Monday, December 27, 2021

The Toys Of Christmas Past

Putting aside the true meaning of Christmas, over the years, for many adults like myself, the excitement over the Holidays is oftentimes overshadowed by endless duties like shopping for gifts and attending family gatherings. While ultimately all these are blessings in themselves, they can get rather exhausting. But for most kids, Christmas is definitely the highlight of the year for one simple reason they get gifts! And to be more specific, toys! So with that in mind, I thought that it would be a worthwhile exercise for me to end the year with a post reminiscing and recalling all my favorite Christmas gifts I received as a kid all those years ago

Monday, December 20, 2021

Bladder Busters!

When the original Ghostbusters movie came out in 1984, it barely made a blip on my interest radar. I do remember my older siblings trying to sell me on this movie about ghosts but I was distracted by my Transformers and G.I.Joes to really care too much. I’m not exactly sure when I finally watched the movie but it was definitely years later when it was available on home video. And while I did like the movie overall, a lot of the more adult centric humor really flew over my head and so it didn’t make too much of a lasting impression on me.

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

A Revealing Agenda

When the first part of Masters of the Universe Revelations show made its debut on Netflix back in July, it elicited such a split reaction from the fandom. And while I never intended for my blog to be about reactions and reviews, I felt the need to chime in with my own thoughts on the show. Not that my opinion carried any weight in the overall fandom, it was just a personal exercise for me to process how I felt about the show.

Friday, November 26, 2021

Be Legendary

As a kid with a very limited weekly allowance, the only toys I collected on a large scale were Star Wars and G.I.Joe action figures. At 3.75” in height, these guys were more affordable than say a Transformer or He-Man figure. I got my fix for those more expensive toys through birthday and Christmas gifts. So yeah for the longest time these 3.75” dudes were my jam.

Friday, November 19, 2021

The End Of A Universe

In 2010, I was working as a web designer in Singapore. Before I made my move to the Lion City the year prior, I was basically just a Transformers collector. But being in Singapore with a fairly decent paying job opened me up to delving into more toy lines. I had already recently fallen for the G.I.Joe 25th Anniversary line, and I was about to fall HARD for yet another one.

Tuesday, November 16, 2021

The New Collecting Normal

I remember it quite clearly, it was Thursday March 6, 2020 and I was sitting in my office looking forward to the weekend. As usual, I had plans to go to Manila’s toy mecca, Greenhills shopping center to pick up some pre orders that arrived and just make my rounds to see what else was there. And then the news broke that the first positive COVID case was identified from a man who was known to have regularly visited a Musilm prayer hall in.you guessed it, Greenhills.

Friday, October 15, 2021

The Best Of 2021: Third Quarter

Amazing how time flies when you’re having fun. At this point we’re closer to the end of the year than the start and before long I’ll be finalizing my top ten list for 2021. But let’s not get too ahead of ourselves as we have another quarter of new toys to integrate into my ever changing list. So let's see what new plastic goodness the last three months have brought to the shelf.

Friday, October 8, 2021

The Bruticus Wars Part 2: A Collector’s Dilemma

In 2017, two 3rd party companies battled it out on who would make the better Bruticus. Both companies seemed to be taking different approaches to their sets. Unique Toys focused more on aesthetically superior individual Combaticon, while Zeta Toys was banking on their larger and more solid combined mode. And as impressed as I was with Zeta’s Bruticus, at the end of the day, I decided to go with Unique Toys.

Wednesday, October 6, 2021

The Bruticus Wars Part 1: It’s All In The Hips

Due to the finite number of “G1” characters out there vs the infinite number of companies in the world of 3rd party Transformers, it’s not uncommon to have multiple versions of the same character all competing for our money at the same time. For many collectors, these are fondly referred to as the “(insert character's name) wars”. While for the most part, this wealth of options is a great thing, for those with a more limited budget this basically means a lot of careful discernment and self rationalization to defend to ourselves the choices that we ultimately make.

Tuesday, August 17, 2021

Back In Black

Back in the 90’s grim and gritty heroes such as the Punisher and Wolverine rose in popularity in the comic book world. As such, writers of more traditional heroes like Superman and Captain America were being pushed to follow suit in order to “keep up” with the times. Fortunately, the late great Mark Gruenwald, who at the time was writing the Captain America series didn’t buckle to the pressure and instead came up with an effective solution to his problem.

Tuesday, August 3, 2021

Cap No More

The Falcon and the Winter Soldier may not be the best MCU based series released on Disney+ to date. But for all its faults and shortcomings, what it does have in my opinion is one of the most unforgettable moments in the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe. And no I am not referring to the debut of Sam Wilson as the new Captain America.

Monday, July 26, 2021

Well...That Was Quite A Revelation

On July 23, 2021 the new Kevin Smith series “Masters of the Universe: Revelation” made its long awaited debut on Netflix. This was supposed to be a moment celebrated by all MOTU fans who grew up on the original cartoon and who had been starving for years for new content. Unfortunately, just like Two-Bad, this new series ended invoking the Spell of Separation and fractured the fandom right down the middle with many professing their love and approval for the new show and another equally vocal portion of fans outright hating it. Oh well….I guess you can’t please everybody.

