Pic of the Day - Interlude

Strider, mini bust by Gentle Giant.

Wow, can't believe it's been almost two weeks since I posted pictures. The Picture of the Day feature will be resuming immediately, but the Star Trek week will be delayed a few days, pending the arrival of a bunch of new Star Trek figures. Stay Tuned! In the meantime, buncha DCUC pics.

Pic of the Day 11

The Mouth of Sauron mini bust, by Sideshow Toys/Weta Workshop. I love this mini bust. It illustrates how much work was put into the Lord of the Rings movies, of which I am a beig fan. Check out the amazing detail on this thing, click on the image to view a much larger image, so you can see the details. There's all sorts of runes around the edges of the mask, his lips and teeth are super nasty.

This bust came to me due to a friendship I developed on the SWAN Forums a couple years back. I met a guy named Daniel, who lives in New Zealand and works as a designer for Weta Workshop, which means he worked on the coolest movie trilogy in recent history, and possibly of all time (okay, I still probably prefer the Original Star Wars trilogy).

Daniel is one of the coolest people I've had the opportunity to talk to, and his friendship has also been beneficial to my collecting. He set me up with a few LOTR items that I thought I never would have had otherwise (sure, many of them are cheaper now on eBay than what I paid for them, but at the time I got a great deal). The pictured Mouth of Sauron bust he got for me on sale, and he also got one of my most prized collectibles, the Balrog Flame of Udun statue, which I'll have to post pictures of someday. Additionally, he let me send him a book I had, The Art of the Lord of the Rings, and he signed it and had a bunch of other people sign it for me. It is awesome. I'll do pictures of it later next week. He also picked up the AFX Exclusive Animated Ringwraith maquette for me, again it's cheaper now than what I got it for, but I got it not too long after it came out when it was going for much more, so that's cool.

Anyway, Daniel's a great guy, and a very talented artist and designer. You can see the results of his work in the Lord of the Rings films, or more directly in the Art of... books, there's one for each film, and one for the trilogy. Additionally, he is featured in some of the bonus features on the LOTR DVDs.

Remember kids: Wraiths! Wraiths on wings!

Pic of the Day 4

Saruman mini bust by Gentle Giant. The Palantír lights up.

They will find the Ring, and KILL the one who carries it!

2007 Review - Part 1

Well, about the middle of January, I wrote out (on paper!) a big old long post, looking back some of the more memorable (to me) items and such that I bought or was looking forward to last year. Now that's its nearly April I figured it was about time I got around to typing it up and posting it.

Experiences

We'll start with some memorable experiences. First, in August I became a member of the 501st Legion of Stormtroopers - the Lucasfilm sanctioned Star Wars costuming club. I served the Emperor as a Royal Guard until just recently, when I sold the costume. I plan to acquire an Imperial Officer's uniform next, planning a Captain in the Imperial Navy (Captain of a Star Destroyer, thank you very much). I've only been to 6 or 7 events, as most take place an hour's drive or more away, but there's also a family I've seen 3 or 4 times that drive from the far side of the state (5ish hours) so I can't complain too much. The most recent event was on New Year's Eve, at Provo Town Center mall, I even got my picture taken with Ronald McDonald (that's me on his left).

The other experience I want to talk about briefly is that I watched a significant portion of Star Trek. A few years back, during school, I worked at a place that allowed me to watch a lot of TV (it was actually part of my job), and for a couple of months I was able to watch several episodes of ST: The Next Generation and ST: Deep Space Nine. Since then I've wanted to watch all Star Trek, in order (well, maybe not Voyager). Early last year I purchased the first season of the Original Series, and my wife and I watched them all. We really enjoyed them, and about half-way through those we borrowed all 10 movies from a co-worker and watched them, as well. We're now almost done with the second season, and I should probably start looking to pick up the third and final season.

I really like the original crew - in particular Kirk, Spock and McCoy (of course, who doesn't love those three?). I enjoy the Spock/McCoy interaction, all the emotion vs logic. And of course, Kirk really is too entirely awesome. While some of the effects are a bit primitive, or some of the costumes are a little lame, for the most part I don't notice those things, and it's just an excellent show with lots of great stories. I'm really looking forward to finishing it up, and then moving on to The Next Generation.

Purchases

Moving on to items I purchased last year, I can say that like 2006, I spent far too much money this year. I couldn't possibly talk about everything I bought last year in one post so I'll just hit the highlights (but I do intend to at least post pictures of everything, someday).

