Beautiful Day!

It's 80º here in Texas with a slight breeze, the sun is out and the birds are singing, its pay day... oh, and Retro Heroes are in stock at Toys R Us. I took a little trip at lunch and picked me up a Mattel World's Greatest Super Heroes Superman (I've decided I don't like the "Retro-Action DC Super Heroes" title they call them) and a Minimates set with the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man! How cool is that?

I then decided to do my heart some good and eat a Vegi Burrito Bowl and an Unsweet Tea, you see Sweet Tea is the norm for Texas and some places like it sweeeeeet, then I hopped back into the Jeep and back to work.

If I have any family reading this and wondering "what the heck does Charles want for his birthday?" I will take a SINESTRO or a LEX LUTHOR, they are packaged just like Superman here, hint, hint...

The Invaders

A little update on my “Mini Collection” with the Invaders Box set. Back in May I saw these and knew I was going to order them, which is not my usual M.O. I usually say I’m going to order a con exclusive and then forget about it. But since I was picking up the next set of EMCE’s I saw this and added it to the ole’ cart.



I have to say that this set is plain sweet! The decos are all really nicely done, usually it’s hit or miss with the paint on Minimates, not as bad as the recent rounds of Justice League figures, just that sometimes you can tell they were a sleep in the line.



Beside the decos, this set excels in accessories. There are three shields, holders for the shields so you can pose Cap with his shield on his back, extra hair for Cap, a modern and vintage mask, hands for poses with shields, the possibilities seem endless as to styles. I really dig this feature and Art Asylum and Diamond Select Toys would just incorporate this into all Minimates. But then again they couldn’t sell multiple copies of characters if you had all the different pieces to make costume changes.



Okay so besides Cap and Buckey’s Sheilds, what makes this set cool is a Transparent Human Torch (not Johnny Storm, before him) and Namor has these little wings for his feet. This I wasn’t really expecting to be so cool, I mean he is Spock in a Speedo after all.



The only thing I could think of that would make this set cooler, or hotter, would be one of those “jump” jets they flew around in. I think I might have to try and make one, if I do it’ll find it’s way up here.



Enough with the words and pictures I’m off to find my old Invaders comic, I gots a jet to make!

C3 Minimates Joker

2004 brought us one of the coolest little Joker playsets around. The C3 line of Minimates from Art Asylum hit selves with a bang, zip, pow! C3 stands for Create, Construct, Customize. These Minimates were taken from several sources of the Batman mythos including two different cartoons, comics, and even movies. Though some of the movie versions never saw release.



This set is based on the Justice League cartoon and is titled the Chemical Warehouse Battle. As you can guess these sets come with little Lego like blocks and Minimates. You can follow the instruction like a Lego set or build whatever your heart desires, cool thing is the bricks in the C3 sets are compatible with Lego sets. I know some people really do not like Minimates, but I really love these little toys, they remind me of a cross between some of the first Lego figures and the stuff they produce today. That and they are like a little hybrid of the Medicom Kubrick figures.



Now if you are scratching your head about Minimates, here's how they started. Art Asylum created them based on Japanese block style figures, they originally were 3" high, and several licenses where approached at that scale. Latter they partnered with Diamond Select to bring out the 2" Marvel Minimates, and still later they partnered with a little company called Play Along to bring out the C3 Construction series introducing the first DC Minimates to the world.



Today Art Asylum is in full swing again with Diamond Select toys to release a more comprehensive set of DC Minimates, plus tons of other licenses including Back to the Future, Battlestar Galactica, and Star Trek to name a few. Okay that's Minimates in a nut shell, to learn more you have to check out Minimate Central .



The C3 sets are no longer available, even when they were released some of the sets were near impossible to find, three sets that were released during the end of the line are the hardest, the Mini Javelin from Justice League and two from the Batman Cartoon, the Batcopter and Batcycle.

I will own these!

Okay so checking the toy news today I see that this year's SDCC will have some pretty cool exclusives. I usually just go cool and forget about them since I will never make it to SDCC. Though this year I will get this set of Invaders, even if I have to hit evil bay!

The thing I think is really cool about this set is the ability to make all the different versions of Captain America. Read more about them here, and know this... they will be mine, I don't know how, but they will be mine! Bwahahahahahahahahahahaha!

image from Diamond Select Toys.

Just a Test

Beamed up from my phone! A little blurry, needs some work. But nice to know I can snap a shot and get it on the web immediately!

Look out world!

Mini Cylon, By Your Command!

Isn't that first image great, if I do say so myself! I got to playing with the Macro feature on the camera we have at the office. I thought this would be a cool test. So here we have the latest in Ebay conquests, okay I know what I said about limiting the purchases for the collection, but in my defense I've had my eye on one of these for a long time, and it's a great mini figure.



