Action Figures / Toys

Anyone else interested in a topic to just babble about action figures and stuff?

I've recently gotten into Mego figures, focused on Star Trek.  I've also picked up some Star Wars Black 6" figs, mostly just new versions of figs I had as a kid 78-83 with a few favorite prequel characters tossed in.  And I finally took the plunge and started buying 6" Marvel Legends figures, with an eye towards 80s era X-Men figures.

I also kinda/sorta collect Figmas.  I tend to pick up Racing Mikus or just Miku variants that seem neat.

I'm thinking about maybe in the future hunting down some Playmates Star Trek stuff, but not sure.  Playmates did a VAST amount of Trek, but I wouldn't call the figures particularly impressive even for the time.

 

I collect Star Wars Black Series and Figuarts.  Mostly OT stuff.  I dabble in Hot Toys, but at this point, I'm just waiting for 3PO and Lando to finish my set o the main OT characters.  

I have a Marvel Legends collection, mostly MCU, but I've been losing interest over the last few years.  I picked up Mezco's One:12 Collective Thor, from Thor Ragnarok, though, and I'm pretty impressed.  I was collecting Marvel Hot Toys figures, too, although it's been a few years since I bought one.  

I collect Figma, mainly Type-Moon characters at this point.  

I like Playmates' old 9 inch Star Trek figures.  I bought a bunch for mitsuki, too.  

Oh, and Mythic Legions.  Awesome fantasy knights, orcs, dwarves, elves and skeletons.  

3 hours ago, Gabriel said:

Anyone else interested in a topic to just babble about action figures and stuff?

Sure. 

I buy figma and S.H.Figuarts of various characters depending on my needs. My needs are basically the ability of the characters to be able to express different emotions and reactions. I love the fact they have swappable faces because I use them as "actors" for making awful NSFW photo comics.

I used to collect vintage Star Wars toys but sold off everything except my loose figures from 1978 to 1985.  Everything else got sold to pay for my first trip to Japan.  😉   I owned every toy Kenner released in that time frame and also lots of prototype toys and packaging.  My focus was Bossk the bounty hunter and I had the most complete focus collection of him known at one time.  That was a fun character to find stuff for.

I still collect anime figures, mostly Nendoroid Petites and any ones that catch my eye of favorite anime girls like Ryomou Shimei, Rei Ayanami and Asuka Langley.  The main bulk of free cash goes to my DD collecting.

I've also started getting certain vintage re-releases of Transformers toys I had as a kid but those are few and far between as buys.

 

Other than the above, I really don't collect anything else.  If anyone wants to share pics of their other collections please do!  I always enjoy seeing how people have things displayed.  I can post pics of my stuff too if anyone is interested.

 

 

Billy

@Galvatim

For me, Star Wars has lost a lot of its lustre.  Even though I've just started, like you, I'm almost finished.  I don't want to get sucked in like I did with 90s and prequel madness.

A while back I saw someone commenting about how Star Wars figures are doing so poorly compared to Marvel toys.  They opined that Star Wars figures are just boring compared to the Marvel options.  I feel there's some truth to that.  Comparing the Star Wars Black series figures I've acquired to the Marvel Legends I've acquired, the Star Wars figures just seem bland.  They're expressionless, and even posed they seem to lack any energy.  I know I find myself just posing the Star Wars figures on the shelf, but I've been endlessly fiddling with the X-Men figures.

Well... I did play quite a bit with the Scout Trooper I just got.  He has this tiny little gun and looks like he's been wading in poop.  So I've decided his figure's personality is a depressed guy that feels the world dumps on him constantly.  My favorite line for him so far is, "I think I'll just walk into an oncoming crowd of Ewoks and end it all."

Moving on to Star Trek, I didn't even know about the Playmates 9" figures until recently.  I'm pretty sure I saw some 12" Generations figures, but other than that all I ever saw were the 5" figures.  I wasn't even aware they ever made playsets, because I never saw any in stores.  

As for your Mythic Legions figures, I remember seeing some of those on your Flickr.  Those are pretty cool.  

@Growcian

That concept of customization was why I started buying Figmas.  I had given up on articulated figures for a while at that point.  I was pretty solidly all fixed pose scale figures then.  But I was chafing at the idea that a scale is always the same pose and the same expression.  I also liked the idea of swapping heads to give characters different looks.

