Last Toy of the Year (2013)

This will be a quick one.  The last half of the year has been pretty busy for me, and I wasn't able to get AMAMOTM finished off before the end of the month (but I'll get it done next month for sure).  I was able to pop out and grab one more figure (make that a set) before the clock rolled over.

Merry Christmas! (2013)

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!

Christmas Town

This one has a lot of pictures, so I'll keep the chatter to a minimum.  For the last few years I've been getting the annual Lego Winter Village sets as they come out, and my little Christmas town is coming together nicely!  I've already stated on the blog here that Christmas is my favorite holiday, which must be why these Lego sets are the only ones I collect consistently.  Well, these and the blind-bagged Minifigures.

Walking in a Winter Skyland

I've been wanting to get to some Skylanders spotlights for a while now, but I couldn't figure out the best way to do it.  This being a toy blog, I wanted to talk about the figures themselves as much (if not more) than the actual games.  I know the games are what it's all about, but I wouldn't be nearly as interested in them without the figures to pull me in.  Also, I have no idea how to take pics of my gameplay, and I didn't want to just cheap-out and use a camera to take pics of my TV screen.  In the end I compromised and used a camera to take pics of my TV screen.

I also didn't know where to start.  I mean, I could go back to the first game and cover all those figures first, but I'm too impatient to get to the characters I like most.  Plus, with Christmas only two weeks away, I've got that holiday feelin'.  So I decided to get the (snow)ball rolling with three of my Skylanders who are more or less Christmas themed.

AMAMOTM - November

The final battle between the Mega Monster Fighters and the Mega Monsters continues!  

While searching Mega Monster Island for access to the underground lair of the Mega Monster Master, Rook's squad meets each attacking wave of monsters head on.  But when they are met by the mutated form of their former ally, the Captain, Rook sends his squad away to regroup with the others, while he transforms into his beast form and takes on the Captain alone.

Give Me Vinyl: Ultra Monsters 2

I've been in a Japanese mood lately, and in the last little while I have become obsessed with Kamen Rider and started planning another Japan trip.  It's pretty fair to say that I've officially switched sides from Team Ultraman to Team Kamen Rider, but that doesn't mean I like the toys any less.  Eventually (either here at the Plastic Eyeball or over at Go! Launch All Eyebot!) I'll give Kamen Rider the spotlight it deserves.  Until then, let's take another look at the Ultraman universe and finish off my (current) collection of vinyl Ultra Monster figures.

EX RED KING

AMAMOTM - October

The final battle with the Mega Monsters has begun!  In the last episode, the Mega Monster Fighters destroyed the Eye Goos, whose teleportation powers enabled the monsters to quickly travel around the globe.  With the loss of the Eye Goos, the monsters are effectively trapped on their island, and now the Mega Monster Fighters have brought the war to their doorstep.

Construct-A-Bugz!

This past week my wife had to go to England for some family stuff, and before she left she asked me to look around online and see if I could find anything I wanted her to bring back for me.  What I found was the Construct-A-Bugz line from Character Options' "Character Building" series.  I hoped she'd bring back a bug for me.

She brought me nearly the entire collection.

CONSTRUCT-A-BUGZ

I Smell Toys and Candy

While this is primarily a toy blog, sometimes I'll cover non-toy stuff too.  Like candy.  CAAAAAAAANDYYYYYY!  I've always felt like candy and toys go hand-in-hand.  Sometimes people say they're like a "kid in a candy store", and other times they're like a "kid in a toy store".  Well, maybe the first saying is more common.  Anyway, one of the nice things about this time of year is that all sorts of cool and weird candies come out in the stores.  I really don't have much of a sweet tooth, but you'd never tell from this post.

Also, I've been buying cheapo Halloween toys like crazy lately.  I don't know why, but every time we go to a store I stop by the Halloween stuff and pick up some toys I don't need.  To be fair, I don't really need any of my toys, so it's a moot point.  Wait, I take it back!  I do need my toys!  Forgive my blasphemy, oh Toy Gods, I know not of what I speak!!!

