Happy Canada Day!

It's July already! Where did the first half of the year go?  Regardless of that, I hope that everyone is having a great summer - and if you're in Canada, enjoy your day off!

The Canadian superheros of Alpha Flight are ready to watch some fireworks.

Minimates Week: Alpha Flight

The Alpha Flight Minimates, in the box.

This two-box set is a good example of why I wasn't quicker to get into collecting these toys.   I really only wanted two of the Alpha Flight figures: the twins.  And of course they separated them into two different sets, which means that I needed to either pay a premium to someone who had the full series and had unboxed it, or buy the whole thing.  I did the latter, so instead of two new figures, I now have eight.

Grumpiness about the inability to purchase individual figures aside, overall I was quite impressed with these - each figure had a solid amount of detail and clearly looked like the characters from the comic.  The accessories were decent as well, and included an ice effect for Snowbird, air platforms for the flying characters, and a hand-holding joint for the twins, (who also each had two hair options although Aurora's dark wig doesn't actually fit on her head).

Random Toy of the Day: Aurora & Northstar (Toy Biz)

I'm back on my regular schedule next week, so today will be the last of these mini-posts (at least for now!).

Back in the late '90s, Marvel published the "new" Alpha Flight with a set of characters that was largely different from the '80s series.  And then, as that series was wrapping up, Toy Biz brought out a series of toys based on the '80s series.  Seems like strange marketing to me, but having started reading the old series and the new one concurrently, I did end up buying the full line of toys (the line consisted of three two packs - the twins that you see here, Snowbird and Puck and Sasquatch and Vindicator).

The rest of this series is probably still in my mother's basement, but the twins here have been moving around with me, and even though they're not he best quality figures, they are part of my permanent collection.  And at some point I will try to figure out what I did with their teammates.