The Ancient Bowels of My Photobucket: PART TWOOOO

And we're back!  Last time we got through a swath of my photobucket, starting from the original folder ALLL the way back at the beginning.  I stopped around when I got into Joes again, so we'll start there and see what kinda junk I had been taking pictures of, beyond MotUC.



Now, keep in mind this is all really old junk, where my backgrounds were couches 'n such.  That, and I'm not altogether proud of some of the old stuff, but I think it's interesting to go through them.  Plus: I want something easy to toss up around Christmas to open up some time for other things.

In some of my earlier post on here, you can see Skeleflex figures fighting He-Man.  This was the first one I had bought, and I did a little pictorial because I was so impressed with it.  Over time I've felt less impressed, mostly because they don't stand the test of time or play.  They're supposed to be pulled apart so you can rearrange the bones however you like, but some of them break at the joint connectors!  In fact, I think each one I own has a broken piece or two, making them useless.  Great idea, but poorly executed.

The monster skeleton gave me some ideas for a little comic, of which I like the angles, but as time has passed, I'm not really happy with the dialogue.

Huh huh huh....yeah, I guess that's the lesson.  Like I said: Meh, on dialogue, but I like all the angles of the shots.

Not long after that, I got some exclusive environment sets for the 25th Joe figures - a desert set, and a cold weather set.  The cold weather set gave birth to this old joke:

This stuff was posted in a thread at Joebattlelines, but it was destroyed (along with everything else) when the old forums accidentally went down.  I actually made a sequel to this joke last winter, in this post.

Ah, Ironhide!  I ended up getting rid of this one, at some point.  It was an interesting figure.  You can see by all the lines at the side that this is a complicated transformation process.

He had a neat arm gun/knife (depending on which way you put it on) but in the end, he was one of those that just was NOT fun to transform.

Looks neat, but I don't regret getting rid of him.

Spider-Man's mid-clone saga costume, as well as yet another black costume - both Hasbro Marvel Legends.  I still have the black suit figure, but it does not stand the test of time...it's just ugly.  I hate it when he's only got open hands, the body is awkward, the head is tiny....not sure why I got it.  The other costume, though: That ain't a bad figure!  It was also the last costume my own personal Spider-Man was wearing the last time I used to play out stories, as a kid (meaning: I used the Toybiz figure that wore that costume, from the old Spider-Man animated series toyline).

Ugh, so many HISS tanks!  I've got at least one more HISS tank than what's in the pic.  The one in the front was my original HISS II, from when I was a kid.  The other three are from the 25th Anniversary line.  I didn't have many vehicles, growing up, so I went a little nuts around the 25th time.

I really gotta get rid of some of these vehicles; taking up so much space.  It was fun at the time!  I love that old fashioned team-building work.  You can see I've got a soldier on the back of each, and the black HISS tanks each have a jetpack trooper.

Oh, and speaking of those times: The very first Techno-Viper joke!

This was before I had acquired the other two Techno-Vipers to accompany my original slacker.

At this time, my wife and I would have still been living out of her Mom's house, so this was when I was always shifting things around and buying bins to keep things in.  This was when I bought the bins I'm still using now (to ignore all my G.I. Joes).  I had taken some pics while I was cleaning, because I couldn't stop myself.  The joke above is supposed to be Ninja Force General Hawk.  HA.

Gotta love those giant 90's guns!  Sometimes they were just oversized versions of real guns, but in this case (unless someone can correct me) I think this monster is just make-believe.  I love it, of course.

Heh, this was one of my signature pics, awhile back.  Cobra Commander...commanding.  Ya know.

And there's a little forum avatar that I made, but never used.  Still cracks me up.  It's called Mer-Money, of course.

And speaking of Mer-Man, I had apparently uploaded some of the items I colored.  The Four Horsemen (sculptors of Masters of the Universe classics, among others) put up their concept pics of their 2002 He-Man designs, at some point.  They were perfect for coloring, so I printed them out and went to work.

It's hard to tell from the pic, but I tried to make his eyes reflective, which is why they look similarly colored to the rest of his face.  You gotta see it close to see the other colors I put in there to mimic the silvery shine I was going for.  The blades on his weapons are black because it's supposed to be volcanic glass.