Let's get back on track.

This time of year always has that extra special candy that you can't find at any other time (the weird stuff), and some cheap-but-still-cool toys come out too.  In order to keep this post toy-related, I'll show them off as well.

PULL BACK (ZOMBIE) HANDS

AMAMOTM - September

As I said in my last post, things got a little crazy around here and as a result, I haven't been posting very much.  The instalment of AMAOTM for September is late, and there's a good chance October will be as well.  BUT things are turning around, and I'm looking forward to everything getting back to normal.  To celebrate, lets dive right into Army Men And Monsters Of The Month for September!

Barrels of Scum for Everyone!!!

I'm still alive, and I can prove it!

Things got a little crazy around here for a while, so not only have I not been posting anything lately (and fallen behind on AMAMOTM again), but I had to cancel my Florida trip.  So all that rushing I did to get my Vinylmation figures in the spotlight wasn't necessary.  But, what can you do?  Things are getting back to normal now (more or less), and while I wasn't able to travel, you can't stop me from buying toys!  One of my recent finds was this set:

Boned

It's easy to plan in advance what you're looking for when shopping on vacation.  When I go to Florida I look for Vinylmation figures and build some droids at the droid factory.  When I went to Japan I wanted to load up on vinyl Kaiju toys.  And when I went to Australia, I figured I'd mostly be buying Trash Pack stuff.  But it's the things you find that you weren't expecting that are sometimes the most exciting part of travel shopping!  These boneheads fall into the latter category.

An Expected Journey

Man, I've been itching to get to this post!  When we were planning out trip to Australia this year, we knew we had to take the chance to pop over to New Zealand, for no other reason than to visit some of the locations seen in the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies.  Sure, the country is beautiful, I found cool toys like the Darkness Warriors, and the Waitomo Glowworm Caves were amazing, but it's the whole Middle Earth thing that really did it for me.

We were able to visit NZ for a week, so we didn't have time to see all the stuff we would have wanted to see, but we visited Hobbiton, it was fantastic, and I'm going to show off my pics here.  I'll also pepper it with some Hobbit figures, because this is a toy blog after all.

Right off the bat, this is the kind of stuff that greets you when you arrive at the airport in Auckland.  Things start getting epic as soon as you touch the ground!  How can you not think you're in for an adventure when you see something like this?

Give Me Vinyl: Disney's Vinylmation (part 3)

Remember how in my last post I talked about how some Vinylmation figures weren't ones that I went out of my way to get, but I didn't really want to trade them away either?  Well, a lot of those ones will show up in this post, which should wrap up my Vinylmation spotlight.  Until I get more.

This would be the poster child for Vinylmation figures that I wouldn't have wanted, but don't want to get rid of.  I don't know why, he's ideal for trading.  I guess I like his smile.

Give Me Vinyl: Disney's Vinylmation (part 2)

In my last Vinylmation post, I went over the basics, like what Vinylmation is, how you can buy the figures, what they do, blah blah blah.  For the most part, I only try to get the figures that appeal to me most (but since this is mostly a blind boxed series, you end up with some that you wouldn't go out of your way for, but you don't really want to trade away either).  But there are some series that are worth going back to again and again, trying to get as many characters as possible.  In this post, I want to look at some of those series.

STAR WARS

Well, of course I would be excited about the Star Wars figures!  Sure the figures are cute, and you would think the Mickey Mouse shape would take away from the look of the characters, but it all works out.  They use the Mickey ears to add some view of the character's background environment, and it actually comes across nicely.  So far I haven't been able to get a lot of the characters that I really want, but it's a start.  If I can get Admiral Ackbar when I go this year, I'll be happy.

There are actually two Star Wars series:  One featuring the regular Star Wars characters, and one made up of classic Disney characters in Star Wars costumes.  They're both pretty cool, but I still lean towards the regular Star Wars series.

