This Week In Your Plastic Crack, Action Figures and Toy Collection 26 26

[Buzzetta]

40 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

Even the sixth scale comic-styled premium figures aren't appealing to me.  Below are the upcoming Sideshow Wolverine and Magneto figures...I'm not liking the look, at least yet.  They lack the artistic flair guys like Byrne, McFarlane, Lee, or the cartoon animators taught me to love.  They do look rather realistic, and I rationally believe I SHOULD appreciate that...yet, somehow, I don't.    If you were going to actually create real versions of the comic costumes, they would probably look a lot like they do on these figures...but they're not translating to reality well for me.  

  

I think that is the problem when people who go to the movies cry foul over the costume ideas. The costumes in the comic books really don't translate well to reality. Magneto's definitely doesn't. Wolverine's might be passable there though... But, this is why Hollywood changes or tweaks the costume designs. 

[comicwiz]

The strike here has been disruptive on a number of fronts. One of those is collecting. Even with back to work legislation, I have put off trying to ship anything outside Canada, and conversely, haven't purchased anything from outside of Canada either. A few of these pieces were purchased just before the strike, and have only now showed-up. Tracking was a joke, but you know how it is with PayPal. Paying through the nose for a traceable service to be eligable for protection, and things like signature confirmation are pointless as these were just dropped at my front door and still shows they haven't been delivered. It's caused me to seriously rethink how I am going to sell anything moving forward, especially if you run into a troublemaker who uses the hang-ups with USPS/CanadaPost to their advantage.

In any case, there's quite a bit of variety here. I'll begin with the Y&K GB-36 Chogokin Voltron Golion (which I've been told could be a rarer variation known as the diamond belt. It's missing the red lion head, and I'll have to pick up a sword at the very least to complete it, but at the price I paid, it was not something I wanted to pass up. I had been looking for a loose displaying Voltron Golion for my kids to display as they recently got into the Netlfix series and are enjoying it.

The other piece is a sentimental one. One night I was lurking in a Facebook vintage toy group and someone posted this toy robot that just captivated me. It immediately took me back to a time and place when I was very young, and recall playing with it. The experience was bizarre because up until now, I had a reasonably good handle on the toys I owned as a kid, but for some reason this one had been completely blocked out. It's particularly wierd because one of my side focuses is diecast toys, but to this moment I don't even remember how I got it (i.e. if it was a gift, or maybe a yard sale buy). I just knew after the flood of memories that I had to have one again. A few weeks later a FB friend had bumped an old sale thread of his, and there it was - the 1979 Mattell diecast Mazinga. It isn't complete (missing the two swords) but it's more complete than I remember mine being

The following two were really neat pick-ups. Last Saturday, the Chewbacca pops-up and it instantly gets my attention. I love Canadian SW, but I really love pieces with original price stickers from stores where I bought mine. This one was really unusual - it had two different store stickers - The Bay and Simpsons. A bit of history here as the Bay did acquire Simpsons, but the timeline of the acquisition didn't phase out the Simpsons stores until the late 80's, and this looks a lot like the Bay moving unsold stock into Simpsons locations. It's even stranger because it's a phantom discount, as that tag underneat the Bay sticker is covering the same price as the Simpson price of $1.19. Oddball piece I couldn't pass up. The bilingual Millenium Falcon is a pretty scarce piece, and it's sealed. What was even stranger is that a certain admin was giving this person (and myself) a hard time about selling, so I managed to pick up a few pieces that might have otherwise been scooped-up given the drama that admin caused. Luckily, she lived close enough that if I needed to I could have made the drive, but after doing some checks on her, she checked out as someone legit. 

This last piece is more of a discovery piece. This was one of the MOC's that came from that all Canadian collection I purchased awhile back. This is what is referred to as a Canadan Red SUB (Stand Up Bubble). I'd seen someone post a recent find, and another person saying these were really rare, but there's an added "square card" variation factor here (the other MOC version is die cut along the curve of Vaders helme. Needless to say, the whole thing got me interested enough to start going through the collection I bought and keep an eye out for any others:

Hope you guys all had a great Christmas, and wish you all a Happy New Year!

[Shadow Images]

1 hour ago, comicwiz said:

The strike here has been disruptive on a number of fronts. One of those is collecting. Even with back to work legislation, I have put off trying to ship anything outside Canada, and conversely, haven't purchased anything from outside of Canada either. A few of these pieces were purchased just before the strike, and have only now showed-up. Tracking was a joke, but you know how it is with PayPal. Paying through the nose for a traceable service to be eligable for protection, and things like signature confirmation are pointless as these were just dropped at my front door and still shows they haven't been delivered. It's caused me to seriously rethink how I am going to sell anything moving forward, especially if you run into a troublemaker who uses the hang-ups with USPS/CanadaPost to their advantage.