2007 was the year that I really branched out to collecting things other than Star Wars. I mean, I had a couple of items here and there (like a Batman Begins figure), but I wasn't researching or anticipating figures in other lines. Until Spawn and Mortal Kombat. I happened across a couple of figures at TRU that I couldn't put down, so I got them. I mostly expected them to be one-off purchases, and the MK figure was for sure (in fact, I returned that one and got two better characters off eBay), but it was that purchase that freed me to get into Spawn figures, which led to Halo figures, which led to DC Comics figures (Batman and Superman), which led to 2008 being a very Halo- and DC-centric year.

I bought three Halo 2 figures, but stopped, as the ones I wanted were a little too expensive, and I decided to wait until the Halo 3 figures McFarlane began producing this year. Now that I have received all of mine from the first series, I should be reviewing them in a few of weeks.

Along with watching Star Trek I decided that I really like some of the vehicle designs—particularly the Enterprise —enough that I needed a couple ships for my shelves. I set out to get each version of the Enterprise, and was happy to find a Japanese company, Furuta, already had a Star Trek line. They've made several Trek ships around 3-4 inches long, including all of the Enterprise versions (except the NX-01 from the series Enterprise). The Japanese sure to love to blind-packaged stuff, and have rare, hard to find chase variants. In this case, the Enterprise E (from the last three movies) was the chase version so by itself it tended to sell for $20-$25 on eBay. Of course, that's my favorite version, but I didn't want to spend that much on it, so I was lucky to find someone selling a lot of 11 ships, which included all the Enterprise E and the other versions, for a very reasonable price.

I also discovered Corgi International was making a few die cast metal ships in a 6-8 inch scale. They released 3 in 2007, of which I picked up 2—the Original Enterprise, and the Enterprise-D. I hope they continue this line soon, particularly with my two favorite ships the Enterprise-E and the TNG era Romulan Warbird.

Another line I branched into this year was Spawn. It started in May-ish when I saw Spawn X from the first animated style series hanging on the pegs at Toys R Us. The animated Spawn figures are in a style similar to that of the animated Star Wars Clone Wars cartoons, I just couldn't pass it up, and it's been downhill from there. I collect mostly Spawn himself, but occasionally other characters are appeal to me enough for me to get them. I really like the look of Spawn, and McFarlane Toys does an amazing job sculpting the figures. Some of my favorite figures so far are Spawn VI (masked version in particular, but the unmasked is pretty good too) and Medieval Spawn III (both from Series 20), Issues 7 cover art, Raven HellSpawn 2, and of course the animated figures - particularly Raven Spawn and Commando Spawn.

While I'm talking about McFarlane Toys toys I also began and stopped collecting the Dragons line. I found the Eternal Dragon Clan 5 at TRU, and couldn't pass it by. That led to buying a couple older ones off eBay (one of which I've since sold, and getting another one from series 5—the Sorcerer Dragon Clan—and one from series 6—the Ice Dragon Clan. There is still one more I'd like to get, Ice Dragon Clan 7. The line has since ended with series 8, and McFarlane has moved on to a new fantasy line called Blade Masters (or something like that). There are a few figures I would like but I'm not really considering getting any soon.

As mentioned earlier, I started getting into DC Comics figures big time in 2007. Particularly, I'm a big fan of Batman, Superman, Supergirl and Green Lantern, but there are a few other characters I like as well. I learned that DC Direct makes a bunch of great DC figures, and they're really aimed at collectors, although I'm sure kids would enjoy some of them, but they're really a specialty marked company, so prices are a bit higher than the lines by Mattel. One of the great things about DC Direct is they often release figures based on particular comics, so figures are made in the style of the artists that worked on the comics.

My favorite line right now is the Superman/Batman line, based on the comic series of the same name. Most of the waves from that line are based on the artwork of Ed McGuinnes. You can see pictures of some of these on my wantlist of his figures. The second series is based on Michael Turner's art—which I love, his Batman is how I will always picture Batman now—and the recently announced series 6 will be based on the fifth major storyline from the S/B comics: Enemies Among Us.

Unfortunately, I didn't get into DC figures until the end of last year, so I've got a lot of catching up to do, but that's what eBay is for, and so far the best way (read cheapest) I've found to get them is to buy lots of several figures at once, as they usually go for a lower amount per figure as opposed to buying one figure at a time. 2008 will be heavily focused on DC figures, between the various DC Direct lines, and between Mattel's DC Universe Classics line, so you can expect to see several reviews of DC figures this year. Most of what I got last year was the end of Mattel's DC Super Heroes and getting all the good Green Lantern figures DC Direct has released.