Luke Skywalker

Give Me Vinyl: Disney's Vinylmation (part 1)

Originally, I didn't pay much attention to these guys, but a trip to Disney World has a funny way of getting you to spend money.  In the weeks leading up to our Disney trip last year, we somehow found ourselves at local Disney Store (I guess we must have been excited about going).  The cashier there told us all about Vinylmation, how you don't know who you're going to get, and how you can trade them at the gift shops down in Disney World.  The idea of trading them really appealed to me for some reason, so I bought a few just to whet my appetite...  And then I was hooked.

AMAMOTM - August

We're over the hill now!  This is the 8th instalment of Army Men and Monsters of the Month out of 12, so the end is in sight!  I guess that means I must have a plan on how to wrap this thing up, right?  Nope.  Not really.

The Rookie has had this dream before.  The world moves slowly around him as he is helpless under the control of the Cobrattler.  He saw the teleporting Eye Goo appear next to the Sniper, but his body won't listen to his mind.  The Rookie cannot help his teammate.

Masters of My Universe

One of the main lines I've been collecting for the last few years is Masters of the Universe Classics, and honestly, I think it's one of the best toy lines to come out in a long time.  I've been wanting to start covering the MOTUC figures here on the Plastic Eyeball, but before I get to them I figured I'd go back to the beginning.  Also, I guess I still have some nostalgia left over from the last post.

I don't think the kids of today will ever understand what we kids of the 80's got out of the Masters of the Universe.  It was a toy line that had something for everyone.  You like wizards and barbarians in a fantasy setting?  Done.  You like monsters or robots?  You can have both.  You like magic, futuristic technologies, time travel, space aliens, or super powers?  MOTU had it all!  Combine all that with a cartoon series that still resonates with people today (for me it's the music, sound effects, and characters more than the storylines themselves), and a series of old-school techno-fantasy comic books and you've got yourself a winner.

BATTLE ARMOR HE-MAN

Waxing Nostalgic

My wife and I both grew up in the same neighbourhood, even though we didn't meet until junior high (when we were coincidentally both living in the same different neighbourhood).  My wife Shannon would talk about "the ravine", an area in the old neighbourhood that I was sure I remembered too.  I wanted to go back and visit this ravine - and take some old-school figures for some outdoor pictures.  It took about 4 years, but we finally got around to going back to the ol' stompin' grounds.  Not only did we visit the ravine, but we also stopped by our old houses, playgrounds, etc.  Here's some random slices of my childhood, comin' at ya!

632

The Wild & Zany Heroes From The World Of Sports

I've never been much of a sports fan.  I can get into a game if I'm there in person, but I really don't go out of my way to attend any games.  Even sports video games aren't my thing.  There has to be a special weirdness to it for me to buy in (like NBA Hangtime for the N64, or World Cup for the NES).  The Sportfreaks line from the 80s had that special weirdness to it, and while I never tried to complete the line, I do remember it fondly.

AMAMOTM - July

My oh my!  I'm cutting this to the last minute again!  Although with last month's instalment of Army Men and Monsters of the Month actually getting posted this month, I shouldn't complain.  I mean, I've had to do two of them this month.  So, we good?  Good.

Power of the Force

There are a few toylines that I consider my "main lines".  I'll buy any figure if it's cool enough, but of course there are some lines that I actively collect.  Masters of the Universe and G.I. Joe would be two lines that I regularly go back to.  But Star Wars, as a whole, would be the one line that I consider my MAIN line.  Star Wars is so huge for me, I didn't even bother coming up with a clever title!  Who needs a silly joke title when we're talking about Star Wars?  No one.  That's who.

I've been thinking about which way to go about covering Star Wars on the blog here, because it's massive.  I've decided to go through the line series by series, starting with the vintage stuff and working up to modern times.  Obviously I won't be covering every figure, but I'll try to show off enough from each series to really show how the line has changed over the years.

