Finally Got Some of the Digimon Fusion CCG packs!

I picked these up off of ebay, got the first pack for $5.50, and then found a listing a few days later with 3 packs for $10. This will probably be all I get of this set of cards, as the cards are fun and have good art, but it's just a 60 card set and by the last pack I opened I pulled all but one duplicate card.

I did some pack-opening videos for them on youtube, and I'll link them below, so give them a watch if you're interested!

HMM Gojulas WIP #3

I actually got a decent amount of work done on the Gojulas yesterday and this morning, and I'm hoping to get even more done throughout the day today. These are all the pieces from the I plate, and next up is K1, all of the "inner frame" parts to the Gojulas' head.

HMM Gojulas WIP #2

I know, I know, I already broke my promise about the "daily update" thing.... looks like I was being a bit overly optimistic about myself then. Oh well though, I'll get these posted as often as I'm able too.

Work has been kind of sporadic over the past few days because of the super-low temperatures around here. I've gotten out to paint occasionally, but it just isn't the most fun activity in the world whenever it's only 4 degrees in your garage. I got my space heater out of storage though and that's helped marginally.

Anyway, here are the pieces (and close ups of them) that I've gotten completed since the last update. They're what remained of the S plates. Onto I!

 

Transformer Tuesday! - Generations Air Raid Review

When I first bought Air Raid I didn't actually have any plans to keep him - got him at a good price and was going to resell - but then I got my hands on the figure and it was one of the best Transformers I've played around with in a long time. Now that's not to say he's perfect, just for some reason I absolutly adore this figure.

To begin, he's surprisingly good figure in robot mode. There are some really great example of articulation here, especially in the arms and legs. Very sturdy and stable as well. The paint application is very impressive to me - the silver looks really nice, and so does the red and gold. There's still a lot of detail remaining on this figure that would look great being done up with some paint - a huge plus for anyone looking to customize this figure.

 

His transformation is rather complex - in the perfect way. Instead of it being like a typical Bumblebee figure or something, and trying to cram all of him into a tiny space, the transformation itself was very fluid, and the complexity/ingenuity of it continued to surprise you along the way (if you know what I mean). All around it was probably the best time I've had transforming a figure since I messed around with Generations Blaster about a year ago.

Alt mode itself is great too (sorry I don't have a picture). I've actually had him displayed in alt mode more often than in robot mode, and that's really saying something for me. The weapons he comes with a very impressive too, especially the sword. The sword in itself is a fun little toy, and it would have been more than enough alone, but the weapon in the picture above is included as well. What is it exactly? Well, I'm not too sure. I have it posed as a gun/laser bayonet kind of thing... and I guess I still kind of like it! It's really that great clear red effect part and gold barrel that make it all so nice despite the fact I have no clue what it's supposed to be or how he's technically supposed to hold it.

 

Finally, there are a few criticisms to the figure. Mostly they have to do with the articulation. While I don't mind this too much, it could be bothersome to some people. The feet have a very small range of articulation due in part to his design, and the head has very little articulation too (more so because of the transformation than design here though). Another negative is that the legs are mostly hollow - this is really my only nitpick of the whole figure, as I wish they were just a little bulkier. As you can see in the second picture here or Air Raid straight on, they just look a little tiny; like toothpicks on him. But all in all, these complaints really hold no real meaning to me as the overall aesthetic and superb transformation of this kit make him one of my favorites in quite some time.

 

 

My overall rating of Generations Air Raid? 4.5/5

 

For my full review of him, check out the video below:

 





Custom Painted Hasbro Dark Spiner

This is my custom painted Hasbro Dark Spiner zoid - technically the first Zoid I ever painted. It was about a year prior to me getting my first HMM when I decided to paint this guy, and I must say that it's one of my proudest accomplishments. I was actually very unexperience with even using an airbrush at the time, and the shading on this kit rivals what I can do to this day.

