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

[F For Fake]

4 hours ago, comicwiz said:

So I had something in the works with the same seller from Western Canada that I got the 3-set Voltron III from. It was a protracted negotiation for reasons not entirely known to me. but I ended-up getting the Dairugger (Voltron I) three-boxed set as well. This format was the same deal as the Golion (Voltron III) - it was meant to spread out the cost of purchasing the complete toy robot over 3 sets priced at $33 instead of the Deluxe boxed set priced at $99. The one differentiation is that the Air, Space and Land Warrior sets were marketed to also function as standalone vehicle robots if you couldn't find or afford the other sets. The instructions are really interesting as they lay out the full Dairugger build, and then on the reverse they show you how to build the individual Space, Air and Land robots. The only downside is that you can't just combine the 3 robots to form the Dairugger as they need to be rearranged differently.  All in all, there are 15 vehicles to form the Dairugger. Prior to this find, I was starting to believe the Dairugger never made it to Canada. This is probably the only time I'll ever see another IRWIN Toy Dairugger, and I had initially only wanted to put together a Golion run, but now that I've found these sets, I'm interested in pursuing all the Canadian sets for the Dairugger and Gladiator. If anyone here sees the Canadian IRWIN Toy sets, please keep me in mind.

For those who aren't aware of the history or were too young to have watched the television series in the 80's, the story behind the franchise is that Voltron was meant to be a trilogy like Robotech, and was supposed to start with Dairugger aka Vehicle Voltron. Somehow, TOEI Animation mistakenly sent the GoLion tapes first. With the air date deadline, there was no way to to get Vehicle Voltron tapes in time for the North American release date. So World Events Production (WEP) decided to go with airing the GoLion episodes. After the final episode of the Golion series, they aired Vehicle Voltron and to say it bombed would be an understatement. Many of the kids growing-up at the time were both confused and disappointed that the 5 Lion team was seemingly being replaced by a new robot and 15 new characters. There was supposed to be a third robot - The Gladiator aka Albegas- but instead of risking the franchise with yet another confusing toy robot, WEP contracted TOEI to create another season of Lion Force. It is rather unfortunate as the Vehicle Voltron has a toyetic appeal that might have enjoyed a different animation fate if they had released the trilogy as was originally intended. The toy itself is striking, and very well engineered. I'm biased of course, but to me there is nothing that comes close to the toyetic genius of a 5 lion combining robot, so the Golion is my all-time favourite, but the Dairugger is definitely starting to grow on me after making this find. The Deluxe (DX) Dairugger is noticeably taller than the Golion when they are displayed next to one another, but the Golion is just a completely different quality of build, weight, feel and overall aesthetic. While the boxes weren't perfect, the toy was in unplayed with condition - just stunning, felt like I was opening these boxes and assembling this toy robot for the first time!

 

Love it, and love reading about it. Voltron always confused me as a kid, and this may explain why!

[F For Fake]

Another day, another lunch break meet-up with some dude from FB to buy old toys. Nice little Secret Wars set. The Magneto and Doctorpus (TM) are rough, but the Black Spidey is nice, and I was most pleased with Doom and Classic Spidey as their paint decos are in nice shape. Usually the black detail is all rubbed off on these figs. These two will be upgrades for the personal collection.

 

[followtheleader]

22 hours ago, F For Fake said:

Another day, another lunch break meet-up with some dude from FB to buy old toys. Nice little Secret Wars set. The Magneto and Doctorpus (TM) are rough, but the Black Spidey is nice, and I was most pleased with Doom and Classic Spidey as their paint decos are in nice shape. Usually the black detail is all rubbed off on these figs. These two will be upgrades for the personal collection.

 

Black Spidey is a real nice pick-up. 

Patrick

[F For Fake]

13 hours ago, followtheleader said:

Black Spidey is a real nice pick-up. 

Patrick

Yeah, he was the star of that set for sure. I've already got a complete Black Spidey, so this one goes into the storage bin, until such time as he is needed for trade or sale, nestled in among several Doctors Doom with faded paint!

