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!