In any case, there's quite a bit of variety here. I'll begin with the Y&K GB-36 Chogokin Voltron Golion (which I've been told could be a rarer variation known as the diamond belt. It's missing the red lion head, and I'll have to pick up a sword at the very least to complete it, but at the price I paid, it was not something I wanted to pass up. I had been looking for a loose displaying Voltron Golion for my kids to display as they recently got into the Netlfix series and are enjoying it.

The other piece is a sentimental one. One night I was lurking in a Facebook vintage toy group and someone posted this toy robot that just captivated me. It immediately took me back to a time and place when I was very young, and recall playing with it. The experience was bizarre because up until now, I had a reasonably good handle on the toys I owned as a kid, but for some reason this one had been completely blocked out. It's particularly wierd because one of my side focuses is diecast toys, but to this moment I don't even remember how I got it (i.e. if it was a gift, or maybe a yard sale buy). I just knew after the flood of memories that I had to have one again. A few weeks later a FB friend had bumped an old sale thread of his, and there it was - the 1979 Mattell diecast Mazinga. It isn't complete (missing the two swords) but it's more complete than I remember mine being

The following two were really neat pick-ups. Last Saturday, the Chewbacca pops-up and it instantly gets my attention. I love Canadian SW, but I really love pieces with original price stickers from stores where I bought mine. This one was really unusual - it had two different store stickers - The Bay and Simpsons. A bit of history here as the Bay did acquire Simpsons, but the timeline of the acquisition didn't phase out the Simpsons stores until the late 80's, and this looks a lot like the Bay moving unsold stock into Simpsons locations. It's even stranger because it's a phantom discount, as that tag underneat the Bay sticker is covering the same price as the Simpson price of $1.19. Oddball piece I couldn't pass up. The bilingual Millenium Falcon is a pretty scarce piece, and it's sealed. What was even stranger is that a certain admin was giving this person (and myself) a hard time about selling, so I managed to pick up a few pieces that might have otherwise been scooped-up given the drama that admin caused. Luckily, she lived close enough that if I needed to I could have made the drive, but after doing some checks on her, she checked out as someone legit. 

This last piece is more of a discovery piece. This was one of the MOC's that came from that all Canadian collection I purchased awhile back. This is what is referred to as a Canadan Red SUB (Stand Up Bubble). I'd seen someone post a recent find, and another person saying these were really rare, but there's an added "square card" variation factor here (the other MOC version is die cut along the curve of Vaders helme. Needless to say, the whole thing got me interested enough to start going through the collection I bought and keep an eye out for any others:

Hope you guys all had a great Christmas, and wish you all a Happy New Year!

Nice pics ups! Love the chewie. Unlike a lot of people I love price stickers.

[BAT MAN]

[BAT MAN]

 

[BabaLament]

Trifecta of Gwenpool Funko Pop(!)'s. Also picked up the Kitty Pride NYCC exclusive; which is my first X-Men Pop; so now I need to find the rest of them...:D

 

[Buzzetta]

8 hours ago, BAT MAN said:

 

I also remember Toys R Us in 1987... We will never see anything like this ever again as retailers cannot devote the space to it. 

[followtheleader]

46 minutes ago, Buzzetta said:

I also remember Toys R Us in 1987... We will never see anything like this ever again as retailers cannot devote the space to it. 

Pics are just insane. 

Looks like MASK toys at the end in the 2nd pic. 

Patrick

[BAT MAN]

33 minutes ago, Buzzetta said:

I also remember Toys R Us in 1987... We will never see anything like this ever again as retailers cannot devote the space to it. 

Most definitely. Kiddie City and Child's World were also places I frequented in the early 80's. Surprisingly even as a 5 year old I can recall walking into KMart heading up kind of in the middle part of the store, and finding huge metal bins with tons of SW 12 backs. And then on top of that an entire aisle, both sides, absolutely jam packed with nothing but SW including end caps to boot. 

There was another store; it was a big department store, name escapes me think it was Edward's. They were light on toys but had an absolute gigantic aisle dedicated to just non-sports trading cards. I remember my first pack of King Kong (movie based) cards

[followtheleader]

Bought these from the same guy as the G1 QuickSwitch. 

I'm not a fan of foreign toys, but these were one of the few exceptions. 

Star Saber box is pretty nice.  Leo a a bit less so. 

Toys are pretty cool.  

He had the gift set with both in one, but that was WAYYYY too expensive.

Patrick

[Shadow Images]

2 hours ago, Buzzetta said:

I also remember Toys R Us in 1987... We will never see anything like this ever again as retailers cannot devote the space to it. 