But the key thing Figmas helped me realize was that I really missed posability.  It made me realize that my favorite character toys had been exceptionally posable for their era, and I used that posability expressively while playing.

@Baldylox

My jaw hit the floor reading about your Star Wars collection.  Having a complete set of Kenner stuff as a kid is impressive enough.  Having prototypes on top of that...

I would have wanted to come over to your house and play every single day!   

The oldest thing I still have is my G1 Soundwave.  I didn't really take care of my toys as a kid.  Plus, I did things like stick Black Cats into R2D2 to see how high he'd fly up into the air when I lit him up.  I don't really think I learned to take care of my goodies until I was into my 30s.

@Gabriel - 

I didn't own ALL those toys as a kid, I only had a few of the playsets and ships.  I only owned all the toys and such when I was an adult collector.  But I did have all the original figures released from SW all the way to POTF.  Luckily I never sold off the figures so the ones I have now are the ones I had as a kid.  You can see the loose figures in a special display case here:

 

DSC_6082 by Billy  Bennett, on Flickr

 

Here's another display I had with some newer and older carded figures:

 

DSC_6081 by Billy  Bennett, on Flickr

 

Oh, I almost forgot, I also have a full collection of series 1 thru 3 of Kenners M.A.S.K. toy line.  Here they are when they were out on display.  The top shelf has a bunch of random Micronauts things.

 

DSC_6080 by Billy  Bennett, on Flickr

 

And then there's the Lego sets.  I only have these older ones from the OT but they were fun to build.

 

lego by Billy  Bennett, on Flickr

 

 

Billy

 

 

Wow, I love that store display rack! What a cool way to display the packaged figures. My older brother would be in heaven here... He used to go hunting for Star Wars figures anytime the local stores got a shipment. 

I don't know if it qualifies for the thread, for the past few years I've been buying fixed-pose figures; fewer lately as there's not as much I'm interested in and prices are up. I was never big on posing and the quality and artistic aspect of scales is what appeals to me. I've also always disliked the look of joints. On DDs I guess they don't bother me as much or I tolerate them for what you get otherwise. I have a list of figures on MFC; there's a bunch of Mikus, other Japanese characters and some of the Shunya Yamashita Marvel and DC bishoujo figures.

I was thinking about part of this recently because of some of the discussion in the Transformers thread, where some of you, and I know people in general, like to collect or re-buy things they grew up with. I've never had a desire to do that, and I wondered why. I think I figured out it's because I wasn't a happy child so have no desire to relive that, heh.

I was out of high school when Star Wars first came out, and perhaps because of that it's never had any appeal for me. What I did have as a kid in terms of action figures was Mattel's Major Matt Mason. These toys were only made a few years and I guess haven't had the kind of lasting appeal as many others as they haven't been rereleased in any form, and I couldn't find much information about them online. Here are a few pages I found:

http://www.fullyarticulated.com/page30/page36/page16/styled-2/

https://www.figurerealm.com/actionfigure?action=seriesitemlist&id=142

https://www.action-figure-resource.com/mattel-major-matt-mason.html

http://www.maikeldas.com/MMMengl.html and http://www.maikeldas.com/MMM3.html

http://www.robotnut.com/mmm/

I didn't have everything but I had quite a bit of it. I always took care of my stuff even as a kid; however, when I left home for college and couldn't take everything with me, my parents sold a lot of my stuff and put much in storage that wasn't climate-controlled so it deteriorated. That happened to this stuff, though by now it would have done so anyway I'm sure. Around 30 years ago I sold it all to some collector.

Something I found funny in those links--there are several pictures of the Astro Trac vehicle with the rear tires either deteriorating or entirely missing. When I got mine from that storage, its tires were just like that. I cleaned off the rest and it looked just like the one with wheels and no tires when I sold it.

I've bumped into Major Matt Mason stuff a bit while researching.  I don't recall ever seeing any of it in person.  The Wikipedia article says Mattel dropped the line in the mid-70s.  It looks like something I really would have been interested in.  Some of the packaging has that dim, barely remembered quality of early memories of the big toy store.  Sometimes I browse stuff like this and remember some long forgotten piece of plastic I had as a tot.

