RID15 1-Step Grimlock - 1-Steppers are a disease that I don't need cured, and I kinda want a bunch of toys of RID15 Grimlock anyway, ever since I saw what an adorable tubster he was (seriously, when we first saw all the toys back in like, Comic-Con or whatever, I just thought he was the cutest). This version works cleverly enough, I like how the whole thing is predicated on flipping the beast legs/robot arms around, but geared so that it doesn't get out of whack easily. Neat!
Dead or Alive 5 Last Round Fight Stick - Time to finally move up in the fightin' games world! Saw this thing go up for pre-orders a while back. As y'all know, I love me some DOA, and have been contemplating getting a good fight stick for some time, so I pulled the trigger. It lives up to my expectations: It's huge, sturdy, looks great (although as much as I love her, it's odd to see an ancillary character like Marie Rose sharing decorative space with story-super-important characters Kasumi, Ayane, and Ryu.), and seems as nicely responsive as it should be so far. Wasn't crazy about the idea of a square gate on the stick itself, but I think I'll acclimate to it. Warmed it up already using DOA5 (natch) and Guilty Gear Xrd. It was easier to play GG on it already than I expected, my 'main' character Ramlethal handles very well on it, and I can do GG's previously-frustrating super motion quite easily now, which really streamlines things. And the English version of Under Night In-Birth should be coming to me sometime next week, so that'll be another one to work with! Gotta start learning all the crazy buffering and quick switches and other cool stuff you can do playing with one of these babies. Maybe I can finally play I-no now!
February Hauls!
-
Onslaught Six
- Supreme-Class
- Posts: 7023
- Joined: Fri Jul 18, 2008 6:49 am
- Location: In front of my computer.
- Contact:
Re: February Hauls!
GI Joe Valour Vs. Venom Operation: Crimson Sabotage, KB Toys exclusive from 2003: Wait, what the fuck?
The "new sculpt" years were a very, very strange time for GI Joe. After years of hibernation, repaints, store exclusive years and online exclusive waves (gee, where have we heard THAT before in the history of Joe?!) Hasbro attempted to relaunch the toyline wholesale in 2002 with figures at a slightly larger scale with new construction and standard of detailing. This was met with teeth gnashing and venom spewing from the fandom for removing their ever-beloved rubber bands from the waists of the figures and replacing them with t-crotches. (Admittedly, t-crotches suck.) So Hasbro gave in and redid the entire line with o-rings again, and continued the line with varied success until about 2005, when the line entirely died once again by slowly going to repaints, store exclusives, online exclusives, and then a relaunch with entirely new construction that got rid of o-rings and had a new standard of articulation and detail...with cruddy crotches at the beginning. Man, Joes go through weird cycles. (By the way, we are currently in the "store exclusive years" phase of the current cycle. In the next few years the Joe club will be the only outlet for Joe toys and then they'll relaunch the line, probably at 6".)
But here's the weird part--to bolster out their newer, differently detailed Joes, Hasbro started sprinkling in tons of repaints and frankensteined weirdo figures, mostly as store exclusives but occasionally in random waves. It's the weirdest thing--imagine if right in the middle of Classics, there were also G1 reissues with new heads and weapons. Right?
Anyway, getting to the point: One of these was a really really neat set of three Crimson Guards--actually some of the first Crimson Guards mostly made of the original moulds in like 15 years or some shit--along with a big red HISS and ASP, which is a neato little turret buggy thing. I wanted this set SO BAD when I learned about it. But it was a KB exclusive and was $20, and was really hard to find except online for nearly twice that. In 2003, 2004, I was maybe 14. I couldn't order online even if I had the money. I basically had resigned myself to never having this set.
Fast forward a decade; Joe goes through almost a scale change (the 25th/"Modern" Joes are pretty tall compared to the original, coming in at about 4") but are using slightly remoulded versions of pretty much vintage moulds. The HISS tank is rereleased basically verbatim. While looking up some unrelated Joe dudes who came out circa 2011ish, I suddenly remember the Crimson Sabotage set. Hasbro has actually slightly retooled both the HISS and the ASP for the modern line, and did release a crimson HISS or two but never a crimson ASP, and I figured, if I was going to get an old crimson ASP I might as well buy the whole set, right? Turns out there was one on eBay for about $40 shipped. That's what I call a deal, son.
So, okay, after all that--how is it? Pretty rad. It seems like the VvV era vintage vehicles were made from legitimate vintage moulds though, because some areas seem like they have some pretty rough mould degration--slight scratches or deformities in un-noticable places or just over the surface of the vehicle. It's really weird, but it doesn't detract overall. I liked not having to assemble the vehicles, kinda, and the stickers came pre-applied which is a godsend when it's GI Joe and all the stickers are tiny little annoying warning labels. I have at least six modern Crimson Guards so I grabbed four of them to hang out with it. The gunner position guy fits fine, this was never a problem even on the modern slightly retooled HISS. Getting a guy to sit in the cockpit of the HISS is slightly harder than you'd think, you need to focus on getting his butt all the way down in the seat and then adjusting his legs to fit, but once you actually get him in there and close the lid, he kinda fits better than some figures do in the modern HISS. The HISS doesn't have a whole lot of inherent play value but it never did; you're paying for a big chunky bastard vehicle that's able to run down your Joes and tow little vehicles. The ASP on the other hand can flip up and rotate around in some cool ways, and can either have wheels down or stands that flip down so the vehicle can be a stationary gunner turret. Unfortunately, this also suffers the most from the larger scale, you can juuuust barely cram a CG into it, and even then he won't look like he's very comfortable--his legs will be in an almost squatting position. Still, I knew that they might not fit perfectly going into this, so it's not very disappointing.
