Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

Chat about stuff other than Transformers.
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Denyer
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

Post by Denyer »

Warcry wrote: Sun Jan 08, 2023 4:47 pmI look forward to seeing how yours looks!
It's a few posts back if you didn't spot it at the time, BTW. Still quite happy with that Avengers lineup although have split them out into different displays now.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Anime Heroes Naruto Shippuden Kakashi Hatake.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Anime Heroes Naruto Shippuden Sasuke Uchiha.

Marvel Legends Eternals Kro - Bought from a Marketplace seller
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Marvel Legends Spider-Man: No Way Home Marvel's Armadillo BAF:
Integrated Suit Spider-Man (MCU)
Black And Gold Suit Spider-Man (MCU)
Doctor Strange (MCU)
J. Jonah Jameson (MCU)
Miles Morales Spider-Man (Gamerverse)
Morlun (Comics)
Shriek (Comics)

Bought all of these through different retailers and online stores.

Marvel Legends Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness Defender Strange.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Marvel Legends Retro Dark Pheonix.

Marvel Legends Retro Apocalypse.

The above were bought from Amazon during a sale.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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So while D&D isn't really my thing - what can I say? I prefer dystopian transhumanism to spellbooks and furry underwear - Hasbro's started putting out 'Dicelings', 20 sided die about the size of a golf ball, and each one turns into a critter from Honor Among Thieves. Well, except for the Beholder. If that showed up in the movie, I didn't see it. They're kind of neat, and I'd get the white Owlbear from the movie, but $14 is pushing it for the regular versions, and $27 is way too much.

And if it wasn't for the extra legs and the teeth at the ends of the tentacles, I could almost pass this off as a book-version of Mugi......
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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There's a brown version of the owlbear in a later wave that's less monochromatic. Not really intending to get more dicelings apart from the red dragon but might be tempted by the mimic treasure chest.

https://geekstronomy.com/?p=34744

They're all quite good iconic picks.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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marvel Legends X-Men Bonebreaker BAF wave:
Heat Claws Wolverine
Siryn
Sabretooth
Maggott
Darwin
Havok
Vulcan
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Anime Heroes Naruto Shippuden Naruto Uzumaki - Probably won't go too deep with this line, maybe just Team 7 and their relatives.

LEGO Star Wars 75347 TIE Bomber - Price-matched Targets discounted price with K-Mart. I've been waiting years to release another system-scale Tie Bomber.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Marvel Legends Iron Man Ursa Major BAF wave:
Modular Iron Man
Stealth Iron Man
Hologram Iron Man
Ironheart
Ultron
Vault Guardsman
Darkstar

Bought some of these from TK Maxx, others from Amazon and the rest from Popcultcha

Marvel Legends The Punisher with Motorcycle - Found at TK Maxx, that discount store has been stocking some surprising action figures that are either out of stock elsewhere or exclusive to other retailers.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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My son has become a huge TMNT fan over the last couple months, and that's gotten me back into the franchise as well.

Reissue 90s Party Wagon

We found a bunch of my old TMNT toys when we were cleaning out my parents' house after they died, enough that my son immediately had a full lineup of Turtles and a decent supporting cast (albeit, somewhat the worse for wear) to play with when he decided that he loved the franchise. But one thing we didn't find were any of the old vehicles and playsets. It was pure happenstance that we stumbled on this at Walmart during a shopping trip right after he pulled the old Turtles out. I had one as a kid and loved it, and since my son and I share almost zero taste in toys I just figured that he wouldn't have any interest in it at all. But in fact, he's spent most of the last 36 hours zipping it around and driving it over "Foot Soldiers" that he's made out of Play-Doh. :lol: So I guess it's his now instead of mine, but I'm just happy that we've finally figured out some toys that we both think are cool.


I've also tried to wrap my head around into the modern Turtle figure market. To be perfectly honest I'm finding the entire thing opaque, confusing and not very consumer-friendly. I feel like there are about five different companies making Turtles merch in ten different styles, and even after spending some time trying to decipher it over the last few weeks I'm still not sure who's made what when, or how available anything aside from the latest waves are. But I've picked up a few things and my opinions are pretty mixed so far.

