#29 of 365 Princess of Power Glimmer

Urgh, I hate time contraints. I'm 3 toys behind and I do have some more gitd stuff for January, but I'm running out of time for them. I would probably need about 3 hours to properly do the stuff I have for January, but alas, time waits for no man. So I decided to do Glimmer before time runs out for gitd January and I'm into Femme February. Well, she makes a nice transition from gitd January to Femme Febuary!

#28 of 365 Terminator 2 Endoglow Terminator

Yes I know I'm a day behind, but such is the way the cookie crumbles. Mmm... cookie...

It's not everyday that we get an action figure of the governor of a US state, but this time around I've got more than a couple of the same guy:

#27 of 365 Ray Stanz

We are close to the home stretch now. January is almost over, gitd will be making way for femme soon, but before we do, here's some of the last few gitd toys for the month.

#23 - #26 of 365 Vizar, Earthquake, Butthead, Battle Blade Skeletor

I was talking to Nick yesterday and told him I was going to cheat with gitd January. Here's the cheat today - of the 4 figs I'm opening, only one, Skelly, gitd.

Earthquake, Vizar and Butthead does not gitd.

#22 of 365 Lego 7775 Aquabase Invasion

I guess I better get the Lego stuff out of the way ASAP. There doesn't seem to be much interest in the Lego pictures. Before I continue though, I have to say thanks to Huw of brickset.com for all the hard work he puts into that site - I've been using that site as my main Lego reference site since Huw created it almost 10 years ago.

Knights of the Magical Light

I've been having fun unpacking boxes, and repacking some of them almost immediately. A lot of my stuff will have to go into storage soon, and I need to make space for other things. I had fun going through:

#21 of 365 Supernaturals Lionheart

I think I have surprised myself at the amount of gitd stuff that I have - unopened - lying around. Nick did mention in passing that he doesn't think there are that many gitd toys, and I told him there's more out there than he can ever imagine.

It's a Small World after all

Disney has the Small World ride in all its them parks. This isn't about those.

I was surprised today to get a call to head to the post office to pick up a package. I don't recall ordering anything recently so, it was a surprise. Anyways, I got to the post office and got this:

#20 of 365 Lego 8708 Cave Crusher

I need to add more Lego fans to my facebook profile. This is only the 3rd set so far this year. I thought there would have been more, but it takes time building up the huge sets (which are mostly what I have left unopened) so it's trickling out slower than what I'd expect.

Glow in the dark (gitd) January

Well, I've already opened today's toy a couple of days ago, so I've got to wait till tomorrow to open the next one. However, I'd still like to blog about gitd January, so...

This has been on my display shelf for a while:

#16 - #19 of 365 Tron, Sark, Flynn and the Warrior

I've never watched Tron ever, but apparently it has a cult following. Perhaps Mr. TVgeek would be able to shed some light on the topic. I think the original toys came with the gitd weapons and the NECA 20th anniversary reissues definately had gitd weapons. Tron forms this weekend's part of gitd January, and I think there are only 4 figures in the line - Tron, Sark, Flynn and the Warrior.

#15 of 365 Human Torch (Toy Biz)

After almost half a week of DC figures, I thought I might bring some balance and open a Marvel figure. This is Human Torch, one of the few marvel characters that I actually like. It's also good that it glows in the dark too!

#14 of 365 Batman Mission Masters 4 - Battle Staff Batman

#13 of 365 Batman Mission Masters 4 - Rocket Blast Mr. Freeze

#12 of 365 Batman Mission Masters 4 - Night Shadow Batman and Night Fury Robin

I couldn't decide whether to count this as 2 toys or one, but yesterday I decided that if it was in one box, I'll have to count it as one, otherwise it gets hairy when it comes to 5-packs and whatnots in future (not that I have many of those, but I do have a few).

#0 of 365 Masters of the Universe Mutant Slime Pit Monster.

I'm not going to consider this fig as part of the 365. Why? Because the box has been opened previously for me to get the Slime pit out. All that's left is the monster which was still tied onto the box packaging.

#11 of 365 Lego 7881 Duplo Pirate Ship

It's a Monday, and I thought I would get some Lego opened. Afterall, I've probably got enough Lego to last me a whole year on one set a day. However, since I'm on the gitd theme, I had to (with some difficulty) locate Lego sets with gitd pieces. That sounds easier than it actually is. Afterall, I don't have an unlimitless collection. But before I go into today's sets, let's just run down #1 to #10:

#10 of 365 Plasma Glow Nira

I gave a preview yesterday of the figure I'd be opening today, here's the picture again.

On display!

#3 - #9 of 365 Supernatural Ghostlings - Hooter, Mr. Lucky, Spooks, See Thru, Vampa, Weird Wolf, Rags

The advantage of not doing one a day is that if I have a whole collection of stuff that I want to open at one go, I can just save up the requisite number of days and open them all up at once. I have a whole weeks worth of Supernaturals that were just sitting there taking up space, and I really wanted to clear out the space, so I decided that they should be opened next.

