These aren’t mine, but someone brought them by the office for me to look at so I couldn’t resist putting them in with the rest of my JLU and taking a few shots.

 I can’t WAIT for this set!

As you can see I threw in a Bandai Teen Titans Beast Boy, just for scale.

Mento was still carded so he didn’t get to join in the shot.  but I did get to see him and he looks great!  Robotman/Cliff Steel is 75% a new sculpt with new head torso and arms.  Only the legs have been redone.

You’ll be seeing more about these guys on the site soon!

It’s no secret around these parts that I’m a Super Powers collector.   I have a complete loose collection and a (near) complete carded collection.   But, I can’t just stop with the 33 figures in the line.   For the past 3 years I have been buying Super Powers customs.   Mostly loose, but I LOVE to find custom SP figures on custom SP cards.

Several months ago a series of …figures started to show up on Ebay by multiple sellers.   They were being billed by the sellers as "the lost wave" of Super Powers figures and were "discovered overseas."  They said they were manufactured by a company called "Industrial Toy Werks"  out of Kazakhstan (which as you recall is where the character Borat is from).

Collectors took notice of these and threads started popping up on several message boards, including ours, asking about the origin of these figures.   This has been fairly baffling as the different sellers all have a different story about where they came from and how they came to own them, that and the fact that there are a LOT of them.   There are some characters I’ve seen listed (and usually sell) as many as 20 times.

So what are these?  Are they customs?  Are they bootlegs?  Were they manufactured in mass?  How many were made, who did it and why?   I still don’t have all of those answers but after having one in my collection I can make some educated guesses.

 I knew that most of the figures would not look great close up, but the cards seem to look nice.   The main issue was that they were a bit too pricey for what they were.   Most ranged from $50-$100 with their starting bids and their "Buy It Nows."  There were a few loose ones that showed up that were just a figure and a card with no bubble,but those didn’t really fit into what I collected.

Then, a Mirror Master showed up on Ebay a few weeks back for a decent price because the  bubble was separating from the card, so I went for it, I took one for the team, wanted some answers, I bit on it and I won the auction.  There was a little bit of back and forth with the seller after the auction closed.  They wanted to make sure I knew that the bubble was really separating and that it might even be worse than the auction  described… so they offered to throw in some freebies. My carded Mirror Master arrived with a Batman McDonald’s toy, and old Superman comic from the 90’s and a loose Super Powers Kalibak (no weapon but great paint and tight joints, even better than the loose sample in my collection, so I swapped him out.)

Here is the carded carded Mirror Master I received:

He was quite easy to slip out of the bubble:

Let’s look at the Good, the Bad and the Ugly of this figure.

It has a die-cut hanger tab (unpunched), the real deal, it’s not just drawn on.

It mentions the magnetic parts here in the card text and that you can mix and match parts.   That is not true.  More on that and the construction of the figure below.

 It has a biography card on the back in the same font and format as the real cards:

Here is the list of characters shown on the back supposedly made for this line/wave:

Of the figures shown above I have yet to see a listing or image for Blue Beetle, Gleek, Booster Gold, Apache Chief, Wendy, Marvin or Wonder Dog.  All of the others have been sold several times with the rarest seeming to be Jayna of the Wonder Twins.   You can see carded images of them later in this article.

Another thing to note is that none of the Shazams or Supergirls that have shown up and sold have capes attached to the figure or included with them.

Shazam is an interesting inclusion in this series since he was in the actual Super Powers 3rd wave line up, but I suppose that Black Adam was made from the same parts so it was an easy repaint/inclusion in the line.

The Riddler appears to also be a mash up of the Flash/Shazam parts, not a reuse of Green Lantern like the Super Amigos bootleg Riddler.

Of course the strangest inclusion in the line is Bruce Lee as "The Dragon." 

The other items mentioned on the card back are the two "play environments."  Neither of these have ever surfaced on Ebay either.

The final note of interest on the cards is the inclusion of this wording:

On the standard figure this text reads: Contents: One toy figure ("one mini comic book" is also included on wave 1 and 2 figures).

Also at the top of the regular cards the text reads: AGES 4 AND UP

Where as on these the text reads: AGES 18 AND UP; THIS IS NOT A TOY

This clearly puts these into the category of Customs and Bootlegs and not a legitimate "lost wave" as some of the sellers would have buyers believe.  We know what the REAL lost 4th wave would have been.

The Bad…here is Mirror Master loose.  As you can see he is based off of the Flash body, with Shazam’s arms and Doctor Fate’s legs.  He still has the lightning bolt belt that’s just been painted over.  The head sculpt looks to be all new probably an original sculpt judging by it’s large size and one solid piece with no neck articulation. 

The figure cast in solid resin so he has more weight to him than a standard SP figure.  He doesn’t have any action feature and there’s NO magnetic parts as mentioned on the card.