It's much simpler than an HMM of course, but there was still a wealth of detail to hand paint, and lots of great armor parts to airbrush. I honestly can't remember what insprired me to do this paint scheme, but I like it a lot more than the original to be honest.

It's unfortunatly missing a few pieces - the small vents on the forearm on each side - but those were gone whenever I first picked up the kit to paint. Looking back, the plastic on this kit (being an older hasbro model) is actually a bit unusual. It's very soft, almost to the point where it feel's malleable. That's not a bad thing however - it actually makes it feel sturdier after assembly than other kits.

Below is a full photo gallery of the kit:

 

Finished posting Yugioh Auctions... finally.....

After many hours of posting Yugioh auctions, I've finally finished uploading all the cards that I have for sale right now. Like I said before, check out the tab on the top of the page to see them if you're interested. I'm also clearing out a lot of my old Digimon "inventory" and posted it as a bit lot and as a Buy-it-Now. Check it out too if you want!

Posting Some Yu-Gi-Oh Auctions on Ebay

Figured I'd spread the world that I'm posting some yugioh card auctions on ebay. Basically just a bunch of old commons and rares that I was surprised to see have some value to them - check it out throughout the day as I'll be posting them a bit sporadically.

Click on the "My Ebay Auctions" tab on the top of this page and you'll be taken to the ebay page that lists all of my auctions.

HMM Shadow Fox Review

I posted a review of the HMM Shadow Fox yesterday on my youtube channel, so I figured I'd highlight a few things about the kit and post the video here as well. This is an unpainted kit that I snapped together, a first time experience for me and the HMM line, and I must say that I think it turned out spectacularly.

The kit has no detailing, panel lining, or any other kind of work done whatsoever, and it still looks fantsatic on my shelf. In particular, the gold on this kit is very impressive. The gold has no marbling to the plastic like the HMM Dark Horn Harry Special did, and looks nearly flawless. The other molded colors are nice as well, but the gold really is the winner in this category.

Articulation is very impressive as well, as each different segment of the kit has a wide range of movement and posability. In all honesty, I really can't come up with any criticisms to give this kit - its truly one of the best representations of what the HMM Zoids line is. I highly reccomend anyone interested in the line to pick one up.

For my full video review of the model, check out the video below:

Daily HMM Gojulas WIP #1

I figured I'd post some work-in-progress images on here, and talk about the kit some. I've actually gotten a decent amount (well, like 20%) of the kit done, and I'm extremely happy with how it's going. I hope to make these WIP posts daily and keep you all updated, so I'll try my best to keep on top of that.

Today I finished up half of the S plates, mainly consisting of the spines on his back, and parts for the thrusters that go on his back. The spine pieces actually took a TON of work to complete, as each two-sided piece was a 30+ minute job detailing alone. These pictures are of them all after top coat.

 

Next up is the other half of the S plates, with some reasonably less interesting parts, but it should still be a enjoyable to paint anyway. I hope to get those painted tomorrow, and detailed at the beginning of next week. If you'd like to see the progress of my Gojulas up to this point, check out the WIP video from my Youtube channel below:

 



D-Arts Mega Man Zero

In even more exciting news today, it's been officially confirmed that the next D-Arts figures is that of Zero from the GBA Mega Man Zero games! A release like this is very exciting to me personally, as I grew up playing those games (in addition to all of the other X games too). I have the Kotobukiya model kit of him from a few years back, but still haven't had the chance to build it. Hopefully I'll get him built soon and I'll be able to do a comparison between the two someday.

I'd love to see him come with lots of accesories, or at least more than just his sword and gun. I'd love to see the energy whip weapon, and the alternate energy blades he used in the third or fourth game.

Masterpiece Prowl on the way from Hasbro!

This is some really exciting news! According to tfw2005.com, an inventory listing of Masterpiece Prowl is currently on the Toys R' Us website. He's currently priced at $60 - a price that I think is very reasonable for the figure, and one that I'd be likely to pay if I find him in stores.

