Tomfoolery After Dark: Black Light Special Returns

Welcome back!  You may remember the last time we did this.  If not, click here to refresh your memory with Mer-Man's horror face.  Since that original post, I have been taking one toy each night and snapping some pics of it under the black light with my phone camera.  Some of them work, some of them don't.  For your viewing pleasure (I graciously assume), I have once again displayed the best of them.

First off, though, lets look at what has joined the usual batch on the night stand!  The new Mini Scare Glow now joins regular Scare Glow, and I got a cool glowing T-Rex skull at The Field Museum in Chicago.

I also dug out my old King of the Dead and remembered how cool he is, so I threw 'em up with the rest of the glowing stuff.

There's also this:

But that was a gift for my buddy Zach, so that's not a permanent addition.

So lets start off the black light junk with the King, once more:

I believe I've mentioned that a black light SUPERCHARGES glow-in-the-dark stuff, so shinning one on a glowing item kinda makes it glow while it glows.  Dawg.

Then, some items are made specifically FOR black lights, like this Imaginext spider.  Their previous medieval stuff (at least anything magical) has some neon somewhere on the figures, so they glow REAL nice.

Vile (from Mega Man X) is another fixture on my night stand, so I added his second version to see how it worked.

Turns out his particular shade of blue plastic works well!  One thing I like about these pics is how they sometimes form this eerie blue glow around them.

And that seems to work best on white items, for some reason.  The Tallgeese here sorta takes in the background with his overactive glow.  There's a Leo mobile suit beside him, but his super aura just sucks it in.

As I've said: Some things work, others don't.  The Gundam took some work, but somehow the right angling of the light managed to get something that looked cool.  I assumed he would light right up, but I guess he wasn't the right kind of white.

Sometimes it's not just the angle of the light, though.  Other times, it's the camera's focus.  I should probably use my regular camera, but the phone does some weird and interesting things, even when it's just refocusing.

The light is in the same spot in both pics, but as the camera randomly refocuses, it makes it seem brighter or darker.

So, if you've got a shiny guy like Blade, above, then you can get a good picture with the "darker" focus.  If it focuses on the light, the whole thing is just blinding.  But, like this, it looks neat!

So, stuff like this looks cool, even if nothing on the figure actually glows in the black light.

With all of these, I make my choices based on what I think will glow.  I'm wrong on many counts.  Other times I'm just hoping that an item will glow, but I have problems with the lighting.  Some angles will light the item, but not the rest of the figure!

Not that it doesn't look cool, but you can't really see who it is.

If I change the angle, though, I lose the glowing blade.  It sorta turns into a...pudding blast.

Thankfully, you can pretty much rely on translucent plastic to glow no matter what.  Doesn't matter how you shine the light on the Green Goddess - she'll glow.  I probably could have gotten a better shot with a brighter and larger light, but I still think it gets the idea across.

And Roboto somehow worked out GREAT!  He's just straight up clear (his torso, anyway) and that doesn't always work.  It worked with his gears, though, and his arms even lit up a bit, which I wasn't expecting.  He's also got a random glowing shield that was sent to me by my buddy Heli.

Speaking of which: You never know when you'll run into that magical figure that glows in unexpected ways.  For instance, this:

A translucent red figure of a Predator (Lava Planet) will turn into this:

It's hard to tell on here, but he turns...green?  Like I said: Translucent figures tend to glow no matter what, but I didn't expect this particularly dark figure to do anything.  Yet, somehow, he turns from red to green!  Doesn't even look like the same figure.

Now, to wrap this up:

The black light can also show you which paint apps are particularly different from everything else.  I have done a TON of these photos (so you can expect many more of these posts in the future) and so many figures so absolutely nothing.  Then you get ones like Evil Lyn, that have random paint apps that glow.

It's great, I just wish it happened more often!

I won't fill the blog with these kinds of posts, but there will be more, so....until next time: black out the lights!