NECA TMNT Adventures Slash

I know that I watched the Turtles show a lot for at least a year or so when I was a kid, but I honestly have to say that it didn't make that much of an impression. I remembered most of the "season five" Transformers episodes, the movie and all the home-video episodes that I rented as a kid. Batman TAS, X-Men, some of Thundercats, various older shows like Looney-Tunes...but when I tried to watch a bit of Turtles a decade or so ago I realized that I didn't remember it at all. The toys, the movies and the video games? Those are permanently imprinted on my brain. But when I think "Turtles", the first thing that comes to mind for me are the Adventures comics. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only person who remembers them, but it turns out there's enough of us that NECA thinks we can support an entire sub-line.

The natural choice would be to kick it off with a set of Turtles, but TBH there are so many Turtles that I don't think that would have caught as many eyes as what they actually did. Although to be fair, they did start with a turtle...

Image

Oh yes.

The visual design for TMNT was all over the place in the 80s and 90s, even more so than Transformers in that same period. Slash has probably four different designs, but this one has always been my favourite simply because, well, he actually has a personality in these comics. And NECA captures him perfectly.

Image

The sculpting on this figure is amazing. The head sculpt looks like it jumped right off of the page. The 90s comic-print shading is subtle enough that it doesn't look weird on a 3-D object, too, which is something that comic/cartoon-accurate figures from all sorts of companies seem to struggle with. It's probably been half a decade since I bought a non-transforming action figure that looked this cool.

The articulation doesn't quite keep up with the sculpt and paint. Slash has a lot of joints but he's also a huge chunk of turtle, and the bulky torso and limbs definitely hamper his range of motion. I wish he could move just a bit more, but everything else about the figure is cool enough that it doesn't bring me down.

It looks like the second and third entries in this line were Jagwar and Dreadmon. I think it's pretty likely that I pick those dudes up too.

Playmates Ninja Elite Triceraton

On the other hand, this toy does nothing to convince me to keep following the Playmates stuff.

I had the original Triceraton figure when I was a kid. In fact, it was one of the figures that we found when my son started going through boxes looking for Turtles stuff! That was a figure with a ton of personality, all hulking and angry and aggressive. This one, on the other hand? It just doesn't capture the same spark.

Image

It's basically unposeable below the waist, which doesn't help. It has joints, but the hips barely move so it really doesn't matter that he's got double knees or decent ankles. The arms move better, but the elbows look weirdly unnatural when you pose him. And the head sculpt has nothing on the vintage figure...it looks more derpy than intimidating.

The last set of collector-targeted Turtles from Playmates (the Classic Collection ones that are guest-starring in both of my pics) felt a little bit dated a decade ago when they came out. But they were also the only accessible option for TMNT figures at the time, so they could get away with it. But the game has changed in the intervening years, fans are spoiled with options, and this figure actually feels even more dated than the ones from a decade ago. I wouldn't recommend it at all.

I have a few other figures en route from a few other companies...hopefully those ones are more Slash than Triceraton.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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I've never been hugely into Turtles, but loved reading all that! I hadn't realised how mad the current marketing of Turtles stuff is. I really liked hearing how you and your son have a toyline you're both into. That;s cool :)

I keep forgetting to post stuff in here. I bought Spider-Gwen from upcoming Across The Spider-Verse Marvel Legends line. I really like the packaging (!) and haven't opened the figure yet, but she looks really neat. I'm glad they gave her unmasked face a smile, rather than the expressionless face the product shots on the back show. Comes with a masked head and interchangeable thwipping hands and looks great. All these figures do, so I may pick up some more at some point.

