not that there is anything wrong with that or anything, just the story wasn't going to keep me up much longer.

Snake eyes wasn't the only cool Joe in this set, Quick Kick came along for the ride to put the hurt on Cobra, but that's for another time.

Yo Joe!

G.I. JOE: 15
COBRA: 12

Clone Wars Clown

I have to say after my initial dislike for the feature length Clone Wars Movie, that some of the series episodes are pretty fun to watch. More so than old episodes of Droids and Ewoks. Which brings me to this clown of the Clone Wars (though not Jar Jar status) C3-P0.



This version of the golden droid of the Star Wars Universe reminds me of those Droids comics of the nineties. Just the overall look. They did a good job on selecting the right gold color for this toy. Not too shiny and not too yellow.



Not as detailed, but more streamlined for animation, Golden Rod here sports a light pipe in the back of his head that lights up his eyes. The light pipe feature is always one of my favorite simple toy tricks. I also like the way they incorporated the end of the "pipe" into the design and made it look like that circle on the back of the droid's head.



Also something to note if you are in the market for a protocol droid is that the little pegs on the his sides are pretty delicate. As you can see one is missing from this one. Came out of the package that way, if only I had noticed at the store. Oh well.



C3-P0 was purchased especially for my Clone Wars R2-D2. I remember seeing the Droids C3-P0 and R2-D2 in a store when I was in high school and thought I was too old for them, I wanted them, but my buddies back then would have never let me live it down that I bought them, now I just don't care what they think which is sorta obvious as I blog about toys.

Scarlett by any other name...

... is Glenda! Which I didn't know till I read this review. I would also like to point out that the Yo Joe website is a treasure trove of GI Joe knowledge.



I just thought this was a neat version of everyones favorite GI Joe Super Secret Agent. Plus she's wearing cool pilot gear, so if they ever re-release the F-14 Tomcat... err I mean Skystriker I'm all set! Though I'm much more of an F-15 Eagle fan, the Tomcat still looks cool, and that toy version of it looks pretty sweet.



Scarlet here comes with a little back pack, which I guess you could pretend is a parachute, a helmet (notice her hair is up so she can wear it, plus make room for the next accessory), a cool vest (which I'll note for Jay hides the dreaded mid torso articulation), her trusty cross bow, and a pistol. To bad no holster for the pistol, but what are you going to do.



I know the color is not military flight suit accurate, but this is GI Joe, these guys and gals get away with all sorts of uniform "modifications", so why not a cool blue fight suit? I think that's what makes it half the fun of these toys.

Yo Joe!

G.I. JOE: 14
COBRA: 12

Arggggh! Today is going to drag by...

Okay so as most of you know today is the DVD release of the Dark Knight here in the U.S. and the first thing I did on the way to work was stop and pick up my copy. Now the waiting game begins. So while I wait I'll go all Batman Beyond on ya with yet another find from the Magic Grocery Store. Which I'm calling out Target and Toys R Us right now, get on the ball this grocery store is kicking your ass!



So an exit scan of the toy aisle at the local food mart, known as H.E.B. around these parts produced this little gem from the DCUC wave 4. I can't believe that they are churning these things out that fast, seemed like yesterday I was finding wave 2, oh yeah I was. Anyway Batman Beyond is one of my favorites and I knew if I saw this h it was coming home right away. So as I passed down the aisle there he was hanging on the front of the pegs just waiting for me.



Now don't get me wrong on this next statement, I like this figure, and think it's great, but I have mixed feelings about seeing ole Terry here done up in the DCUC style, I think that Batman Beyond really works better in the Timm Universe style, more so than the regular Justice League. The original Batman Beyond Cartoon was really meant for the simplified, more stylized line art.



One thing that works really well is the paint job, yes you can screw up a figure as simple as this. The high gloss on the costume is sweet. And it looks just as good in person as the photos. The one thing I would have liked to seen is maybe some detachable red wings like the show. But this is still all good with me.



He also came with a sweet, fairly show accurate bat-a-rang that doesn't have a peg sticking out the back of it or an extremely large launcher / bazooka type device, so I guess there's that!



Now I just have to wait till 2009 rolls around to get my Timm-Verse style figure from Matty Collector! Hurry up baby new year and hurry up five o'clock I gots me some Dark Knight to be watching!

