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.