Looks like retailers have started receiving the first shipments of the Four Horsemen-sculpted DC Universe Classics line. This is my most anticipated line since comic Hellboy, or perhaps even the revamped Masters of the Universe.
You can click on the pic below to order a six-figure case.
Paul from ToyBender has very kindly done a write-up on PoA. There’s nothing like free publicity, even if he does suggest that I support feeding babies to zombies–which I totally don’t!
…anymore.
This is amazing. I’m green (and red) with envy.
Back when Santa Jack was first released, I bought one. Its right leg broke out of the package, so I returned it to the comic shop and got a replacement–whose right leg broke out of the package.
I hate gluing figures, so I just chalked it up to bad luck and gave the figure away for customizing scrap. But this year, I found myself wanting another SJ and went looking for him online.
To my surprise, I discovered him for sale at the incredibly cheap price of $3.25 at Sci-Fi Genre. So for a total of $12, including shipping–the price of one of these figures at retail–I picked up both the first and second versions of Santa Jack. If you’ve been holding off on the NBX figures, check out the sale at SFG.
This is certainly an appropriate topic right now…there’s about seven inches of snow piled up outside my window.
I’ve already mentioned my love of Rankin-Bass Christmas specials. One of those specials is The Year Without a Santa Claus.
Oddly enough, I didn’t watch this special very often when I was growing up. My favorites were Rudolph and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town. I would catch Year once in a while, along with another obscure favorite, The Life & Adventures of Santa Claus, which was based on a novel by Wizard of Oz author L. Frank Baum. (Sadly, this last has yet to be released on DVD.)
In my early years of college, while searching for holiday-themed websites (back when websites were still something of a novelty), I came across The Heat Miser’s Hot Spot. Since I preferred the Snow Miser to the Heat Miser, I was a bit indignant that Snowy had no website of his own, and took it upon myself to create one.
That was about seven years ago. That website is still up. It’s gone through various incarnations–it started on my old undergraduate website, had its own URL for a while, and now resides as a sub-site of this one–but I’ve never taken it down.
It was originally called The Snow Miser’s Big Chill, to contrast with the Heat Miser’s Hot Spot, until I finally read a plot summary of the movie The Big Chill and discovered that it was a euphemism for death. Thinking quickly, I came up with the far more clever title The Snow Miser’s Cooler.
Since I created the website, The Year Without a Santa Claus has become one of my holiday staples. It still rates behind Rudolph and Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, mostly because I don’t find the story that compelling–the Misers are the best part. But that website has been a perennially popular holiday destination for thousands of people each year. I’ve yet to have any other part of my website be quite as popular as that one, which still looks like it was made in Notepad in 1999 (which it was, though I update it once a year or so).
In 2000, I held the second “Rumble in the Claymation Jungle.” The first was held by POFToo! creator Paul Levesque (which may or may not have been his real name…) and featured a battle between the Bumble and the Winter Warlock. Mine pitted–you guessed it–the Snow Miser vs. the Heat Miser. Ol’ Hothead won by 3, 193 to 190. In a fake CNN article I wrote about the event, this was probably my favorite paragraph:
In addition to the 383 votes cast for the Snow and Heat Misers, there were 5 votes claiming that neither Miser would win in a fight, 1 vote for their mother, Mother Nature, 1 vote for Jesus Christ, and a vote by ‘Aquaman’ for himself, who said, “As a…JLA member, I can tell you that my power to communicate with fishes would overpower these two.”
I’d like to do a third Rumble, but frankly, I’m not sure there are any badass characters left. Maybe I should think outside the box and do, say, the California Raisins (they had a Christmas special) vs. Jack Skellington?
To make this post more on-topic–as I mentioned before, The Year Without a Santa Claus was treated to an entire toy line by the now-defunct Palisades Toys a few years back. Later, NECA bought the molds, and you can now buy YWASC figures at pop culture shops like Newbury Comics and Time and Space Toys–including, of course, the Snow and Heat Miser. If you’re curious about the figures, you can read this review by Michael Crawford.
While you’ll have to pick up ToyFare #126 for photos of the whole line, the Four Horsemen have posted some photos (including a scale comparison of Nightwing and Robin) on their Myspace page. Check ’em out!
All the figures look great, but I am particularly psyched for that Robin figure. The new suit is much cooler than the old one, in my opinion.
UPDATE: Looks like that was a true sneak peek, since the pics have been taken down. But you can still see the whole line-up by picking up ToyFare tomorrow! It’s the one with the Iron Man cover.
