The Randoms (Just Say Something! ANYTHING! Edition)

Hooooooo man.  I knew it was going to be harder to find time for the ol' blog,  but SERIOUSLY?  I haven't done a true post since Feb!  There was that one Twitter post, but I haven't kept up with that either.  Probably because Twitter's so boring.  Anyway, there's a lot of things exciting me toy-wise that I'm itching to get to, but before that I want to get this batch of randoms out of the way, which I assembled out of desperation to just talk about SOMETHING.

RAZHAN MOL

One thing that's changed since I last posted on the blog is that Target has high-tailed it out of Canada.  I guess they didn't really try and they disappeared as fast as they showed up, but I always liked shopping there.  I don't know what other people were looking for, but I was always able to find things that I couldn't anywhere else, like Razhan Mol here.

I have a thing for companies like Papo and Schleich.  Those lines of unarticulated knights, monsters, and the like.  I think they're usually European.  You can usually find some really interesting figures with that stuff.  This Terra line is from a company called Battat that seems to specialize in making similar versions of toy lines you'd see elsewhere.  Not full knock-offs, but not super original either.  This is their Papo/Schleich series.

First things first, I love the background insert packed with the figure.  I think it's a real picture.  I like the idea that someone went out and snapped pics of real locations to serve as fantasy worlds for these figures.  Or it could be fake.  Either way, I like it.  Not enough to keep it, but still.

Razhan Mol (the Unholy) is pretty cool for what he is.  I'm used to these kinds of figures being more expensive than they look (I think they're hand painted?), but Battat's stuff isn't quite up there with the competition.  If any good came out of Target closing up shop here it was being able to discount shop before they left.  I couldn't bring myself to pay full price for this guy, but I got him at a slight discount.  The toys were some of the last things to get marked down to blowout prices, but I didn't want to miss out on him.  A slight discount is better than no discount!

Razhan Mol is easily the standout of this Terra line.  They're all fairly generic, but this guy still managed to grab my attention every time I saw him.  He does look like a badass, if a generic one.  Still a badass!  The paint here is pretty plain, but there's still some cool details, like the skull on his shield.  

Razhan comes with a pretty massive sword and an less impressive hammer.  I think you might be able to pull the hammer out of his hand, but that sword isn't going anywhere and it's fairly rigid, so storing him safely might be a bit of a trick.  It would have been cool if you could actually use his shield, but it's not surprising that it's stuck to his back.

As far as generic, near no-name toys go, you really could do a lot worse than Razhan Mol.  I know I didn't praise him as much as I could have, but I do like him.  He's got his flaws (it was almost impossible to find one with good eyes; I settled for one that looked like he could be looking to the right), but he's also not without his charm and I don't regret buying him.

Oh, and all the Terra figures come with a bio, or more specifically each figure comes with the bios for everyone.  I can't find the little fold-out sheet with the bios, but basically Razhan is the the big bad villain of the series, and he looks like it.

GUP-B

This next guy is also from Target, but he was much more of an impulse buy.  Like, entirely an impulse buy.  I'm just a sucker for a hammerhead shark.  He ended up being pretty cool though!

I've never seen the Octonauts show, but apparently this is Captain Barnacles.  He's a polar bear.  There's not a whole lot more I can say about him besides WOOK AT DAT WIDDLE FACE!  *Aherm*.  The real draw here is his widdle vehicle, the Gup-B.

The Gup-B is a widdle shark boat with rollers on the bottom so you can roll it this way and/or that.  I will say that it's noteworthy that they actually sculpted some dials/controls for Captain Barnacles (or at least his head) to use.  They could have just left that area blank, and a lot of toy makers would have.  It's nothing fancy, but I like it.

Anyway, hammerheads, right?  Right.  The cool thing about this set is that it comes with extra "shells" that you can snap over the regular shark boat to either make it into something else, or give it different abilities?  I prefer the latter.  I can see this thing transforming to meet whatever situation arises.  Oh yes, I've thought of action scenes for Captain Barnacles and his Gup-B.  He's got his regular shark mode for biting things, his hammerhead mode for ramming (and radar)...

He's got this flying fish mode for flying (duh)...

And he's got this tiger shark mode for cloaking/camouflage.  And maybe more biting.  I can imagine a scene where he's dropped out of a plane in flying fish mode, then glides until he's close enough to change to his shark mode and dives into the water.  Then he stealthily moves in tiger shark mode until he changes to hammerhead mode and strikes!

I'd like to say that I imagined that scene as a joke for the blog, but... I can't.

SHOULDER TROLL

You can find some interesting stuff at dollar stores, like this thing here.  It looks like it's marketed towards girls, but even more it looks like it's marketed towards ME.  Yeah, I know I've got an interesting batch of randoms this time.

