– The Workshop get’s an all new step by step tutorial. If you’re a fan of APTK’s and WWRp DIY Noms, you’ll definitely want to check it out.
– Blind Cowboy and Ghost Horse Review
– All new feature – An Artist’s Spotlight – Interview with self made toy artist, Chris Moore of webecomemonsters.com
– and maybe a surprise or two..
This is the first time we’ve posted a preview of a statue here at RTR! It’s Batman, it’s Kotobukiya, it’s ARTFX.. how could we say no?
I’ll let the “official” speak do the talking.
DC COMICS BATMAN BLACK COSTUME VER. ARTFX STATUE
A Kotobukiya Japanese import! A classic returns! One of the original and most popular DC Comics ARTFX Statues is back in a new version to thrill fans all over again. The comic book Dark Knight returns; where once he was the blue-suited Jim Lee Hush version, Bruce Wayne is now BATMAN BLACK COSTUME VERSION! Inspired by the magnificent art of Lee in the seminal 2002 storyline pitting Batman against some of his most diabolical enemies, the original ARTFX Statue captured the Caped Crusader as he appeared then. It’s only fitting that with Jim Lee drawing Batman in the current DC 52 Justice League that the classic Batman return in a tremendous all-new color scheme with some minor adjustments to the sculpt. Batman is forever, and ready to fight crime on your shelves!
With his battle-tattered cape swirling dynamically around him, Batman strikes an intimidating pose designed to strike fear into the hearts of the evil doers of Gotham City. Leaping into the fray against the Joker or Two-Face, Bruce prepares a wide-legged stance for optimal balance while holding back his cape with one arm and keeping the other free to punch or pull a needed item from his utility belt! The highly detailed sculpt and paint shadowing reveal the billionaire playboy’s muscular physique, trained to the peak of human perfection and highlighted by the skin-tight Batman outfit. The detail on the Dark Knight is just as good as it was on the original version, with expert touches including the belt, swirling cape, and of course the stern head sculpt. Meanwhile, the new black and gray costume colors lend a darker, grittier look to Batman that makes him blend in even better with the night.
Sculpted by Kouei Matsumoto, Batman Black Costume Version stands 11 inches tall (1/6th scale) on a special display base. While he looks great on his own, Batman also makes a perfect companion piece to the previously offered Catwoman, and the Joker!
srp $99.99
Available July 2012.
TM & © DC Comics. WB SHIELD: TM & © Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. (s12)
by Jim Bailey
I discovered 3A toys, and in particular, World War Robot, about a year and a half ago and reacted emotionally to say the least. Nothing had triggered that sort of bone-quaking visceral response since I was a kid and really, really into my toys and comics. As I began to devour everything on the 3A menu, I slowly puzzled out the metrics of this phenomenon I felt. It’s all deeply influenced by the pop stuff that Ashley Wood (and I) was enthralled with as a kid. Turns out we’re the same age and have the same iconic images and stuff burned into our psyches. Go figure. The Names of bots and colorways and characters are reminiscent of early eighties GI Joe. The early chiaroscuro Popbot art looks like Frank Frazetta pounded it out on one of his notorious Sunday evening last-minute frenzies. The robots look like they come straight out of Star Wars. Square is clearly influenced by the Gonk Power Droid. Bertie Warbot is R2D2 with hands instead of feet, two pegs where his third leg should be, IG-88 style bandoleer, and killer new paint jobs! Heck, the card packaging IS the Star Wars packaging but for a few tweaks. Nom Deplume variants are clearly influenced by Vader and the Stormtroopers. I have my carded Noir and DIY sitting with some Daywatch and Nightwatch bots. Right above them are carded black and white imperial figs along with some loose Stormtroopers and Vader. The resemblance is uncanny…and cool. The company logo is even a riff on my favorite model company as a kid: Tamiya. I could go on for pages about influence, homage, and art, graphic design, and toy history in 3A’s works but that’s not what this article is about. Maybe Brodie will nut up and invite me back to do another piece someday if I don’t get booed off stage with this one!
So…when 3A showed their prototype Stormtrooper and Boba Fett, I just about lost bladder control. There it was! The real deal! You have to understand that I had not purchased or really even checked out an action figure since I was about 12…and that was 29 years ago. When the word came down that they would not be granted a license, I started to look around. The first thing I found was the Medicom and Hot Toys stuff. Incredible, but a bit pricy and too tall. I never did go for the 12″ figs when I was a kid. Too much like dolls in my mind. Then, I found the Vintage Collection from Hasbro. We were shopping for something at Target and I happened by the toy aisle, picked up a 3 pack that was packaged just like the original 1978 3 packs (that I got all of for Christmas that year), got home, opened it up, and started playing. Couple hundred bucks later I had like 50 Star Wars figs laying around. These guys are amazing and dirt stinkin’ cheap, next to 3A stuff anyway. They ain’t your Daddy’s Star Wars figures, that’s for sure!
