Earthquaking

I meant to do the rounds this evening and do a lot of posting, but a large-ish earthquake and the cleanup necessary to the toy areas kinda killed that. So stay tuned for more soonish.

SDCC 2008: He-Man and the Masters of the Universe

If you're a He-Man fan, and who isn't these days, here's the scoop from Comic-Con. In a departure from what you would expect from one of the major toy companies Mattel has confirmed figures will be sold from its web site, direct-to-consumer, for about $20 a pop. King Grayskull, on the other hand, will be about $30. Each figure is super-articulated (or as close as you're going to get) and feels big, chunky, and like a real toy. I got a King for my stash and I can say that it's almost a shame these won't be at retail. It feels solid, and despite being based on a character few fans are going to clamor for based on name recognition alone, it's a wonderful toy.

Starting this Fall, one figure will be released for presale (and presumably sale) per month. The line kicks off with He-Man, and will be followed by Beast Man and Skeletor. How long this will go on for is hard to say, and the direct-to-consumer market is really tricky to get right. But as one of the many fans who bought into the 2002 offerings who had no intention of attempting to collect them all, I can't deny that these are some of the finest figures I've had the chance to play with. I hope it lasts a while and performs well enough so that we can get to all of the important figures, which basically means I want new Trap Jaw, Orko, Hordak, and Evil-Lyn figures.

Important links:
Gallery at Altered States Magazine
Masters of the Universe at My Flickr Gallery
Matty Collector

Better late than never: Comic-Con 2008

As the show was a whirlwind of insanity, I did not get to update the blogs as I went. But I did a little twittering with some big announcements and other goodies.

Everything I shot at the show (and can show you) is now available here. 674 photos, mostly toys, lots of booths, and the Sci-Fi era MST3K guys.

The show was... it was a lot. Hasbro showed dozens of new Star Wars toys, including a toy featuring the Pit of Carkoon. Mattel showed off its first new He-Man figures. And yes, we at Entertainment Earth got to reveal a number of things like our new Gentle Giant and Hasbro exclusives, which was fun. And I'm not just saying that because the new Joker Squad sets received actual, significant applause at the panel either. Nosiree.

But yeah, I'll post more news to the other blogs as time and energy permits.

Comic-Con This Week

Comic-Con is this week, and in a way, it's going to be a test run for the whole blog thing. I haven't yet announced any of this stuff but I'm hoping to post crap to my various blogs from the show and see what happens. It's going to be different, and most likely not work well. But if it does, it's going to mean that my life online is going to get a whole lot easier. For me. Who knows how it'll be for you people, you're on your own.

...seriously though, if anyone out there is reading and sees this please email me/leave comments for requests of what you want to see from Comic-Con. Due to work I can't do a lot of panels (OK, maybe 2 or 3) but I will be there with my camera ad my little notebook to ask questions if happenstance permits, so hey, use me as your roving reporter if you'd like.

I'll definitely be podcasting for work, so you'll hear shows either this week or early next week. Again, there's a lot of tools that are going to be tested, and if it works it'll work nicely.

Oh yeah-- my good friend Shaun-- and when I say "friend," this is someone I actually hang out with when we're in the same city, and we went to college together-- put up a great short film called Discount Assassin. The whole idea is a guy will kill on the cheap. He also writes for the comedy blog Comedy Is Dead, so be sure to see his movie as it beats doing nothing.

Game Stuff

The Magic Box and a bunch of other sites have a lot of game news from E3, some of which is really good.

I'm thrilled to see WiiWare getting a new Gradius game called Gradius Rebirth. It looks very 16-bit. It thrills me in all the ways that the Wii game Castlevania Judgment, a new fighting game, doesn't. But Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia looks pretty sweet. I'll buy that. It looks solid enough to warrant... well, whatever it'll cost. 2D rocks.

LEGO Architecture = Yes

The Brothers Brick has some images and info on this newfangled Architecture set they're doing. Actually, it looks like two-- the Sears Tower and the John Hancock Center. No idea where you can buy these online just yet, but if executive toys are your thing, these should be perfect.

LEGO 7036 Castle Dwarves Mine Video

This week I went ahead and made a video of a LEGO set I bought and finally got around to assembling. It's a gold mine! Also, a silver mine.



Yeah, I know I have a voice for silent films, and the dialogue was basically made up on the fly as much of the time went into trying to shoot it and edit down a ton of footage. But hey, it was a fun one to put together.

LEGO Space Invaders

I don't want to work on writing a Figure of the Day so I instead decided to make this.



Click here to view LEGO Space Invaders gallery on Flickr

Simple, small, just took a few minutes to do. I think pretty much anybody could do this one if you have a couple of brick buckets so you get enough of any one color to work with. As I do these I'm finding out I have very, very little black.

LEGO Simon Belmont

I was really busy this week, so I wanted to do something to take my mind off of work... and blogging. Naturally, the results were something I had to share with you all.



Click here to view LEGO Simon Belmont gallery on Flickr

Basically, I did something pretty simple-- take the sprites from the NES game Castlevania II: Simon's Quest and make it out of LEGO. I had some pre-sorted buckets so after a couple of missteps and one gross mistake, I managed to crank this out in just under a couple of hours. (Odds are if I weren't tired, it'd be quicker.) So there ya go-- easy stuff!