These Shoulder Trolls came a little late to the 90's party that was TROLLS.  Very late.  And I know it wasn't because they were trying to get their card art just right.  Woah, Wikipedia says Troll dolls hit their peak in the early 60's.  Really?  Ok.  Point is, they missed the boat.

That being said, this guy looks nuts.  Girls really want this guy sitting on their shoulder?  Because I do.

I love his colors!  Blue and orange is my personal favorite color combo.  Everybody has one!  This is mine.

Now, Shoulder Trolls being Shoulder Trolls, one would assume there should be a way to have them sit on your shoulder.  And there is.  All Shoulder Trolls come with this MAGIC COIN that helps them sit on you.  With magic.  Look at that thing!  They took the jazzy effects from the packaging and just carried it over to the coin!  

I do feel bad though.  You know the Shoulder Trolls really thought they'd tapped into something special.  I shouldn't even be telling you this, but the magic of Shoulder Trolls is... magnetism.  Once again, science explains absolutely everything in the universe!  Sorry, Shoulder Trolls.  You see, there's a magnet in the MAGIC COIN and you simply place the MAGIC COIN under your shirt at the shoulder.  Then, you stick the Shoulder Troll (which also has a magnet in it) to the MAGIC COIN and the troll sits on your shoulder.  That's the magic of science!

I had taken a picture of me wearing the Shoulder Troll, but... I can't find it.  Maybe the troll's hiding it somewhere?  I wonder if that'll come back to haunt me...

BIFF'S CAR

Did you know there were other cars in Back To The Future besides the DeLorean?  I went back and rewatched the movie, and it's true!  Apparently there's even some worth remembering!

Seriously though, even if I didn't love Back To The Future, if you know me at all through reading my posts here, how could I NOT buy this?  It's just an old timey car covered in shit manure.  Look at it!  It's gross!  The manure's even got this shine to it.  It looks fresh.  And a little moist. 

This is Biff Tannen's Ford Super De Luxe that can be seen manure-free numerous times throughout the movie, but I don't care about that.  I will only buy it if there's poo.

DAREDEVIL

When I originally took these pics way back when, the Daredevil series on Netflix was brand new and it blew me away.  Seriously, I never really cared about the character, but I thought the show was amazing.  It also made me see Daredevil in a new light and truly appreciate him.

Now, this isn't Daredevil from that show.  This one is from a Spiderman line that came out some years ago.  I actually bought him at Safeway, and I only got him because he reminded me of CJ, the end boss of the godawful Street Combat game for the SNES.  Why did I want a figure that reminded me of CJ from Street Combat?  I don't know.  I also wanted a car covered in manure and a troll that sits on my shoulder.  I just want things, ok?

This figure definitely shows its age, but it also manages to stand its own against some of the more modern figures.  This Spiderman line just predated Marvel Legends, I think, but you can see where things were headed.  On one hand, this Daredevil looks a bit scrawny and his neck joint is weird/frustrating, but most of these joints work.  There's a bunch of Marvel Legends figures that can't claim to actually have joints that work.  As for the scrawniness, well, he's not very big in the Netflix show either, but it works.  The face is a little old school, but aside from some minor paint issues it also works well enough.  

Daredevil comes with some nunchucks that are connected by black string, so you can actually chuck 'em.  He's also got a church window base for some late night skulking that's got a hole in the back so you can mount it to a wall with a nail.  Or a tack.

Given that I haven't always liked the character and bought this figure for dubious reasons, I loved how the base mounts to the wall, and this Daredevil has been proudly mounted to my toy room wall for all to see for years.  Then the show came out and made me like him that much more!  Still, I look forward to a proper Netflix Daredevil figure.

Street Combat sucks.

BUNGEE WALKER

Wooo, look at this guy.  I've been reading the Walking Dead comics for years, and I've gotten into the show as well.  Unfortunately it's been hard to get into the toy line by McFarlane Toys, mostly because the earlier waves were so terrible.  The figures have gradually been getting better though, so I finally bit the bullet and picked up one of the zombies.

Every season the show has a few zombies that really stand out, and this guy showed up in the first episode of season 4.  You take whatever humour you can from this show, and seeing a walker that has fallen through the ceiling and is dangling by his intestines is kinda funny.  Creepy.  But funny.  He'll still try to getcha though!

His guts come sculpted in a ring shape so you can recreate his dangling scene, and the guts can be rotated to look like they're just hanging loose as well.  Or you can remove the bungee parts completely so they don't get in the way.  Whichever you like.  The Bungee Walker is here to please you.  

There's not a whole lot going on here articulation-wise, but that's not too surprising and not really a bad thing either.  This guy is meant to dangle and dangle he does!

Oh, incidentally the figure's original name was "Bungee Guts Walker".  I don't know why they cut the "Guts" part, but it was so much better that way!

