The Adventures of Isabela in Liverpool

I'm back from my week-and-half in England on the annual "friends, family and football" tour, so how about a few photos?  My travelling figure for this trip was one of Titan's Dragon Age mini figures, Isabela (a ship's captain seemed like the right character to bring along to visit rivers and canals, I thought).

As with the adventures of mini Ivy in Thailand, I'll be breaking this up into a couple of posts to keep it from getting too unwieldy.  Now on with the photos!

Then and Now

I'm about to head out of town for a week, I just realized that my oldest BJD (Volks SD13 Heath) turned ten earlier this year, so I thought it would be fun to celebrate by sharing some photos before I go offline.

His current look.

Random Toy of the Day: American Girl Truly Me #44

AG Truly Me #44

One thing that I'd never realized before moving to the US is how often American Girl has sales.  This time around the value was even more impressive than the last one (where I was able to pick up Kaya and an extra outfit for 66% of the cost of the doll alone), as the deals offered included a doll from the modern "Truly Me" line, an additional outfit and two accessory sets for a similar discount.

So even though I wasn't really looking to add another AG to my collection, it was too good a deal to pass up, so I decided to order one.

Unfortunately it was raining when she arrived, so I wasn't able to take many photos, but I felt the need to share even so (I unboxed her in my home office, so I apologize for the cluttered backgrounds).

Random Toy of the Day: Doctor Bashir (Playmates "Warp Factor" Series 2)

Since picking up the Playmates' Captain Sisko over the summer, I've added another figure from the DS9 line to my collection: Julian Bashir (always one of my favourite characters on the show).

This figure is from the second release group ("Warp Factor Series 2" versus Series 1), but has the identical body to the figures of the earlier line.  Playmates did change the style of the stands for this release though, and they now have a wider base.
Since the figure itself has the same features as the Sisko one  I won't be reviewing him, but I did want to share a few photos.

It's all photos from here:

Kids do like dogs, but..

One of the two Taffy sets.

I was checking out the toy section a few weeks ago, when I noticed a proliferation of dog-related sets. A dog spa set, a puppy-keeping set, and a dog walking set.  Cute, I thought, but then I looked more closely at the dog-walking one and realized that it's actually called the "Potty Trainin' Taffy" set, and spotted something ridiculous (but set-appropriate) on the accessory list: 5 little brown bits of plastic representing the dog's bowl movement.

Out of the Box: "Canterwood Crest" Breyer Horses

Reading Serenata's The Grand Summer Gymkhana post reminded me that I was planning to post about of a pair of Breyer Horse figures that I picked up recently.

When I was 10 years old, I remember going to a horse show and picking up a miniature Breyer catalogue from one of the sponsor booths.  I was fascinated by all the detailed models of different breeds and various famous horses and carried that booklet around with me for months. I never actually owned any of those models though, and I eventually forgot about them until I started reading reviews of them over on Traci's A Wild Review Appears blog.

Out of the Bag: Punisher & Green Goblin (Hasbro's Marvel 500 Series 1)

From the Marvel 500 line: Green Goblin & the Punisher

It seems like every month I swear off of mystery mini figures, and yet somehow every month I'm back with more.  But at least this time there's one difference: they're micro-mini figures!

The Marvel 500 series is a blind bag micro-mini toy line (they're about a third of the size of Funko's mini figures) that sells for around $2.50USD.  There are 24 figures in series one, and they're sold in single mystery bags.  The figures themselves are very basic - no articulation and limited painting, but for the size and price that shouldn't come as much of  a surprise. The two that I opened turned out to be the Punisher and the Green Goblin.