My review of Hasbro’s Hydra Soldier has been posted over on OAFE.
My fiancee (a.k.a. Mrs. Ghostal-To-Be–MG2B for now) got me an early Christmas present this week. It was early by request; I find that Christmas-themed gifts are best enjoyed during the actual Christmas season. Nothing’s more anticlimactic than, say, receiving the most awesome Christmas ornament ever on the very day you don’t really need it anymore. But we’ll get to that in a moment…
While I’ve collected action figures me entire life, it was only when I became too old enough to do so without having to call myself a “collector” that the industry started making the action figures I wanted as a kid. True, I did get the Kenner Robocop and the Mattel Simpsons lines in 1988 and 1990, respectively, but it wasn’t until 1992 that the first mainstream Alien and Predator figures hit stores. Later years would bring Freddy, Jason, Ash from Army of Darkness, Cthulhu, the Lord of the Rings and even the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles into figure form. I could fill up several entries with my comments on this phenomenon, whereby any and all things I loved as a child have been turned into toys. But nowhere have I been more surprised than by the wealth of Christmas-themed action figures we have been blessed with.
I grew up on all those Rankin-Bass Christmas specials. About ten years ago, a company called Memory Lane put out action figures based on the best of them all, Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. The figures were quite good, and have since become perennial sellers thanks to the special’s long-lived popularity. That Rudolph could get toys wasn’t in and of itself so surprising; kids of every generation since the 1960s have loved it.
But action figures of the Snow Miser and the Heat Miser from The Year Without a Santa Claus? Action figures from Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town, including my all-time favorite Rankin-Bass character, the Winter Warlock? Figures of the main cast from A Christmas Story, including a 5″ Ralphie with his Daisy Rider rifle?
Most of the Rankin-Bass figures have been produced as part of a line called Memory Lane, which has passed through several companies’ hands at this point and now seems to be under the control of Round 2, who don’t seem to have a website as far as I can google. However, the Year Without a Santa Claus and Christmas Story figures were released by NECA (though I think the YWSC figures were created by some other company the first time around and then re-released by NECA last year…can’t remember for sure).
The latest addition my Rankin-Bass action figure collection is Frosty, who arrives courtesy of the aforementioned Round 2. I’ll be reviewing Frosty for OAFE soon, so I’ll skip a lengthy discussion of him and move on to the other Snowman action figure I got this year–the Snowman from McFarlane Toys’ Twisted Xmas line.
While my interest in most of McFarlane Toys’ product waned in the early 2000s when they stopped making action figures with any real articulation (thus making them just “figures” really), occasionally they still manage to grab my attention with something. I was pretty excited when I first heard about the Twisted Xmas concept–monstrous versions of classic Christmas characters sounded like a great contrast to all the cute Rankin-Bass Christmas toys that had flooded the market.
Unfortunately, I think the final results are a bit lacking in imagination. The squat, masked Santa looks an awful lot like Todd McFarlane’s own “Clown” character from the Spawn comic, and he’s also similar to the Wizard from the earlier Twisted Land of Oz series. The bipedal Rudolph monster is very odd-looking, the Elves are uncomfortably grotesque, and Jack Frost is annoyingly out-of-scale (he’s the same size as the rest of the figures, but the little houses on the display base suggest he’s supposed to be Godzilla-sized).
The Mrs. Claus figure, while being yet another example of the sexism rampant in the comic book and action figure industry, looks quite good and will probably be the most popular figure in the line, since it will probably get picked up by many people who don’t usually buy action figures (I can see it in a lot of Yankee swaps).
But the only figure that really interested me was the Snowman. Now this is the kind of figure I’d envisioned for this line: a hideous perversion of a Christmas staple that sticks to the traditional elements of said character, but exaggerates them into the grotesque. For example, the Snowman has the familiar top-hat, carrot-nose, and two eyes made out of coal; but the hat is ragged and twisted (no doubt a product of the Buddy Ebsen Hat Distressing Corporation), the carrot is bent and the coal eyes are glaring with hate and rage. Then there are the arms–six wretched branches ending in clawed fingers.
When it comes to sculpting and paint applications, few companies can beat McFarlane, and the Snowman is yet another example of McToys’s fine work. The arms have a sculpt, texture and paint that makes them look and feel like real branches; the hat is filthy, and the carrot has just the right touch of orange. Unlike the Rudolph figure, the gigantic mouth makes sense here–he’s made from snow, after all, and so one can expect a certain degree of viscous mutability. The rows upon rows of icicle-teeth are a nice touch, too.