I got into swords for a little bit at the beginning of the year, mostly due to learning that there were replicas of the swords from the Highlander TV series and movies. I'm not a big fan of the movies, but I quite enjoyed the TV series. In my extremely outdated series of posts on my overall collection I mention the Highlander figures and the Highlander Swords which I own, so I won't do more than point to those posts and say that I really like swords, those are fun to play with and are some of the favored items that I purchased last year.

I also got several Lord of the Rings items, mainly Gentle Giant items, but a couple SideShow/Weta items as well. Again, I talked about these item in a previous post so I will only say here that my favorite items is probably the large Balrog statue (by SS/W), which I got a rather good deal on, thanks to a friend of mine that lives in New Zealand, works for Weta Workshop and actually worked on the LOTR films. It is an excellent, highly detailed piece, and is quite possibly the best non-Star Wars item I own. The detail in the sculpt and paint is amazing, the thing looks almost real to me. I'll probably do a detailed review of it someday.

Well, that seems like enough for this post. I'll write up my Star Wars summary and post that as part two.

Episode III - Revenge of the Collection

Episode III: Revenge of the Collection

And only 5 months late! Not to mention that the pics are probably even older than that. But, I started this project a long time ago, and dagnabit I'm going to finish it, so I can move on and post the new pictures I took a couple of days ago. And instead of using tacky spoofs on Star Wars movie names (I just realized this should really be Episode 2.5 - Collection Wars) I'll get to come up with tacky spoofs on other movies - maybe I can use Batman (Collection, Collection Returns, Collection Forever, Collection and Robin? That doesn't work, but then again, I don't count that movie among the Batman movies either), or Lord of the Rings - Fellowship of the Collection, The Two Collections (The Collection Towers?), Return of the Collection (oh wait, I'll be using that one with the Star Wars theme). Apparently I need other, better ideas.

Previous posts in this series: Episode I, Episode II

Just get to the pictures already!

Okay, okay. Relax, sheesh. Take some Ritalin or something.

McQuarrie Concept Figures

2007 saw the release of some great Star Wars figures by Hasbro. Hasbro did a very collector oriented sub-line in the Basic Figure line with the Ralph McQuarrie Signature Series, which was basically figures done to match Ralph's great concept artwork. There were 12 or so figures released throughout the year, these are the four I got, and a special Boba Fett figure.

From the top, Boba Fett done in the animated coloring of his Holiday Special and Droids and Ewoks appearances, McQuarrie Boba Fett, Darth Vader, Stormtrooper, and Snowtrooper. Also, a neato sketch of Vader and the Heroes my sister-in-law got me for Christmas a few years back.

Some board games

Thankfully, I don't collect board games anymore, even if they are Star Wars related (I believe there are 2 more SW Monopoly versions due out this year). But I did for a little while. I was going to tell you what they all are, but you can just read the labels for yourselves (click the picture for a really big version that will make it easier).

Only he could be so bold

What do we have here? Ah yes, my Darth Vader shelf. SW Transformer Vader/Vader's TIE fighter and Action Fleet Vader's TIE are sitting atop the three Vader mini sabers by Master Replicas (Eps III, IV, and V, unfortunately they gave up the SW license before they could get the Ep VI saber out the door). The Gentle Giant ROTS Vader mini bust sits in front of that. Next to the display we've got one of Hasbro's Unleashed Vader figures (the cool Bespin version), Hasbro's Titanium Vader's TIE, the Hoth Unleashed Battle Pack Vader, next to that the chrome Titanium Vader's TIE which sits in front of a Hasbro Vader (looks like one of the 2006-2007 ROTS version) which is in front of the Riddell mini Vader Helmet (which disassembles!)

The next section has the other two of my favorite Vader collectibles, the Gentle Giant Animated Vader maquette, and the Medicom VCD SuperDeformed Vader. Also present are two mroe Hasbro Vader figures - the left is the ANH version, and the one with red eyes and blue highlights is from Hasbro's first wave of comic packs in 2007, from the old, old Marvel comics. We've also go the Tomy mini helmet with the dome removed (because it won't stay on), one of the GG Vader bust-ups, the Titanium Vader's Sith Starfighter (Ep 3 Jedi Starfighter repaint), and misc little Vader figures from Micro Machines playsets, or hologram pack-ins, etc.

More pictures of most of the items on this shelf can be seen in this post, and I wrote up a review of the Riddell Vader helmet on the Star Wars Action News Forums which I should reproduce here one of these days.