I also bought some Matchbox die-cast toy cars Poundland were clearing through. It's easy to see why Matchbox has lost ground to the thrusting and aggressive Hot Wheels, and it doesn't seem to get the same love from Mattel Hot Wheels does. It's cosy, real world vehicles can't really compete with their brash and bright coloured vehicles. Case in point; the Matchbox 1971 MGB GT Coupe. A nice bit of British car design; but it looks quite sedate in it's realistic dark green. Still, there's something to be said for having less mental and more realistic vehicles in this scale. I particularly like the four I got with 'Moving Parts' (they have opening doors or boots), which are very nice. Less so the strange things the line does like a speed control trailer, which seems an odd thing to sell on it's own with no vehicle to tow it. Picking these up reminded me I don't have my mailaway Frosties Pontiac, so picked one up off eBay. I'd kept a version of this and was disappointed it seemed to have got lost when I moved, so it's nice to have it again. I was half expecting it to cost a fair few quid, as these mailaway things usually do, but no they were produced in such numbers it's no more expensive than any other Matchbox Superfast from the 1980s. Still grrreat though (Frosties joke).

I can't remember if I posted about these before (probably did), but I managed to pick up a complete set of Matchbox's Parasites line. Something I always thought looked cool, but is very much on the Gobots end of transforming robot lines from the 1980s. The gimmick here is that the alien creatures are inhabiting the shells of vehicles (a bit like pretenders). They're really bizarre and I love all six of them. Picking these up lead me to get a couple of Road Blasters too, but they're quite hard to come by for less than £30. I lucked out on two for way less, but it seems these were well loved by the folks that did pick these up in the '80s, as loose complete versions are very hard to find and what loose ones there are in hideous states and usually missing all their accessories, which is the fun of them - a kind of M.A.S.K./ Mad Max mash up.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Ooh! Speaking of Hot Wheels, I got a 5 pack of Batman themed vehicles. They're neat but a bit silly - the made up Muscle Bound and '49 Merc have Robin and Batgirl's likenesses plastered all over them. The '11 Dodge Charger makes for a nice beefy GCPD car and there's the ever excellent '66 Batmobile there too - this time with added blue bits. Final vehicle is The Bat from the Nolan films. Just a personal thing, but I've never been a fan of toy aircraft. Mainly because you can't whizz them along a track racing them against other vehicles.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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I don't get who the audiences for all of the crossover two-packs of Turtles are, but they keep appearing so presumably there's a hardcore market. Apparently there's a MOTU/Turtles crossover line coming. I got the four main characters from whatever large and articulated retro line was current in TRU at the time (after somewhat overpaying for Bebop and Rocksteady because they were in a display cabinet in a collectibles shop and discovering the line existed) but apart from maybe being persuadable towards realistically priced options for Splinter/April/Shredder that's kind of enough TMNT personally.
Matchbox's Parasites
I had the green snake, but not sure if it's still knocking around here. I think at the time it was as much the novelty of having a van that could stand in for the A-Team one. RoadBlasters might have had a TV commercial at some point, they do look a bit familiar... same sort of era as Ring Raiders?

It's weird how the Spider-Man supporting/next-gen cast are more interesting than the main players, and by weird I mean that Marvel's done everything in its power to reset button any kind of stability with decades of increasingly bizarre and desperate narrative choices to the point the PP/MJ/AM core doesn't seem worth following.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Skyquake87 wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 9:35 am I've never been hugely into Turtles, but loved reading all that! I hadn't realised how mad the current marketing of Turtles stuff is. I really liked hearing how you and your son have a toyline you're both into. That;s cool :)
It shocked me TBH, he's shown very little interest in Transformers or superhero figures, even when his cousins visit and go nuts playing with the stuff. He actually fell in love with Turtles pretty much immediately when he saw my wife and I playing Turtles in Time, and got into the toys after the video games had hooked him. Which I guess is what the games were for but it's funny that they're still doing it 30 years after release.

Before now he's been very much into vehicles...he would absolutely dive into the Matchbox stuff you posted about. BTW, what's the quality like on Matchbox nowadays? Hot Wheels stuff doesn't really impress for the price, but I'm not sure if the alternatives are any better.
Denyer wrote: Mon May 08, 2023 2:04 pm I don't get who the audiences for all of the crossover two-packs of Turtles are, but they keep appearing so presumably there's a hardcore market. Apparently there's a MOTU/Turtles crossover line coming. I got the four main characters from whatever large and articulated retro line was current in TRU at the time (after somewhat overpaying for Bebop and Rocksteady because they were in a display cabinet in a collectibles shop and discovering the line existed) but apart from maybe being persuadable towards realistically priced options for Splinter/April/Shredder that's kind of enough TMNT personally.
The two-packs are baffling. Who in the world is asking for TMNT/Stranger Things crossover? I guess it just goes to prove that a lot of people are happy to pay for two figures just to get the one they want.