Battle Royal!

I decided to just round the week out and make it Star Trek week. So up for your viewing pleasure Kirk and Spock from the episode Amok Time. Probably one of many on my list of favorites.



You have to hand it to Playmates Toys, way to take a couple of existing figures add a sash on one and a tear on the other, make a new accessory and bingo new set. It always bugged me that this Spock was through the Vulcan peace sign when he was supposed to be kicking Kirk's ass. Kind of made his right hand useless for fighting. Notice I conveniently cropped it out here, wink, wink!



I will give Playmates a slide on the Kirk figure, they did sculpt a new torso so you get the nice rip effect. Plus this kirk cold be used in any number situations with the Gorn, Mugato, or the Orion Animal Woman. I think I have my Halloween costume for next year!



In the episode Dr. McCoy saves the day by doping kirk up so it looked like he was dead, pulling the wool over the Vulcans eyes, and keeping Spock from getting in trouble by not killing the Captain. Still Spock didn't get the girl, but she was getting with that guy who they used to play Vulcans and back ground Romulans. Oh well, all's well that ends well... Live Long and Prosper.

Star Trek Destroyer

Here's a blast from the past. A miniature of a Star Fleet Destroyer or Cruiser, take your pick. This was a piece from a miniature rpg from back in the seventies, early eights maybe. I never played the game, but my friends and I would hit the hobby store so we could have tiny models of our favorite Starships. Sort of early versions of the Micro Machines I put up yesterday.



The only drag was you had to paint these yourself, and being a kid with a fair knowledge of painting models, I still had problems trying to paint the name and numbers on my ships. this one was actually coated in white after a failed attempt to paint the numbers on the saucer section.



These ships are about the same scale as the micro machines, maybe a little smaller, but to give you an idea this guy is about two inches max in length.



I think besides having the chance of getting a small Enterprise back then this opened up my eyes to a a much larger and diverse range of ships both from the Federation and all the aliens of the show. I think this may have been the only time I had actually seen a Tholian ship as a model. Years later I would be reminded of these tiny ships when I picked up a Classic series book detailing the federation designs and this ship along with the cargo ship were both featured in the diagrams section.



Too bad we never really played the game, though we did make up or own using these ships, small rocks for torpedos, and the 12" tiles on floor of a friends parent's house as a measuring system for parsecs. Like we knew what a parsec was.

Space the Tiny Frontier...

More smallness this week with Tiny Trek Ships! Actually these were from the Galoob Micro Machines Space line of the early nineties. Galoob known for it's tiny Micro Machine cars branched out by taking on Star Trek and Star Wars in this tiny scale. These were both a welcome sight in my home back then. This meant a fleet of ships could be displayed on top of computers, shelves, toothbrush holders, you get the picture. While I amassed a large set of Star Wars ships, we'll only be checking out the first set of Trek stuff today.



The first series, besides having a more generic packaging featured what could be considered Trek's big three as far as ships go. The U.S.S. Enterprise leading the pack here is a pretty close representation of the ship from the classic series. I was surprised when these hit stores that it was as detailed as it was for a mass produced miniature. I think I bought an extra set so I could hang one from my rearview mirror in the Chunky Mobile... I know super geek.



Another surprise was the detail on the bottom of the Romulan Bird of Prey, but I guess if you are going to do this ship you kinda have to go all out with the bird on the bottom or it would look kind of boring. I know I've mentioned this before, but the AMT model version of this ship was one of my nemesis back in the day. I had more problems with that damn bird decal...



Last but not least, the Klingon D-7 Battle Cruiser. Probably my second next to the Enterprise of favorite ships from the original series. If the Enterprise was hanging from the rearview, that meant that extra D-7 was converted to a key chain!

Not that I'm an army builder, but I thought at one time I would get a few of these and maybe make a fleet of D-7's for my Enterprise to take on. Then I could take all the Enterprises and re paint them to make the other ships in Star Fleet. Man I'm glad I didn't take this project on or I would probably be single right now.

Lil' Joes!

The first series of the GI Joe Combat Heroes are starting to hit big here in all the stores, and me being a sucker for little "cutie-fied" versions of anything picked up Li'l Snake Eyes and Li'l Zartan here.


Zartan rocks the transparent panels so you can pretend his armor lights up. Lightsaber sound not included. "Arggggh sunlight!"