But I think I was exactly the right age to miss the boat on Major Matt Mason.  The toyline launched in 66, before I existed.  I can't find any notes about how long it lasted.  One of the pages you provide states some products were released in 68.  There's another mention of a 1970 variant of a single figure.  The Wikipedia page says Mattel discontinued the line in the "mid 70s".  I found another page where someone anecdotally mentions the line was long out of production by 1975.  But I've read that toylines pre-Star Wars were only expected to last about three years tops.  So, I 'm guessing the line was gone in the early 70s before I even emerged from toddlerhood.

 

I saw a couple of scales this morning that drew my attention for different reasons, so I might as well mention them.

https://myfigurecollection.net/item/806173

You know, from my POV, a lot of bunnygirl figures are absolutely ruined by the pose, as is the case here.

 

https://myfigurecollection.net/item/740318

Oh hell yeah!  I normally dislike swimsuit figures, but I'll cast off my prejudices for this one.

<Butthead>Huhhuh He said "cast off."  Huhhuh.</Butthead>

But I actually still prefer this older one:

https://myfigurecollection.net/item/676024
 

I don't like the FREEing bunnygirls where they go all out with the butt-in-your-face poses like that one, though for Senran Kagura it doesn't seem as out of place as with for example https://myfigurecollection.net/item/676136

I only have one of theirs https://myfigurecollection.net/item/292668 who I was a little disappointed with as the quality isn't quite up to most (smaller) figures.

This one I thought was nice and considered getting but didnt: https://myfigurecollection.net/item/676272; I think it doesn't quite look like her, though all of the Aniplex ones look really off to me; whoever is doing Aniplex's sculpts these days make everyone's eyes too big as their recent Rin Tohsaka is really weird too: https://myfigurecollection.net/item/672734

That older Kaga is better to me too because I find swimsuit figures kind of boring, and prefer characters in whatever their normal outfits are. I'm not sure exactly what it is, but nearly all of the swimsuit Azur Lane figures come across as borderline lewd to me, like even this Alter one: https://myfigurecollection.net/item/713437

Really, all of the Azur Lane figures that I've seen have been kind of disappointing to me. I don't know anything about the game as I don't care about mobile games, but I've seen a lot of nice art that none of the figures live up to, and for whatever reason so many of the figures are these swimsuit ones.

Man, with the whole retro figure thing going on right now, someone needs to relaunch Playmates Star Trek.  Fix the leg joints so the figures can actually sit, and reissue the TNG bridge playset.  I picked up the Mego inspired Picard and Borg figures from Diamond a few years ago, and they have better articulation than the Playmates 9" figures, but the cartoony Playmates Picard sculpt is better, in my opinion.  

015 by Tim Solberg, on Flickr

Feel free to check my Flickr for more pics, along with a few of my 12" Trek figures.  

I've been losing interest in anime figures.  I have a few that I've never opened, and quite a few I kind of regret buying.  I stick to buying Asuka, Ron Tohsaka or Saber for the most part now.  I have Flare's 2B on preorder, along with a couple others.  

Best bikini figure: https://myfigurecollection.net/item/128854

This one is awesome, too:  https://myfigurecollection.net/item/3227

 

That Playmates Picard does look better; you can tell they went for a stylized look; the other one just looks like the usual bad attempt to mimic the actor. It actually reminds me of another character actor that I used to see in various shows, but don't know his name.

I have a few anime figures that I probably wouldn't buy over again, but I still like more than what I could probably get by selling them. I have thought about culling a bit just to not have as many. The two bikini figures you linked are nicer, in some part because they're not just standard swimwear. The seemingly discontinued Wave Beach Queens line was the worst for this, it was always just boring poses and bland bikinis with very little individuality between characters.

10 hours ago, Gabriel said:

I've bumped into Major Matt Mason stuff a bit while researching.  I don't recall ever seeing any of it in person.  The Wikipedia article says Mattel dropped the line in the mid-70s.  It looks like something I really would have been interested in.  Some of the packaging has that dim, barely remembered quality of early memories of the big toy store.  Sometimes I browse stuff like this and remember some long forgotten piece of plastic I had as a tot.

But I think I was exactly the right age to miss the boat on Major Matt Mason.  The toyline launched in 66, before I existed.  I can't find any notes about how long it lasted.  One of the pages you provide states some products were released in 68.  There's another mention of a 1970 variant of a single figure.  The Wikipedia page says Mattel discontinued the line in the "mid 70s".  I found another page where someone anecdotally mentions the line was long out of production by 1975.  But I've read that toylines pre-Star Wars were only expected to last about three years tops.  So, I 'm guessing the line was gone in the early 70s before I even emerged from toddlerhood.

