obligatory random shelf post

                *Read this to yourself in a voice from an old 1950's educational film*
 when in a doldrums with little in the way of inspiration for a cool blog post, a random shelf post will fill the void in a jiffy .

See wasn't that fun?

Thanks for the memory's old friend.

Sometimes a toy means more then just being a cool representation of a property you enjoy. These toys that we collect might mean nothing to some but might spark a vivid technicolor memory of a different time  in others. Be them good or bad those memory's are still a part of us and make us who we are.This particular toy does that for me. I remember exactly when and where and why I got him and because of the circumstances around him he never made it in to the "play with" pile .He has been carefully cared for and once long ago he had a cohort that he spent all his time with. His friend was lost to me through my own careless actions and for years after I refused to buy another copy of that figure because I could replace the figure but the memory attached to the specific figure couldn't be replaced. So after the loss of the one I have held the other close and very dear to me.He has been a constant part of my life for 32 years. While other aspects of life have come and gone twisted and changed he has been the unchanged thing , a tangible link to something that played a massive part in who I am today. But change is a part of life and its time for my old friend to say his goodbyes and head to a new home. I know where he is going he will be cared for and appreciated and with the above information I hope a little of the memory silently recorded in him is remembered in his new life. Goodbye my old friend.

  

Unboxing the new army.

In my time away from the blog I have been building up to some interesting stuff. While I was opening up today's delivery's I just snapped a quick picture to see how photogenic the new recruit was.This is that picture.

He looks pretty good on my cluttered coffee table but I bet he will look way better in what I have planned for him...

I paid .86 cents for this guy at Walgreens

Dollar Tree cannon fodder soldier

official press release and the state of my MOTUC collection

I had kind of quietly hit on this a couple posts back and again in the comments of my last post but it seems to have gone under the radar .So here I am officially announcing my retirement from weekly challenge type posts. No more queue of the week ,prompt or weekly challenge type  posts from me. I think the idea of it is a good one but in practice it doesn't show any real results. The idea being that a group gets together and all post on the same topic and link to other blogs as a means of cross pollination but I haven't seen it work. Not in any of the different weekly challenge groups have a I seen a boost in comments or views and added to that fact I simply do not enjoy doing them. There is only so many ways you can rehash the same basic idea and over the course of time that I've been involved with these different challenge groups pretty much any topic that is suited for my blog style has been covered .It had started to feel repetitive and forced  kinda like how Stephen King's books  have started to feel like he is plagiarizing himself.I started to get real Deja vu with the themes and looked back through the body of my work and I could see why.Historically on this blog I can guarantee that if a post is extra wordy that will have a substantially lower view count .That is basically why I whittled it down to a format of no words and one cool image , it's my style .I enjoy taking artistic picture and would never under any circumstance call myself a writer. That fact made the weekly challenge posts  even more frustrating when it would be a queue that basically called for writing over pictures. These posts truly stopped being fun and enjoyable with the first round of The League of Extraordinary  Bloggers , after that they started to feel like an obligation and a chore .So I felt that this needed to be said , I'm not slighting anybody and I'm not trying to cause hard feeling for stepping out of that scene .It's just not for me anymore and any effort to continue with it would be a hollow and meaningless facade with no feeling to it.

Now on to something a lot funner , this is my Masters of The Universe Classics collection  so far.

Now It wouldn't be right of me to show this collection without putting forth the fact (and a huge thanks to) that all but 4 of these figures came in trades from my good friend Alexis. Without her help this collection would never have got off of the ground as these figures are more expensive then I for the most part can afford.I hope this collection grows larger but I can't say for sure that it will or not.

It seems that giant spiders are the natural enemy of skeletons

A candid behind the scenes look at the Skeleton army aka downtime for the forces of darkness

I haven't felt much like blogging as of late . I guess I was feeling a bit of burnout and I started to feel the content I was putting here wasn't my style due to doing weekly "theme" posts on subjects I just couldn't put feeling to. Im hoping to get back on track in the next couple of weeks and cover what I gave myself for my birthday last week.

