Retro Week: A Tale of Ice Storms and Vintage Figures

Bingo Beaver, Optimus Prime, and ET are cold and wet.

As happened a couple of years ago in December, last week I got to "enjoy" a Toronto ice-storm.  While that made it hard to go anywhere, it did give me a great excuse to grab some toys from the basement and take them outside for some photos.

For this round, I brought out a larger ET figure (this one with 5 points of articulation, unlike the solid mini-figure we saw the other day), a return visit from Transformer Optimus Prime (who was one of the stars of our first Retro Week two years ago), Bingo "Bet it All" Beaver, from the Get-Along-Gang, and finally a smaller figure in the form of the Care Bears' Tenderheart Bear.

Happy Bunny Day!

Retro Week will continue in a couple of days, but since it's Easter it's time for our friendly neighbourhood Pipos Dark Rabbit to make his annual appearance, this time accompanied by a clown sidekick.

I hope you're all having a great Easter if you celebrate it, and that you're having a great weekend if you don't.

Retro Week: E.T. in a Snow Speeder

I'm in Toronto this week and as usual, that means I'm posting less than usual, but I also have access to my mother's basement full of toys.  So to give you a taste of what's to come, here's an ET mini figure riding in a Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back Snow Speeder.

Out of the Box: DC Super Hero Girls Bumblebee

The DC Super Hero Girls are a cartoon that involves teenaged versions of heroes and villains from DC comics in a high school setting.  Full disclosure: I haven't watched it, but even so it's been hard to miss the merchandise.  Mattel has put out two versions of the six main characters (Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl, Bumblebee, Harley Quinn) - an action figure and a fashion doll (which is being branded as an action doll).

This line seems to be bringing up a lot of the old discussions about the line between dolls and action figures (and about gendered toy marketing), which I'm thinking about making a separate post about, since it's such a huge topic.  But in the meantime, let's take a look at the action figure version of Bumblebee. I'd actually planned on picking up Batgirl, but they'd actually sold out of every other figure at my local store - although they still had all the dolls, which makes me wonder if the figures are benefiting from more of a crossover market.

Tagged! Farah Lily's Questions

The Liebster Award is making the rounds again, and this time Farrah Lily of Cozy Comforts and Dolls is passing around a new set of questions.  Thanks for the tag, Farrah! :)

This is an easy one: Thank your nominator, answer their questions, tag some more people, and write up some questions for them.

The questions here are less doll-centric than they usually are, and I've had fun reading along with other people's responses.  On with the questions!

Out of the Box: Dragon Age Alistair (ThreeZero)

I've posted a few times now about this Alistair figure from ThreeZero: while at first it was excitement about finally seeing a 1/6th scale Dragon Age figure, as the release was pushed back from November to the new year, to January, to late February some of that excitement had started to turn into frustration.  But the wait is over, and he arrived today!

ThreeZero is a Hong Kong-based company that produces 1/6th (and some larger) figures from a variety of game, TV, and movie franchises (you can check out some of their past and future releases here on their Facebook page). The figures are similar in size and style to the same-scale figures from Hot Toys and Sideshow and sit at a similar price point.

This particular figure has 15 points of articulation (head, chest, waist, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles) and is wearing a well-constructed fabric outfit. His accessory set included a large shield and sword and two pairs of option hands (one pair with sword grips and one pair of fists).

Dolls in Springtime

We may be just out of February, but flowers are already blooming here in Houston.  While I haven't been able to do any major outdoor photoshoots with them yet, it did inspire me to go through my photo archives and dig up some photos from my old Burlington garden to share.

In addition to the garden, featured in these photos are "Shep" (Illusion Spirit ZhuQing), "Roland" (Soom ID51 London), and "Zed" (Angel Street Zazaen).

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