While I certainly don't remember, it's mentioned on a couple of those fan pages I linked that the line was first sold in 1967, with copyrights on the toys being 1966, and it was discontinued in 1970. Based on what is stated it seems like it was a combination of what you said with lines only expected to be popular for 3-4 years, and perceived general public loss of interest in the space program after Apollo 11.

As a kid I was interested in that; while I really remember very little of my childhood, I remember staying up way past my bedtime to watch some of the Apollo stuff since it was generally covered live on tv. As shown in some of those articles a lot of the Matt Mason stuff was inspired if not by actual NASA stuff, at least was feasible, or close enough for a kid. The time is probably right; now 3-4 years sounds like nothing but as a kid it was a while. I lived in a small town where there weren't real toy stores or anything, and I think the small carded stuff was typically most of what was available locally, and I only got toys at Christmas anyway, so I remember each year poring over the Sears Christmas catalog for what was new in this toy line, and also remember it petering out after a few years and then disappearing entirely. As it went on, I also remember there being more toys I didn't like because they seemed lame, stupid, no longer "realistic" like the older stuff was. That was part of why I never even tried to get all of it; there were a few bits I wanted that I never could find, but there were also things I didn't want at all.

As usual, the info on those fan pages can't be taken 100% at face value. That Figurerealm listing of toys has 1966 as the release date on all of them. Just taking a quick look, the Star Seeker on the second page I am positive came one of the later years. That was an interesting toy, for the time anyway. It was motorized and moved around the floor a bit like today's robot vaccums. It didn't search and react on it's own, but those little orange "wires" you can see each plugged into one of 3(I think) holes for direction, left, forward, right, so you "programmed" a path for it to take.

The reason I keep saying 3-4 years as none of what I can find indicates if it was still being sold by Christmas 1970 or if was discontinued earlier in the year. I'd only consider it 4 years if it was available for the Christmas season all of them.

I wish there were better or larger pictures of any of it. I remember the stuff being really well made, but as I haven't actually seen it in 30 years, who knows what it really looked like.

On 9/12/2019 at 5:06 PM, baldylox said:

 

DSC_6082 by Billy  Bennett, on Flickr

 

Billy

 

 

I see you're a fellow Eagle Scout.  What was your project?  Mine was cutting bushes at a local railroad museum.

 

As for figures, I never got into collecting them, or even playing with them.  I liked LEGOs, Construxs, and Robotixs way more.  Probably why I become an engineer.  I've thought about maybe getting some anime figures, okay, Miku figures, but the draw has never been enough to draw money away from DDs and model trains.

One of Billy's recent photos made me remember how I miss my old Big Trak.

There was a site selling new ones years ago, but I never ordered one.

----

Yep, Playmates Picard looks considerably better than the retro version.  

I accidentally found the McFarlane Star Trek figures at a Walgreens.  The likenesses on them are top notch.  I need to do some pics.

---

Figma Snow Miku 2019 arrived on Friday, but I haven't even been able to open the box up.

I picked up the McFarlane Picard a while back.  I like the sculpt and paint work, but I ended up sticking him back in the package.  Did they ever release any beyond Kirk and Picard?  

I know QMX has a 1/6 scale Trek series, but skipped Picard due to rampant reports of the outfit staining the figure's neck.  I did get the One:12 Collective Spock as a gift for mitsuki, very impressive figure.   

@sinclair Oh nice!  There's more Eagles out there than I thought!  😉  My project was to redo all the bleachers at my school.  We had to replace broken boards, sand down rusty metal structures and repaint everything.  It was pretty fun to do tho!

 

@Gabriel Let me tell you, I used to spend HOURS playing with my Big Trak as a kid.  I also had the hauler part that carried and dumped things.  I used to have Big Trak run over the bad guy figures or dump Lincoln logs on top of them.  LOL  My dad would yell at me for having the tank fire all the time because it was noisy.... so I had it go into the living room one time and shoot at him 99 times.  At about 50 he picked it up, turned it off and put in the top of his closet for a day.  😛  I wish mine still worked but sadly it doesn't.

