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Except I have a LOT more toys now.

(and I WISH I still had all that Mego stuff! *sigh*)

Yesterday I went to Target to get some stuff for work. TheTarget I went to is the ONLY one in my area that has confirmed sightings/purchase of the 3 new 3-packs. A friend got me a full set of the 3 newest JLU 3-packs at that store over the weekend. Someone else got the other set of 3 that would be in that case of 6 pieces.

Whoever got the other 3 3-packs must have been sitting on some old stock, because they returned the following 3-packs to that store: Purple carded Ultra Humanite 3-pack, old yellow carded Zatanna, Batman, Shining Knight 3-pack and the Vixen, Dr. Fate, Hawkgirl 3-pack.

So not only does that Target now still have 5 Captain Atom and 2 Question 3-packs on the pegs… now they have even OLDER stock!

It’s amazing we can still find anything new in these parts.

Sorry for the blurry picture.  It was taken with a camera phone while in a hurry.

(Yes, I know Secret Wars only ran from 1984-1985, but Super Powers ran from 1984-86 and "Shazam" was a 3rd series figure for SP so I figured there’d still be plenty of SW figures on store shelves in 1986.   I just thought it was funny to walk in and see two "Super Powers" characters right next to the new Secret Wars figures.)

 If you like good TV….

If you like thought provoking drama and suspense….

If you consider yourself in the slightest atom of your being a fan of Science Fiction….

You MUST record "Torchwood: Children of Earth"

It’s starts TOMORROW, on Monday for 5 nights straight.  Even if you’ve never seen an episode of Torchwood or Doctor Who, you can watch, understand and enjoy what is going on.

This is mindbendingly good TV and would NEVER have been made for American TV.
For as TERRIBLE as the first season of Torchwood was this… this was maybe the best thing I’ve seen this year.

It was Jekyll-good!

I know everyone is going to be buzzing about Comic Con this coming week, but it would be a real crime if this gets passed over by Sci Fi Fans.

DISCLAIMER-  This is NOT a show for kids!   Don’t watching with the young’uns.   Also there is homosexuality depicted between two of characters.     Just giving you a warning if you are sensitive to that sort of thing, but I would really hope that’s not a deterrent for people in 2009, and that you can overcome that bias in the spirit of watching a great story unfold.

Here are a couple of trailers for it to whet your appetite.

Just in case here’s a little be of Spoiler Free background on Torchwood from Wikipedia:

Torchwood (pronounced /ˈtɔːtʃ.wʊd/) is a British science fiction television programme, created by Russell T Davies. It deals with the machinations and activities of the Cardiff branch of the fictional Torchwood Institute, who deal mainly with incidents involving extraterrestrials. An initial 13-part series was commissioned by the BBC as a spin-off from the 2005 revival of the long-running science fiction programme Doctor Who with which it is closely interlinked. The main cast consists of John Barrowman, Eve Myles, Burn Gorman, Naoko Mori and Gareth David-Lloyd.

The series is set in Cardiff and follows the Welsh branch of a covert agency called the Torchwood Institute which investigates extraterrestrial incidents on Earth and scavenges alien technology for its own use (its origins are outlined in the Doctor Who episode "Tooth and Claw"). To paraphrase Torchwood Three’s commander-in-chief, Captain Jack Harkness, the organisation is separate from the government, outside the police, and beyond the United Nations. Their public perception is as merely a ’special ops’ group. The events of the first series take place some time after the Doctor Who series two finale, in which Torchwood’s London headquarters were destroyed.

If I were you I wouldn’t read too much more of the Wiki entry as it does have spoilers for these episode.

DO YOURSELF A FAVOR AND WATCH!

I don’t know where they will go with the show after these 5 hours, but I’m with them all the way.

And now back to my regularly scheduled Comic Con preparations….

 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!

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.

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.