Snake Eyes has his pal Timber holding his knife for him, sorta weird, but okay. I think it would have been cooler to have him growling or something. Snake Eyes was originally not my favorite character. Sure I thought he was cool back in the day, but it wasn't until recently that I started picking up all the different Snake Eyes out there. I think I need three more of the 25th style figures to bring me up to date!

As with all the various lines in this style that Hasbro produces, each figure has very limited articulation and is pretty much posed in the package as how it will pose out of it. The coolness would be that your favorite character will be all cute, out of proportion, and tiny. These would be cool if they came up with some generic green characters like those cheap dime store soldiers.

Yo Joe!

I think these guys need a separate count on the ole' blog:

Lil' GI Joe: 1
Lil' Cobra:1

Firestorm DCUC Style!

Something old, something new or Now vs. Then, I haven't decided on a feature title yet. I'm leaning towards the latter.

Here's a shot of the new DCUC Firestorm. You've seen him by now numerous times all over the web. I just got mine so that is one reason I'm throwing him up on the blog.



The second is I wanted to show a side by side with Kenner's Super Powers Firestorm. While the DCUC has articulation coming out the Wazoo and the cool transparent fire feature, I think the paint is a little more sloppy and for some reason I'm digging the Super Power's design on the figure's chest more.



Plus take a look at how the design lines up on the back of each figure. Now I do not know enough about Firestorm to determine which is more character accurate, but my design side is liking the Super Powers solution way more than the DCUC version. Still I think it's sweet that Mattel is bringing these more articulated versions out and that wouldn't (and didn't) stop me from buying this guy or more of the DCUC.

He's Here...KHAAAAAAAAAAAAN!

As promised some pics of the EMCE Khan figure, or retro cloth figure, I think that's what most are calling these.



The coolness factor of this figure is off the scale, which when I thought about this last statement a little more I thought of a funny situation. If I was eight this would be the lamest figure ever, I mean that's why I had Kirk and Spock when I was a kid, they were not lame, they were the heroes of the show. Now, much older, this is one of the coolest of the figures from the EMCE Star Trek line. Makes me chuckle when I think that I may be betraying my younger self.



Oh and isn't the likeness dead on to Ricardo Montalban? Which by the way celebrated a birthday just this past Tuesday, Happy Birthday Mr. Montalban! The plane, the plaaaaaaane!

Happy Turkey Day Everyone!

I hope everyone is having a Grand Turkey Day!

At the request of my sister I am throwing up a Christmas List. I don't like making lists, but since she asked I figured what the hell... I mean heck (case Santa's reading). Plus in the spirit of when I used to make Christmas Lists back in '78, I scoured the catalogs (in this case the web) and clipped the stuff I was looking for under the tree this year! Also as since I know Santa reads all the lists I like to start with a few selfless requests, the ones that I would really be happy if they came to fruition on Christmas Day, no joke, plus I always like to butter up the jolly fat man with some well wishes as an ender. Everything else is just icing on the cake, plus they are way more obtainable than the first three, that way some of the pressure is off Santa and back on the rest of us.

I don't expect everything, but I think I came up with a few choices in various price ranges and will most certainly be happy with any one thing from the list. So without any further wait I give you Christmas List 2008!



Also, Sis, I am going to post this at the side bar so it's an easy reference for ya, that way you don't have to dig through all the posts!

And as always I will be ignoring everyone else's lists, that's just the way I roll. Keeps you on your toes!

One Present Off The List!

Python Patrol!

Speaking of repaints, here is an example of what I'm talking about, slap some new colors on the ole' Cobra Trooper and bingo you have a Cobra Python Patrol Officer!



I can't count the times I passed on this figure, only to break down and pick him up on one of my last trips to the GI Joe aisle. I have to say I kind of dig the colors on this one, he really looks better out of the package and is somewhat cooler that the regular Cobra Trooper Officer.



So much so I might have to snag another in case I want my H.I.S.S. Tank to change squads and go with the Python Patrol. Or maybe target needs to get some new Joes in stock so I am not tempted to pick up another one...

