Shadow Attack Trike

Got mah mitts on a boxed attack trike, which was one of the last few vehicles in the Starcom line to be released. This was the fourth and last wave of vehicles ( which also included the Six Shooter, Shadow Upriser and Mini Tank ) released in UK and Europe only.

The attack trike has a very simple Power Deploy mechanism; the switch on the back causes the front tracks to deploy and raises the front guns at the same time, and the rear tracks flip open. It has a seat for one pilot and the side guns have to be manually deployed. Between this and the Mini tank i'd say the mini tank is definately cooler. :p

Metal Build Gundam Seven Swords

Picked up the Metal Build GN-0000/7s "Seven Swords" Gundam today from falcon's. I was kinda sitting on the fence on this one until i saw the released product online, by then it was too late as most places had sold out of it!

Luckily happened to score one from TFH as someone didn't pick up their piece for whatever reason. :) The build is great and the detailing is very good as per Bandai's higher end stuff. The 'gokin' is quite substantial as it feels very hefty when you hold it. Articulation is also very good, with the toy able to strike very dynamic poses.

Also included in the set is a display base and a series of stands to pose the character in mid flight, more pics can be seen here and here!

THOR

THOORRR!!!! Wasn't expecting much from the movie, but it suprisingly turned out pretty entertaining (and simply hilarious at moments), i think Kenneth Branagh did a pretty good job of directing the movie. ( Did you know that the story was written by J. Michael Straczynski of B5 fame? )

This isn't your Thor of norse legend, but rather Marvel's own rojak version of the actual Thor, a course, a lot of liberties were taken with the story but the characters are mainly there. :)

Chris Hemming plays a believable Thor; haughty, overconfident and proud. Loki was also pretty good, pretty close to the comic character. The show was about 2 hours long? But was pretty much glued to the screen to every second. :)

If you're gonna watch this, don't forget to spot Stan Lee (again) and stay to the end after the credits for the secret ending! :D

Skyroller

Here's the Skyroller "High-Rising Supertank" from the good guys team, it's kinda hard to describe what the actual purpose of this tank is... i mean, you're supposed to keep a low profile from being hit right? I guess you can use the power deploy feature to... get a better view over the fence! ;) Man, i think the good guys got shortchanged in the tank department!

This toy was released in 1988, along with the 3rd wave of vehicles which included the Missile Fox, Sidewinder, Tornado Gunship and the 4 action pods.

State of Toys.

Was down at CSC today for a weekly walkabout, i guess today being the eve of a public holiday, the place was more packed than usual.... but something struck me about that place.... the wise words of a Ben Kenobi came to mind "a wretched hive of scum and villainy".

Ok, not ALL of them are like that, but seriously, 80% probably are. A majority of the stall owners hark back from the Clarke Quay days; they were farked up then, they are still farked up. I see a lot of regulars trying to sell of crap to unsuspecting ppl at crazy prices. Seriously if you didn't do your homework before going there, you're going to get slaugthered by them.

I guess also it boils down to the type of culture the 'adult' collectors are breeding now, i seriously think the hobby will be a dead end unless they let the younger generation get their hands on some items, not to mention that the stocks of toys are controlled by a few shops, and the prices shoot WAY up for god knows what reason. Seriously, i do most of my shopping for toys online nowadays.

Yes, there are some good deals to be had there, some rare finds for sure. But this doesn't really happen too often now.

Case in point, my buddy's bro bought a Ninja Turtle accessory today (Donatello's Bo Stick), and the bugger sold it to him for $5... Can you believe it? WTF, it should only be sold at $2!

Well, after all this ranting, i know i'll still go there, if at most just to laugh at the pricings!

Shadow Blast Track

Another from the box! This is again from the third wave of Starcom toys released. I wonder what if Mattel ACTUALLY used the license they had to re-release Starcom? New molds and better motors i hope! Maybe with electronics now. :p Makes me wonder why these companies are sitting on these licenses they have! :(

These cases are mostly the Euro boxes, actually a lot of my Starcom buys seem to come from UK, Germany, Italy, Greece etc. In this box i got the Euro figure Lt Vasor.

Shadow Bandit

Any evilbay buy from the fruitbox. :) The shadow bandit was a later release in the Starcom line, and was part of the third wave in 1988 which consisted of the Shadow Spy and Shadow Blast Track for the bad guys.

Well, this was another vehicle that had a grip and trigger like the Shadow Vampire. The function of this vehicle was... to steal cargo? Or maybe as a quick entry/exit vehicle.

This was MIB, condition not bad and stickers unapplied. :)