I never thought I’d say this, but I own a doll just like a little girl. Yeah, I know the whole “action figures” are really dolls business jerks throw at toy collectors, but this time I’ve really gone and done it. I bought a doll and I lay the blame on Tonner Dolls who were at this year’s Chicago Comic Con. If they hadn’t of been there, I’d still be happily doll free.
Poe’s note: You may have noticed I’ve started using larger photos in my reviews. I thought people might enjoy the higher resolution and detail, but if they’re proving to take too long to load or see all at once on your screen, please let me know in the comments.
Spend any time reading various toy-related blogs and forums and you encounter a lot of complaining, nitpicking and so forth. It’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture: we finally got He-Ro! (Oh, and movie-based Ghostbusters figures.)
In 1987, Mattel’s Masters of the Universe, once master of the action figure boys’ toys aisle, was on its last legs (due as much to corporate mismanagement as any true waning of popularity). Mattel’s designers tried to inject some life back into the brand with the Powers of Grayskull concept, set in a prehistoric “Pre-Eternia” (nicknamed Preternia by fans) long before He-Man’s time, when dinosaurs roamed the earth and evil stalked the land in the form of the Snake Men.
Some of the Powers of Grayskull toys made it into stores, such as the incredibly awesome Tyrantisaurus Rex (which I owned and, later, painted red to make it into Devil Dinosaur…man, I wish I still had that thing), but none of the human figures made it to retail, including the main character, He-Ro. However, photos of these figures did appear in product catalogs, which eventually made the rounds among fans, and thus He-Ro passed into MOTU legendry.
According to the licensing guide for Powers of Grayskull, He-Ro’s real name was originally “Gray,” and as a teenager he was granted mysterious sorcerous abilities after an adventure in a cave (paging Dr. Freud!). There was also some hints among the various materials and from interviews with designers that He-Ro was intended to be He-Man’s ancestor, a role that was changed to King Grayskull in the 2002 cartoon series.
The brand managers at Mattel are slowly developing a new canon for Masters of the Universe Classics, incorporating bits and pieces from every incarnation of MOTU to date. To make his story fit–particularly when the mythos (muthos?) incorporates the very similar King Grayskull–they created a very different bio for He-Ro. (more…)
Man, just can’t keep up today…Mattel has posted in-package photos of the next Walmart wave on their Facebook page, along with assurances that Walmart has ordered more this time around.
They’re calling it Wave 9 for some reason…maybe it was supposed to hit stores in force before the Chemo wave?
Before I forget, ToyFare #146 is out in stores this week, featuring an interview by yours truly with the head of Star Wars (non-figure) licensing at Lucas Licensing, Chris Spitale. It’s a Star Wars-themed issue. (more…)
While at the recent Wizard run Chicago Comic Con I went on a sort of frenzied spree buying old Playmates Star Trek figures. There were tons of them for five bucks or less, so I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to finally check out these figures after missing all of them when they were originally released. A few of the figures came with customer response cards from Playmates, so I did what any rational person would do. I filled out one of the nearly ten year old surveys. After answering questions about my birth date and address I filled out the rest of the card. Here’s what I put:
In 2006 I was checking out a forum for writers and saw a post from one of the founders saying that they were starting a blogging network and needed writers. I decided to check out what was available and I saw that there was a toy collecting blog up for grabs. At that time they wanted ten posts a week and I wondered if I could actually write that much about toys on a consistent basis. Nearly three years later and after over a thousand posts, Toy Bender is done.
Blue Canoe Stew, the poster at RTM who’s been pretty accurate with his DCUC leaks so far, says the 2010 SDCC DCUC exclusive will be Plastic Man:
Plasticman with various attachments and shapes that wouldn’t normally fit on a single figure card. He’ll be the last figure needed to complete Mattel’s re-making of the SUPER POWERS
collection. (The others will come in waves announced prior to Comic Con).
Is he right? We’ll find out next April.
Joe Acevedo’s CustomCon23 continues today. Yesterday I posted about MsBig’s Dollhouse figures. Today, along with Sillof’s awesome “realistic” interpretation of Marvel teams (today’s is the Outsiders, who I think are the Defenders but I’m not sure) and other neat customs, there’s this professional-looking Matrix Minimates line by Luke Porter of the Minimate Factory.
On a side note, who else had a some of those N2 Toys Matrix figures? Those actually weren’t half-bad for a young company; problem is, that turned out to be their high point. God, that was ten years ago–I feel old.