Dunno what I was going for with Man-At-Arms, but I'm pretty proud of him, still.

Man, I don't even know what I was going for with this one.  Badass album cover?  Pretty sure that was the joke.

Technically we're catching up to where this blog started, or at least, the time at which the first pics on the blog are taken.

Ah man, Generations Cyclonus!  Try to find some version of this mold, if you can.  Fantastic little toy.  I'm surprised he didn't make it into my Transformers post.

One of my early customes, using a 25th Cobra Commander head and his helmet, backwards, with a BAT shaped visor hold cut in the back of it.

Black Destro!  A Target exclusive Destro body matched with a comic pack that randomly had this awesome black head with red eyes.  They look great together, as you can see.

Lord Dread, from Captain Power!  Captain Power was a BIG part of my younger childhood.  I used the heck out of the old figures, and no one more than Lord Dread.  I've always loved cybernetic parts, so it makes sense that Lord Dread was eventually used as a hero, when I was a kid.  The one on the right is my original, and when compared to the new one on the left, you can tell how USED he is.

He used to play the role of Jack Cyborg, my own personal hero who had a ridiculous amount of adventures against an equally cybernetic enemy named Berzerker.  It was my excuse for working in all the themes I had been sucking in from the video games I had been playing at the time - I even worked his adventures into "levels", so to speak (I wrote up pages of power ups, weapons, and the names of all the levels, along with drawings of how I thought the bosses really looked, since I had to use existing figures as bosses).

The Dread on the left was a stroke of luck: A friend of my Mom's was selling old toys at a flea market.  This Lord Dread was still in his package - it was destroyed, of course, but the bubble was intact!  So I paid two bucks for what is basically a perfect figure!

I'll probably do a new pictorial for him sometime, though, I wish it could be an overall Captain Power set.  I actually don't have that many Captain Power figures, but it was a great little line, if short-lived.

If you remember my earlier posts here, then you remember the advent of the little guitars.  I showed the He-Man pics, but didn't show what else I did with them.

Those guitars improve everything tenfold.

This was right before I started Alexx Shorts, on Joebattleines and Joesightings.  My first shorts-like posts were about a set of Cobra and Joe five packs.  This brought us a particularly cool Baroness, which you can get RIGHT NOW, at Toys R Us...in a sort-of lesser fashion.  The paint apps aren't quite as good as this original, but oh well.  It doesn't feel like Hasbro really cares, right now.  Seriously: find the Baroness and Lady Jaye two pack and tell me if any of them have good paint applications for Lady Jaye's eyes.  It's crazy terrible across the board.

A friend, at the time, asked for a shot of DAT ASS, so I obliged:

Forum antics, I tell ya.  I still like this figure, though I think they could have worked on the head a bit more.  Maybe a tiny bit bigger, and get that hair molded in some way that allows for easier movement.  Her hair actually popped off, since it runs into her shoulders.  I still haven't gotten around to gluing it back on.

I made a gunblade, one time!  Dunno why.

I also tortured the dog for a few seconds!  Dunno why.

Another story lost to the destruction of the Joebattlelines forums!  I had been doing some cutting with a hobby knife, in an effort to create this:

The knife slipped and slid RIGHT into my finger.  Like, a good way into my finger.  I yelled something like "Uh-oh.  UH-OH.  UHHH---" and ran into the bathroom.  I was upstairs, my wife downstairs.  She yelled up, asking what was wrong, but I was freaking out, so I only managed to yell out "UUUMM... BLEEDING LIKE A STUCK PIG."  My wife had no idea what that meant, so she met me upstairs with an armful of various medical supplies, only to find me whipping blood into the sink.  I mean...how often are you bleeding enough to whip blood like a ninja splattering the paper walls with his enemies innards?

Anyway, we took care of it without a hospital visit, though, my finger is still a little...strange, around that area.  Like it didn't heal quite like it was supposed to.  I don't run into it very often, though.

Just for whenever you need this reaction.

One of my favorite shots from the first Alexx Shorts!  It all started when I wanted to show people how cool the Rise of Cobra toyline was, regardless of looking unlike most Joe figures.  I won't go into too much of those, though, 'cause I want to repost those at some point.