The vintage series was called "Power of the Force", and it went from 1978 (before I was even born!) to 1985 (after I was even born!).  One thing I've always loved about Kenner's (and now Hasbro's) Star Wars toys is that they represent everyone.  Core characters to background extras all receive figures (eventually), which is great because a lot of my favorite figures from the line are obscure background characters.

DARTH VADER

EYEBOT UPDATE - Iron Man Assemblers

The first spotlight has finally been posted over at Go! Launch all Eyebot!  So click on through to see what's cookin' with the Iron Man Assemblers!

The Land of Moose Part 1: The Plush Pack

One of the main things I was looking forward to with our Australia trip was all the Trash Pack stuff I knew I would find.  Moose Enterprise Inc, the company that manufactures the Trash Pack (and Mighty Beanz, and Fistful of Power, and Fizz Magic, Wubber Wrestlers, etc etc etc), is based in Australia, so I was calling it the Land of Moose.  And in the end, Trash Pack toys were the majority of the stuff I bought, so the Land of Moose was true to it's name!  Or true to the name I gave it...

AMAMOTM - June

Better late than never!  I set out with the idea that each instalment of Army Men and Monsters of the Month would have to be posted during their respective months, however my Australia trip cut everything too close and it wasn't meant to be.  But the show must go on, so here is the AMAMOTM episode for June!

Give Me Vinyl (Anniversary Edition): Ultra Monsters

So I was hoping to do something special to celebrate the 1 year anniversary of The Plastic Eyeball, but I was travelling through Australia at that time, and I didn't have the means to do anything.  Now it's a little late (the Eyeball's anniversary was June 27th), but by gum I still gotta acknowledge it!  HAPPY ANNIVERSARY PLASTIC EYEBALL!

I had also been planning to do more "Give Me Vinyl" posts, spotlighting the various vinyl (mostly Japanese) figures that I like, but I'm late with that too, since the first Give Me Vinyl was done almost a year ago.  So let's remedy both situations and do a special Plastic Eyeball anniversary edition of Give Me Vinyl!

GAN-Q

Dark Warriors of the Grocery Store

I briefly contemplated posting the stuff I got during my Australia/New Zealand trip in the order I got them, but then I decided that some stuff is too cool to wait.  Case in point: Darkness Warrior!

How Ya Goin'?

I had hoped to get at least some basic posting done on the blog while I was in Australia for the last 6 weeks, but obviously that didn't happen.  Wi-fi wasn't easy to come across there (the free stuff was basically useless, and the wi-fi you had to pay for got more expensive as we went).  The AMAMOTM post for June is going to have to wait for July, and The Plastic Eyeball's 1 year anniversary went by without any mention.  I'll still give that a special post to give it the acknowledgement it deserves.  On top of that, I've got lots of new stuff to show off now!  Australia is the homeland of Moose, the makers of the Trash Pack, so I picked up a lot of them there, but I have some other odds and ends too.  It'll take a while to go through all the pics and get everything cropped and ready to go, but until then, here's some random Australian pics to get you in the mood.  Oh, and we spent a week in New Zealand as well, so there's some pretty epic stuff to show off from there as well (unless you don't like the Lord of the Rings/Hobbit movies, in which case I don't want to know you anyway).

AMAMOTM - May

Another month of Army Men And Monsters Of The Month, another instalment cutting it close to the deadline!  In this case there's still over a week left in the month, but I leave for Australia this weekend, so I need to get this done NOW.  Let's get to it.

Getting Closer to the Finish

I finally came across some more Trash Pack series 1 12-packs, so I tried to finish off my list of missing characters.  I got a bunch of new color variations, but only found two more characters that I needed:

DISINFECT-ANT

(Glow-in-the-dark Trashie)

GARBAGE EGG

I figured Disinfect-Ant would be the hardest character from my list to get, since he only comes in the 12-packs and I was having trouble finding them.  I actually ended up getting two versions of him today, so... Bonus!  I also finally got Garbage Egg, who is supposed to be a common Trashie.  As with Disinfect-Ant, I got two versions of Garbage Egg.  Now all I need from series 1 (besides the highly unlikely limited edition Trashies) are Rott Box, Crud Can, Rankenstein, and Bin Scab Beetle.  Almost there!