No Luck Toy Hunting Today....

I went to the city today to see the touring production of American Idiot (which was great, by the way), and I figured I'd do some toy hunting while I was at it.

 I only had a couple things in mind - first off was the new Funko Blind Box pony figures. I found this one about a week ago at a Target, and only picked one up because I wanted to see about what they were like/quality/etc. I LOVED the figure, as it actually seems to be of higher quality than the regular size Funko pony figures, and immediatly wanted more. But, of course, Target had none, Hot Topic had none - couldn't find a single one.

Next up was one of these new Digimon CCG booster packs. They were released last week, and I've had zero luck finding any at quite a wide range of places that I've visited. I'm not so much into getting them for the card game itself, I kind of just want to get them because a lot of the card have REALLY good new art for the Digimon - kind of weird to want the cards for the art, I know, but it really is my driving force behind getting some. I may end up just giving up and ordering some of the $6 packs off of ebay.

Lastly, I was looking for either a Generations Skids figures of (by some miracle) Generations Rhinox. I'm sure Rhinox won't show up around here for another month or two, but the Skids/Waspinator wave has been makings its rounds. I've seen all of them but Skids over the past two weeks, but today, literally every single store I visited had an empty Transformers sections aside from some Construct-Bots and a couple Beast Hunters figures. *Sigh*

So, I suppose it was a decently disappointing day for finding toys, but not all was lost because seeing the play was fantastic.

New MLP Funko Vinyl Figures

Images of the two new Funko pony figures have popped up. We knew they were going to be Trixie and Twilight, but I'm actually surprised to see that Twilight's her Alicorn version. Knowing the crowd-pleasing ways of past releases, I expected to see Twilight in her original form, but I suppose I was wrong (not that I have anything against Alicorn Twilight).

I'm very excited about the Trixie, because that figure looks absolutly fantastic - and this is coming from a person who doesn't really care that much about her character as it is. The Twilight looks alright in my opinion but, for the first time, I actually think the clear versions of these figures look better than the originals - I'm especially interested to see that clear Trixie in person because of the multiple layers with her cloak. I've personally had the luck to find two of the clear/glitter figures in stores (Pinkie Pie and Octavia) and bought them simply because of their Rarity (haha) but I'll definitly be on even more of a look out for these two.

Digi-Fusion Shoutmon Project

I recently purchased the entire first wave of the new Digimon action figure line, called Digi-Fusions. They're a pretty fun line to play around with, as all of their parts can be swapped around with the other figures to make new creations, or digivolutions from the show, such as Shoutmon X4 and MetalGreymon. The most fun aspect of the line though is that Digimon figures are back in stores! As a big fan of Digimon, and even bigger fan of the toys, I've been waiting to see this ever since their last release in 2004. Here's hoping the line does well!

Anyways, as fun as the toys were, I still had a few issues with the production of some parts of them. For instance, many of the pieces are nearly hollow, and make for a very light weight and cheap looking figure. Some of these hollow parts are neccesary for the "fusion" ability, but most are not. Therefore, I decided to "customize" some of the figures and try to make them just a bit better.

I am starting off with Shoutmon, just to try things out and see if I even have the skills to do this. I've repainted action figures like Transformers before, but I've yet to venture out into full-blown modifications, even as simple as these may be.

I used a combination of three types of putty/clay, being the Milliput Epoxy Putty, and Mr. Hobby Dissolving Putty. I began though with some simple Air-Dry Clay bought from Wal-Mart. I used this to fill the most of the holes on the figure itself. After this dried, I went over the top of it with a bit of dissolving putty just to seal it in there, and finally placed the epoxy putty over that.

The epoxy putty dries very hard and can be sanded down to be smooth. Any little knicks or imperfections in the sanded epoxy putty can then be fixed with just a bit more of the dissolving putty.

Although it kind of looks like a mess in the picture, the arm piece here is actually extremely smooth, just as the pre-molded plastic is. Putting a bit of primer and paint on this will (hopefully) make it look like it was originally produced this way.