It's a Minimate from the folks at Diamond Select Toys and Art Asylum, and I think it's one of the most successful Minimates around. What makes it so successful? The detail in the head. Instead of the standard cylinder head with sculpted hair, this guy gets a sculpted head. I say head because were the original Cylons not robots? I mean I knew as a kid that they were people in suits, playing robots, unlike that golden guy on Star Wars... which late I found out was not a real robot and was an actor... then to find out that the small one was both a remote control and a little person actor, damn was my dream crushed. If you asked me then I thought by now I would have a pair of those droids. But back to the Cylon here. This guy is tiny, and I've placed him next to a ruler so you get an idea. Now this guy was produced in 2006-2007 as a limited edition run of classic Battlestar Galactica Minimates to celebrate the new show. They have newer characters now, plus the classic will make an appearance in a box set later this year with some other of shows baddies.





This preview set came sort of blind boxed, but with a window so you could see who you were getting, sort of spoils the fun, but good for me so I didn't have to go through an army to get the one I wanted. See, I never was much of a fan of the commander cylons, the gold didn't do it for me. and the ones with the blast marks look silly to me. The stealth one though looks pretty cool, but the show didn't have stealth Cylons, please. Basic silver is the ones I thought were cool. I do think they made a limited number of these in chrome, but I haven't found one, could be a myth.



When I got this guy the other day I thought, sitting there holding the little Cylon in the palm of my hand, this is what the figure in the ship I had as a kid should have looked like. That would have been sweet. At one time these classic Battlestar Minimates were to have little SD versions of their ships, kind of a cross between the Lego knock offs that Art Asylum did and the Minimate Speed Racer Cars of not too long ago. I'm just happy with this guy though. It will be interesting to see the good guys and bad guys box sets that come out, maybe a chance to have a Daggit again!

One other thing I thought of was I remember back in the day when Battlestar Galactica first aired, everyone talked about how George Lucas had a law suit against the producers for copying the Stormtroopers. I never was sure if this was true or not, I was too young and didn't care. But if you think about it now, robots that say "By your command" and robots that say "Roger, Roger" seems awful similar. I wonder where he got the idea?

Nerd Alert!

I cannot be the only person that thinks this...

Plus this...

Equals good idea.

I had one of these Trek bridge models as a kid, and if I remember correctly it should be about the same scale as the Minimates (maybe a little smaller). Ditch the model figures included in the set, sprinkle in a dash of Star Trek Minimates Series One and Two (for a complete bridge crew) and whoa-la! Star Trek Minimates Play-set!

As geeky as all this sounds, I'm seriously thinking about trying this, I just need to find this model on the cheap!

Photo Credit: Minimates: Diamond Select Toys, Model shot: E-bay (the one I'm watching so far)

DC Minimates: Green Lantern and Star Star Sapphire

I can't believe this is my first real post about Minimates! I know some do not care for these smaller versions of their favorite heroes, but I truly love these things. I was hooked when they first arrived on the scene and they were much taller. Then when the Marvel ones came around in the new scale it was all out Minimate Madness!

So to kick things off is a recent set I picked up at the local comic dive. I had been waiting on these new DC Minimates, I figured I would order them online in sets, but never really got around to doing it, so this is officially my first set of the new DC Minimates. You will note that there are some DC Minimates that have surfaced prior to these new ones, the C3 line, I do have most of those, but these are the newer comic versions, so totally different series all together.

I think I dig Minimates so much because they remind me of the Kubrick line from Japan and I always thought it was about time we did something smaller and better than Japan. By smaller these are at least a half inch smaller than the Kubricks, at about two inches tall, and by better they have at least 14 points of articulation to the Kubrick's 8 POA!

Anyway I was picking up a comic and saw Hal Jordon here and thought, why not. He comes with a little power lantern to charge his ring and a villain to fight. Truth be told I was looking for the Hawkman / Hawkgirl two pack and this was the next best thing they had in stock and I needed a Minimates fix.

Still, it's a pretty damn cool Green Lantern figure, and he can hang with my Marvel Minimates until more DC reinforcements show up!

Medicom Kubricks

Seems like I have a nice little Batman groove going, So why not continue with a little Batman? This is none other than the 89' Batman in the fun little Kubricks style. Kubricks is a toy line from Japan, from a company called Medicom. I have to say they make some of the coolest stuff. I hope to feature some more Medicom wares in the future. These toys are under 3 inches in height and all share some basic features, such as the same shaped head, basic body, arms, and legs. I guess these would be close to Lego mini figs, a little bigger, and I like to think these were the inspiration for Minimates from Art Asylum. I do have a few examples of Kubricks with sculpted heads and not the standard cylinder, these are mainly animal type characters, the ones I have include Bruce Lee. I'm guessing that they needed to have a better likeness of Mr. Lee than the cylinder could reflect, though Art Asylum did a pretty good job with their version.

Medicom has run the gamut with these guys. They cover popular Japanese properties like Astro Boy, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Shin Getter, and even a set from the cult classic Battle Royal. They didn't stop there though, they started hitting the American licenses as well, Edward Scissor Hands, Planet of the Apes, Back to the Future, Star Wars, and of course Batman just to name a few.

So far as I can tell they have covered Batman with assortments from the following eras of the Dark Knight; Batman the 1989 Movie with some Batman Returns thrown in, Batman The Animated Series (including a couple Batman Beyond characters), The comic book style Batman, and finally the more recent Batman Begins Movie. I'm still working on getting most of these, but to date this 89' Batman is my favorite of the Batman Kubricks.