Luke "don't sass me" Skywalker
These are 3-1/2 inch figs like the originals. The sculpting is fantastic, the paint work is tight and the decals are really clean. Check out my homeboy Luke in the pic above. There is a holster for his pistol and that lightsaber clipped onto his belt comes off. He comes with powered-up saber as well as the helmet. Four accessories for an X-wing pilot? Wow! Oh, the individual blister cards for this line of figures are to die for. They look just like they could have been released back in the day. Don’t have any in these pics because I picked the figs up CHEAP in big lots on the ‘bay. Display room is at a premium anyway.
Princess Leia
The Rebellion. Featuring.. Jim's wife?
By the way, this is not actually a review of a set of toys but more of a “hey, check all this stuff out” kind of deal. I warn you that my photography sucks. You can find detailed reviews of all this and much much more on a whole host of dedicated fan sites out there. Better photos too :-).
editor’s note. Jim, are you REALLY telling people to go check out OTHER review sites? grumble grumble… sigh, continue..
One of the greatest things about these figs is the level of articulation. Almost any pose is possible. They have ball and/or swivel at neck, shoulders, elbow, wrist, waist/legs, knees, and feet. Some of the figures pictured here are from older lines but anything done in the last two years by Hasbro is insanely poseable. That’s an older Chewie above. I think he’s from the SAGA line. Good stuff there too but can’t hold a candle to the new figs. They haven’t redone Chewie yet. The other big deal with the Vintage Collection is that the face sculpts look like the actors. That Leia Hoth face is about the size of my pinkie nail but it looks like Carrie Fisher . So does my wife, strangely enough 🙂
Big daddy pimp Vader. And Crew
Yeah, that’s right. Check out Vader and his posse. These are stormtroopers from one generation back. The newer ones are even MORE poseable. Vader’s helmet is in two pieces so you can have him rockin’ the hamburger head if you want. I really love how cleverly the joints are all concealed, across the board. Most poses look seamless and natural.
"Comander, what good does chest armor do if our faces and crotches are exposed?"
The Hoth imperials above are a mix of new and older stuff. Snowtroopers, At-AT pilot, and Commander are TVC. Veers and AT-ST pilot are SAGA. At-AT Commander (far left) is a must. Seriously, just go spend twelve bucks on ebay and get one. Right now. Oh, there’s IG-88 hiding behind him. Get him too. He’s so poseable he can break dance.
Bossk
Big bad Bossk here shows you just how far action figure design has come in 3 decades. I LOVE this guy. I loved him then too although he clearly looks like a freaking muppet next to his contemporary counterpart. Another thing I’ve done is go back and collect all the recarded figs up through the second wave of ESB. That’s about when I quit collecting Star Wars in earnest when I was a kid. I moved onto GI Joe then punk rock and girls. This is fun too. You can buy restoration kits for cheap on ebay. Collect nice specimens of your favorite old figs and recard them yourself. Multiple variants of cardbacks are available too so you can match the backs you had as a kid…if you even remember. I don’t. I mean, I’m a geek and all but…
Snow Job
Yeah, GI Joe is doing it too. These figs are taller. More like 4″. They still feel just right. Check out Snow Job above. This is one of the single coolest figures in my collection. The illustration and graphic design on the packaging is really tight and homes looks all set to take out a Deep Powder Bramble or a Snowballer droppie with his recoilless. All of the previous comments RE Star Wars apply to this guy. Where he leaves them in the dust is the accessories. See the pic below. He has his rifle with removable swivel tripod, a backpack, 2 skis, 2 poles, camp stove, skillet, gas can, radio and handheld, an ice pick for mountain climbing and, get this, a tent (not shown) that utilizes his skis and poles as the structural elements. Oh, and his jacket comes off, and he comes with a base and cool fold-out mission insert. Is that crazy or what? That’s accessorization at the level of a 12″ fig! These are fetching about 20 bucks after-market. Still a steal at that price, sez I.
Snow Jobs Stuff, wow!
Snake Eyes. Badass and going strong since 1982.
The Snake Eyes above, from the Pursuit of Cobra line by Hasbro (Snow Job is too) is so dripping with accessories that I get lost. There are two knives with sheaths, a pistol with a holster, two katanas with two removable sheaths, explosives pack on shoulder strap, removeable tac vest/harness, trademark UZI and pistol (both have removeable silencers), an assault rifle (not shown), and a head variant (not shown). Whew! My only issue with the Pursuit of Cobra Joes is that they are weirdly long in the legs and the hip articulation, just like the old skool figs, detracts from the presentation. Most of the new Joes are just as goofy as the later waves of the originals so you have to dig around to find the good stuff.
