Tuesday, May 19, 2015

Stalling for Time


Hey, folks!  This weekend I went to Acen (Anime Central); a convention near Chicago.  I didn't do aaaaanything in terms of preparing a post, so here's some random pictures from my photobucket until I'm done preparing pics of all the junk I bought at the convention.


First off: That's a picture of the hole in my porch.  It may be another reason for a lack of post, soon.  We'll see.  On top of that: There's a room under my porch!  Who knew?  Maybe the people who lived here before us - I don't know!  Would have been nice to know.  Then I wouldn't have tried to test the porch by walking on it and risking the fall down to basement level (I didn't, by the way, but it was interesting to find out what COULD have happened, once we realized there was a room under there).

So that's a thing burning a blackened smudge on the back of my brain.


Here's an ancient VCR!  The library (where I work) was going through a massive clean-out, and I took this baby 'cause we wanted to watch a few old home movies my wife had made.  Once I dusted it off, the thing was practically brand new.  It's good old fashioned 80's futuristic!  It's also way heavier than it looks, and could kill Mr. Body if you hurled it at him from across the room.


I don't know why I took pictures of these.  They're He-Man clips from when I was a kid.  I vaguely remember having these clipped to my shirt for no good reason.  Skeletor is supposed to be resting on a sword, but I (of course) took that out 'cause I was an accessory freak.  Am.  Am an accessory freak.  But, young Alexx did that one.


I'll just say this for a good half of what I post here: I don't know why I took a picture of this.  It's from an old He-Man coloring book.  I used to color only parts of pictures, sometimes, and then wrote captions.


Snake Face is somehow unaware of how his powers work.  I think that's the joke.


These are some blind-boxed mixing toys, from awhile back (not sure when, but it was in the 2000's).  On the right is Dr. Duck, then next to him is a Buttmunch, and on the left is some monster who remains un-mixed 'cause he was so cool.



An old Techno-Viper joke, lost to the ages, because it was a response to someone in the old Joebattlelines forums.  I think it was responding to the fact that Air Vipers should get insurance since they have to fly these jetpacks that are just GIANT engines with guns strapped on top.


Love those old Mega Bloks dragon eggs.


They really do make some damn fine toys.


This was in the opening to Toy Story 3.  I had to have the Pig Ship.


It's just good buyer's sense.







This figure of Pre Vizsla (from Clone Wars) was pretty dang cool!  He's got those dumb hips that I can't explain (the ones you have to turn to make them go forward) but otherwise, he worked out great.








Hey, there's another one of these in here!







One thing I love about Japanese toys is that they will put neat little things in boxes with candy for everything.  Anything under the sun has cool little toys on the cheap, in Japan.  I love it.

These are little Mega Man figures that come apart:



They're simple and have no articulation, but tiny and cool, all the same.  Love me some tiny things.












Someday I have to take a video of all the sounds this crazy rip-off Vader makes.  He goes on for what feels like forever - all the most annoying noises you can think of.  It's great!  Speaking of knockoffs:


I think I found these at a Dollar General.  I always loved those molds.
























Alright, that's enough!  I'll have my normal post up either later today or tomorrow.  Probably.

11 comments:

  1. Man I want those Cyberjet Knock-Offs, cause I'm a CYberjet fanatic. Easily 3 of the bets/fun molds ever made.

    And Mega Bloks should bring back the Dragons line, except with the new Articulation and armor customization/gear. That or do some form of Masters of the Universe and Dino-Riders (Since they're all Mattel owned). They're on a roll.

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    1. Cyberjets are the beeeesssst! I wish they'd do some more repaints of those. They don't feel outdated in the slightest - so articulated! I also love those claw-launchers, even if I don't use the missiles very much.

      Yeah, it seemed like Mega Bloks were bringing back Dragons every so often, but I wonder if they're done. We'll see, I suppose. If they do MotU it's gona KILL my wallet.

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    2. I don't think the Cyberjet molds survived. Too good for this world. I would have loved to have seen them in any of the Cyberverse lines.

      They do have TMNT again for next year, hopefully those have the glorious new arms and a Foot Ninja team pack. I'm down for whatever they put out with those style of figures, the fact that they come with some excellent building sets is icing on the cake for me.

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    3. The... Energon(?)... Starscream was a pretty damn fine Cyberjet tribute, if memory serves. Not sure why they didn't repaint that until the sun stopped shining.

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    4. He's more a take on the g2 Smokescreen that came with Dreadwing. Same transformation cues and bit larger. That transformation and what not was last seen in the magnificent Hunt for the Decepticons Deluxe Terradive and DotM Spacecase (as well as Botcon machine Wars Starscream and the Club subscription figure of Pre-Beast-Wars Depthcharge.