I had absolute scads of TMNT toys as a kid and I have nostalgia for a lot of the designs, though nowhere near as much as Transformers, or even Batman or X-Men. I'd probably have been a much more active TMNT collector if there'd been more retail availability for stuff other than the same rehashed Playmates "classic" figures that have been reappearing for the last decade (the ones in my post above, and I'd guess probably the ones you have has well?). In the current marketplace, though, where most of the interesting stuff is exclusive to hobby shops or online retailers? I feel like I'll be a lot more selective.

I got a couple more Turtles figures in today...from two more totally different companies.

Image

Leo is the Super 7 Ultimates Leonardo. The remit for that line is to basically remake the original toys, detail for detail, but with more modern articulation. And it certainly is that, though I'd have expected a line that's so dedicated to the old toys to be more, well, toylike. Leo isn't particularly poseable and the joints feel more fragile than I'd like. The figure came with a hip that was completely frozen in place, and while I'll happily use excessive force on a Hasbro figure when that happens, the joints are so delicate on this toy that I had to very carefully, very slowly work on it with a blow dryer and some hopefully non-destructive lubricants. So that didn't make a great first impression, even though I did manage to get it moving eventually.

It comes with a ton of accessories, including a bunch of swappable hands, a more comic-styled head, and two sets of the original Leonardo's gear (a modern, painted set and an old-school browny-orange set still on the sprue). I can't imagine I'll ever do anything with the 90s-style equipment but it's a nice touch.

It's a nice conversation piece of a figure, I like it and I'm glad I got one. But it isn't doing much to convince me that I need more than one of them, either. It definitely doesn't feel like it's worth the premium that these things go for. And that's too bad, honestly...the line has remade a few of my absolute favourite childhood figures (Samurai Leo, Space Cadet Raph and Metalhead) and I was kind of hoping that Leo would be good enough that it would feel "worth it" to track them down. I don't think I'd pay full retail price for another of these, though if I found them marked down I'd be tempted.

Krang comes from the the "BST AXN" line from Loyal Subjects. I'm really not sure who the target market for this stuff is...the figures are small and basic enough that you'd assume they're for kids, but the prices are pretty high for that and the designs are very retro. There's a few options for a Krang walker floating around out there, all of which are pretty basic since the design is just a set of legs with a brain riding it. This one seemed cute, so I got it. Most of the Turtles fandom seems to aggressively hate it for not being "accurate" to something, but I think it's fine. It has legs, it does walking poses. You can plug the tentacles in at different angles to make it look like he's gesturing. And you can pop the brain out and attach a couple of (different) articulated tentacles if you want to have Krang scuttling around on his lonesome, which is how I mostly think of him. I'm glad I remember the character from Adventures and not the cartoon, so I won't feel compelled to try and find a version of the ugly android body!
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Dragon Stars Vegeta (Super Hero) - Bought from Big W.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Dragon Stars Gamma 2 (Super Hero) - Bought from Big W.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Power Rangers Lightning Collection In Space Phantom Ranger - Found at TK Maxx.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Not sure if this'll show as Imgur have apparently analysed it as possibly containing adult or erotic imagery (because it contains more than two square millimetres of skin tone?)

Got two out of the three of the Excalibur box set, and at some stage if I get another airbrush might have a go at the orange costume which is the Davis/Delano pre-Excalibur Meggan look I remember. Not the original fists on Brian (yay for Masterverse MOTU) and his knees also needed painting to not look weird.

He did come with the titular sword, so I decided to have a go at a cheap and cheerful costumed Faiza Hussain until Marvel Legends gets that far. Not in scale with anything because the body's a clearance Sprite (Eternals didn't do very well, did it?) I didn't realise was quite that small from the photo. Probably need to matt down some of the colours a bit more, but happy enough with the overall effect. There's implicitly a helmet under the repurposed Skeletor cowl.

Image
https://i.imgur.com/Zyot8Dt.jpeg
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