They have that OG G.I. JOE smell
In addition to the Pursuit of Cobra, there are several other GI Joe lines that have interesting features or that might appeal to peeps. The pic above is of some figs that are the real equivalent of the Star Wars Vintage Collection. They are well articulated, nicely sculpted updates of their 1980-1982 counterparts and sport the original card art. Flash was my first back in the day. $1.50 at Best Products! It took me 6 weeks of allowance to save up for him. I fell out after the 2nd wave cos I grew up (sortof). Snow Job was my favorite fig as a kid. How could he not be. He had skis! There are a couple of nice figs in the Rise of Cobra line as well as the new stuff available at Target/TRU based on the animated series. Cartoony but lots of fun.
One last bit on all this stuff: it’s built to be chewed on by 2 year olds and dogs, go through the wash, and handle at least one bottle rocket shot. Enough Black Cats or a blowtorch will probably kill them (like they did in the eighties) but the point is that these are meant to be played with. They can handle it. Sometimes I think I get lost in the “value” of the relatively shoddily constructed art toys I’ve collected over the last year and a half and treat them too gingerly. Just pose them occasionally and let them sit there. Give yourself a rest from the fear and go slumming for some cheap thrills. For what you drop on a 12″ fig, you can get buckets of this mass-market stuff to mess around with. I guess I’m just an old guy. The mass-market stuff is so massively better than what I had as a kid (and in many ways, better than 3A) that I can’t help myself. If the devil himself handed me the Bossk and the Snow Job that I feature here back in 1981, I kid you not, I would have sold my soul.
Rock on, brothers and sisters!
Jim Bailey aka Grindhouse
words by Miller
Snoop Dogg is FORTY!
Yeah, that’s right, forty years old. That is probably older than most of your teachers were when you thought that they were old, out of touch nerds. That is older than your parents were when they told you that you shouldn’t smoke weed and listen to Snoop Dogg. You aren’t supposed to trust anyone over thirty. Statistically, Snoop Dogg is closer to a natural death from old age than he is from birth. Middle age was the case that they gave me.
So, what is middle aged Snoop Dogg up to these days? If you get a chance to listen to his collaboration with 24 year old Wiz Khalifa, the soundtrack to “Mac & Devin Go to High School,” you’ll discover that mature Mr. Dogg is smoking fields of marijuana and letting fools know what’s up.
This is the soundtrack to a movie ostensibly about education (I’ll be honest, I’m never gonna see this movie) but there is nothing really educational here, unless you are majoring in horticulture or botany. This album is all about the ganja. Snoop Dogg smokes weed. Wiz Khalifa smokes weed. Guests Juicy J., Bruno Mars, Curren$y, and Mike Posner smoke weed. It is just one long musical Jamaican shower.
“So what we get drunk? So what we smoke weed? We’re just having fun.” Yeah, that’s pretty much what this music is all about and maybe that is okay. Wiz Khalifa is lyrically adept, but with the gravitas of a character from “Toy Story 2.” Snoop comes from a time in hip-hop where every rapper had to either shoot people or pretend that they were capable of shooting people. Yet, the middle aged Snoop is kinda past all of that nonsense. Wiz doesn’t really exist in that world and thank God for that.
Modern rappers are transcending some of the machismo posturing that made some untalented people famous and made some unbelievably talented people dead in the nineties. The gangsta dynamic is alive and well, but it is not as essential to selling records in the suburbs as it was when Snoop Dogg was in his twenties. These days, if a rapper wants to record an entire movie soundtrack and only talk about getting stoned then he can do that.
I never really understood, or appreciated the combination of being stoned and shooting people. Getting high is an inherently peaceful endeavor. Being shot must be a pretty horrendous experience, but especially if you’re baked. I’m glad that the rappers are separating those two experiences from each other. Gunshot wounds are probably horrible buzz kills.
The modern crop of hip-hop superstars like Lil Wayne, Kanye West, and that Canadian dude – that may or may not have been confined to a wheelchair as a teen – are more about the riches and the bitches than the nines and the AKs, and that is probably for the best. Wiz Khalifa leans more towards that camp than Snoop’s former thuggier associates. However, it is pretty cool that old man Broadus can still keep up with youngsters. His swagger is fully intact on these party songs and their collaboration is mutually beneficial. Snoop provides a little credibility and Wiz inspires a youthful playfulness in Snoop’s flow.
This is good stuff. However, it is pretty forgettable. If somebody popped this disc in at a party I would really enjoy it, but it isn’t something that I would search out. I guess that if I still got high, it would be my favorite, but that isn’t something that I do anymore. Maybe when I’m Snoop Dogg’s age I’ll pick the habit back up.
When Miller isn’t sitting in America’s courtrooms fighting for the rights of our troubled youth, he’s crack’n wise on this blog with “useful” information about “necessary” distractions.
Rad Toy Review 