 

 

Billy

18 minutes ago, baldylox said:

I used to have Big Trak run over the bad guy figures or dump Lincoln logs on top of them.  LOL

Were the Lincoln logs wood or plastic? As a kid I had hand-me-down Lincoln logs that were made of wood, though I remember the ones sold by then were plastic which I'd have rather had, because I always got splinters from the wood ones.

This thread makes me remember weird trivia that I've otherwise forgotten. I also just remembered I had a set of Giant Cooties:

http://www.angelfire.com/az2/gamesgoneby/giantcootie.html

The best part was the spinner thing that they had instead of dice. I remember using that thing with every game that came with dice instead.

Edited September 16, 2019 by cfx

Lincoln Logs were some of my favorite early toys.  I remember several tubs of them being purchased for me.  Back in the 70s when I played with them, they were still wood.  Wood logs, wood roof planks.

In the mid-80s, my little half brother was given a set.  By that point they were plastic.  The logs had this kind of tan color to them instead of the rich dark brown of the wood.

Star Trek

Galvatim, as you probably noticed, the cards for McFarlane Kirk and Picard have teasers for TOS Spock and a character from Discovery (I don't watch Discovery, so I don't know her name.)

I had been thinking about getting the QMX figures, but I knew if I went that route I would want the entire core bridge crew.  At $180 a pop, I didn't feel like going that deep.  However, I've seen they've teased ST2 style versions of Kirk and Spock.  I'll get those when/if they produce them.

 

Oh yeah, I think it was those green roof planks that I always got splinters from rather than the logs themselves.

I didn't remember it was that much later when they became plastic; I guess then it was rather at the time wishing I had those just I saw them as an adult and thought "wish they were like that when I was a child" lol.

Here's another one, and I know this change did happen while I was a kid because I had both: I had a hand-me-down Monopoly game where the houses and hotels were wood, and a new one where they were plastic. Here plastic was a definite improvement because they were more detailed. Something changed about the player pieces too but I can't remember what it was now; maybe there was/were additional one(s).

Edited September 17, 2019 by cfx

@cfx The ones I had were all wood except for those red plastic roof support pieces.  Everything else was made of wood.  I had several sets that used to be my dad's as a kid and a few smaller sets that I got for birthdays and Christmas when I was younger.  And included in my dad's stuff were all these cool cylindrical pieces in various colors.  I'd never seen them come with another set of Lincoln Logs before so I always wondered about them.  Years after my grandfather passed, I happened to ask my dad about those pieces and he said my granddad made them for him to go with the premade pieces.  I was amazed because they were so well made that they looked factory built.  Granddad was a carpenter by trade so I should have expected as much.   

 

 

Billy

That's an awesome story.

My brother and I had some wooden Lincoln Logs back in the day.  We had quite a few wooden blocks, which were generally used to create bases for Star Wars, GI Joe or Transformers.  My dad was really good at finding cool toys at garage sales back in the day, most of my Star Wars toys were garage sale finds.  We actually found a near complete GI Joe Cobra Night Raven once, and complete Ultra Magnus and Scourge at another.  

@Gabriel, I'm not seeing any Mcfarlane Trek figures beyond Kirk and Picard on eBay.  Looks like Spock and Micheal Burnham ( the Discovery character) aren't out yet.  I bought the Discovery season one Blu-Ray, I've only watched the first 5 episodes, and that was months ago.  It's not bad, but like I said, it's been months since I started, and I still haven't finished.  

7 hours ago, Galvatim said:

I'm not seeing any Mcfarlane Trek figures beyond Kirk and Picard on eBay.  Looks like Spock and Micheal Burnham ( the Discovery character) aren't out yet.    

Yeah, they're teased, but that's about it.  I've seen some posts elsewhere where people are wondering if McFarlane Toys will even do any more.  There's no formal announcement.

If they do continue, I'll probably pick up a Spock. 

BigBadToyStore sent me an email yesterday that they're expecting the Star Trek II Mego figures to arrive.  So looking forward to that pre-order.

I would have gotten into the Eaglemoss ships, but my XL TOS Enterprise was broken out of the box requiring repairs, and the XL Refit Enterprise was just outright bungled.  So no more.  Its a shame they're the only ones doing Trek ship toys anymore.  I don't think Diamond will ever release the Reliant they teased years ago.

 

I just noticed this scale figure on AmiAmi.  It definitely doesn't knock my socks off by any stretch, but I may order it.

https://myfigurecollection.net/item/808447