      The closes to the cyberjets in recent years was probably Prime Cyberverse Commander Dreadwing/Skyquake.

      I'd love to see some 3rd party Cyberjet and Skyscorcher inspired little figures.

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    5. Yup, and I love that they used the transformation from G2 Smokescreen! Loved that figure; it made Energon Starscream all the better. I've got 'em, along with his classic-colors repaint. Certainly some of my top favorite figures.

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  2. Dude agh. Explore that room! Make sure you have a flashlight, and maybe gloves and a dust mask or some kind of breathing protection in case there's something funky below waiting to be released. Safety first and all, seriously. BUT EXPLORE THAT ROOM. There might be treasure! Or old nudie mags! Or unsold Atari 2600 cartridges! Or nothing but it's just THE THRILL OF FINDING OUT MAN!

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    1. I wish there was something in there! What you see in the pic is all that's there. Unless the floor of THAT also gives way and there's ANOTHER room! Which I hope there is. There damn well better be.

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  3. Assorted observations.

    - Whenever I'm in a thrift store, I look around for a Quasar top-loading VCR of a similar model to the one you've shown. To fuel my Nostalgia Engines, my toy room has an old CRT, a VCR, a digital alarm clock from the 80s. This setup is where I play my 80s video games and sometimes I put on movies on the VCR while I'm cleaning up or reorganizing. Why do I want an older VCR than the one I have? I dunno, get off my lawn, kid!

    - Growing up we had several Transformers coloring books, which were some of the craziest shit ever put out as a media tie-in. Like there was one where Megatron's plan was to rob a shipwreck and steal its pirate's gold so he could buy a bunch of factories and build an army of Decepticons, and there was another one where the artists didn't have any of the toys or character models, apparently, so they just made up a bunch of robot modes. Anyway later on my bro and I went in and wrote "funny" captions on all the pages.

    - Where did that Blacktron body come from? All the early 90s Lego Space stuff was my favorite as a kid.

    - For a long time the only way to get that Seeker mold in Thundercracker colors was to buy a very expensive Botcon exclusive. You can imagine the Fandumb Outrage that occurred when the mass-release one came out. Maybe you experienced it. There was one guy who wanted to sue Hasbro for ruining the value of his other toy. True story.

    - That Ecto-1 was an important staple in our childhood toy wars. Its role was to carry as many action figures as possible, and then the driver would declare "OOPS! WE FORGOT SOMETHING," and immediately drive backwards over whatever figures were standing behind it. We also jammed some sort of spaceship into the trunk space so it would have "jet engines." The thing had tons of little nicks and paint scrapes on it from where it had bashed into other figures and stuff.

    - Black Shadow/Sky Shadow is awesome and I love the old fan sort-of misconception that he was in the "space mafia." (Really he was just a mercenary, but that's still really cool)

    - I have hopes that someday Shout! Factory will release subbed DVDs of Beast Wars II and Beast Wars Neo.

    - Tux rules

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    1. - I honestly had no idea that VCR I got even existed, but WHATDOYAKNOW! You were looking for one! Someday I'll post something you don't know about already. SOME. DAY.

      - Yeah those old coloring books were great! So many products made, back then, without the creators even talking to the company. Sounds like Transformers got the best of it, though. Anyway, I wonder how many folks have "captioning coloring books" as a pastime?

      - The Blacktron guy is one of the blind-bagged minifigures. No mixed parts! He just came like that. Made sure to track that sucker down, 'cause Blacktron was a particular favorite series. They released some different Blacktron bodies in the build-a-figure thing in Lego stores, which allowed me to build a little Blacktron crew. I got a picture....somewhere.

      - Yeah, I didn't have many vehicles back in the day, so the Ecto-1 served a lot of purposes. Never thought to jam a spaceship in there, though! That's awesome! One particular memory is when I parked the Ecto-1 in this cove between the couch and a wall that my dog usually slept in. Since that was HER spot, she helped herself to the little orange ghost on top of the vehicle (the one that came with the car). I came back to a million tiny orange pieces all over the place.

      - AWWW...the space mafia thing was a misconception? I love that idea! Then again, mercenary is always cool too. Honestly, I just bought him because he looks friggin' metal.

      - Someone had to tell me that Thrust was from Beast Wars II. I had NO idea what it was - I just love those molds, so I bought it. It does sound interesting, from what I was told!

      - YES.

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    2. Well, TO BE FAIR, the stuff in this post that I didn't know much about, I didn't comment on - like I really have very little knowledge of the Glyos stuff and Mega Bloks stuff - other than what I've observed on shelves or read about on this blog. So, I guess, just assume that there's a 50% chance that whatever you post about is something I have prior knowledge of. Maybe make a bingo card, or something! ("Transformers" is the free space.)

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