Cyberman Bust and Illustrated book

This Tiny cyberman bust and book are sold in the gift area of bookstores along with desktop zen gardens or the Harry Potter Golden snitch packs. It's plastic but looks like metal, and features the cyberman design from the recent Neil Gaiman episode. The book features a short description of every Cybermen episode from the classic and new series. Awesome!

I love this thing.

Also, the plastic fork is in the picture to establish scale.

The Sacramento GI Joe show was taken over by a local toy store this year. I went to the show for the last hour. Oddly enough, I'm glad I went in that hour because I was able to pick up some free toys people were trying to get rid of. Here you can see some of the free toys I picked up. They include a knock-off Leo Convoy figure, a broken Phantom Stranger DC Direct figure (neck peg is broken), a gobot, a plastic airplane model kit, a poor condition GI Joe vehicle, a couple Green Lantern McDonalds toys and most impressively, two plastic assemblable Transformers statues.

This one is Terrorsaurus.

And I have no idea who this is. But the hard plastic with the pointy bits made trying to get the pegs to snap into the corresponding holes a pain in the ass.

So what did I actually pay cash for? Well I picked up a Puppet Master 12" figure and the guy threw in a Jackie Chan figure for free because he couldn't give it away. Except he did give it away. I'm actually interested in seeing what it can do. It boasts triple jointed arms and legs so I wonder what that really means. I also picked up a base bbi 1/6  scale figure to see if the brand is any good.

Also, I got a Black Widow figure because I put in a bid in an auction to get Mario a Nick Fury figure.

Oh, and hey, my Big Bad Toy Store order came in. 6 months of toy orders, finally here!

We'll go over that another day.

Simpsons Bust'em Ups Series 5

So I found these Simpsons Bust'Em Ups in a novelty store clearance section. Series 5, The romance series. I picked up a Ralph Wiggum and another school based one.

First up is Ralph and his iconic "Choo-Choo-Choose You" moment. The set is clever, but constructing it was a pain in the nuts. Because of how small these sets are, the plastic is really flimsy. I broke on of the chair legs. I got it to balance, but if I ever pick this set up again it'll fall apart in a second. It also requires that you put some pressure on the figure to get pegs to stick in their holes. But that amount of pressure snaps the plastic. So bad QC there Mcfarlane Toys. You see how the desk isn't in the peg holes in the picture above? That's because the desk legs are in a certain position and won't fit in the holes. No without stretching and potentially snapping the flimsy plastic. Yeah. And the one time i did get them in the holes properly, the pressure from the bending legs ejected the desk right away, sending all the various parts flying. Like the Valentine's day card. Which is a separate piece. Bleah.

The other figure I picked up is a Krabappel/Skinner set where they're making out in a Janitor's closet. You have to put the room together, which is much like trying to set up a house of cards. But once you do, it's pretty sweet. The door even opens and closes, allowing you to replay the shocking reveal to your hearts content.

I will say one thing, the level of detail in these sets is great. The calendar with a clearly readable month and dates. The back shelf stocked with cans. The mop and bucket. The only downside I had with this set is that Krabappel and Skinner were not packaged together, so you have to carefully interweave their limbs to get them in that position. And considering how small their limbs are, it is not easy. But once it works, man it's a trip. This is actually from one of my favorite episodes of the series, so neato.

Baller-Annie and Christmas Wizard Duncan

So I like that show Community, but I'm also savvy enough to know that while I might like the show, the chances of them making action figures based on the show is very rare. Mugs? Sure. T-shirts? Maybe. But action figures for the small audience that watches the show is unlikely since that audience isn't large enough to justify the finances that would inevitably be involved.

Fortunately there apparently is a collector's market for figurines, and so I was able to go to the NBC store and pick up a couple. They're collector items, so they're $15 a pop for what are essentially mini statues, but Mighty Muggs and other vinyl figures have prepared me for that. And when I say there's a market, it's apparently a very small market. The figures are based on the claymation versions of the characters that appeared in last year's Christmas special. They made 7 figures, but curiously left out two of the most important characters, including the central character for that episode who also happens to be one of the most popular characters of the show. So that's weird and seems to indicate that the initial batches didn't sell very well.

But whatevers, I got a figure based on Annie as Baller-annie, although she's missing the windup dial on her back that she had on the show. (Part of the claymation concept was that one of the characters was delusional and saw all his friends as misfit toys.) I got this one because Annie is one of my favorite characters on the show since the way Allison Brie plays her is this weird combination of adorable, psychotic, and sexy.