I have about half of the pieces to the figure completed now, and I've been working at it for about a week. Most of the time is spent applying putty, waiting for it to dry, sanding, and repeating the process until you have a nice clean piece. I've also only been working on it sparingly in my spare time so it's going a bit slower than it could because of that as well.

And incase anyone's wondering, I'm using 400 grit sandpaper to start out the sanding, and moving to 600 grit to finish it up and smooth everything out nicely. I hope to get more work on this guy done soon, but honestly I have no clue when I'll get him completed (especially the painting part). Hopefully it will be sooner rather than later though.

 

S.H. Figuarts Android 18 Announced

Looks like the newest DBZ S.H. Figuarts release has been anounced, and it's Android 18! I just recently got my first Dragonball Z Figuarts, Perfect Cell. He's a great figure, and really has me itching to get more of them. My favorite arc of the series was the Androids/Cell Games, so Android 18 will likely be one for me to pick up down the road sometime. At the moment, a few other figures hold a little more priority to me, but I definitly want to have this one in my collection at some point.

Looks like it will be priced at 4,104 Yen, and with the discounts many online retailers give, it wont be too bad of a final price.

Transformers Tuesday! - Generations Waspinator Review

Welcome to my first installment of Transformers Tuesday! Each Tuesday I will be reviewing a Transformers figure - some old and some new. In this case, it's the brand new (at least to me) Generations Waspinator!

As someone who grew up watching Beast Wars, finding this figure was a top priority for me. Unfortunatly I live in a small town in the midwest - not exactly a hot spot for new transformers releases. So nearly a month after most people got ahold of theirs, I finally found one at a Toys'R'Us last Sunday. I was ecstatic to finally find him, and I must say he didn't disappoint.

First a foremost, I want to highlight just how great the all around sculpt for this figure is. From the head all the way to the legs and feet, he looks absolutly perfect. Even the paint work that Hasbro put into this figure was very nice, the only place that was missing is a few details on his face. What really stands out though is the paint used on the Wasp's eyes, the perfect shade of metallic blue really makes them shine in his Wasp mode.

Another cool feature to him is that his wings flap up and down. There is a little tab on his back that when pushed makes them flap. It is a simple feature, but one that is surprisingly effective in my opinion.

He also comes with his weapon, as seen in the first photo here, that doubles as his stinger in Wasp mode. While it is a nice weapon, I do feel as if some paint would have greatly helped it out. As you can (barely) see in my photo, it is competely transluscent and just blends in to wherever you have him displayed. While this is just a minor issue, it is the one that I actually plan on fixing with just a bit of paint.

Lastly, the only real issue on this kit is his lower legs and feet. While they look great (that paint and scuplt is beautiful) the articulation is sorely lacking. The bend that you see in the picture above is literally all that he is capable of, and it doesn't help that his feet don't move side to side at all. This can make posing him a pretty big pain, especially when you want to get  him into a pose other than just standing straight up. While the leg movement is a significant disappointment in my opinion, it still doesn't make him not worth buying. For anyone that loves Beast Wars, or anyone that just wants a really nicely scuplted and painted Transformers figure, this guy is worth a buy.

My very nostalgia influenced rating? 4/5. Check out my full video review below.

HMM Berserk Fuhrer (Fury) Inner Frame

Here's the painted inner frame of my HMM Berserk Fury. It's  really solid inner frame, and can get in lots of poses as you can see from the pictures below. I really applaud Koto for making a full inner frame on this guy, as I think it's a feature that really puts it in the upper tier of the entire HMM line. Personally I wish that all, or at least a lot more, of the HMMs had full inner frames that could be displayed on their own.

I still havent completed the armor on it (had a bit of a mishap that means whenever I do complete it, it will be a "battle damaged custom) but I'm happy displaying it like this, just as I would have been happy displaying my Liger Zero as just the inner frame. Check out the full gallery of pictures below!