The UGLY…WHOAH!   Now that’s a face only a mother could love!   As you can see in this closeup the paint is not the strong point.  The eyes are just vague, crooked black dots, and the lips are just a smudge.

It also looks like there was a sculpting glitch on his "bib" where whatever they used to sculpt it flipped up a bit when they let it dry and it stayed that way.

Because of the limitations of the material used the legs are REALLY loose, floppy even.   It is possible to get him to stand when finding his center of gravity, but make sure nothing bumps the shelf he’s standing on.  

In this picture below you can clearly see how wide a gap there is between the hip and the pelvis.

 

Another interesting thing to note is that there are no peg holes in the feet like all Kenner figures of this time had.

 

In my Custom Super Powers buying frenzy of the past year I actually ended up with two different Mirror Masters customs by two different custom artists.  This one is also based on the Flash body:

As you can see the custom on the left is much more accurate in color, costume and accessories.   That was part of my inspiration in buying this was since the bubble was separated from the card, I knew I could do this switchero and have a much cooler carded Mirror Master in my Super Powers collection.

Here are some of the other figures available from this series:

  I still don’t know who made these or how many are out there, but hopefully after reading this you can answer for yourself "are they worth it?’

I wouldn’t mind picking up Captain Atom, Black Adam, Classic Brainiac and maybe Supergirl for my collection IF I found them cheep enough.  With the cards as nice as they are there’s enough of a novelty factor in them for me to be interested.   And, I can always try to do another switchero with a better custom.

Tonight at 8:39 PM there was a magnitude 5.0 earquake centered about 1.5 miles from my house.

My collection did not fare well.  It was the FIRST things to start tumbling.

I’m sure this will also be the scene in my office in the morning to stay tuned for part 2 tomorrow.

Do I go to work today?  Or do I just keep following this truck to it’s destination in the hopes that it is filled with new JLU and DCUC wave 8?  Hmmmm…..

As I was putting my 5 year old daughter to bed last night she asked me "Dad, what’s your favorite TV show?"  and after thinking about it and weighing Lost against everything else I had to say
"It’s a show called ‘Battlestar Galactica‘." And then I had to say "and oddly enough the last show is tomorrow night."

It’s sometimes hard to convince the non-watchers to get on board this show because most of them remember the old show with it’s goofy costumes with capes, monkeys dressed up as robot dogs and Dirk Benedict.  Even I was not anxious to watch the original miniseries when it was first announced.  As a matter of fact I only watched the first 2 of the 4 hours.  Then when it became a series I said I’d give it one more chance, and watched the episode named "33"  and when it was over I said out loud "I will watch every episode they make of this."   And I have.  And it has consistently been on my top three shows that I MUST watch as soon as they air (along with The Shield, which also ended this year, and LOST which ends next year).

During the writers strike my girlfriend and I got into watching a lot of BBC shows, and the thing that is unique about them is that they have a story to tell and they tell it and when it’s done, it’s done.  There are a few American shows that are also picking up on this idea, but largely TV just loves to strip mine a series until there is nothing left that you care about and just watch out of habit (like I am doing with ER).   

 Battlestar Galctica has a plan.  They have had one story to tell, it ends tonight, and I really will be sad when it’s over.  BSG has provided some of the best, most consistently written characters in TV and really deal with some difficult social issues in interesting ways like REALLY GOOD Sci Fi should.   It deals with what would really happen if there was just a handful of people, roughly 50,000, what would they do to maintain the human race.    It’s so good at tackling these issues that the U.N. invited them last week to talk on the topics of: race, war, torture, suicide bombing and genocide.  They take on the subjects in interesting and difficult ways.  It’s not like Star Trek where when the ship is in trouble they solve things with some Sci Fi techno-babble.  In BSG, if the fleet or humanity are in trouble you have two options: Fight or flight!

The thing I like about the new Battlestar Galactica is that every week they surprise me.  Every episode there is some gut-punch twist that makes me want more.  This is the same reason I like Lost and the Shield.  They all work really hard to show you something that you don’t see on other shows.   I really like that.  

Tonight I’m gonna watch the show with my girlfriend and a few other friends that are also big fans on a big screen.   I have no idea how the plot lines will resolve themselves, but I can’t wait to see what they have in store for the last two hours.

  If you have yet to start watching, do yourself a favor and TRY IT.  Take the Julius Marx BSG challenge.  Watch the 4 hour Miniseries.   It’s good, but not brilliant, but you really need to see it to know what’s going on.  Then watch the first episode of Season 1- "33" and see if you aren’t hooked.

If you need to catch up on this season you can do it here.

You can download every episode off of itunes.

Or you can buy the seasons off of Amazon.com

If you are already a fan and all caught up go ahead and hit "more" for some other cool articles.   But if you are new, or not caught up do yourself a favor and stop reading this now, go in spoiler free and just enjoy one of the best shows on TV…ever. 