Canada Has Been Targeted!

One of my favorite things to do when travelling down to the USA was to hit up a Target store or two.  Target's always done their toy aisles right, and I always knew I'd come across something I couldn't find in the stores up here in Canada.  Well, last year the lame duck Zellers closed up shop, being bought out by Target.  And now Target is here!

Slime and Cards

The third series of Trash Pack toys hasn't fully hit Canada yet, but is instead trickling out through the line of Trash Pack trading cards.  You can buy the cards either on their own, or including a hidden series 3 Trashie, so I've gotten a few that way.  My friend Alexx from Toys and Tomfoolery hooked me up with some slime sets as well (thanks Alexx!), so instead of doing a true Series 3 spotlight right now, I'll just focus on the the slime and card sets.

I'll start with the cards first since they're my first exposure to Series 3.  Sounds pretty fair!  I used to love trading cards as a kid (I still have my complete Monster In My Pocket card set), so I was pretty excited for these.  Also, the Trash Pack is hardly known for its highly detailed paint applications, so seeing the fully illustrated characters on the cards is nice.

The Gross Gang in Your Garbage

The Trash Pack is becoming my "vacation toy line".  I discovered them on a trip to Las Vegas, I got a large chunk of my Series 2 collection while visiting Florida, and in less than a month I'm travelling to the Trash Pack's homeland - Australia.  The day I take a vacation somewhere and I don't get any Trash Pack stuff will be a sad day indeed.

One Man's Trash

I love it when I come across something I've never seen before.  That doesn't happen very often in the age of the interwebs.  I usually know what's coming out toy-wise long before it ever shows up in stores, which is useful for sure, but sometimes I miss the thrill of discovering something completely new to me.  It still happens from time to time, though.  By now everyone's heard of the Trash Pack.  These little guys are inexplicably popular (I say "inexplicably" because I usually seem to gravitate more to the less popular things).  But when I came across them in a Toys R Us in Las Vegas a year ago, I had never heard of them.  They took me completely by surprise and I can literally say I loved them at first sight.

See Spot. Spot is Cool. Cool Spot! Cool!

When I was a kid, I don't know if you could've called me "cool".  I guess I was kind of awkward, and I didn't go out of my way to fit it.  I knew what cool was though, and I knew that there were those who would always be cooler than others.  And when I was a kid, no one, and I mean no one, was cooler to me than Cool Spot (the mascot for 7-Up back in the late 80's/early 90's).  7-Up isn't even my favorite brand of pop, but I can't deny the Spot.

AMAMOTM - April

I took the pics for this chapter of Army Men And Monsters Of The Month all "lean-and-mean" quick style, so the pics *might* not be as up to snuff as my usual pics.  The lighting isn't perfect, there's some stray hairs here and there, and there may be touches of blurriness.  But we're getting close to the end of the month, and I don't feel like retaking any of the shots.  Hopefully I'm the only one picky enough to notice any of the little imperfections.

The Commander briefs the Mega Monster Fighters on their next mission:  A distress signal has been received that appears to have been sent from a Mega Monster defector.  A young Cyberbike has turned on it's creators and is seeking asylum with the Mega Monster Fighters.  In return, it will deliver top secret information regarding the origins of the Mega Monsters.

Yes, I Have a Dino Drawer

Looks like I don't have dinosaurs out of my system just yet.  When I was taking the pics for my Jurassic Park posts, I did a lot of rooting around through my previously mentioned dino drawer and came to realize that some of the oldest figures I own are of dinosaurs.  I guess that's kind of fitting.  Then I decided I wanted to show some of them off, and before I knew it I had most of my drawer emptied and photographed.  So here they are!

