Good lord, that title sucks.

Anyway, you may recall my recently plugging yatkuu‘s “Shaun of the Dead” Lego project on Lego’s Cuuso website. Well, Simon Pegg mentioned the project on Conan the other night (video) and the project’s support has exploded.

Now, I have no idea how the rights issues are going to be resolved around this sort of thing – or whether Lego would even be willing to create a set based on an R-rated movie, no matter how popular it is. But it seems we’re closer than ever before to a Shaun of the Dead Lego set, which, honestly, is pretty amazing.

If you want to add your support the project, head over to the website.

Before we go further, I’d like to issue my usual reminder that this is my blog and sometimes I’m going to post about stuff that I like, but I realize may not be of interest to all/most Poesters.

So Tamashii, whose relationship to Bandai I’ve never quite sussed out by they seem to be some sort of Japanese corporate arm or subsidiary of them, is having its third annual “Tamashii Features” even in which they reveal a lot of the new products for the coming year. Three items caught my attention. Here they are, in order of least to most interest:

Super Robot Chogokin Daizujin

This is Super Robot Chogokin Daizujin, a super-articulated version of what many of you may know better as the Dino Megazord from Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers. I never watched the show, but I’m guessing some of you did. (more…)

I always get confused as to whether it’s spelled “Khan” or “Kahn.” But for Kobra, Genghis and the arch-nemesis of Captain Kirk, it’s H before A. Kuh-hawn, as it were.

Anyway, yeah, Mattycollector sale today and all that. Tons of stuff for sale, including lots of DCUC, the awesome Blazing Sword Voltron, and Peter Venkman for only $16, so go check it out at 12 noon ET – if you dare.

UPDATE: It seems the line was cancelled due to factory issues.

I found out this morning that the factory came back late last night and said they can only do the figures at the 80mm scale which is 1/3 larger than the 60mm they promised. According to them, 60mm is just too small for them to handle. There was simply not enough time to notify everyone and give them the option of cancelling their pledge. Had this news come a week ago, an update would have gone out letting people know and the Kickstarter would have lived or died based on the 80mm size change. So really, the only option was to cancel.

[…]

The upside of this whole situation is that there are a couple other avenues that will allow the figures to be made at 60mm and sooner. Just not at this manufacturer.

I just found out about this deal breaker early this morning, P! found out late last night. So rather than take your money and hope for the best, we cancelled. There really was no other option. I hope this provides some clarification for those of you who are rightfully upset and confused. For those of you who are still pissed after reading this, all I can say is I am sorry that we hit this bump, but cancelling the Kickstarter was absolutely the right thing to do, based on the last minute info from the factory.

I will gladly take egg on my face over this hiccup, when the alternative was letting the project fund and taking a gamble with your money.

This seems fair, and I retract any criticism of Karis (aside from suggesting he should have posted this in the first place). But it certainly illustrates the difficulties of producing your own line of toys.

Original article:

The Battle Beasts-inspired Kickstarter project Rise of the Beasts has been cancelled just as it was set to be funded (at $5K above the requested amount). (more…)

First off, let me say that so far there does not appear to have been a single other case or even suggestion of a security breach at Digital River. As of right now, all we have is the single report from the other day.

The original poster has now taken down the initial post, but put up a new one describing a call he received from a Digital River representative who was seeking to identify him as one who made the initial report. (more…)

Not being a G.I. Joe collector, I’ve only been following this issue from a distance, but it seems worthy of mentioning. Fun Publications, who appear to be Hasbro’s equivalent to Digital River, is the company who handles the G.I. Joe and Transformers collectors’ clubs. Club members have been hit by credit card fraud related to security flaws in FP’s system (which were noticed by collectors years ago).

Hasbro released their official statement on the matter yesterday. (more…)