This tells you we're around 2009!

This is what you get when you cut part of the neck on a Snake Eyes figure, add a head from a Star Wars droid, and then a trooper helmet on top of that.  I believe this guy is still together, and I really like how he turned out!

Whoa!  Star Wars figures.  That's another set of figures that needs a post like I did with Transformers.  If not to show off my favorites, then at least to go through them and weed out all the figures I haven't touched in ages.  Star Wars has always been on-and-off, with me.  Lots of great figures, but they're so hit-and-miss.

Hey, Snake Shadow!  The merging of DNA between the two most deadly ninjas known to man!  What else could possibly come of that other than this joke?

These pics were used to illustrate the oddball "weapons" that came with a vehicle in the New Adventures of He-Man toyline.  They needed to make things that Skeletor could hold, since his hands are stuck like that.  So he got these crazy two-handed....things.  The top one is a gun, but the bottom one....I dunno, man.

Before the current Power Ranger line took my attention, I got together the Joe sized versions.  I still like the team at that size, so I may yet keep them.  They covered a decent range - even getting to Lord Zedd, as you had seen in a previous post - but they dropped the ball at Goldar.

They somehow decided that the best thing for Goldar would be to limit his poses to the above, and this:

That's it.  His skirt and shoulder armor are both hard plastic, and allow no movement beyond what you see there.  He can't bring his arms or legs forward, and he has no knee or elbow articulation.  I don't get what happened here.  It is the absolute worst case of form over function.  Looks great, works terrible.  I'm still waiting for an articulated Goldar.

I ended up ripping him to shreds in an effort for FORCE articulation into him, but I never did anything with him, so he's currently in pieces.

Funny thing is that, if you look under the armor, they DID articulate his hips and shoulders!  It was just wasted money, because they can't DO anything.  I was going to somehow reattach the armor in a way that allowed it to move, but....here we are.

Back when I still bought Nerf guns; this was a Christmas present!  I never put it through its paces, sadly, which is sorta why I stopped buying Nerf guns, no matter how cool they are.  I'm thinkin' one day I should just plop down my whole box of Nerf guns among a gaggle of kids so that the guns can finally get the use they deserve.

Around the Valor VS Venom days (G.I. Joe theme, 2004) they tried out the dreaded Action Attack features for the first time since the 90's.  Nothin' like toys that do the playing for you!  Why have them swing a weapon, when you can press a button and EEEAAAGH, he hits himself in the face!  I have no idea if I still have these things - otherwise, I'd show you Danger-to-Himself-and-Others Duke, furiously smacking himself in the face with giant nunchucks.  It was hilarious, which makes me think that I DO still have this guy.  Why would I get rid of that?

Comedic side note: Around this time, actual fans were talking about sending the action attack figures back to Hasbro, as if that was going to do anything.  That's how pissed they were.  Could you imagine the fifty or so - probably less - random action attack figures that would show up in their mail?  And then the big shrug that would follow?  They did remake the action attack figures as normal ones, next year, but if I remember correctly, they had already stated they were going to do that from the get-go.  So...no silly send-backs were needed.  Just wanted you to know that Joe fans were JUST as crazy as He-Man fans.

Custom fodder.  Whaddayagonado?

Ah, two of my favorite little customs!  These were the "Crimson" Guards from the desert environment set.  They didn't really seem like Crimson Guards in the slightest, but the tan suits were perfect for just about anything else!  The left one is Razumihin and the right one is Julian.  Both are mercenaries with that sort of "odd couple" thing going on, where they're total opposites but end up having to work together all the time.  Raz likes to make things go boom while rushing in, and Julian likes to have elaborate plans in place before doing anything.

And this is Deker!  He's from Power Rangers Samurai, and he got an awesome S.H. Figuarts toy that I'll never be able to afford.  So, I'll stick with this one.  Isn't he awesome?

He's also the last thing here!  We're totally up to date with (at the very least) the highlights of the old photobucket - things I didn't want left behind, since they wouldn't have any place else to go.  Might as well use them, right?  Hopefully this still was at least semi-interesting!  I'll pop back in on Christmas with a quick post, then we'll see what I can cook up for New Years, alright?

Alright.  You kids go play.