#2 of 365 - Spiderman 3 - Midnight Stealth Costume Spiderman

Boxes take up too much space, hence the reason that I'm opening these figures. Well, one of the reasons anyways. The other reason of course is that toys are meant to be played with, not kept in their plastic prisons. If Toy Story 2 is anything to go by, that would just make the toys anti-social and grumpy.

I still haven't got to the NECA stactions yet. Not today, as I had limited time to open the toy, play with it, take photos and then write up this note, so I though I'd do something a little simpler.

#1 of 365 - Lego Space Police 3 5973 - Hyperspeed Pursuit

All those advent calendars leading up to the holiday of choice (there was a nice one that ended on New Year's day done by Emily Lakdawalla) probably started this desire to do something similar. But I'm not opening one toy a day literally. Noooooo, I'm opening one new toy for each day of the year. There's a slight difference there. It's the 7th of January as I'm writing this, which means I could open up to 7 new toys today. I'm not going to open 7, because I want to take photos to show here (and yes, I'm using this almost like a blog).

Now, the first of anything is always monumental, and I wanted it to be something special. I know I've got all my NECA stactions ready to be opened, but they weren't that special to me, so I was hunting down for the perfect toy to be the first toy I open in 2010.

Unpacking memories

[Note: I'm going to start using these Notes as my blog]

Today was a weird day - I was so desperately trying to locate all my NECA stactions located and in one place so that I could take a picture or ten of them before I open them all up as part of my 2010 a toy a day calendar. I knew I won't be able to sleep tonight if I don't get everything in one place for at least one photo today.

And so many times I thought I almost had them... until I realised that the box I had were something else. First they were just MotUC stuff - the early figs without the mailer boxes. That was a disappointment. Then I found King Randor, but not the rest of Wave 1. Grrr...

It took me a while, but I finally located a box with 4 figures! That's it! Stinkor and all of the first series. Until I actually pulled them out. There was Stinkor all right, but no, that's not Hordak, wait... Webstor ??!? Webstor? Leech??? and Snake Face! You mean I have Series 4? Really! Wow! I never knew that. See, that's why I need to open all these figs and play with them. I don't even know what I bought in the past few years!

I finally found another two big boxes with the 200x figures... could it be? That looks like Hordak! Yes! Hordak and Clawful and good ol' Snout Sprout! That's it, Series 1. And I present you the photo below.

All the NECA stuff!

Opening a toy a day

Well, it's the new year. 365 days. Wouldn't it be nice if I could open a new toy a day? Yes, I know it's already the 5th, so that means I'm 5 days behind. I'm not planning to actually open a toy a day, every day. It's more something along the lines of let's open a toy for every day of this year. So I guess I get to open 5 toys by today. 6 by tomorrow. And I haven't begin opening yet.

I'm like-whoring to gauge if there's any interest in a vid of me opening She-Ra. So far, 3 people have liked it. I'm also collecting together my MOC stuff for a final photograph before I tear into them. That might take a while. But I can show this:

200x nostalgia

Just for a lark, I decided to unpack all my opened 200x stuff. Now, that isn't a lot. Basically one of the two Battle Bones, both Castle Grayskulls (2 different versions) and about a score of characters. Thanks to Kyrone (wherever you are, thanks!), those figs are the ones with the chip, so I spent more than an hour sorting out the pile of weapons and then activating the sound effects on Castle Grayskull by placing the foot just about so on the spots indicated. It was fun.

I was hoping for more memories with these figures, after all these were the figs that I was looking forward to then when Mattel announced the new cartoon and the revitalisation of the line... after more than 15 years. However, tonight, I got close to nothing with most of the figures - they were just so blegh. The heads were way too small and the figures mostly seemed hunchback and there was so much not going for it. No wonder the toys tanked at the stores and got dumped.

Another sad thing is that out of 21 figs, 5 of them were He-Man and 3 of them were Skeletor. Almost half of the figs were either He-Man or Skeletor. That's not a good thing. My favourites in the lot? Tri-Klops jewelled eyes, Stratos' jetpack, Mekaneck's see through eyes and the designs of Sy-Klone and Ram Man. I was even playing with Sy-Klones chest image thing earlier changing it from one image to another and thought that was rather nicely done. Notice that neither He-Man or Skeletor are in the list.

Sadly, these are things of the past. I'm going to pack them away again tonight before bed. The vintage stuff will always be memorable and they have so much memories packed into them - each one of my vintage figs has a story to tell. The Classics currently sit on a shelf displayed for all to see - they are posable and display friendly. The 200x stuff seems to be an embarassment - not posable, not displayable, too anatomically incorrect. Unloved. Unliked. Once upon a time, they were thing figs that I wanted. How times change.