Oh, also, it came with three of the old CGs but I don't need any of those. I sold off the entirety of my pre-2007 GI Joe collection (except my very first Cobra Commander, since he was also my very first Joe I ever bought) a few years ago (Jesus!) when I got into a bad spot and started selling stuff and also needed space, and they were essentially worthless, so I didn't feel too bad about it since I figured if I ever got the itch for them again, I could just buy them again. In fact, I will probably turn right around and sell these on eBay to help offset the cost of the set!
The "new sculpt" years were a very, very strange time for GI Joe. After years of hibernation, repaints, store exclusive years and online exclusive waves (gee, where have we heard THAT before in the history of Joe?!) Hasbro attempted to relaunch the toyline wholesale in 2002 with figures at a slightly larger scale with new construction and standard of detailing. This was met with teeth gnashing and venom spewing from the fandom for removing their ever-beloved rubber bands from the waists of the figures and replacing them with t-crotches. (Admittedly, t-crotches suck.) So Hasbro gave in and redid the entire line with o-rings again, and continued the line with varied success until about 2005, when the line entirely died once again by slowly going to repaints, store exclusives, online exclusives, and then a relaunch with entirely new construction that got rid of o-rings and had a new standard of articulation and detail...with cruddy crotches at the beginning. Man, Joes go through weird cycles. (By the way, we are currently in the "store exclusive years" phase of the current cycle. In the next few years the Joe club will be the only outlet for Joe toys and then they'll relaunch the line, probably at 6".)
But here's the weird part--to bolster out their newer, differently detailed Joes, Hasbro started sprinkling in tons of repaints and frankensteined weirdo figures, mostly as store exclusives but occasionally in random waves. It's the weirdest thing--imagine if right in the middle of Classics, there were also G1 reissues with new heads and weapons. Right?
Anyway, getting to the point: One of these was a really really neat set of three Crimson Guards--actually some of the first Crimson Guards mostly made of the original moulds in like 15 years or some shit--along with a big red HISS and ASP, which is a neato little turret buggy thing. I wanted this set SO BAD when I learned about it. But it was a KB exclusive and was $20, and was really hard to find except online for nearly twice that. In 2003, 2004, I was maybe 14. I couldn't order online even if I had the money. I basically had resigned myself to never having this set.
Fast forward a decade; Joe goes through almost a scale change (the 25th/"Modern" Joes are pretty tall compared to the original, coming in at about 4") but are using slightly remoulded versions of pretty much vintage moulds. The HISS tank is rereleased basically verbatim. While looking up some unrelated Joe dudes who came out circa 2011ish, I suddenly remember the Crimson Sabotage set. Hasbro has actually slightly retooled both the HISS and the ASP for the modern line, and did release a crimson HISS or two but never a crimson ASP, and I figured, if I was going to get an old crimson ASP I might as well buy the whole set, right? Turns out there was one on eBay for about $40 shipped. That's what I call a deal, son.
So, okay, after all that--how is it? Pretty rad. It seems like the VvV era vintage vehicles were made from legitimate vintage moulds though, because some areas seem like they have some pretty rough mould degration--slight scratches or deformities in un-noticable places or just over the surface of the vehicle. It's really weird, but it doesn't detract overall. I liked not having to assemble the vehicles, kinda, and the stickers came pre-applied which is a godsend when it's GI Joe and all the stickers are tiny little annoying warning labels. I have at least six modern Crimson Guards so I grabbed four of them to hang out with it. The gunner position guy fits fine, this was never a problem even on the modern slightly retooled HISS. Getting a guy to sit in the cockpit of the HISS is slightly harder than you'd think, you need to focus on getting his butt all the way down in the seat and then adjusting his legs to fit, but once you actually get him in there and close the lid, he kinda fits better than some figures do in the modern HISS. The HISS doesn't have a whole lot of inherent play value but it never did; you're paying for a big chunky bastard vehicle that's able to run down your Joes and tow little vehicles. The ASP on the other hand can flip up and rotate around in some cool ways, and can either have wheels down or stands that flip down so the vehicle can be a stationary gunner turret. Unfortunately, this also suffers the most from the larger scale, you can juuuust barely cram a CG into it, and even then he won't look like he's very comfortable--his legs will be in an almost squatting position. Still, I knew that they might not fit perfectly going into this, so it's not very disappointing.
Oh, also, it came with three of the old CGs but I don't need any of those. I sold off the entirety of my pre-2007 GI Joe collection (except my very first Cobra Commander, since he was also my very first Joe I ever bought) a few years ago (Jesus!) when I got into a bad spot and started selling stuff and also needed space, and they were essentially worthless, so I didn't feel too bad about it since I figured if I ever got the itch for them again, I could just buy them again. In fact, I will probably turn right around and sell these on eBay to help offset the cost of the set!
People spend so much time worrying about whether a figure is "mint" or not that they never stop to consider other flavours.BWprowl wrote:The internet having this many different words to describe nerdy folks is akin to the whole eskimos/ice situation, I would presume.
