the vynsane asylum

jjreason wrote: Haven't opened them yet but the OT one are sweet on the cards.

That's the main reason I bought that R5-D4. Damn near made it 197whatever again.

There is the odd figure/card combo that TOTALLY brings with it a huge sense of nostalgia, R5D4 was one of these for me. Even though the figure is cheap (just a build-a-droid really), being my son's age again for a few seconds was worth the $12.


EDITED: and before you get mad at me for feeding scalpers, keep in mind our retail prices up here for these are $9.99 plus 14 percent gst - I'm paying over $11 to get them at TRU or WalMart, not like you lucky $6.99 paying sons of bitches.

I took advantage of TRUs BOGO sale on LEGOs and picked up the Police Mobile Command truck, the bigger Police helicoptor, the fishing boat, and the Speedboat transporter truck. I had some coupons also, so I got like $150 worth of bricks for $90.

Nice. I got the ebay stuff - 3 figures the guy forgot to send.... but this time 2 of them were screwed up ><. The good news is I now have Rebel Fleet Trooper which I didn't order (he failed to send me the blue Royal Guard, which I already have one of so this was truly a score).

Bad news is I got stupid Endor Capture Luke (same as the mis-carded Jabba's Palace Luke, which I was happy with because I got a "real" vintage card replacement not some crappy new one) instead of Death Star Escape Luke which I thus still need.

So for waves 5 & 6 I still want the aforementioned DS Escape Luke, Dagobah Landing Luke and a repaint of the #41 Stormtrooper. Hoping to ebay these soon.

Got the Lego Alien Defender and Tripod Invader sets for Father's Day.

Ran wrote:Got the Lego Alien Defender and Tripod Invader sets for Father's Day.

*jealous*

i have the two lowest-tier sets in that theme, the 'alien striker' and 'alien defender'. don't have any of the larger alien or human craft. the starfighter with 'earth defense HQ' is the awesomest production LEGO spacecraft i've ever seen.

Yes, that HQ thing is nice. Sort of a thowback to the old Space Legos, but way cooler. Too bad it is out of my price range. I'd like to get the UFO Abduction set and a couple of the more NASA based space sets.

jjreason wrote:EDITED: and before you get mad at me for feeding scalpers, keep in mind our retail prices up here for these are $9.99 plus 14 percent gst - I'm paying over $11 to get them at TRU or WalMart, not like you lucky $6.99 paying sons of bitches.

I don't know who's paying $6.99 around here, but he would indeed be a lucky son of a bitch. Walmart and Target have them for $8.99 and TRU is at $9.99 (which wouldn't normally be a problem but they seem to be getting in wave 7 before the other stores).

Target here is still $9.99 (or was the last time I saw any new figures there, which was, what, 1987 it feels like). TRU is a whopping $10.99. And they ain't got shit since the AOTC wave.

Really, and I'm not trying to sound like a Debbie Downer, but it's getting really tough now to be excited about figures. Any figures. DC figures have gone through the roof pricewise; I think the decent Green Lantern figures were on sale last week at Target for $14.39. DC and Marvel both focus on the currently-popular characters over the classic ones I might actually be interested in, and the figures are remarkably low quality for the high prices.

Transformers have been impossible to find since around the first of the year due to the shitty distribution and what seems like Hasbro banking on the popularity of Skullgrin and Thunderwing, for some strange reason. (I've said before, I love both characters, but they're pretty damned obscure. Especially Skullgrin, since Thunderwing at least was a prominent villain in the comic when it got to the point where it was just me and Rollo reading it.) I consider myself lucky as hell to have gotten figures like Perceptor, and I've never seen Wheeljack, Thundercracker, or Warpath. Probably never will. Windcharger and Grapple seem to be "Ross exclusives," victims of waves so under-ordered at regular retail that they go straight to the closeout stores.

GIJoe is a similar situation. The last new figures I found at retail were Low-Light and Skydive. (Again, I consider myself really fucking lucky to have scored Low-Light.) I got part of the next wave from hasbrotoyshop.com, but not all. I have no expectations of finding anything beyond that, due to an insane abundance of Arctic Destros. Pity. GIJoes are far more customizable than the other lines. (Okay, I take that partly back: I found the "Ross exclusive" vehicles which were technically released in 2011, but were scheduled for a year earlier and never wound up at Target.)

As for Star Wars, I see nothing but ESB wave from last August, and the occasional figure from the AOTC and ROTS waves. I saw the ROTJ wave once, and part of the ROTJ/AOTC wave once. I hope someone comes and liquidates (literally) all those motherfucking 4-LOMs. Really, what the fuck were they thinking to re-release a year-old (two-year-old?) figure at a higher price when he wasn't exactly flying off shelves the first time?

I always find it odd that Transformers, with their many small tooled parts held together with hinges and screws and other small tooled parts cost pretty much the same as action figures that are roughly 1/4th the size and have presumably less small tooled parts overall.

And the nearest Ross to me is in a different timezone, so if you see Windcharger and Grapple...

I'm looking for them. I've seen other characters from their assortments, but not them. The other "Scout class" figure (God, they pick the least user-friendly name for these sizes!) is some movie-looking dude named something like Chop Arm or something else retarded. The "Voyager class" figures are Grapple (excuse me, "Solar Storm Grappel"), Lugnut, and a repaint of ROTF Seaspray in black called Deep Dive. Lugnut is, IIRC, a realistically-styled version of the Animated character, for some reason, so he and Grapple are the popular ones. I've seen Deep Dive several times, and always think, "Goddammit, they had Grapple! This looks nice. I'm not buying it, but Seaspray does look nice in that color scheme."

That's bizarre about the pricing - has it gone up like $2 or $3 in the past year? I could've sworn when we were in Minnesota last summer they were $6.99 (and that was vintage collection too as I was looking for Jabba & seeing the AT-AT for the first time). I wonder if the demand for toys has diminished to the point where it's just not worth it to Hasbro to try very hard with their distribution right now.... anyone seen sales numbers?

I was in WM today and saw Lowlight. It was too cool to pass up so I bought it. And this from a guy who's passed up the last half dozen Snake-Eyes. He's got so many accessories I think the net weight of the stuff he comes with is more than the actual figure.

Rollo Tomassi wrote:I always find it odd that Transformers, with their many small tooled parts held together with hinges and screws and other small tooled parts cost pretty much the same as action figures that are roughly 1/4th the size and have presumably less small tooled parts overall.

And the nearest Ross to me is in a different timezone, so if you see Windcharger and Grapple...

Hasbro doesn't have to pay licensing fees on Transformers or GI Joe in the way they do on Star Wars and Marvel, or that other companies have to pay for other properties. Thus, more parts, pieces, and/or accessories in a company's in-house lines.

Speaking of Marvel, TRU here got some new single carded figures for the first time in ages - I just look at them mind you, don't buy them - but I saw Coipel Thor, Planet Hulk, Spider-Woman and Iron Man #448 or whatever they're up to Iron Man wise now. Did a double take on the Thor, he looks like he jumped right off the cover of a comic.





That's an awesome figure if I do say so myself.