The other figure is of Duncan, a recurring character from the show played by John Oliver, as the Christmas Wizard. Yes, a Christmas Wizard. I sort of wish he came with his remote control that summons the Christmas Pterodactyl. (It was an awesome episode.) I got this figure because I love John Oliver. His podcast, the Bugle, has pretty much become my favorite thing to listen to. So damn straight I'm going to get a statue of him dressed like a Wizard. Because what the hell is happening to the universe.

These figures are in the 3 to 4.5 inch range, and that includes the bases, so they're pretty small, so to get an idea of how small they are, I've posed them next to my Scarlet Spider from the Marvel Universe 4 inch line. I'm lucky I didn't get the shorter characters, supposedly those come in at 2.5 inches.

The paint looks a little sloppy on these close-up pictures, but looking at them in person, they look great. I'm happy to have them, but at $15 a pop and with shipping extra, I'm probably not going to get the other ones. (Although Britta-bot and Teddy Pierce do look great in their online solicitations.)

Necrophilia is not an acceptable fetish

Despite what the movie Corpse Bride tried to imply, finding the death sexy is not a good thing. Which is why I'm weirded out that they're making a Black Flash Ame-Comi figure. Black Flash, the embodiment of Death for speedsters in the DC Universe, looks like this...

What the hell.

Cyberman Leader Helmet

This is a mini-version of the Cyberleader Helmet from the 80's (So essentially the Earthshock design, which is my favorite)... made by WETA. The guys who made all the props for Lord of the Rings. They made this a while ago, a couple years before I decided I wanted one. (And a full year before I even knew it existed.) By the time I wanted one it cost too much, because a couple years in this market for limited edition collectibles is like a decade. Seriously, limited to 500 pieces.

I never thought I'd be able to get one. But I found a couple at the Doctor Who convention I went to back in February. The one I ended up getting was discounted because it had a few scratches and a large scratch in the back. But I didn't care, it was something I really wanted, at a dicounted price. THAT IS AWESOME. Because truthfully, I figured it would get scuffed up when I displayed it anyway, so a few scratches aren't that big a deal to me. As long as the front looked good enough to me (it did) then I would be overjoyed... and happy... same thing.


You see that dent/scratch? Yeah, only if you're looking at it from the back, which I don't. So who cares? But that was enough to drop the price by 50% so HOORAY!

Okay, so down to brass tacks. It's fairly small, under 8 inches tall when you include the display stand, has a good heft to it, and IT IS AWESOME BECAUSE IT IS A CYBERMAN HELMET DEPICTING THE CYBERMEN FROM THE 80S! I really like it. And it classes up the joint in a way that the Mandarin bust I got a while back never could. Since it sits on a black display stand it looks like a piece of art, and the robotic design makes it seem more mainstream and less geek niche than a supervillian in costume. Of course I have them both next to one another, so that kind of makes it moot.

Also, Cybermen are awesome. Have I mentioned that before?

The Mandarin

So I bought a Bowen mini-bust. Why? To class my apartment up a bit. Also because it was insanely cheap. There's a slight chip (so slight it's almost impossible to see) that brough the normal price down to $15, and I found it during a sale where everything in the store was half off, so I got this guy for under $10.

SCORE!

But why did I decide to get this guy? Well, for one thing, it's the Mandarin. A Fu-Manchu, yellow peril archetype villain who has somehow stuck around through sheer inertia. And this bust depicts him back when he was at his most silver age. Which is to say when his character was essentially was Chinese McAsian: Mystical Far East Terror.

Did you know that the Mandarin is half-caucasian? His mother was white. But he was raised by his father's mother, who taught him to be an Asian villain. Then he found 10 alien rings that essentially gave him power over the reality of a limited space. He seemed to be magic and voila: horrible stereotype!

So I got this out of an ironic fascination with artifacts of racism against Asians in American history. Based on how the dude is posed it's hard to see the fu-manchu mustache, which is a shame since that's the most obvious sign pointing to his yellow peril status. Well that and the fricking dragon on his base. Nothing says mystical Asian better than a dragon.

Let's take a look at that chip which robbed this bust of 66% of its value. It's on left tip of the mask.

Did you spot it? Look carefully. It's that white tip on the top. Yup, that's the chip that brought down the price of this bust so damn low. You can barely see it when you look at it further than two feet away. And really, since I don't collect this stuff for the resale value, I think I'm fine with a chip like that. Especially if it means I can buy it for 17% of it's current price.

The only real downside to this bust is that due to his cape, the bust is a little back heavy. It balances well, but the slightest knock or jolt sends it toppling back. I'm going to have to figure out a display option that eliminates that part.