[STORMSHADOW_80]

Boom! Picked up a few more great Joes this morning. I almost passed on the yellow Storm Shadow but for only $25 and he has all his accessories I couldn’t. I’ll post better pics after I get a chance to clean everything up. I’ll probably whiten Storm too

[Buzzetta]

@comicwiz

Joe... thoughts?   The first offerings of 'The Child' have been made from Funko and Mattel.   Hasbro is notably absent from providing any news.  With Hasbro's Star Wars license reported to run through the end of 2020, could this be the end of Hasbro's 25 year hold of the toy rights? 

[GeneticNinja]

On 11/30/2019 at 5:42 PM, ADAMANTIUM said:

Sorry the comic rooms a mess...i assume this can go in this thread

Black Friday, marked down from $300 to with tax $162

Final Fight, 1944 Bomber game, Ghosts N Goblins, and 1 other so 4 in 1

wanted the tmnt, but maybe another time...

I'm curious about these smaller arcade units. I'm after a few of the real deal myself. But I think someone hinted that they might make the big Konami X-Men game. And I would get that. No way I'm getting the original.

 

But some of these arcade games to me are actually better as their home console versions. The games are more balanced. I know I prefer Final Fight on Sega CD to the arcade version. Soundtrack is awesome.

 

Also, I had this remixed version when I was a kid on cassette tape!

 

 

It came with a Street Fighter soundtrack. I want to do something cool with Final Fight as I have this Kotobukiya figure.

 

 

I still find the after the fact made up backstory hilarious. Absolutely no one when we were playing the game in arcades thought of what they came up with. You would punch Poison and see what is now called under boob. There wasn't even that term back then that I knew.

 

There is this too that came out recently. Cody doesn't care about gang girls in this either.

 

On 12/3/2019 at 5:38 PM, comicwiz said:

So I had something in the works with the same seller from Western Canada that I got the 3-set Voltron III from. It was a protracted negotiation for reasons not entirely known to me. but I ended-up getting the Dairugger (Voltron I) three-boxed set as well. This format was the same deal as the Golion (Voltron III) - it was meant to spread out the cost of purchasing the complete toy robot over 3 sets priced at $33 instead of the Deluxe boxed set priced at $99. The one differentiation is that the Air, Space and Land Warrior sets were marketed to also function as standalone vehicle robots if you couldn't find or afford the other sets. The instructions are really interesting as they lay out the full Dairugger build, and then on the reverse they show you how to build the individual Space, Air and Land robots. The only downside is that you can't just combine the 3 robots to form the Dairugger as they need to be rearranged differently.  All in all, there are 15 vehicles to form the Dairugger. Prior to this find, I was starting to believe the Dairugger never made it to Canada. This is probably the only time I'll ever see another IRWIN Toy Dairugger, and I had initially only wanted to put together a Golion run, but now that I've found these sets, I'm interested in pursuing all the Canadian sets for the Dairugger and Gladiator. If anyone here sees the Canadian IRWIN Toy sets, please keep me in mind.

For those who aren't aware of the history or were too young to have watched the television series in the 80's, the story behind the franchise is that Voltron was meant to be a trilogy like Robotech, and was supposed to start with Dairugger aka Vehicle Voltron. Somehow, TOEI Animation mistakenly sent the GoLion tapes first. With the air date deadline, there was no way to to get Vehicle Voltron tapes in time for the North American release date. So World Events Production (WEP) decided to go with airing the GoLion episodes. After the final episode of the Golion series, they aired Vehicle Voltron and to say it bombed would be an understatement. Many of the kids growing-up at the time were both confused and disappointed that the 5 Lion team was seemingly being replaced by a new robot and 15 new characters. There was supposed to be a third robot - The Gladiator aka Albegas- but instead of risking the franchise with yet another confusing toy robot, WEP contracted TOEI to create another season of Lion Force. It is rather unfortunate as the Vehicle Voltron has a toyetic appeal that might have enjoyed a different animation fate if they had released the trilogy as was originally intended. The toy itself is striking, and very well engineered. I'm biased of course, but to me there is nothing that comes close to the toyetic genius of a 5 lion combining robot, so the Golion is my all-time favourite, but the Dairugger is definitely starting to grow on me after making this find. The Deluxe (DX) Dairugger is noticeably taller than the Golion when they are displayed next to one another, but the Golion is just a completely different quality of build, weight, feel and overall aesthetic. While the boxes weren't perfect, the toy was in unplayed with condition - just stunning, felt like I was opening these boxes and assembling this toy robot for the first time!