The encounter

The forces of evil

I pieced together my perfect Cobra Commander last night. It wasnt the most involved custom ever but it came out to be exactly what I wanted for the leader of my Cobra ranks.

Also last night , I put together my version of The Masters of Evil. Im well aware that Red skull was never in the MoE but Im much more a fan of Red Skull then I am of Baron Zemo.

Thanks to the fact that I have now closed up shop on the Marvel Universe figures I was able to obtain 3 of these guys in trade. Now mind you it's not that I dislike Marvel Universe figures , I cashed out on them because I simply had spread myself too thin.I've really tightened up the belt on my collecting  and by focusing in on just a few things I have been able to really add to those collections. Now I'm pretty solid at Marvel legends, MOTUC, GI Joe , Battle Beasts and Aliens / Predators . Cutting out Funko , Marvel Universe , Thundercats , The other world ,Mcfarlane ,Ninja turtles, Transformers ,and  all the random things I tended to pick up gives me more space and money to really fill out other collections.

Potato head kids , trash or treasure ?

So I saw an old mobile home  being cleaned out the other day .This place has been completely covered in ivy and kudzu for a really long time,Like at least 15 years maybe even 20 or more. A few weeks back there was a bunch of people out on the property hacking, chopping and mowing and after about a week they uncovered the mobile home and like 6 cars and an old ( now flat) storage building. I figured the place was probably empty because frankly I hadn't seen or thought about the place in so long .But it wasn't empty , oh no it was far from empty . The place was packed from floor to ceiling with junk .These potato head kids came out an old christmas popcorn canister and I was actually pretty shocked to see them because they are something you just don't see that much . I would have loved to have dug around more but the people cleaning it out said that nearly everything was covered in mold and rat poop so I shouldn't mess with it. These guys are perfectly fine though and just for safety sake I gave them a good bath.

 Now truthfully I wish it had been a can full of He man or gi joe figures but heck I really cant complain seeing they were completely free.

Round Robin Challenge - Ultimate Crossover Pictorial

Yeah Im just going to kind of call this one in . My camera has been acting up recently and I just couldn't really find any inspiration so Im recycling a picture from a long time ago. Here is a Poison Ivy Shockwave cross over.

Im sure if I really sat and thought about it I could come up with something better but this will have to do for now, I may redo this later if inspiration hits me.

Here is some other stuff
Alexes' universe

Mr Smiths Plastic Bubble

Just a quick group shot

This is a quick group picture I took the other night just to see how these guys photograph together. I take tons of test pictures like this before actually dragging stuff outside so I can see if what I have in mind will work. Most of the time I just delete them once I see what I needed from them  but this one looks pretty cool so I thought I would share it.

Run through the jungle..viper

yeah bad pun I guess. This is a Jungle viper I've had for a while but this is the first time I've taken him outside.

I guess I don't really live in the environment he is meant to blend into but he doesn't look to bad in the deep woods.

Who the heck does this stuff?

So I was at Walgreens following up a tip that they had the new Marvel Legends Angela ( they did in fact have her and Ill get around to taking pictures of her someday) and I spotted this:

Now this clearly isn't the build a figure piece for Absorbing man that this is meant to have with it. This is in fact this figure:

Dc Direct Kingdom Come Deadman with his extremities removed. Who does this? In my eyes this is stealing , not trading or some equivalent exchange like in alchemy but flatout theft. Am I wrong here? This is stealing isnt it? Anyways its a pretty shifty thing to do.  I guess thats enough ranting for now and to make up for it here are some random images .

  

Wolfman's got nards!

Strange little fact this blog was originally going to be named "Wolfman's got nards!" but I went a different direction ...anyways ..Now my Frankenstein Battle Troll has a friend !

It's been literally years since I have ran across a Battle troll in the wild let alone a super cool one like the Wolfman!I picked this guy up a few weeks ago as part of my amazing Goodwill haul (yeah I'm still milking it). The last cool battle troll I need is the Cyclops and Ill be done with what I wanted from the line.

