Wednesday, October 14, 2015

Little Red Radar Dishes

Doing battle against a ruthless, terrorist organization determined to rule the world day in and day out cannot be an easy job. Granted the G.I.Joe team is composed of some of the most skilled and talented military operatives, you have to imagine that it can get quite stressful. Even if these guys are supposed to be the best of the best, they are only human and like most of us need time to refocus and air out their problems to someone. This was probably the line of thinking over at Hasbro when they decided to give us Psyche-Out…the official G.I.Joe psychologist!

Thursday, October 8, 2015

Blue Thunder

You never forget your first. And when it comes to my first “Transformer” toy, it was a blue F-15 jet that my dad brought home for me. While the concept of a robot transforming into vehicle wasn’t new to me at the time (I’d had a few machine robos already), my new blue jet was just cooler than all the other transforming robots I had at the time. He wasn’t exactly an official Transformer, my robot belonged to a Japanese line called Diaclone that would eventually be repackaged into the Transformer line that we all know and love.

Wednesday, September 23, 2015

Turning To The Black Side

Like most kids born in the late 70’s, Star Wars was the first major toyline I fell in love with. It was my older brother that introduced me to that wonderful world in a galaxy far far away inhabited with jedi masters, stormtroopers, droids and numerous other alien races. And it was my dad that steadily fed and nurtured my growing collecting habits and completist tendencies by bringing home endless numbers of Star Wars action figures whenever he returned from his numerous business trips.

Friday, August 14, 2015

The Great Green Dream Come True

When it comes to adult toy collectors (as in an older person who collects toys, not someone who collects adult toys :P) like me, nostalgia plays a BIG part in why I pursue this hobby. Each toy I buy brings me some degree of great memories of simpler and more fun times of a kid growing up in the 80’s. Not all toys are created equal though and the degree of joy varies from toy to toy. It’s the difference between receiving a couple action figures versus the G.I.Joe Tomahawk for Christmas. Even today, while pretty much all my toys are purchased due to some level of nostalgia attached to them, a special few are on a totally different level of awesomeness and magically bring me back to my childhood days.

Tuesday, August 11, 2015

Hawkeyes for the Home (Pt.2)

The West Coast Avengers was one of the first comic titles I started collecting religiously as a kid. Every month I would eagerly surrender my 25 pesos (a little under 50 cents) for the latest issue. There were many reasons why I enjoyed this title, month to month, the writing and art were consistently good, but the main reason was because it featured one of my favorite superheroes as the leader of the team…the avenging archer, Hawkeye.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Higher Stakes for the Archer (Pt.1)

When I was younger, I would often accompany my mom to the grocery. Yeah I liked pushing the cart and going through the aisles in search of junk food, but the real highlight was when we would check out and I would get to see the latest comics available at the comic book rack nearby. At this point I wasn’t a serious comic collector, I would literally pick up whatever looked interesting that week and that was that. One day I picked up a comic I was vaguely familiar with. Now I knew who the Avengers were….but the West Coast Avengers? That was something new.

Friday, July 31, 2015

I Wanta Wampa!

Sometime in the 80’s, when I was about seven, I got the opportunity to go to the US with my family. Back then the US was this magical place that my dad would occasionally fly off to and come back bringing lots and lots of new toys! So you can imagine just how excited I was. I was finally going to see for myself this magical place where most of my amazing toys came from…I was finally going to see what heaven would look like.

Sunday, June 14, 2015

Kre-ating a New Obsession

When I first started collecting G.I.Joes again in 2009, one thing I told myself was that I would only collect the action figures and stay away from getting any of the vehicles and play sets. I did this for 2 reasons, one to obviously keep my spending down, and secondly because I really didn’t have the display space for a Dragonfly or a Terror Drome. And so that’s how it went, my G.I.Joe action figures grew in number and I managed to keep any vehicle purchases to a minimum (hey, I’m only human). Everything was good….until Hasbro decided to launch their G.I.Joe Kre-o line. Bastards.

Friday, June 5, 2015

Going Kre-azy

I’ve always loved Legos. As a kid, Legos were the first toys my dad really got me into. Every time he would go off on a business trip abroad, which was quite often, he would always bring home a new Lego set or two for me. Fast forward years later though, when I started seriously collecting toys again, I purposely stayed away from getting back into Legos. I did this for one main reason; they’d become so damn expensive!

Wednesday, May 27, 2015

The Best of The Rest

When it comes to toy purchases in 2014, I guess it’s no surprise that I didn’t just stick to my main three of Transformers, He-Man and G.I.Joe. I got married last year and after the wedding followed trips to Singapore, Hong Kong and the US with my wife. And of course that meant a whole bunch of toys to catch my attention and bore new holes into my wallet.

Sunday, May 24, 2015

Cars Good, Jets Bad

When the Transformers story unfolded in 1984, there was an obvious line drawn in the sand on who the good and bad guys were. The good guy “Auto”-bots were all cars, and the bad guy Decepticons where everything else, but mostly jets, in the form of the seekers. While this clear differentiation was convenient to new fans, it didn’t take very long for Hasbro to realize that sticking to this basic classification system would soon seriously hamper their toyline’s marketability.

Friday, May 8, 2015

Still Looking Back At 2014

2014 was a big year for Transformers. It’s no surprise that of all the toys I got last year, Transformers came out on top in terms of quantity and money spent. Last year saw the release of the 4th Transformers Movie, The Age of Extinction. I didn’t really have high expectations for the accompanying toy line. In my opinion, the Transformers movie toys had been becoming worse with every movie so my expectations for the 4th movie line were quite low….

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Looking Back at 2014

A couple years back, I started a little “tradition” wherein I would start a new year by counting down my top toy purchases of the past year. In 2012 I had my top 12, in 2013, my top 13. Now as much fun as I wad having with these lists, I came to the realization that at my current setup, I would be doing my top 25 in the year 2025 (which at the rate I’m going would be the year of my next blog entry after this).

Sunday, April 26, 2015

It's Been Awhile...

Wow, it’s been almost a year since my last entry. For someone who planned to keep this blog active by writing a new entry at least once a week, I’ve been doing some major procrastinating. To be fair, a lot has happened since my last post. In a nutshell, I got MARRIED to an amazing person who thankfully shared my love for toys. We honeymooned in New York, just in time to attend New York Comic Con, and we finally moved into our new home where I set off to build a better toyshelf.