City of Death set

I'm getting kinda annoyed of all the sets featuring 4th Doctor episodes end up being the 4th Doctor and one of the villains. Seriously, let's get some Romana or K-9 action going. (The sets that don't feature the 4th Doctor, all use the same Leela figure, which is a small step forward but not by much.) Case in point: This City of Death set.

City of Death is one of the episode Douglas Adams helped write. Yes, Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, that Douglas Adams. The outfit that Romana wears in this episode is one of the iconic Romana outfits, perhaps even one of the most iconic companion outfits of the entire series. But you don't get that in this set. Instead what you get is the Doctor wearing his "Exterior shot" scarf that was designed not to get caught on things if he had to run around, Count Scarlioni, and a copy of the Mona Lisa.

Now I quite like this Doctor variation. It's one of the few that isn't wearing a vest, going instead for a casual button down shirt look with a lot of the top buttons undone. I haven't gotten a 4th Doctor figure with the  exterior scarf, most of mine are the interior scarf variants, which were designed to drag on the ground a little more and was a little more tightly wound around the neck since the environment could be controlled and there was less of a chance of an accidental scarf choking.

Scarlioni is also a pretty neat figure. The likeness is really good and he comes with an alternate head to simulate his "real alien face under a rubber human mask" that the character sports for the final part of the story. Oh. Spoiler warning... for a 30 year old television episode. Fuck it. Dude's an alien. It's Doctor Who. It happens. A lot.

The Mona Lisa painting is also a nice nod to the story's plot. You can even flash a UV light over it to see that "It's a Fake" has been painted on it. Of course the way the letters are slathered on the canvas, you can see it without a UV light. But nice touch.

Overall it's a nice set. Both figures are quality but the set goes for $40. That's about $20 a figure. Pretty steep really, especially for another 4th Doctor. I would have much preferred they replaced the Fourth Doctor with Romana or even the character that was used for the John Cleese cameo. At this point I wonder if they really think that no one who would buy this set doesn't have a 4th Doctor figure or if packing in a figure they've already made for is the only way they can justify covering the costs for a new figure in a limited run.

They're lucky that 1) City of Death is one of my favorite episodes and that Scarlioni is one of the great bad guys from Doctor Who and 2) I like this look of the variant Doctor. Otherwise no way would I have been willing to pony up full price for this set.

Holy crap, Don't get any Blinkus

I saw some Blinkus packages at the Dollar Tree the other day. I've seen them at Target and was curious. I enjoy lenticular technology, and the idea of basically fusing that technology to what are essentially cheap Go-Go Bones rip-offs appealed to me. Especially if it served to give the figures a little more personality. So I kinda wanted to get a blind bag and check them out, but not for the prices they go for at Target. A dollar for a bag of three seemed like a safe amount to gamble with, so a purchase was made.

And then a disappointment was had.

I could forgive the bad paint application, I mean for this size and price point, bad paint is almost a given. But the lenticular sticker, the thing that pretty much defines these things, they were peeling off all the figures in the bag.

The glue was pretty dry too, no quick fix here. Nope, it seemed like the stickers would peel off completely soon after I had bought them. Disappointing? Very much so. I mean I spent $1 and felt ripped off. That's just not right.

Add to that the disappointing figures that I got. A couple generic monsters which were pretty lame, and a robot which had, I thought, a cute lenticular transformation from a nervous robot into a robot with a bullet hole through its head.

But one figure I liked out of three, with all three having issues with their stickers staying on, well, I'm not getting any more of these, for any price.

Spectre...

I've never been a big Spectre fan, so what would convince me to buy this figure? It's not like I'm going out of my way to collect all the DCUC JSA figures or anything. Nope, the reason I got it was because it was cheap and I wanted to remove the head and try and see if a simple custom head swap would work.

To make Hal Jordan: Spectre, which was pretty much the last time I thought the Hal Jordan character was interesting. Its not perfect, but it's probably the only way I'd be willing to put a Hal Jordan figure on my shelf. Unless they make a good DCUC scale Parallax. But they won't. Still, it would work better if there was a hood, or Hal's face was all white. But I'm not at the level where that's an option for me to do. I'd just break something and be sad. Still, as an experiment that cost under $5, I'll say this was a semi-success.

Articulated Monster, Episode 30.5: Bonus Episode

Short bonus episode of the podcast, under 7 minutes actually. Just a way of saying we love you. Recorded at Olive Garden.

Catcycle City Chase

Look, I'm not thrilled to be paying $12 to get the 2 minifigures out of the set, which is really the only things I want from the set. I've never had a burning desire to get the "barren street corner" Lego playset, but ever since I got back into Legos (Which would have been, the Summer of 2009,) I've wanted some Batman minifigures. And since they've been discontinued and expensive, the return of the characters in the DC Heroes line has been great. Even if it means I'm pretty much paying $6 per figure. Still cheaper than what they were going for on e-bay.

While everyone else and their mother with a toy blog has already gone over this set if they're interested in it, so I just wanted to bring up the bit I find weird. The Batman minifigure, with the big plastic wings, pretty much falls right over if you try to stand it up unaided. So they had to add a jet pack with "flame" to serve as a third leg. Otherwise you have to either choose to have Batman falling over or capeless. Or I guess you could attach him to a brick, but that almost feels like cheating.

Civil War Captain America and Arnim Zola

I got this set mostly for Arnim Zola, because a Nazi Scientist who put his consciousness into a robot with a tiny head and a chest with which to project his face like in Robocop 2 is a toy you need to get for the sheer ridiculousness. But when I did, I found out that the Captain America figure was kind of cool.

It's supposed to be Captain America from the Civil War miniseries, but that's ridiculous as that Captain America was just the regular looking Captain America. He didn't wear his WW2 goggles and helmet look. And he sure as hell didn't wear his 90's Avengers Leather jacket...

Wait, what?

Yeah, in the early 90's the Avengers went through a period where all the members wore leather jackets with the Avengers "A" logo on the sleeve. This is when the Avengers consisted of Black Knight, Sersei, Crystal,  and who cares it was a ridiculous look and is emblematic of the 90's comic book culture. Everyone was wearing a leather jacket. Wonder Woman, Sue Storm (which was hilarious because this was back when the rest of her uniform was the swimsuit with a boob window shaped like the number 4), even Gambit... Actually Gambit may have been the guy to cause it all to happen... ANYWAY...

But yeah, this set includes alternate arms and chest piece to create a Avengers Leather Jacket version of Captain America... Or any other minimate you want to put in that jacket. 10 stars!

Freeing Dobby

I only bought this set because it was discounted to under $3. But I've got to say, the Dobby minifigure isn't bad. And I like the sock plate piece. Otherwise the set ain't great shakes. The Harry figure isn't anything special, although I like Malfoy's alternate face / death eater mask on the other side of his head.

The odd thing though, is that the archway is designed so you can send Malfoy flying away by thumping him with a cleverly hidden stick.