May Hauls

[andersonh1]

Hey, I actually get to start a Haul thread.

For my birthday today, my sweet wife and daughters got me Skydive. Of course, this means I'll have to get the rest of the set now. I was kind of eyeing the Stunticons, so maybe I"ll end up with two combiner sets at some point.

[JediTricks]

So they got you an addiction? Happy birthday!


I got 2x Star Wars Rebels Sabine Wren & Stormtrooper figure set, and both are the friggin' missing-paint variant.

[andersonh1]

So they got you an addiction? Happy birthday!

Apparently so! 2nd Transformer of the month, purchased at Target this evening: Powerglide! I still have my original that I bought at Wilson's 50c-$1.00 store when I was a kid, and I have both of the larger Universe versions. It was hard to pass up this version, but then I didn't try too hard.

[138 Scourge]

Boy, Hasbro knew what they were doing with that Humble Bundle. Hey, here's a big long commercial for our products! Give us seventeen bucks, sure, we know you're gonna buy a bunch of the toys advertised herein, suckers!

Yeah I went and bought Skids.

[Onslaught Six]

Boy, Hasbro knew what they were doing with that Humble Bundle. Hey, here's a big long commercial for our products! Give us seventeen bucks, sure, we know you're gonna buy a bunch of the toys advertised herein, suckers!

Yeah I went and bought Skids.

How you like him? I think his shoulders are a little too overthought and his arm guns kinda get in the way too much for my liking--I originally thought they were removable when we got pics, but that unfortunately isn't the case--but I like the way his legs fold out and the way his doors stay on. I ended up liking Crosscut a lot more, actually--probably something about the shiny red paint and faceplate head, and something touching the Diaclone lover in me. Wish I had a motorcycle Minicon to pair him up with, but I think Armada Sideswipe was the only one who had a true motorcycle--the biker guy from Perceptor was a BMX bike at best, although I wonder now about the remould of that that turned up in Energon or Cybertron...


As mentioned in another thread, I again spent WAY too much on GI Joe vehicles and some figures. I tried very much to not spend more than $20 shipped on any single vehicle, and more or less stuck to that goal. I'll try not to bore everyone with super detailed reviews of everything, but:

-ROC "Dragonhawk," basically a souped up modernized version of the old Dragonfly, with the best modern era Wild Bill. Earlier versions of him had a small head with painted fleshtones and usually had big honkin' holsters for his six shooters that prevented him from sitting well in a vehicle; this version fixes both of those problems. I actually had a Dragonfly (and still have, although it's in my eBay pile) that my grandmother found at an auction and was trying to offload on eBay before I rescued it; Wild Bill was my second Joe and my first "Joe" team member (I had only just recently bought my first Cobra Commander) so I have a minor affinity to the guy and his vehicle. The Dragonhawk itself is pretty cool, although a little small and pudgy instead of the sleek long Dragonfly. It only seats one pilot instead of the Dragonfly's two, which is a little disappointing as I can't have Airbourne or someone else hang out in the cockpit with Bill like the comics, but whatever. No automatic spinning action, but you can spin the rotor manually and that's fun, and it has some pop-out launchers from the sides.
-Rounded out my '82-83 vehicle lineup, sort of, with the European Action Force versions of the FLAK and Whirlwind, in that attractive-ass bright green and black, plus a 25th RAM motorcycle. I just need the MOBAT to complete '82 now, and want an APC, but other than that I think I'm almost done with this end...
-50th Snow Job and 2002 Rockslide/Polar Battle Bear. Expanding things out just a tad more into the winter department for next winter's fun times. Wanted multiples of the Bear but without them being all the same; 2002 version has a cool rotating rocket launcher on top and wasn't too expensive.
-Retaliation Cobra Fangboat, which is what they called their variation of the Water Moccasin, for trademark reasons. Since the 25th, Hasbro completely redid the Moccasin at a slightly larger scale with more detail and stuff. It's an iconic vehicle and the Fangboat had probably the most interesting colour scheme of the few times it's been used, and it was really cheap because nobody really wanted most of the Retaliation vehicles, so hey! The driver is crap but has a cool head.
-Retaliation Mouse. Mouse is a bit character in the intro of the movie played by the little boy from Jurassic Park, all grown up. I love JP, and in terms of "annoying kid movie characters" he's actually one of the most tolerable--he's supposed to be annoying in the beginning but when he gets into danger, you really actually feel for him. His part in Retaliation was pretty well acted and I wish he hadn't been offed with all the other guys. Rounds out my modern-looking guys pretty well.
-ROC Beachhead, finally to go with the dude he came in a pack with a motorcycle with. A head swap and new helmet later, and he's a fresh new guy I can work in. ROC was great for giving you cool figures who just needed a little tweak and a lot of personality.
-ROC Ice Dagger. The Ice Dagger is a repaint of a 2003 or 2004 vehicle that nobody ever remembers. It's bigass and blue and will work nicely in the snow. Came with the driver, too, Frostbite, who is pretty generic and not at all like the vintage Frostbite. Oh well. A new head from a Shipwreck, a fur collar and a pair of goggles would fix that nicely.
-ROC Mantis submarine with Aqua Viper. Aqua Viper is basically a ROC Eel with a completely new head that's not masked or anything. Just a nondescript dude (who sorta looks like a young Harrison Ford?) which is entirely weird in a line where there were DOZENS of Joes with masks. Swapped the head out and saving it to do something cool. The submarine is a 2002-2004 era repaint that's alright, nothing special, and might get thrown onto eBay later on. Not much use for aquatic vehicles, I'm afraid.
-Now the crown jewel, 2003's Patriot Griszly tank. This thing is MASSIVE. It's bigger than one of my cats, and I have a big fuckin' cat. I probably overpaid a little bit for this, but I can't overstate how frickin' huge it is. It's as large as Unicron or Primus if I stood it upright. It's the size of two HISS tanks! Somewhat forgotten by collectors and purists, this is probably the pinnacle of the 2002-2005 era of Joe's vehicle design team. It has dedicated seats for at least three dudes plus a compartment in the back that could easily hold two or even three more, plus old (large-style) foot pegs all over it for other dudes to stand on. (Unfortunately these are basically useless to me since the modern era dudes have different peg sizes, but whatever.) It has some decent sounds for moving the treads and turning the barrel and shooting the cannon, which is a cool motorized missile launcher that has about 15-20 missiles or something crazy. Also has a removable second gun, little radar dish and antennae. Now the bad: The treads are not in any way working or even rubber, because that's not really a thing Hasbro was doing at this time--even if they were non-moving treads that were made of rubber, like ROTF Bludgeon, that would be cool, but unfortunately they're straight up plastic. The radar, antennae and machine gun are all removable but they all use 3 different sized pegs, so there's no customization--you can't put the machine gun on the outside of the turret, for example. The end of the main cannon is a removable piece, mostly for packaging reasons, and this actually is apparently easily lost and made it hard to find a non-boxed example that actually had it, which is unfortunate, especially because the tank looks like crap without it. Finally, the missiles can occasionally get stuck or misaligned in the motorized cannon assembly, which is fine and actually noted in the instructions--but to fix it and get it aligned, you need to actually unscrew a panel with two Phillips screws, which (with my luck) will probably wear down after time and become stripped. Thankfully, I probably won't be using the motorized cannon too much so I won't have to worry about it. Lastly, it runs on 2 C batteries. C batteries! Who the fuck has those laying around?! Not me, I had to buy some for like $5.
This thing is definitely a monster that will be on the front lines of almost every outdoor photo session I have in the future. Probably the only other complaint I have is that it's in a desert camo colour scheme instead of flat green or jungle camo--there was a "Night Force" repaint that was green and black, but it's apparently even harder to find and way more expensive, so I resigned myself to only ever having this one, and I'm glad I did. Makes me rethink getting a MOBAT to finish my '82 lineup, just because of how huge and cool it is.