This is one of Calvin’s snow goons come to horrific life.
But my favorite part has to be the fact that the Snowman appears to have been made entirely from snow that’s been piled up in one corner of a mall parking lot for weeks, turning black as it’s covered with layer after layer of soot, exhaust, and grime.
The one major misstep with the figure is that it’s molded from a kind of translucent white plastic, making it seem a little too much like a toy. I think it would have been wiser to go with a dirty white color and then shade from there, but the translucence does lend a sense of
“iciness” to the sculpt.
While the Rankin-Bass action figures are great, it’s refreshing to get such a creepy take on an old Christmas standby. McFarlane Toys has set up an entire Web site devoted to the line, featuring wallpapers, paper ornament templates, e-cards and even stories about the characters. I like the way the Web site (and the packaging) contrasts the traditional cutesy view of these characters to their McFarlanized counterparts.
The best thing about the Snowman is that unlike most of the figures in the line, he’s not necessarily Christmas-specific–meaning he can sit out on my shelves throughout the winter without seeming out-of-place.
You can read reviews of the other Twisted Xmas figures over at OAFE or Michael Crawford’s site.
Now, what I’d love to see next from McFarlane is a Monsters line based around A Christmas Carol. In a later post, I’ll describe what I think such a line might look like.
So, after being so disappointed by the Hydra Soldier, it was a bit of a surprise to be so…surprised by the Silver Surfer, part of Hasbro’s “Marvel Legends: Fantastic Four” wave, which features comic-inspired versions of the recent movie stars.
To help limit my spending, I’ve tried to buy only Marvel Legends versions of figures I owned as a kid. I owned Toy Biz’s first Silver Surfer (whom I later painted into a custom Constrictor), as well as the original Marvel Legends version from a few years ago. I was 
disappointed by that figure–it had a strange, too-alien facial sculpt, massive shoulders, gawky articulation, and was nearly impossible to pose on his board.
While Hasbro hasn’t pleased too many collectors with their Marvel Legends offerings, this is one case where they’ve improved on Toy Biz’s work. Unlike the Hydra Soldier, Norin Radd features the full range of articulation that ML fans are used to, including a bicep swivels and double-pin joints at the elbows and knees.
What’s more, I like the sculpt. It’s much more sleek and streamlined than Toy Biz’s previous offering, and actually resembles Jack Kirby’s art. The facial sculpt actually looks like a face, though there is one problem: he has a wee noggin! It definitely seems to be a bit too small for his body. I can’t help wondering if perhaps it’s the head of the 5″ Surfer from the movie line stuck on a 6″ body.
The paint is also good, though it’s hard to screw up a simple silver finish. Still, I like the choice of silver paint more than the less reflective silver used on the earlier ML version.
Of course, that first Legends Surfer had a few touches this one doesn’t. Rather than
pegholes in the feet, it had magnets, allowing the figure to stand on his surfboard (which had a metal plate inside) in any conceivable position. It also came with a clear stand and a base, so you could actually put the Surfer in the air. And finally, it came with one of the greatest accessories of all: Howard the Duck.
Hasbro’s Surfer only comes with his surfboard, and it has a big ugly peg on it for his foot. However, I like the surfboard itself better than the Toy Biz one. It’s very long and narrow, and looks like it might actually be a cosmic form of transportation rather than a shined-up boogie board. The board is done in chrome to mirror-reflectiveness, which looks really cool (although it’s prone to fingerprints).
While the Hydra Soldier could have been a lot better, I’m satisfied with the Surfer. He looks great with my BAF Galactus.
NECA has updated their website with the first official pic of Leonardo with the updated paint application.
In 2008, NECA presents collectibles from one of the most popular comic book properties of all time: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. This spring, Series 1 of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Action Figures hits stores. Based on the original Mirage Studios comic created by Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, NECA’s new action figures maintain the gritty look comic book fans fell in love with over twenty years ago. Today, NECAonline presents the first figure in this highly anticipated new license: Leonardo! The leader of the Turtles, Leonardo has two deadly katana, multiple points of articulation, and his original red facemask. In the coming weeks, NECA will be releasing details, photos, and more of the entire Series 1 line-up. For now, check out our first official image of Leonardo and keep checking back at NECAonline for the latest updates on Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles collectibles and more!
My opinion? Looks awesome.