Click on the moving eye to check out a post from way back 5 years ago when I was still using a $5.00 Disney Princess camara , Poor picture quality but might still be entertaining to those who haven't seen the old stuff.

Toy Biz Marvels Most Wanted Spat and Grovel

This set came out in  1999 (I think) but it has held up pretty well.

These guys can be had very cheap and look great  in a display with Marvel universe figures.

Ill probably never get the rest of this set..

Do you think they get hazard pay?

out with the old

Ill  start this post by saying that 3 times in the past fads have bit me in the butt and the wallet .Back 1998 I didn't lower my price on Furbys fast enough before Christmas and I ended up with 11 unsold Furbies.This wasn't truly a loss as I was able to return them to Toys R Us and get my money back. I still made a profit even with returning the 11 for cost because the 9 that I did sell went for $150 each( a profit of  about $110 each) Then in the 99 I got out of the Beanie Baby business just in time to turn a small profit on the remaining stock I had before the entire world sold off all at once. Then in 2000 I lost my shirt in Pokemon cards overnight , thats all I have to say about the Pokemon crash . Now what do these have to do with today? Well Ill tell you, many many many people are soon going to face a nasty realization that they are not going to get back out what they put in on a modern day Beanie Baby crazy. What is Im talking about? FUNKO POPS! the Pops bubble is going to burst and my feeling is it will happen pretty soon. People sitting on 3000 pops mint in box are going to wake up one morning to find that they are worth about a buck each and they will never get that 25 bucks each they had hoped for. Those who forget are doomed to repeat .Why am I stating this ? Because I'm out, me and Pops have parted ways for good. Sure I still have a few here and there but those are parts of character related collection and not part of a Pop collection. I cashed out and left the table. Recently a small hole in thee wall comic book store opened up in my town. Now for a place the size of a walk in closet they had a great selection of toys. I noticed they seemed to highly favor the Pops. So I made a proposition to the owner and we struck a deal and now my future worthless fad collectables are his and I'm the proud owner of some cool new stuff that doesn't have dead black eyes and swollen Mellon hydrocephalus like heads. Ill get to taking better shots of this stuff at some point but for now here are a few quick shots of a few of the things I got in my Pop purge .

I walked away very pleased with our trade and I'm not missing the Pops one bit. Some of the items I got I haven't pictured here and will unveil them at a later time.

this probably isnt going to end well

Spiderman Noir vs Clayface

And vs The Yeti

Must be a bad day for Spiderman Noir

Nobody says the "B" word.

I'm the ghost with the most, babe!

A renewed faith in humanity.

I have been frequenting the local Gamestop for a couple years now just to browse at the shiney things I cant afford. A while back I found a couple of the 3 inch Marvel legends figures but the characters where ones I just didnt want or need so I walked away from them even though the price had been reduced to only $4.00. I bought something that day ( your guess is as good as mine as to what it was I bought that day) but what's more important is the nearly forgettable small chitchat that I briefly had with the guy ringing me up .I said something to the effect that I wish I had got there sooner because the 2 characters from the line I wanted had already sold .I guess he ask me who it was I was looking for and I told him Spiderman Noir and Captain Marvel and he said something to the effect that he worked at 2 other Gamestops and he would take a look for them for me. I'm assuming I muttered thanks while thinking "sure you will buddy" and went on my way completely forgetting the event till today. I walk in the store and the same guy was there ( Gamestop employees all kinda look alike to me , no offence meant but its true) and he was like "ah just the person Iv been waiting for, I found your figures! I was like "what the heck are you talking about" so he reminded me of the chitchat that day and presented me with Spiderman Noir and Captain Marvel! Not only did he find them and bring them to me but they had a nice shiney bright yellow clearance sticker with the price of $1.97 each! Needless to say this made my day.Its rare for somebody you dont know to go out of there way to help you in this world and its great to see that there are still cool people to be found out there. Here is a quick peek at them , Ill give them the proper BrotherMidnight treatment at a later date .