My Vader shelf has changed significantly since the picture was taken, in some ways for the better, in some for the worse. All of the regular Hasbro figures were sold, except for the comic version, as well as the Unleashed figure (which gave everybody a little more breathing room), also the GG animated maquette (cry!). I acquired the GG Chrome Vader mini bust (which looks real nice next to the Chrome TIE Fighter, though that may be leaving one of these days. To fill up the extra space one of my Spawn and Green Lantern figures moved in.

The Sith shall rise again!

Oh yeah, I just remembered/realized that the theme of this set of pictures was supposed to be The Sith. This shelf is where Count Dooku and Emperor Palpatine reside. Unfortunately, it got a little washed out by the flash. Starting in the back we've got the Acme Archives Dooku character key, the Hasbro Dooku figure (from the Sith Evolutions pack), the Dooku Unleashed figure), the Galactic Heroes Dooku, and the M&M Dooku. Starting off the Lord Sidious section is the Unleashed Emperor Palpatine with his excessively windblown robes and Sith Lightning, and a whole bunch of Senator/Emperor/Palpatine/Sidious Hasbro figures, which I'm not even going to attempt to name.

Of note is the GG Darth Sidious bust-up, from the duel with Yoda scene in Ep 3, which sits in front of the Medicom Kubrick Palpatine, and next to the GG Anakin bust-up from the same series. Also very noteworthy is the GG Palpatine mini bust, also from the Senate Duel scene. Unfortunately, when I cut back on spending money I didn't have, that was one of the first items I sold to help pay off credit card debt. Much sadness :(. However, it's also at the top of my list to re-acquire, once I have paid off my debts, and saved up the money to pay for it. It can also be seen that several clones share this shelf with the Sith, and since those sections have only changed for the more figures I will cover those in depth in a later post (hopefully there won't be so much light in the updated pictures. Suffice it to say that the orange troops are the clones that served with Obi-Wan Kenobi on Utapau, and the grey ones are those assigned to Coruscant.

Mess 'O Figures

And we come to the last picture, the Darth Maul display, which was quickly corrupted and filled in by other stuff that needed a place to sit. But it's all great stuff, so it deserves a mention. From left to right, back to front: Sideshow Anakin 12 inch figure (has since left my possession, the Hasbro Unleashed Darth Maul (also no longer in my possession), the SDCC exclusive 501st Legion Stormtrooper figure by Hasbro. Next row, the Sideshow/Weta Workshop Balrog Flame of Udun statue that my buddy in New Zealand that actually works for Weta hooked me up with - I love this statue, next is the Sideshow 12 inch Darth Maul figure (very awesome), my former Master Replicas Darth Maul FX saber (modded with removable blades, since sold), and the US version Gentle Giant Darth Maul statue.

Next, Ninja Spawn 2 right behind Mortal Kombat's Sub-Zero right behind GG Darth Malak mini bust (also no longer mine), Mandarin Spawn repaint behind Mandarin Spawn II behind Movie Spawn. GG Darth Maul mini bust (sold!) behind Hasbro's Holographic Maul with holo-projector (gone!) behind Necro Cop from Spawn Series 31. Master Replicas .45 scale Darth Maul saber holding up Nazi Kroenen from Hellboy, the Transformers Maul/Sith Interceptor, Titanium Interceptor (on eBay right now!), a Hasbro Maul, Holographic Maul (gone) and Medicom's VCD Shadow Stormtrooper. In front of the GG Maul Statue we have the Maul from the Evolutions pack (for sale now with the Transformer and Titanium), the Kotobukiya Darth Maul which I got for a steal of a deal 50% of the retail $100, the StarWarsShop.com exclusive Republic Commandos Maquette, and the Hasbro EE exclusive Republic Commandos figures. And probably a couple other odds 'n ends I missed or skipped over.

Thanks for reading, or at least looking at the pretty pictures. Come back again sometime, maybe I'll have part 4 up.

Episode II - Attack of the Collection

Hellboy

NECA's Nazi Kroenen figure

Sideshow's 12" Kroenen figure - I prefer his Nazi outfit, but the Sideshow version was available exclusively at SDCC (2003?) and I can't afford the eBay prices.

Highlander

I had the swords, so I thought I'd better get a couple of figures. These, again, are Sideshow's 12" figures - Connor MacLeod and Duncan MacLeod.

Lord of the Rings

The Gentle Giant Ringwraith mini bust.