1987 would have been the best year. Everything was on the shelfs then Star Wars, GI Joe, Transformers, M.A.S.K., MOTU.

[fantastic_four]

Really loving this Golden Age of figures, and this week I picked up the very recent Playstation 4 Spider-Man figure pictured swinging below.  I'm not necessarily a fan of the costume, but the articulation and molding detail on the figure is incredible, best I've seen on a Spidey and a slight upgrade to the mega-popular "pizza Spidey" figure from 2015, and the webs it comes with are really fun to pose with.  Got tons of stuff still coming in this week including the new amazing Marvel Legends Thing, the entire first wave of retro Legends characters, last year's Legends Psylocke, Select Juggernaut, and the Revoltech Wolverine.  Of those I'm looking forward to Revoltech Wolverine the most.

Also found out yesterday that last year's Mr. Fantastic has metal wires in his arms so you can bend them and they will mostly stay bent that way, making his stretchy arms far cooler to manipulate than I originally thought.  I've got him below trying to wrap up the Marvel Legends Juggernaut build-a-figure.

Edited January 2, 2019 by fantastic_four

[fantastic_four]

I spent the holidays dreaming about building a Hot Toys armory of Iron Man figures, but how can the high-end figure market ever thrive with the glut of Chinese counterfeits that are flooding the market?  American and Japanese figure makers are pushing quality in the figure market like never before, yet EVERY major premium figure they produce gets cheaply copied by people from China, and they're ALL getting hit by it including Hot Toys and the other Sideshow creators, Revoltech, Figma, Figuarts, etc etc.  And this isn't rare, it's absolutely RAMPANT with the majority of higher-end figures being sold through eBay being counterfeit now.  Yes, I know I can get originals straight from the manufacturer or trusted sellers like BigBadToyStore.com, but how can I justify paying maybe $500 for a figure that I can't re-sell for that much due to the confusion these counterfeits are causing in the market?    I don't see how I can consistently spend more than $50 on these figures with the way that China lets its citizens violate international copyright and patent law.  

Edited January 2, 2019 by fantastic_four

[fantastic_four]

On 12/7/2018 at 9:33 AM, F For Fake said:

They will sometimes do rereleases and reissues. For instance, the Deadpool and brown Wolvie figures from the first wave of the new X-Men Legends were rereleased, as was that entire wave, at least once. But eventually it sold out and they moved on to the next waves, and now they're expensive again. Cyclops is an interesting one. His secondary market price exploded a while back, but he is still showing up here and there. For instance, I grabbed one at Target out of the blue about a month ago. I'm assuming at this point they have a pretty good idea of how many units to produce in order to maximize their profits, and at a certain point it's no longer cost effective to return certain figures to production. Just spitballing, I don't really know.

The good news is that they often reuse and reissue figures, a lot of exclusives end up repainted in regular waves, etc so there's always a chance he could return!

I hadn't realized it, but actually that Jim Lee Cyclops DID return, but with a Dave Cockrum 1970s/1980s repaint paired with a great-looking Dark Phoenix figure that was a Toys-R-Us exclusive in 2017.  I also don't like those straps that constantly fall and move around on the Jim Lee Cyclops, so I'm picking up this set very soon because it's got the best version of Phoenix I've found to date.  Add in that it was released right before Toys R Us went under and a HUGE added nostalgia factor kicks in for me.  

Edited January 2, 2019 by fantastic_four

[fantastic_four]

On 12/9/2018 at 3:29 PM, Buzzetta said:

I have a feeling that they are about to. 

They took notice of the second hand market on 6" Black Series figures and will be revisiting those figures with photo realistic faces.  Should be interesting to see what it does to the second hand market since I do not think that the knock off market can crank out paint apps like Hasbro is promising on these revisited figures. 

I'm still learning about the extent of the counterfeit market...are they really knocking off the $20 Hasbro figures?  Why the heck would they do that?  Not a lot of meat on the bones left for them to scavenge with a price point that low.  

[F For Fake]

On 12/30/2018 at 11:05 AM, BAT MAN said:

 

Brings a tear to my eye. Man, that takes me back.

[F For Fake]

1 hour ago, fantastic_four said:

I hadn't realized it, but actually that Jim Lee Cyclops DID return, but with a Dave Cockrum 1970s/1980s repaint paired with a great-looking Dark Phoenix figure that was a Toys-R-Us exclusive in 2017.  I also don't like those straps that constantly fall and move around on the Jim Lee Cyclops, so I'm picking up this set very soon because it's got the best version of Phoenix I've found to date.  Add in that it was released right before Toys R Us went under and a HUGE added nostalgia factor kicks in for me.  