Thursday, July 15, 2021

The Best Of 2021: Second Quarter Part 2

Despite staying home about 99% of the time for over a year now, I’ve sort of returned to my pre-pandemic toy collecting ways. While weekly toy hunts in Greenhills and other malls have been replaced by a steady stream of deliveries to my front door, new toys have still managed to find their way to my hands on a regular basis. And so here we are at the midpoint of the year and it’s time for another update to my running list of top ten toys for 2021

Tuesday, July 13, 2021

The Best Of 2021: Second Quarter Part 1

We’ve now hit the midpoint of 2021 and it's time once again to take stock of what new toys have been added to the shelf. Things haven’t really slowed down at all these past 3 months so it was quite the challenge trying to figure out how my running top ten list would evolve for the 2nd quarter. But that’s really what I think makes this exercise fun. So let’s get to it shall we?

Tuesday, June 29, 2021

Thinking Bigger

As a toy collector, I never really saw myself as much of the diorama display type. I was perfectly happy having my action figures neatly standing side by side in semi dynamic poses on a neutral shelf. There was one character though that I felt needed more though, I mean just how exciting can a solitary giant slug look on display? And so that’s what drove me to start “construction” on my Jabba’s palace diorama.

Tuesday, June 22, 2021

Strike Up The Band

In the back half of 2019, I started up a new project of putting together my first ever diorama. By this point, I had amassed enough characters in my collection to put together a nice Jabba’s palace display. It was a really satisfying build and I got to work with materials I’d never used before like foam boards, joint compound and 3D printed elements just to name a few. I couldn’t be happy with the end result but I knew it wasn’t close to complete. So almost two years later, I decided to revisit my diorama and work on expanding it even more.

Friday, June 11, 2021

Game Set Match: The Black Order

One of the definitive highs in a toy collector’s hobby is being able to complete a certain team or lineup of characters. It can be a journey full of twists and turns and major frustration. But in the end, seeing a complete line up on the shelf makes it all worth it. With that in mind, I’m starting a new “sub series” of posts called “Game Set Match” where I’ll write about how I completed specific sets or teams in my collection. So let's get started on how I finally got to complete The Black Order.

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

I'm A Huffer Puff

When you look at the original crew of the Autobot Ark, you’d find quite the mixed bag of characters and personalities. Sure you have the typical good guys, like the noble leader Optimus Prime or the courageous Bumblebee. But peppered in as well are a few more nuanced characters such as the cranky Gears, the narcissistic Sunstreaker and the self doubting Trailbreaker. And then you had Huffer.

Friday, April 23, 2021

The Best Of 2021: First Quarter Part 2

As if making up for lost time, the first Quarter of 2021 has been pretty busy. There are a lot of cool new additions on the toy shelf to talk about. So let's get started on finishing up the quarter.

Friday, April 16, 2021

The Best Of 2021: First Quarter Part 1

Well it's a new year and time to get cracking at another series of “Top Ten” installments for 2021. Unlike last year, which started out pretty slow, this year has been more business as usual with quite a lot of new stuff coming in these past few months. So we're gonna go back to the four quarter format.  Anyway, let’s get started on the first quarter list for 2021.

Monday, April 5, 2021

Oh Captain! Not My Captain!

Marvel or DC? It’s the age old question that has long been debated back and forth between comic book readers. For over 80 years, both DC and Marvel have introduced iconic superheroes to the world and are deserving of their places in the pop cultural landscape. While there are a lot of overlapping ideas and concepts that exist in both comic universes, I do think that there are some elements that DC does better than Marvel and vice-versa.

Thursday, March 25, 2021

Seek And You Shall Find

My very first “Transformer” was a blue jet that my dad brought home from a business trip in Japan. Actually, the toy was from the Japanese toy line Diaclone, one of the main precursors of the Transformers. That blue jet made its debut in the new line as the Decepticon Thundercracker. And although he was one of the bad guys, he has remained to this day one of my favorite characters in the franchise.

Friday, March 12, 2021

Rebel Yell

When it comes to Star Wars, the Stormtrooper is probably one of the most iconic characters and designs that come to mind. Whether it was because of their striking white armor or their apparent inability to hit their targets, they were one of the most memorable parts of the original movie. While this is all and good for these soldiers of the Galactic Empire, the same couldn’t really be said of any of their Rebel counterparts.

Wednesday, February 24, 2021

All That Jazz

Of all the Autobots and Decepticons introduced in the 1984 Transformers cartoon, Jazz was one of the more memorable ones. Simply put, he was just so easy to like. Everything about him was just...cool. He transformed into a Martini Porsche 935 turbo, which was probably one of the most visually interesting cars in the Autobot fleet. And he had a uniquely distinct voice, done by actor and musician Scatman Crothers.

Tuesday, January 12, 2021

The Best Of 2020: Part 4

There weren’t that many toys being released at the start of 2020. For the most part I was just placing pre-orders for stuff scheduled to be released later in the year. So come September onwards all those pre orders started arriving and just like that I was overwhelmed with so many new toys. So much so that it took me one whole post to just write about my honorable mentions for the last third of the year. So now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time to go over the final top 10 list for 2020.

Thursday, January 7, 2021

The Best Of 2020: Part 3


Aaaaaaand we’re DONE with 2020! Now while the first few days of 2021 haven’t really proved to be any different, there is a stronger sense of hope in the air as the new year rolls in. There’s no doubt that 2020 was one of the toughest years we’ve all collectively had to go through. Which is why it’s even more important to try and look back and reflect on whatever good we all experienced in the past year; family, friends, new skills unlocked, and of course for collectors like myself, our favorite new toys.