Raving Toy Maniac

For me, it's been really hard to resist all the Funko POP vinyl figures. I've been holding steady(ish), but I fear I might break soon. So far I only have the Wonder Woman, a Batgirl, and a movie Catwoman in hand, with a Jabba the Hutt in my BBTS Pile of Loot.

The Target Halloween section has reminded me of how much I love my Kelly dolls, so I think if I go sort through my collection of those again, it might help inoculate me against the cuteness of the POP vinyl.

The current obsession this week, though, is to work on figuring out our kid's holiday wish list. When we are in stores, he'll say he wants things, but so far it's not been anything big like last year when he wanted things like the Imaginext Batcave. I was excited to see all the retailers' hot toy lists this week, but so far the lists have not been helpful. The list items are either things he isn't interested in, or things he already has. (Kohl's put the Imaginext Batcave on their list...)

Mine is Bobbi.

Has been for years.

-Rob

I have to go have a Sally Field moment now...

.

Since Star Wars is pretty stagnant right now, my main action figure focus is on MU. That may or may not change when the Hobbit line hits.

As far as passion goes, I'm oddly excited to have found these little "Predasaurs" buggers at Target yesterday, just a couple days after I'd happened to read about them online. They're neat little toys, and finding them takes some of the sting out of my discovery that the folks who make those Dino/Dragon/Whatever Magic fizzing egg things made a series of alien creatures and aren't releasing them in the US.

For me the toy collecting has really fallen off. Normally I collect Batman & Batmobiles, but with the poor showing from the Dark Knight Rises that Mattel produced I took a pass on almost everything. There have been a few new Hotwheels Batmobiles, but they're hard to find.
So, I've been building model kits, mostly Sci-Fi stuff. Right now I'm building two different Battlestar Galacticas (one with the flight pods retracted), and kit bashing two 1:2500 scale Enterprise-Ds into one Cheyenne class with the help of aftermarket parts. It's slow going, and keeps me at home more than toy collecting, but I'm still having a good time.
The only Batman stuff I'd like to get at this point is from Hot Toys, and I simply can't afford those.

I'm still into Marvel Legends and I pick and choose with Star Wars now. Too many clones and minor variant character changes. Don't care about them. I do look for interesting characters from Hot Toys. Just received my SWAT Gordon.

I'm now psyched about the new Mad Monster Party figures coming out. Hopefully there will be additional assortments. Growing up in the 60's and 70's, I loved that show.

POP Vinyl are tough. I have Batman, Robin, Batgirl, Wonder Woman and a Captain America that I got for Christmas. My daughter has Batman, The Joker, The Riddler and Two-Face; I'd like to get her a Penguin one day to complete the Bat Rouge's Gallery. I really wanted Captain Marvel, Hawkman, Green Arrow, Aquaman, Hulk, etc., but iI do not need to buy another line, especially one that expands to so many other properties (I forgot that I have a Rudolph Santa). They are hard to resist,

I've been big on the MU line for a couple years ow but with just about every other line letting me down now, it's all I got and I'm not getting any finds from the two new waves and if I find nothing else, I got land that She Hulk. The Nighthawk wave better be more plentiful as I want everyone of those in a BAD way.

Nothing at the moment. But those Beast Saga figures are mighty tempting. I loved Battle Beasts as a kid.

Nothing now...but hope springs eternal...

I could really go for some MU boxed sets of silver age (Kirby) Fantastic Four & X-men teams. I have zero interest in an FF in short sleeves, or white outfits, the Thing in long pants & shoes, etc...

How about an Inhumans set, including Lockjaw? The Frightful Four even...?

How about some Giant-Man variations, including the blue helmet version and the original Goliath?

I wish the upcoming Scarlet Witch had her original costume, and came packaged with a minty green Quicksilver...

Frankly, these MUs aren't the easiest to find...I don't feel like hitting ebay for a red or yellow Daredevil...

No question - Four Horsemen's Outer Space Men. 3 - 4 new figures a year, three colored translucent variants, a painted Infinity version, and now repainted Cosmic Creator series takes on previous years' figures. Easy to collect, fun to play with. I just wish the news from 4HM was more consistent and the releases a little more spread out.

I still don't know if they will have their "Beta Phase" editions at NYCC next month...

Unfortunately, the line that has presently captured my heart is MegaHouse's One Piece Portrait of a Pirate 1/8 line of figures. I dropped $1000 on 6 figures in a week and then I knew I was in serious trouble.

I have all of the 2012 Marvel Legends except Moonstar and Blade as well, so once I acquire those my ML 2012 lineup will be complete.

Trash Packs and Marvel Select for the moment. My normal hot toys are letting me down right now. Plus as a dad I'm very persuaded by what my kids like.

LEGO!

I swear I've been dropping over $1K/month on just Lego alone! NO variants, NO "Chase" items, great manufacturing and paint ops! GREAT distribution!! It helps that I have a Lego store nearby but even the store exclusives are available at Lego's website!

I still love Minimates, but I gave up being a completeist with all their variant Battle Beast nonsense.

Yes, Lego is expensive BUT *every* set goes on sale at some point, mostly on Amazon, so I rarely buy at MSRP.

Selected Play Arts and LEGO. I miss DCUC waves coming out 3-4 times a year, and I'm taking a very long hard look at those (read: which to keep) as Club IE rolls along, but with the promising offers next year (Wally! Friggin'! West!) that may change, even though they're all mostly new heads on the same old body...