SO SAY WE ALL!!

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I came across this over on Veidt.com and thought it was TOO well done not to share.  It’s a mash up of  the Watchmen trailer and Pixar’s Wal*E.    Someone spent some time on this and it shows!

This was the scene I was met with this morning at my local Target on my way to work.    Target has reduced two colums of Justice League Unlimited and DC Infinte Heroes (8 pegs) into one column (2 pegs for each, 4 total) and in the remaning space has added 8 pegs of Marvel Universe 3.75" Fury Files figures.    3.75" Marvel and DC figures hanging side by side.

The short answer is I liked it.

On Monday night I was invited to a special IMAX test screening of Warner Brothers Watchmen movie that will be released this coming Friday to a theater near you.  Why did I call it a “test screening?”  Because it’s one of the longest IMAX movies ever attempted and it barely fits on the projection platters.  They literally have to wind the film extra tight and work on the humidity in the projection booths to make sure this all works right. Warner Brothers has requested that the new Harry Potter trailer be attached to the IMAX prints and even just that minute and a half of extra film on the platter is causing concerns for the IMAX theaters.  It’s such an issue that there are different, shorter credits on the IMAX version of the movie than the regular prints.   It turns out there was an issue in the screening I saw where the film had to be stopped for about five minutes.

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I’ve seen a lot of collections in my time, but no one puts together more interesting dioramas than my buddy Cuban Zod.  He just finds the coolest stuff and puts them together in such an interesting fashion.    I have a few photos of parts of his collection that I thought would be fun to share with you.

Here is his diorama of Superman’s funeral.   It’s made up of Super Powers figures, Superman and Batman animated figures, his own customs, some Chap Mei policemen, and some scale props.   The building/set they are on is a scale model used in the filming of the movie "Reign of Fire" that he bought in a warehouse sale.

Here is Cuban Zod’s Funeral For A Friend diorama:

I’ve been lucky so far.   I’ve keep toys at my workplace for the past 13+ years, and not just a few here and there.  A LOT!  I’ve been fortunate to work at places where a toy collection fits into the culture so it’s really become and extension of my displaying area.   Here is a picture of me in my office from last year.   As you can see I have quite a bit of stuff on display.

I’ve worked in bull pen areas, I’ve shared work space with a coworker and, for the past 7 years, I’ve had my own office. Currently I have my own office, with a door, that locks, in an out of the way area that you need a key card to get into.  It’s not a commonly traveled common area, you have to want to go to where my team sits.  When I go home at night I lock my door.  I’m also the guy that controls who get what keys on this campus, and security reports into one of my team.  I should be the most secure guy at work. At least that’s what I thought….

I have all of my Mattel JLU figures at work on a shelf..or 2 as the line has expanded.  Here was my JLU shelf back in 2007

Some time in November 08 a few of my JLU figures went missing.  Even though I have a lot of stuff in my office I notice that sort of thing right away.   It was weird because the first batch that went missing was all from the villains shelf:  Joker, Red Hood (original black version), Bizaro and Lex Luthor… but the FIRST one, the one in the suit.  Yeah, the rare one that Mattel will never re-release. 

That was frustrating to say the least.  But, I thought maybe it was just a coworker having some fun and they would be returned to me.  It wasn’t and they weren’t.  Then I thought maybe it was a desperate janitor that needed Christmas presents for their kids, but it was such a weird selection.  Why not take Superman and Batman?  They are so iconic, and right in the front.   I noticed a little later that Waverider had also gone "missing."

With the help of Jim Able, my girlfriend and Ebay I was able to replace those over the holidays and all was well.

As time went on the JLU line expanded and so did my shelves.  Here’s what they look line now (YES there are some customs in there)

 When I got back this week from Toy Fair I noticed the thief had struck again while I was gone, and this time he/she hit me even harder.

 This time the list was:  Superman, Blue & gray Batman, Green Lantern (bald with goatee), Steel,  Robin (Teen Titans), Batgirl and Nightwing for the heroes and Star Sapphire, Reverse Flash, Penguin, Catwoman for the villains.  Now clearly whoever is doing this doesn’t know what they are grabbing.  By that I mean they don’t know who is valuable in the line.  They seem to be just grabbing characters they recognize.

It’s disappointing and it’s maddening.  Some of these figures I might have replacements for somewhere in storage, some I won’t.   Some I’ll have to rebuy on the secondary market.  I just feel violated.  I always hoped I’d never find myself here.  I’ve changed security procedures for my office.  No one gets in while I’m not there.  I’ve set up a web cam for after hours.  

But if it happens again, I’ll have to pack it all up any bring it all home.  In this day and I can can’t afford to keep rebuying my collection.

Has that ever happened to you guys?   What have you done to prevent it from happening?   Ever catch who was doing it?