 

I didn't know they made these as separate releases. I only had the full robot releases for both of these. I know they just released a Chogokin of the Vehicle Voltron. I too was never really fond of that cartoon. I tried to get into it. The teams seemed cool. But everything was so much better with the lion Voltron cartoon.

[Buzzetta]

What were your top three 2019 pickups in your plastic crack, action figure, and toy collection? 

For me? 

Transformers: Micromaster Countdown and Rocket Base. 

Star Wars Power of the Force Luke Skywalker Jedi Knight 

Lego Mustang

 

[707comics]

34 minutes ago, Buzzetta said:

What were your top three 2019 pickups in your plastic crack, action figure, and toy collection? 

For me? 

Transformers: Micromaster Countdown and Rocket Base. 

Star Wars Power of the Force Luke Skywalker Jedi Knight 

Lego Mustang

 

All killer pieces but I have to say the Luke figure is just 

[Dark Knight]

Thought this was cool, a friend of mine bought for me

[comicwiz]

21 hours ago, Buzzetta said:

@comicwiz

Joe... thoughts?   The first offerings of 'The Child' have been made from Funko and Mattel.   Hasbro is notably absent from providing any news.  With Hasbro's Star Wars license reported to run through the end of 2020, could this be the end of Hasbro's 25 year hold of the toy rights? 

@Buzzetta hey Andrew, I'm hardly the best person to give a read on this. I'm stuck in my world of 70's and 80's toys.   I did see something about an feeBay listing for a crochet baby Yoda selling for $2K, and that it caught the attention of Disney, who are frantically trying to produce toys for something they seemingly bet pretty big on, but also look badly unprepared for with the gift giving season around the corner. Everything Disney has done up until seems to suggest they are looking to control every aspect of their licensing and merchandising, though it's a pretty complicated business as well. Funko gets away with it by producing "bobbles" which are technically not an action figure and aren't seen as competing with other license holders. I think by May 2020 (and possibly earlier) when the baby Yoda is released we will know the answer on whether Hasbro lost it, or Disney is willing to hand out license like a shared lollipop.

Edited December 8, 2019 by comicwiz

[F For Fake]

On 12/7/2019 at 11:21 PM, Buzzetta said:

What were your top three 2019 pickups in your plastic crack, action figure, and toy collection? 

I bought a lot of toys this year, having unprecedented good luck with estate and yard sales this year, as well as picking up a couple of large collections.

It's really, really tough to narrow it down to three specific pieces, so I'll narrow it down to my three favorite finds altogether, and a piece or two that stick out from each

1. Cheating a bit, but in the late fall of 2018 I acquired a large G1 TF collection from one of my oldest friends. I didn't actually start sorting it until march of this year, though, so I'm counting it! It ended up being a great haul. If I picked one piece, I'd say the Bumblejumper, just because he's unusual and uncommon enough to be interesting.

2. Second big haul was a Craigslist pickup from late summer, got this amazingly clean vintage Star Wars collection, which lead to being hooked up with some immaculate and complete Transformers. From that set I'd pick the Droid Factory R2-D2, and the Jazz with upside down hood tampo and a diaclone sticker sheet.

3. One of my favorite scores was from an estate sale, I found a cardboard box on a bed in a back bedroom labeled "$5 all". It was full of parts and pieces, including Joes, MASK, Rambo, Secret Wars, etc. I made at least a couple hundred bucks off of that $5 box, and held onto some cool stuff as well, including this complete Cobra Bunker, along with Enemy Trooper (and an officer and Fang, not shown).

It was a great toy year for me, gotta keep beating the bushes and finding those deals!

[STORMSHADOW_80]

Nice ones @Buzzetta and @F For Fake 

It has been an amazing year for me too. I'll have to find a couple highlights. I know the one particular estate sale a few months ago was a big win for me when I took home the SDF 1 and Mauler

[Brandon Shepherd]

On 12/2/2019 at 7:27 PM, Brandon Shepherd said:

Can’t wait to come back and post a pic, hopefully within 7-10 business days.

