Happy Halloween

I try to add at least one interesting old Halloween thing to the collection each year, and this year it was a cool plastic witch rattle.





The thing itself isn't particularly amazing, but it still has the old department store price sticker on the handle, and it does a fine job of chasing the neighbor's cat out of my yard.

Remco - The Wolfman

For the most part, when I visit one of the many local antique stores in my neighborhood (and there are over a dozen of them), I tend to find very little aside from whimsical decorations, and the odd bit of Victorian furniture. And it's not that I mind looking at the whimsy or the furniture, but you've gotta know that I'm always looking for something like... well... like this.









Reading the recent blog post about Remco Universal Monsters over at plaidstallions.com, motivated me to pull this 1980 (1981?) Remco Wolfman out for Halloween.

During one of those aimless trips through the local antique mall, I spotted this guy tossed onto a shelf behind a bunch of clutter. Sure, he needed to be dusted off and cleaned up a little... but what Wolfman doesn't?

Monster Zero

It was about a decade ago when I realized that of all the things I could collect, there was nothing more fun than vinyl figures of Japanese monsters.

I came into the game well after the resurgence that had occurred around 1983, but what drew me in, aside from spotting vintage vinyl on eBay a few years before, was the availability of figures around and about 1998. While haunting local Japanese markets, I would constantly see new toys, and was easily sucked into buying them.

King Ghidorah from the Bandai "Toho Kaiju" line is perhaps one of my favorite figures from around that time.

Ad Space: The Six Million Dollar Man

MPC Astronauts

I love space themed toys, and the root of that love more than likely came from playing with cheap, dimestore plastic space men as a kid. One of the brands that you're most likely to see out there is "MPC" or Multiple Plastics Corp.



They put out little playsets with brightly colored (red, white and blue) astronauts in the '60s, and to this day represent some of the best spaceman toys ever made.

Infinite Heroes (The Atom and Shazam!)

Mattel's new DC Universe 3-3/4-inch figure line has received its fair share of mixed reviews, and while criticism about the simplistic sculpts, dodgy paint applications, and limited articulation is deserved, as with so many other toy lines, this one is hard to judge unless you've opened a few of them.

To start, I picked just two of the seven figures from this first wave of little DC heroes. I decided to get The Atom, because it seemed like he could work with the larger DC Universe figures, and then Shazam! as well, because I simply love the character.



Now, as a kid I was never really a huge fan of DC Comics. Growing up in the '70s, I fit snugly into that group who saw much of what DC was putting out as being corny, and so I tended to stick almost militantly to books by Marvel.

The irony of finding one group of guys wearing capes and tights to be less or more corny than another group wearing capes and tights, was only obvious to me as an adult, and by that time I'd moved on and away from comics anyway. Much credit can be given to toy lines from the last ten years when it comes to jump-starting my old love of comic books. It's toy lines like this one that have encouraged me to dig around and read up on characters that I didn't know very well.

The Atom is a great example of one of those characters. Though I knew the name and face, seeing him in the Infinite Heroes lineup encouraged me to learn more.



Getting back to that idea of opening these figures to determine if they're winners or not, I was happy to find that there is some really decent play value here. Ten points of articulation won't make these the most poseable 3-3/4-inch figures out there, but The Atom is a well built and sturdy toy, so things even out.

The Atom's sculpt and paint are good, if not a little generic. One detail that would have made this guy more of a winner, is if his belt had been a sculpted-on detail and not just paint. Aside from that, there's nothing terribly wrong with this one.

Captain Marvel, or Shazam! as I came to know him from watching the Filmation TV show in the '70s, is not quite as good.



When I was talking about "corny" DC superheroes earlier, it was hard not to think about Captain Marvel in particular. The gaudy cape and gold sash make me wince just a little, but there's also a part of me that loves the classic and iconic style.

What I'm not in love with are the huge freaky hands that Mattel has given Shazam! I'm not sure what they were thinking here, but what's more weird is how compared to The Atom, this doesn't seem to be the norm. Captain Marvel's Sculpt and paint are fair. He's victim to a little paint slop, and to be honest, I had to sort through quite a few of these before I found one that didn't have funky eyebrows.



So when it gets down to it, I'm not sure that I'm willing to be as hard on this line as some people have been. Mattel could have easily done a lot to make these figures better, but they are by no means terrible. I'd like to imagine that perhaps this line will also encourage kids to investigate the more obscure characters as Mattel puts them out. These are fun toys to play with, and compared to many other small scale action figures out there, they're priced well, so I just may give a more of them a try.

Plastic Raincoat

Something that makes me laugh every time I look, are the Google ads that I've got stuck on this page. Things like disposable bibs, rubber pants, and raincoats seem to be popular subjects.

I'm probably only making it worse by writing about this, but seeing as how it's raining out right now (here in Portland anyway), I dug up a really great kids raincoat that I'd found at a thrift store ages ago...









Made in good old Hong Kong from 100% PVC, and dated © DC Comics Inc. 1976, it puts just about every other raincoat that I've ever seen completely to shame.

Costume & Mask: R2 D2

I'm a sad slave to nostalgia, and though I'm apt to go on and on about how one thing or another "reminds me of my childhood," it's really no more true than when I'm talking about either old Topps trading cards, or Ben Cooper costumes.





Now... as much as I love Ben Cooper stuff, and this R2 D2 costume is a prime example of just how silly and great they can be, it's instantly apparent that nothing is more creepy than when an adult wears one of the masks.

Skrull Invasion?

I'm more than a little surprised by the general lack of Skrull plastic out there this past year. Oh sure, if we're lucky that Kree vs. Skrull 2-pack will turn up at some point, but all things considered, I'd thought that Hasbro and Marvel would run with this idea a bit more.

And so speaking of Skrulls, I had to dig up the Toy Biz figure from a few years ago.



It's great, but it was hard as hell to find. (Even more difficult to find was the clear variant.) Sad really, because out of the entire Fantastic Four classic line, this figure was the most fun.

This Is Go!