Because guys like me will try this…

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Posted by Julius Marx

Over the holidays I was talking to fellow AFi staffer Cantina Dan about the “olden days” of collecting and I mentioned my time in the mid 90′s out east and hitting “Hills” department stores as part of my regular run.   I never had Hills in the mid-west and they seemed to be a treasure trove of old and new toys I was looking for (and some that I was not looking for).  They were great for finding new 5″ Toy Biz Marvel figures, Kenner’s Aliens (and Predator) line and Playmates Star Trek figures as well as full runs of clearance Swamp Thing, Pee Wee’s Playhouse and Nightmare Before Christmas.

I WISH they were still stocked with the vintage toys in these old commercials!   I would have very much liked to have walked in and found endcaps of Shogun Warriors, Micronauts and Generation 1 Transformers!  I stumbled across these the other day on YouTube and they were just too weird and wonderful not to share.

All the Hills discount stores are gone now.  But their memory and their commercials live on!

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Posted by Julius Marx

Just got this in the mail from the good folks at Round 2 and Captain Action.

Full feature coming soon…

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Posted by Julius Marx

Just like the rest of you we have woken up today to the news of the awful tragedy, the shooting at a midnight screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” in Aurora, Colorado.  As some of you know one of our team member “Superfly” lives in that area.  We have heard from him this morning and he and his family are fine.   But our heart absolutely breaks for the families of the dead and injured in this terrible event.   Senseless violence is always just that… senseless, and we may never know the gunman’s motivations.

While we may not know any of the victims, we know that they were genre fans, Batman fans, nerds, geeks, film lovers… just people like the rest of our community.  People that were excited to see a movie that most of us are excited to see.  They are us, they are fans, they are part of our “extended family”… and now there are 14 of them that don’t get to go home and tell their family and friends how great the movie was, or how tired they are this morning, but that it was totally worth it.  And there are at least 50 more that will live with lifelong injuries.

If I live to be 1000 I will never understand what motivates someone to end the life of an innocent person.

Some people are focusing on the fact the gunman was dressed up, some are questioning why there were young kids, 3 month and 6 years old in the midnight screening.  None of that is the point.   We’ve had a death in the family, the over all family of fandom and we should mourn them.  They were us.  They deserved better.

Our hearts go out to all that were affected by the events last night.

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Posted by Julius Marx

The other day I got a review sample of the Club Infinite Earths DC Signature Collection Starman figure.  As I was taking pictures I realized that while I appreciated the extra, unmasked head he came with I was never going to display him with that head.   So what other uses are there for a spare 6″ scale bearded head?

I grabbed my Ghostbusters Walter Peck figure, boiled and popped his head, popped on the new Starman head.  Then I just needed a wheelchair.   The first one I thought of in that scale was the Toy Biz “Xmen” movie Professor X.   I knew I had one, but it was in storage somewhere.   That weekend I had Cantina Dan in town staying with me so we hit up Frank and Sons and I found a loose one for $4.

Put them all together… and I’ve got a nice little custom Niles Caulder to lead my DCUC Doom Patrol.

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Posted by Julius Marx

I can’t take credit for this and I don’t know where the original came from, but this was posted on a toy collecting Facebook group that I’m a member of.   At my local Target I could hang these on the Marvel Legends pegs that have been completely empty going on two months and the Star Wars vintage pegs that are overflowing with Phantom Menace figures that will never sell.

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Posted by Julius Marx

I’ve known for a while that there is a shady “collector” that has been buying stuff at my local Target, opening it and returning it with different figures. They have been laying low for awhile. I hadn’t seen their handy work for about a month when he had returned a ‘Real Steel’ figure in a movie ‘Thor‘ Destroyer package.

Today I walked in to my local Target and found these 2 treasures …

(more…)

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Posted by Julius Marx

This video has been making the internet rounds this week and thought it would be a good finale to our video posting this week- It’s an animated short by director and former Monty Python member Terry Gilliam.

Happy Holidays everyone!

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Posted by Julius Marx

Ok. One more bonus video for this week. I just saw this one and thought it fit our Holiday video theme for the week.
This one goes out to all the girls that like super heroes and all the boys who like princesses.

Here’s hoping you all get whatever you want this Christmas!

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Posted by Julius Marx

I guess Christmas videos will be a running theme this week on my blog as I’ve found one to post here each day this week.  Here is the entry for today- A Christmas Home Video circa 1966.  This is not me (I wasn’t born in 1966) or my family.  I have no idea who these people are… but the little boy in this home movie opens a really cool Batmobile, a Captain Action figure and several Captain Action costume sets. I thought that was awesome.

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Posted by Julius Marx