Christ, it sounds like so much when you lay it out like that. I'm glad I only have one more package coming to me and that I slowed down, and thankfully, I think I hit about 75-80% of, like, *every* Joe vehicle I could possibly ever want in this run. (I also sold a bunch of stuff on eBay, like FOC retail Bruticus and Armada Powerlinx Prime.) There's only a handful of others and they're mostly expansions out into areas I don't have stuff in (for example, I don't have a lot of aircraft) so that makes sense. But man, Hasbro had such a winning formula with the entire figure/vehicle/playset dynamic, it's shocking to see that it doesn't work as well today. They just get better the more of them you buy, weirdly. Something cool about having just shitloads of them.

Oh, and I have Combiner Wars Wave 3 on the way, and eventually Wave 2 too. Just gotta find Hot Spot.

[138 Scourge]

I haven't had a ton of time to fiddle with the toy yet, but so far Skids is pretty enjoyable. I like the look of the robot. The particular shade of blue it has going on is so weird, but it'll make him stand out in a display. All the weapons he has going on reminds me of one of those Cybertron Defense dudes from back in the day. He's got a truly comical amount of weapons on him for a theoritican/secret agent guy. Hopefully later today I'll have more time to figure the thing out.

If you're looking for motorcycle mini-cons, there's always that guy from the Classics minicons-the dirt digger team or whatever? He came with a monster truck and a bitchin' muscle car?

[andersonh1]

Double haul today: Firefly and Dragstrip. They were the only two Combiner Wars limbs Target had, or I might have been tempted for more.

[JediTricks]

Hasbro's PR firm sent me a Star Wars countdown calendar, a day-by-day calendar both counting down to the launch of the new movie product on Sept 4th, and each page also has an image and factoid about collecting Hasbro Star Wars over the last 20 years and Kenner over the last 38.

[JediTricks]

Found the Hot Wheels Star Wars The Ghost at Target today, $5. Although not as finely-detailed as the other 3 tools in the wave, this is the first toy of The Ghost that isn't LEGO or part of some middling green army men-like set, and it gets the broad strokes so accurate that it almost certainly came from those digital models. The ship doesn't actually have that many fine details, it has some panels and a few greebles, but mainly it's weathered, and this die cast toy isn't -- I can't say I'm not inspired to give it a try, but I have no skill or tools. They sculpted the landing legs, but the balance point is well behind that so it tips up slightly without the stand. The aft has the Phantom docked facing in rather than out, the show has done it both ways.

The included flight stand is nice, it's all clear and the base has blaster cannons sculpted into it, then the middle has the Star Wars logo on one side and the Hot Wheels logo on the other, just above that is a small circle badge with the Rebels-style rebellion phoenix, and then it angles up high to a white specialized connector plug that keeps the ship facing forward. The stand doubles as a flight ring, a "kid" can wear it and fly a ship (or a small squad of ships) around, and on my unremarkably-sized index fingers it goes halfway to the second knuckle.

[Shockwave]

Box from BBTS:

Protectobots!!
First Aid, Rook, Streetwise, Blades, Groove

Minibots!!
Viper, Warpath

Reviews in the Combiner Wars thread.