Hey swift,

How do you feel about the play arts dark knight returns figure?

I was hoping for a NYCC exclusive too.

I tentatively placed it on pre-order along with Robin. I've seen fans saying it's too far from the source material, but I like how they "anime'd" him up. And DKR has been my favorite Batman story since I first read it at the age of 9, so unless I see crappy in-hand pics, you can rest assured I'll be posting pics of him in the iconic "leaping in front of lightning" pose when I get him.

I'm happy to have a version that isn't pre-posed in a crouch and is indeed more anime as well. I'm going to get it myself and figured you'd be on board too:)

My current toy passion is probably Kidrobot's Labbits. However, for years it was Transformers and will be once my love for Labbits wears off.

I only pick up Transformers occasionally right now, something I never thought I'd say.

The bulk of my buying goes to figma (link to my figma collection). I'm completely addicted to them, usually get two or three a month. I've also started picking up some figures from Bandai's D-Arts line, mainly their Persona offerings and the upcoming King of Fighters stuff. It's a lot to jungle, but sure does look good on the shelf.

Emerje

Marvel MiniMates, all the way. I still pick up choice selections from other properties and lines, e.g. Marvel Legends if they happen to put out a character I want, but MMM got me with its wide character selection, great accessories, and style.

Beast Saga! I'm just putting the first wave on shelves and can't wait for more. Battle Beasts live again, only Japanese and more awesomer.

Transformers.

Maybe it was pics of the upcoming MP Soundwave, but for someone like me who isn't big into TF, I am ALL about it right now.

It's a huge world of toys I'm not really a part of, as much as I love my MP-01 Convoy and Binaltech Smokescreen, I'm not really a part of that world. Now I'm watching the toons and so nuts about the toys and have gotten a bunch and more on the way. Always liked the history and the storys and characters, but now I'm so nuts about the toys.

I have been collecting Jem dolls for a long time, but I am really excited about the new Hollywood Jem by Integrity Toys and can't wait to see what other dolls they will release.

I've always had a thing for werewolf figures. Even though it has been awhile, I'm still a little miffed that those totally friggin awesome Werewolf the Apocalypse figures, and the AWIL figure were cancelled.

I've been really tempted by the PoP line, but luckily (?) I've been addicted to SH Figuarts from the start, and because of the scale went towards the Figuarts Zero One Piece statues. Aren't PoP bigger? Because I have a few Figuarts Zero like Gekko Moriah which are gigantic, and I can't imagine them on a bigger scale. I would love to just get the cheaper, smaller Banpresto figures if I could find them regularly.

The rise in the strength of Yen compared to the dollar started to curb my Japanese toy buying, but man Bluefin has been hitting it out of the park in terms of bringing stuff over and putting them in Diamond Previews. Getting various D-arts, SH Figuarts, SIC, Super Robot Chogokin, Robot Damashii along with the occasional Soul of Chogokin large purchase. If Figma were more readily available I'd get more of those, especially the Nintendo ones. And man I started collected Sentai mecha again...

The spotty distribution of Marvel Legends means that I'm skipping the entire line. DC is winding down too. I like Marvel Universe ok, but I also have a tough time finding all of them without having to order cases, and I think I'm just going to go after figures I really like, like Darkhawk.

Even Transformers are getting hard to find. I'll still pick up the ones I really want, such as any Masterpiece figure, but the smaller scale of the newer figures and the spotty distribution is kinda making me scale back. After buying most of the first movie wave I skipped over the vast majority of the following two movie waves, so I consider that my "break" in Transformers collecting whenever they go back to that well. I almost skipped over Prime altogether after the FE fiasco, but Wheeljack pulled me back in.

So far I've been able to resist Playarts Kai and (thankfully) Hot Toys, though if all the Avengers were actually still available for preorder, I would be seriously tempted. But that's a hold from which my wallet would never recover.

Oh, and I have a few Beast Saga coming in, so excited about that. And a Maketoys Green Giant.

Have you checked the Jem website set up by Integrity Toys? They have pics of Classic Jem, Synergy, Jerrica Benton, and Rio Pacheco. They look pretty cool, and Synergy looks like she was modelled (at least to me) after electroclash musician Peaches.

Mr. Tibbs

Integrity Toys - Jem

re: Beast Saga

Got some in, played with a couple of them for a few minutes, but I fear I might be hooked. Now I gotta figure out how the game works. They should really put the faction sticker on the empty chest, though.

This also made me think: why hasn't a Japanese company licensed the Skylanders tech? They make so many little figures that would work great for it. The obvious one is Pokemon (and I think the WiiU has some RFID tech in it), but I would love a Beast Saga skylanders-type game... I mean, Takara is the company that integrated a videogame in a transforming toy with Gradion anyway.

I actually just checked after I posted that message! I had been checking the Integrity site throughout the week, but didn't realize the new pics were up! I managed to pre-order all 4!!!! Can't wait until they arrive:)

NOTHING!...Right now!

I'm enjoying basically having a year off 'cos Fall 2013 will bring THE Action Figure Line( that I have been waiting LITERALLY ALL MY LIFE FOR!...BASED ON THE 1966 "BATMAN" TV SERIES!!!!

I WILL be getting ALL of the Mattel stuff and as much of the HOT TOYS stuff that I can afford!!!