Cobra
G.I. JOE: 13
COBRA: 12

Bazooka Joe

I know that Hasbro just mixes and matches the parts to various joes, or may just repaint them, but they do it so well that for this line I do not mind. Star Wars on the other hand it bugs me, maybe because the number of clone troopers is hitting astronomical levels. Anyway we have seen the Cobra Trooper released and rereleased with different paint schemes before, but this has to be my favorite to date. They added some cool web gear and a sweet helmet, plus he gets an old school bazooka and a 45 and he's ready to blow up some GI Joe Tanks! Does a Cobra Trooper get better than this? I don't know, but in my book this guy rocks!



Ah the simple things that make us happy. Cobra!

G.I. JOE: 13
COBRA: 11

Now for some Cobra Reinforcements!

The H.I.S.S. tank is mine again! My original one was the black version and didn't come with a driver this one, also the black version, came with a driver and a few bags of Groceries! That's right I found this one at the grocery store. I'm sure they are everywhere, but he was actually a dollar less at the local food buying place. Man I love that Grocery store.



How cool is it to be able to hit the grocery store and come out with a freaking tank! That's Cobra cool there! This is exactly like my vintage one with the non moving treads, rotating blasters that you can pop off and pretend it's a flying laser canon (come on I'm sure I wasn't the only one that did this). If I remember right I picked up my original one through a mail away catalog that came with another GI Joe vehicle, ah the magic of toys in the mail which would make sense that it didn't come with a tank commander or driver. I wonder if the store bought ones back then did, that's okay my Joes always stole the H.I.S.S. and used it against Cobra.



I would like to end with a quote from my son "Holy Crap they sell junk that big at the grocery store!" They sure do, COBRA!

G.I. JOE: 13
COBRA: 10

It's been a long time coming...

Okay so I've been out a while, this is what I like to call "Catalog Season". The company only does one catalog a year (though this year we actually did two) and most designers know that a catalog is a lot of work, not a big deal, just a lot of work. Now not to sound like I'm whining or anything, but I have to shoot the entire thing, process the images, do any illustrations, lay it out and then get it ready to print. This year I was behind due to some other projects so the time I usually take to lay it out was cut in half... anyway now it's done and I'm going to try to get back up to speed on the ole' blog. So I thought I would start with a heavy hitter, at least in my book. A new member of the Eclectorama Collection none other than...



Wait for it...



Wait for it...







MEGO IRON MAN!!!!

I have been wanting a Mego Iron Man since I was little. I remember seeing his picture on a box or on a store display when I was just a lad. I knew Mego Spidey and Mego Captain America needed this guy too. I was so confident that I would get him one day that I would tell my friends that their Megos were in trouble when he finally arrives. Which goes to show you don't count your Megos before they are bought.

So fast forward to 2008, some thirty plus years later and I finished a large freelance project and was eyeing that Hot Toys Bank Robber Joker, when this guy flew across my radar. So the Joker had to wait for another day as I set to watching Iron Britches on Ebay. I waited and waited for what seemed like forever and when the time was right I struck and low and behold I was the new owner of a Mego Iron Man!



Now my Mego readers will have to tell me if he looks original or not, I always have my suspicions, but he looks pretty damn close to original to me and I don't think I would like him any less if there were some reproduction parts on him. I tell you Mego Iron Man is one of the end all be all Iron Man figures and he has a permanent place on my desk and my collection, always in sight. I'll probably be buried with him!



So look out Bobo, Randy, and Snuffy. I finally have my Iron Man and I will be looking you guys up for some battles, Muhahahahahahahahahahahahahaha! Man I hope they still have their Megos, that would be awkward...

I'm Officially Excited!

Okay I've been excited for months upon learning of a new Star Trek movie, but the trailer was the deal breaker. As a warning to my wife, be prepared for an onslaught of "Star Trek this and Star trek that" till the movie is released. Here's some stills from the trailer for the rest of you to enjoy.


Ooooh, they have Stormtroopers now!


A sweet shot of the Enterprise under construction


Hey look, Spock was born where Kirk fought the Gorn!


Leaving a Starbase? Ahead Warp Factor One, Mr. Sulu


Some Shuttlecraft escaping a battle


Oh My, Mr. Sulu in a fight with a... Klingon???
edit: turns out it was Romulan


The Millennium Falcon...err I mean Enterprise makes a daring escape!


The new face of Star Trek villainy

So what are you waiting for, check out the trailer here!