Gentle Giant's Animated Saruman Maquette


The Sideshow/Weta Mouth of Sauron bust, Sideshow/Weta Scaled Morgul Lord's War Mask, Gentle Giant's Gandalf mini bust, and the miniature Ringwraith sword.-


And since it's been over two months since I took the pictures for this post, I've received a few more LOTR items, so I set them all up and snapped a few pictures.

The new additions are a couple more Gentle Giant mini busts: Saruman (with light-up Palantír), and the Balrog (with light-up mouth and fiery mane), as well as the Sideshow Weta Balrog Flame of Udun statue (which I got from a great friend of mine that lives in New Zealand and works for Weta Workshop).


And in an effort to show off the light-up features of Gandalf, Saruman, and the Balrog I took a picture in the dark. Unfortunately, the camera decided it was too dark to focus properly, so the nifty feature that compensates for my complete inability to press the shutter button without jerking the camera didn't work very well.

The Matrix

The first movie was really good; the second had lots of talking, but some cool action sequences (and the Twins were freaky-awesome); the third had even more talking (and it was even more boring talking than the second film, most the time), but again the action sequences were pretty cool. So I have a few Matrix collectibles.

Let's start with the bad ones first: the action figures by N2Toys (which I think is no longer in business). Honestly these figures aren't great, little articulation the sculpts are also not very close at all. Thankfully I got them for really cheap. I'll do a more in-depth review of these someday.

Next we have the good stuff: the Gentle Giant mini busts. The company's recent business decisions have been horrendous (from a consumer's point of view) but their product is still top-notch - at least, in the Star Wars and Lord of the Rings lines, I've heard the Harry Potter line is slipping, they'd better do a good job with the Halo mini busts. Anyway. I set these up so that generally you only see three of them, either Neo, Smith and Twin 1 (though I seem to not have taken a picture of that) or thw Twins and Smith. But if you move around a little, it's not too hard to see all four, but they start looking crowded that way.

Star Trek

Since I've always been interested in Star Trek I started actually watching it a few months ago and decided I should have some toys from it - particularly the various incarnations of the Enterprise.

I found a Japanese company called Furuta that makes small plastic 'model kits' of Trek vehicles and proceeded to buy all the Enterprise variations they offered, which at the time was everything except any shown in the series Enterprise - Classic Enterprise, Movie Refit, Enterprise A, B, C, D, E and a future variant of the D. They're about 3 to 4 inches long, and are the ships in the middle of the following picture.



I also purchased a few of the Halmark ornaments, I have the Enterprise D, E, Romulan Warbird (not pictured) and the Classic Enterprise on the base, also in the middle of the above pic next to the Furuta ships.

Additionally, this year Corgi began making Die-cast Enterprise vehicle. At this time only three have been released (to my knowledge) - the Klingon Warbird (as seen in Star Trek IV) the Classic Enterprise, and the Enterprise D, of which I have the two Enterprises. The Classic Enterprise is actually the best, because it is all metal and has a good heft to it. They're quite well detailed, and a nice 6 inch size, not scaled to each other, unfortunately. The disc section of the Enterprise D is plastic however, but it still looks pretty cool. They can be seen in the picture above on the left, the D partly hidden behind the Gentle Giant Animated Shadow Stormtrooper maquette.

Planned for next year are a Romulan Warbird (which I'll definitely get - it's one of my favorite vehicles designs ever), the Reliant (from Star Trek II) and I think the Defiant. I hope they eventually release all the Enterprise variants as I'd love to have them all in a bigger size - particularly the E and A.

Venom

And finally, I was initially very impressed with Spiderman 3, having always been a fan of Venom (without actually reading any comics, or knowing much about him) and really liking how he was done in the movie I picked up a couple Venom items - the Walmart exclusive Venom figure that was actually black instead of purple, the Gentle Giant Venom mini bust (the one on the right) and the even more cooler-er Sideshow Venom mini bust.


Well, that's all for this Episode.

I'd like to try to post at least twice a month, which could get Episode 3 up before the end of this month, and Episodes 4 and 5 before Christmas. However, I'm going to start a little series posting pictures of the figures/items I display at work, since I tend to rotate the figures ever 2 or 3 weeks, and I try to have some vague theme to the display, so I may start interspersing those posts with these, which will delay the end of this 6 part journey - not that it matters, since few people (if anyone) reads this. But it's mostly for my benefit, so I have pictures of my collection, so in an effort to please myself and have pictures to show to people when they ask about my collection, I'm going to try to be more regular about posting here. I may even have to take drastic measures and not buy new things unless I've posted twice in the previous month.

To be continued...