CHEETAH

My brother is the real anime/manga fan of the family, so I gave him this Cheetah Diggers figure for Christmas one year.  I've never read a Gold Digger comic, and I don't know if he has either, but... cat girl... so it's okay.  I guess he didn't care about her too much, because he ended up putting her in a box of stuff he was getting rid of.  So I took her back!

She's got the basic five points of articulation that are making a comeback these days, so she can punch and kick and... dive?  Sure, why not?  I still no nothing about her, but she's colourful and... cat girl... that's about all you need to know, right?  

Well, I'm sure Gold Digger is worth looking into. 

SLEVEN & ANACONDRAI BATTLE MECH

I have a bad habit of buying Lego sets specifically for the minifigures they come with.  That's why the blind bagged minifigures are so perfect for me, but it's expensive otherwise.  Besides the Winter Village sets, there's not a whole lot I really pay attention too once the figures are built.  I even have a bin of unbuilt Lego sets with all the minifigures removed.  I'll get to them eventually...

But that's why I like tiny sets like this, because it's still mostly about the minifigures! 

I've picked up a handful of Ninjago sets over the years, and yes, it's always been for the minifigures.  I really fought the urge to buy one of the bigger sets for one of these snake skull guys, and I'm glad I did.  This little Anacondrai Battle Mech came out and now there's no guilt!

This minifigure is Sleven, and while I haven't kept up with the Ninjago storylines, I can tell you he's a cool looking dude.  The snake skull helmet was the real draw, but his snake tattoos and half painted face also make him pop.

Giant mechs are all well and good, but for some reason I prefer the smaller ones.  I love this little gladiator-looking thing, and how Sleven kinda functions as its head.  It's not the safest design, but I guess that's why he wears the helmet.

CREW CHIEF PVT. SPUNKMEYER

Have I mentioned my love/hate relationship with Minimates?  If not, just know that I love them and I hate them.  I love how you can often find obscure characters that rarely get figures with Minimates, and I'm ok with the style.  I hate how some of the figures fall apart too easily and quality control isn't always the best.  But usually the really barebones Minimates are a safe bet.

I've only seen Aliens once and it's ok, but I had to look this guy up to see who he was.

Daniel Spunkmeyer

I must confess I only bought this figure because of his name.  Spunkmeyer!  Hahahahahahaha!  Seriously?  Spunkmeyer?  SPUNKMEYER!  It still kills me.  Apologies to the Spunkmeyers of the world.

I could have chosen an armoured marine or any number of aliens, but no.  I wanted my Spunkmeyer!

Silly names.  Cat girls.  Poo cars.  This is how I buy things.  Luckily Spunkmeyer is actually a nice figure.  I said the barebones Minimates are best and it's because you don't have any bulky crap getting in the way and bogging the figure down.  Jackets and helmets are okay, but some Minimates have extra stuff on their torsos/waists/arms/legs that just end up hurting the figures more than anything.  I have a Stay Puft Marshmallow Man Minimate, and I LOVE Stay Puft, but his legs are so bulky only one foot can be on the ground at a time.  Spunkmeyer is perfection at its simplest.  He's got a helmet and a gun and that's it.  He moves well, he can stand on his own, and he's ready to be ripped apart in the back of your dropship, should you so desire.

Haha!  SPUNKMEYER!

GEORGE SANDERSON

Wrapping things up this time is George Sanderson, the big shaggy horny guy from Monsters Inc.  

What?  He has a horn!

I can't remember why I bought this figure, but I think it's because I thought his scene in the movie was funny?  I mean, it is, but is that why I got him?  I have no idea.  It's been so long that now he's just there in my collection, but I know he wasn't gifted to me.  I chose him.  Hmmmm....

Anyway, see that nicely detailed sock on George's back?  That's not good, and it needs to be dealt with appropriately.

If you push down on George's head, his fur flies off and he screams "No!  Not my fur!" to recreate the scene in the movie where the CDA (that's Child Detection Agency) jump him and shave him bald.  He may scream some other lines, but his batteries are dead and I haven't gotten around to changing them.

In the movie he's left completely naked, but it's only his torso that gets shaved here.  It would have been nice  if he had more snap-off parts so you could remove all his fur, but he is what he is.  He's still got the bandage over where the sock was though, and that's a must.

Lastly, George comes with a cone to wear so he doesn't gnaw at his scabs.  Because walking around naked at work isn't embarrassing enough.

And I should say that I love how the monsters in Monsters Inc all have regular human names.  I know their world is supposed to be just like ours, but still.  George Sanderson.  Brilliant!

And that's it!  I've posted!  You've read it!  Everything is as it should be.  Like I said at the beginning, there's a lot exciting me right now, toy-wise, so hopefully it won't be another six or seven months before I post something again.

SPUNKMEYER!  

Street Combat sucks.