About this site 2010.

Here's the deal. I'm not a MOC collector - I open all my toys. However, over the past 8 - 9 years I've been collecting toys with the intention to open them, but for one reason or another (mainly due to the lack of time), I've never opened these toys. Well, all that's about to change. For 2010, I'm opening a Toy for each day of 2010, aka Toy a Day (TaD).

To amuse myself, I'm doing theme months, where each month, I'll open toys based on a particular theme. Due to my desire for opening entire lines together, sometimes some figures will "piggyback" onto a theme figure from the same line. Also, because the only action figure toyline I'm currently collecting is the one-a-month MotUCs, these will sometimes break the theme of the month, although where possible, the theme has been chosen to reflect the figure for that month, i.e. Adora for Femme Fatale February, Trap Jaw for Mecha.nic.al March.

January was gitd (and if you don't know that word yet, it's glow in the dark) January, where I opened stuff as diverse as Supernaturals to Tron.

Febuary, was Femme Fatale February, where I opened toys with females in it.

March was Mecha.nic.al March, a month dedicated to machines and Mecha and Androids.

April heralds PoP anniversary April, which despite its name, will focus on Millennium (aka 200x) MotU figures.

May continues the MotU theme with MotU May and continues to focus on the Millennium figures as well as a couple of oddballs here and there from the other MotU lines.

June showcased the DCUC figures in Justice League June, while July was a partial continuation of  with a hodgepodge of other stuff as Jambalaya July.

The theme for August was toys with links to an animation feature, hence Animated August, and this theme continued into September for toys with links to both an animation feature and a movie in Super Screened September.

The current plan is to have Monster October for monster related (animated) toys and Nostalgia November.

Prior to the 3rd of April, everything was posted on Facebook Notes. They are still there (go befriend me on Facebook and you'll get access to those notes). There are also photo albums on Facebook for each entry which will have more photos about the toy that I just opened (but again, you will have to befriend me to see those).

I've also branched out and am currently guest blogging on a number of other sites as part of the Blog Mash Bash.  Some of the Toy A Day reviews could also be read at the following sites:

Hobotastic
Killer B Hive
Poe Ghostal Points of Articulations

Thanks for taking the time to visit this blog - everything is duplicated on Facebook as well, so you can follow this there as well.

Vintage vs Millennium vs Classics

This site uses the folloing terms for Vintage/Millennium/Classics with respect to He-man and the Masters of the Universe.

Vintage refers to the MotU figures released in the 80s. This encompass the MotU figures, the PoP dolls and the NA figures, as well as the MotU Commemoratives.

And just in case you do need a decoder:
MotU = Masters of the Universe. Note that during this era, the MotU were split into the Heroic Warriors, the Evil Warriors, the Evil Horde and the Snakemen.
PoP = Princess of Power
NA = New Adventures (of He-Man)

Millennium refers to the MotU figures released around the middle of the new millennium.  They are more commonly known as 200x figures.  I feel that using 200x to refer to the millennium line is a huge misnomer, as the Classics were also released in 2008, and thus is a 200x year.  I've adopted Poe's classification of using the term millennium instead.  Now, during this period, there were no Heroic Warriors - these were upgraded to be the "Masters".  The Evil Warriors, Evil Horde and Snakemen still stayed the same.

Classics is the new Adult collector line launched in 2008 and available on mattycollector.com.  This is the first line to be marketed as MotU Classics (MotUC).  There are a lot more factions here - the Masters, the Evil Warriors, the Evil Horde, the Princess of Power and the Space Mutants have all been named as of the beginning of 2010.

My vintage MotU wants list

Accessories:
Battle Cat's Helmet
Dragstor's Ripcord
Faker's Sword
Hordak’s Bat-shield
Hordak’s Cape
Hordak's Crossbow
Horde Trooper's Staff
King Randor's Staff

Leech's Crossbow
Mekaneck's Club
Orko's Ripcord
Panthor's saddle

Strider's tail
Trap-Jaw's hook
Orko's Coin trick
Warrior Ring (from Trap-Jaw or Tri-Klops)

Vehicles/Beasts/Playsets:
Attak Trak
Castle Grayskull
Snake Mountain
Spydor
Wind Raider
All 10 meteorbs
Fright Fighter
Blasterhawk
Eternia
Tyrantisaurus Rex
Beam Blaster and Artilleray

Figures:
Blade
FF He-Man
Ninjor
Rotar
Saurod
TP He-Man
Twistoid
LL Skeletor
LP He-Man
Scare Glow
Tytus
Megator

Minicomics:
The Cosmic Key
Energy Zoids
The Flying Fists of Power!
The Magic Stealer!
The Obelisk
Snake Attack!
The Ultimate Battleground!