Thanks @F For Fake

I’m back!

Now it’s complete. Notice the left foot pod.

[ADAMANTIUM]

Hey it looks great! @Brandon Shepherd 

fairly fast on the shipping and a personalized note

 

[fantastic_four]

On 12/7/2019 at 1:01 PM, Buzzetta said:

@comicwiz

Joe... thoughts?   The first offerings of 'The Child' have been made from Funko and Mattel.   Hasbro is notably absent from providing any news.  With Hasbro's Star Wars license reported to run through the end of 2020, could this be the end of Hasbro's 25 year hold of the toy rights? 

I'm unclear on exactly what rights are held by any toy company because MANY companies release MANY toys for both Marvel and Star Wars, not just Hasbro.  For example, Mattel releases Barbies that are both Star Wars and Marvel themed and Funko and Egg Attack release figurines for both properties.  Do the exclusive licenses perhaps only apply to very specific types of toys such as articulated action figures?  What's the Mattel Baby Yoda toy, is it a plushie or something?

I've only recently begun to collect action figures, but I've already seen periodic speculation about company X losing license Y throughout the toy forums I participate in (thefwoosh.com and Reddit), so I've started to ignore all of it until there's compelling evidence of it happening.

Edited December 11, 2019 by fantastic_four

[Buzzetta]

1 minute ago, fantastic_four said:

I'm unclear on exactly what rights are held by any toy company because MANY companies release MANY toys for both Marvel and Star Wars, not just Hasbro.  For example, Mattel releases Barbies that are both Star Wars and Marvel themed and Funko and Egg Attack release figurines for both properties.  Do the exclusive licenses perhaps only apply to very specific types of toys such as articulated action figures?  What's the Mattel Baby Yoda toy, is it a plushie or something?

Hasbro has the ability to sublease. 
 

so for instance Hasbro is not going to make sideshow / hot toys level figures but recognizes that there is a small market for it.  Sideshow Toy and Hasbro will come to terms under a sublease agreement due to Hasbro having exclusive rights to Star Wars “action figures” and related toys. 
 

about 15 years ago Hasbro was successful in shutting down LEGO when they were offering three packs of LEGO Star Wars mini figures as it interfered with the terms of their licensing agreement with Lucasfilm.   So LEGO decided to throw in pieces to build a small vehicle or accessory like a speeder bike and that’s how the battle packs were born causing Hasbro to lose standing. 

[fantastic_four]

On 12/7/2019 at 11:21 PM, Buzzetta said:

What were your top three 2019 pickups in your plastic crack, action figure, and toy collection? 

Almost every Marvel Legends figure ever made that I wanted.  Just started collecting them last December, and this year I bought somewhere between 150 and 200 from the entire 20-year history of the line.  I think I've got almost every one I wanted.  Certainly every major character I've ever liked I got, so any I get now are new releases or characters that I didn't know I would like that I learn about.  An example is Taskmaster from the upcoming Black Widow film...I decided I like the character so now I'm looking for a figure of him.

[fantastic_four]

8 minutes ago, Buzzetta said:

so for instance Hasbro is not going to make sideshow / hot toys level figures but recognizes that there is a small market for it.  Sideshow Toy and Hasbro will come to terms under a sublease agreement due to Hasbro having exclusive rights to Star Wars “action figures” and related toys. 

So Hasbro gets a cut of all NECA and Hot Toys figures?  What about the Japanese companies that do licensed Marvel and Star Wars figures like Mafex, S.H. Figuarts, and Revoltech, do they pay Hasbro too or is Hasbro's license limited to the US market?

Edited December 11, 2019 by fantastic_four

[Buzzetta]

21 minutes ago, fantastic_four said:

So Hasbro gets a cut of all NECA and Hot Toys figures?  What about the Japanese companies that do licensed Marvel and Star Wars figures like Mafex, S.H. Figuarts, and Revoltech, do they pay Hasbro too or is Hasbro's license limited to the US market?

No idea what the exact terms are.  Hasbro revealed this when they used to do the Q&A for the fansites due to questions in regards to the Hasbro 12” line vs Sideshow.  
 

it was revealed back then that they reached terms with Sideshow for a very narrow part of the stars wars license but did not reach specifics.