Okay, how did you guys let Hayden Panattiere's 18th birthday slip by without posting any hot photos of her?

Slackers....


 

 

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Actually, that Ratchet looks pretty cool.  I haven't bought him yet either and didn't think that I would, but the repaint looks pretty good.  Like you said, if it's not $30 maybe I'll pick one up.

I'll probably pass on the Megatron, though.  I didn't really care for the figure although I thought the design looked cool in the film.

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I would love to go to this con some day but this year CIV soaked up all my spare cash and the non-Celebration years have been too far away.

I wish they'd find somewhere in the North East to hold this con.  I think DC is the closest they've come but that was 6 years ago at least.

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I picked up a set of 6 tonight and built Pitt.  I found them at a WM on clearance already for $7 each.  When I noticed that I decided not to pass them up.

The Pitt figure is incredible.  I have two issues with mine, the elbow in the left arm doesn't have the "click" positining so he can't hold some poses and the upper body is so heavy the hip joints have a hard time holding him.

I might snag a second right arm if I can get another cheap but I don't know.  That one most won't have to worry about but the weight and the hip joints may be a problem with a lot of them.  Still, overall, it's an incredible figure.  And well worth the price, especially on sale like that.

I haven't gone through the basic line yet to know if I'm going to keep any of them but I may hold onto Witchblade and maybe Judge Dredd.  The rest, although they look good, just aren't up my alley as collectibles.

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There was a big recall on some of the Magnetix toys last year because of the magnets falling out of them.  One thing that they've kept mentioning in all the reports I've read is about the power of them.  The Magnetix were pretty strong and apparently so are some of the ones in the toys being recalled now.

I wonder if the magnets in the SW figures are powerful enough that they'd raise the same alarm?

All these recalls are really going to hurt Mattel's bottom line for the year.

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You've hit on one of the reasons that focus and character collecting are popular.  I like the idea of the Galactic Heroes and 2" Unleashed, for example, but they aren't something I wanted to really get into.  But, both lines now have an AT-AT Driver figure so I added them to my character collection.

It's a way to collect neat items from different lines (within Star Wars in this case) and still have a theme that brings them together.  My main collection revolves around Hasbro action figures but my character collection lets me branch out.  I also collect Republic Gunship vehicles so I bought the Transformer and later this year I'll also pick up the AT-AT/AT-AT Driver, meaning I'll have Transformers in my collection even though I wouldn't normally have picked them up.

I do also collect figures from other lines outside Star Wars though.  Notably, GI Joe figures.  But I have enough of them that they form their own collection. The oddball stuff either fits on a shelf by itself or eventually ends up in storage.  I still have the Sentinel Build-A-Figure from the ML line on my bookshelf but the figures that I kept from that wave, Angel and Spider-Man, have long gone into a tub somewhere.  Ironhide and Barricade are on the shelf and, hopefully, Bumblebee will join them shortly.  I'll probably keep them on display, though, as I really liked those movie figures.

I started out as a toy collector before I really got back into Star Wars.  Back in the early to mid 90's I was collecting a lot of things but when the glut of EP1 stuff started hitting I pretty much did away with everything else because my hobby money was tied up.

I'm not sure if he's on JD.com but my buddy Joe Kersavage (some of you here know him) has fun adding 3" (or thereabout) figures to his collection by incorporating them into his Cantina display in his Star Wars room.  He's got some Predator and Alien figures along with Micro Man Batman and Batgirl figures, and even a monkey from the Planet of the Apes movie in there.  So he found a way to buy other cool toys and display them without needing to have an entire area dedicated to them.

But, back to your main question, I mostly did away with other toys besides Star Wars and for the SW lines outside of the 3.75" area I usually pass until I can add an item that fits into my character or vehicle focus.

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Thanks for the info, Brian.  I don't think my WM is going to carry the Joe stuff anymore but we'll see.  This is also a store that has never carried any Star Wars exclusives.  They never carried the VTOC last year and didn't have VTAC this year.  It's a newer store, only 3 years old, mabye, and very sketchy on what they stock.

The 12" Joe figures I found in Elmira were in cardboard displays on a 4-sided aisle display along with the new Marvel Toys figures.  That store didn't have shelf tags for 25th GI Joe figures either but they weren't done with their reset yet.

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