That was a super nice set. After TRU folded it was available at BBTS and other retailers for a while, but it looks like it's sold out now, so prices are creeping back up again on eBay. But yeah, the head sculpts on Dark Phoenix are super.

[Buzzetta]

15 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

I'm still learning about the extent of the counterfeit market...are they really knocking off the $20 Hasbro figures?  Why the heck would they do that?  Not a lot of meat on the bones left for them to scavenge with a price point that low.  

Chinese vendors (pointing a finger there as it seems that is where most of the counterfeits originate at), have always looked at the second hand market and not just generally released retail items as possible items to duplicate for their own sales. 

eBay sellers such as tunghori and viperskingdom seem to have a line to the factory where they have access to quality control figures or loose samples.  Speculation has abounded as to the actual source of their items. 

However, as soon as Hasbro started discontinuing the original 6" series and you saw Luke in X-Wing hit $60 Chinese manufacturers saw a chance to make money where Hasbro did not. 

You should see what's going on with Lego... wooo... whole sets under the Lepin brand with Lepin pop up stores... 

[fantastic_four]

1 hour ago, Buzzetta said:

Chinese vendors (pointing a finger there as it seems that is where most of the counterfeits originate at)

It's not new or isolated to toys.  Just about any worldwide company who sell items protected by intellectual property laws detests China's absolute indifference to copyright infringement.  I'm not sure of it, but my best guess is that the biggest source of lost money is from Microsoft, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was a big military contractor like Lockheed-Martin or Boeing.  t's just as bad with copyrights, patents, or trademarks with Chinese manufacturers just ripping off any device or creative work they want to with no fear the government will ever do anything about it.  Even the government itself will rip off patents for production of state-funded projects across virtually every industry.  The Chinese government requires that patented devices have their complete schematics disclosed to them to even be able to sell many types of devices in the country, and in many instances those schematics have been leaked to private companies to explicitly rip off the device for state use and sometimes even openly sell knockoffs.

It'll be interesting to see if this ever changes.  Their latest "president" since 2012 has paid lip service to it, and I just saw that Lepin won a trademark infringement lawsuit in Chinese courts late last year that supposedly ordered them to cease using the name and Lego trademarks, but as far as I can tell they're still up and open for business ( https://lepinworld.com/ ) using the same name and clear Lego ripoff art, so who knows how much that even matters.

Edited January 2, 2019 by fantastic_four

[comicwiz]

The problem with anything that has a made in Hong Kong or Taiwan stamp is the lucrative nature of knock-offs being sold through the secondary counterfeit market. It hasn't always been the case that the retailer even knew the toys were knock-offs. It even happened with comics through the mechanism of affidavit returns, and the comics were being made here! We know for instance a number of Chinese factories that produced toys for large toy companies as early as the late 70's were also cranking out product through the back door. Some of those toys were making it to larger American and Canadian cities under the guise of legitimate foreign versions. In such cases, the licensee did a dreadful job of granting permission to many different companies, and even now as adult collectors, we have trouble matching-up country of origin stamps or other identifying characteristics to determine which is which. And it's not necessarily the toy company, but the licensee, that has to pursue the problem of piracy (and/or protect it's interest), and frankly it isn't worth it unless they can prove product makes it to North America, and even then they can only go after the retailers who are selling them. LFL was quasi-successful from go with keeping the problem at bay, but a different problem emerged with bootlegging in markets where licensed production didn't exist.

As a result, the terms bootleg and knock-off are often mistakenly used, and it isn't uncommon for people to use these words and not really know their true meaning and/or how to differentiate the two. Bootlegs to me can never be mistaken as licensed product, there should be no confusion between the bootleg and its licensed counterpart. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people refer to these as knock-offs. A counterfeit or knock off is a lot like bleaching a low denomination currency note such as a $1 or $2 bill, and reprinting a higher denomination such as a $10 or $20 note. The better ones will always try to keep it as close and original in likeness and materials. If you are buying vintage, try to learn the difference between the two with whichever toy line you are into, and you should be fine for the most part. It's people continuing to buy modern toys that to me feels a lot like what happened with affidavit return comics - they're out there, they've blended too well into the mix, with many of them ending-up in our collections, and there really is no definitive way of knowing unless you can trace it back to the source. If you dwell on the fact that it was a mechanism that allowed publishers to get ripped-off, then the only ones you know for certain are safe are the ones you bought from the newsstand yourself, or are still in sealed multipacks. At some point, even Chuck had to realize the Mile High II find was pretty much a contravention of his own policy not to deal in such books when he eventually assumed them, and began putting out ads in comics to sell them. If it could happen with a retailer in Denver, you better believe major cities like New York become the epicenter for their proliferation.

Edited January 2, 2019 by comicwiz