The Nutritional Goodness of TANG

Let's take a break from all that dinosaur talk and and have a nice delicious gulp of TANG.

Life, uh, Finds a Way

The problem with these multi-post spotlights is that once you start, you don't want to cover anything else until the spotlight is done.  But once you've done one or two of the posts, you want to talk about other stuff.  Such is the ADD world of toy collecting.  Any way, I love Jurassic Park!  I love Jurassic Park toys!  Let's go!

Hold on to Your Butts!

I've already said how Jurassic Park is one of my all-time favorite movies and one of my favorite toy lines.  So let's just get right back to the figures!

This nice looking young man is Dr. Snare, one of the "Evil Raiders".  The Evil Raiders are dino poachers and the enemies of the Dino Trackers (and the other heroes from the movies).  There were only 3 of them planned, as far as I know, and only two were released.  A cyborg named "Scrap Davis" was shown on the card back, but sadly never came out.  Scrap Davis was the weirdest-looking one, and    would have definitely been my favorite.  Anyway, in keeping with the "everyman" toys aspect that I love so much about these figures, Dr. Snare could just as easily be at home in some post-apocalyptic wasteland story as a villain from Jurassic Park.  Actually, he'd fit in well with Cadillacs and Dinosaurs.    Both of the Evil Raiders came with removable pieces of clothing that would reveal "dino-damage" battle scarring.

Welcome To Jurassic Park

One of my favorite movies of all time is Jurassic Park, and with it being back in theaters (in 3D no less!) I decided to dig through the boxes in my toy room and show off my JP collection.  Some of the figures are pretty worn in, but they've been well used!  Not only is JP one of my favorite movies, it's one of my all time favorite toy lines.

I've also done something a little different with the pics this time that I may or may not do again, depending on how these go over:  Speech balloons.  I've wanted to try them for a while, but the paint program on my MAC is pretty sad, so these took a lot of time and effort.  There's not a TON of voice balloons, because that would have taken forever.  Any way, let's dig in!

Wild, Crazy, and Cool

Welcome to the wacky world of Mad Wheelz, where anything goes!  A chicken with mag wheels?  A turbo boosted brain?  A burger that goes 0-60 in 6 seconds?  They're wild, they're crazy...  They're cool!  They're Mad Wheelz!

 - From the Mad Wheelz website

I found these guys at Walgreens while on a trip to Florida back in 2004.  I'm not sure what I was doing in a Walgreens on vacation, but I guess it worked out.  These Mini Mad Wheelz have a real Savage Mondo Blitzers vibe to them, so obviously I had to give them a try.  I just wish I grabbed more than the two 3-packs that I got.  There was even an eyeball that I foolishly passed up on.  What was I thinking?  I went for the nose, and noses are harder to find in toy form than eyeballs, so I suppose it's all good.  And I love foodie characters, which make up half of my collection here.  But enough of what I could of got. What did I actually get, and how do they look next to Savage Mondo Blitzers?

Go! Launch All Eyebot!

And so another chapter begins!  I've teamed up with my fine-feathered friend Alexx (from Toys and Tomfoolery) to create our own toy-themed blog: Go! Launch All Eyebot!

What is an "Eyebot"?  What does it all mean?  Well, I like eyeballs, Alexx likes robots, and we both like toys.  I'll keep working on the Plastic Eyeball here, but I'll also post links to the updates over at the Eyebot whenever Alexx and I decide that two toy-loving heads are better than one for a particular spotlight.

Mirth will ensue.  Let's just get that out of the way right now.

AMAMOTM - March

Well, we took a look into the past.  Now let's go back to "modern times" and see what the Mega Monster Fighters are up to in "Army Men And Monsters Of The Month" for March!

We begin this month's episode with the Commander holding a briefing with the Mega Monster Fighters.

Ketchup and Mustard

Don't you just love it when a theme comes together?

I'll probably cover Skylanders at some point, but I like how these two look together, so I wanted to show them off now.