Open Your Toys Cast

Our biggest local con starts today, Fan Expo Denver. Over the past 10+ years, it has become a juggernaut. Some highlights this year, for me at least, include a pretty comprehensive Scream and Goonies reunion, most of the cast of The Boys, all the Hobbits, and a huge amount of voice actors, including Michael Bell, Peter Cullen, Frank Welker, and Matthew Wood. It has ballooned to a 4-day event. We’ll do our shopping early today, then we do panels most of the time, and we’ll squeeze in the exhibit floor as we have time. One of our favorite things to do is hit up celebrity row. Or I should say rows, nowadays. Since we’re not big autograph people, we’re too cheap, we love just walking that area and seeing our favorite celebs interacting with fans, hanging out, or even just being on their phones.

Luckily, I’m out of the reselling mindset and just get to care about things I love. Star Wars showed me a lot of love in their latest Fanstream, but nothing like their SDCC TVC Clone Wars homage. The Masters movie is showing off a ton of characters, but I absolutely love that they are featuring a focus character of mine. To see the movie Roboto in the Origins line so soon makes me very happy. The Transformers line I love the most is making Dinobots, and my boy Snarl is on the way. No Joe news this time around, but I’m still loving this TRU Acid Raid collab.

I completely Star Warsed myself out yesterday. If you’re in the group or follow me, you probably got a lot of spam about what I was watching all day. However, as I write this, I’m watching the third Family Guy Star Wars special, It’s a Trap. Why? I have mild OCD and must finish a 3-part series after watching the first two parts. It truly is a sickness. With that being the case, I really don’t want to write a whole post because I do truly love these.

Need to wrap this up, so I’m just going to point out my favorite stuff without any attempts at wittiness, but with the inevitable verbosity. Even though he was name only, my boy, Psyche Out is finally on his way. Blokees kills it with Beasts in their cutest scale. Mondo continues to show He-Man a lot of love. What the Sith?

For such a crappy start, there were so many good things in this show. When a well-done homage to a fan favorite concept is not even in the top three, you know it had to have been fire. Then there was the new Amazon Exclusive Gaming Greats Clone and Droid Training 2-Packs. Of course, Masters is just on another level with the new movie coming in hot. My favorite? An Optimus Prime that transforms into the Autobot symbol. But there was so much more.

It’s been a long week. I’ve been going through a ton of boxes. About to list ~160 new items. I’ll catch you next time. At least I got to watch a lot of movies.

As I mentioned on the show, my absolutely favorite reveal, despite its duck-billed alt mode, was Krannix from the Transformers ’86 movie. Talk about holes being filled. For Joe, the addition of dinosaurs to the line is extremely interesting, even if it’s just a momentary distraction. Masters of the Universe, of course, went off. With two different lines similar enough to be confused, at least by me, we have a ton of options. But, that Trap Jaw with an articulated jaw, am I right? Star Wars blew their load pre-Toy Fair, but being an arctic guy, let’s just say, I want everything.

It’s been a crazy weekend, and I’ve got an “NBA All-Star” game to watch, so no long post today. Stay tuned for Toy Fair talk next Sunday.

Are you dedicated enough to sit through overly excited marketing managers on the Star Wars Fanstreams? How about watching hours-long, overly produced Mattel Revealed events that feature your favorite line for about 5-10 minutes? I think nothing says dedicated like Artist Roundtable videos. Were you able to make it through the 45-minute session of What We Got to hear our thoughts on the new Master’s teaser trailer for 20 minutes? If so, that’s dedication.

Do you think these toy companies are changing for the good or for the worse? They seem to be dialing into the fandom, but at the same time, pricing many of us out of our casual lines. We’ll have to see the price of these new Joe / TMNT crossovers, but they have definitely sparked collector interest. Transformers is attacking on every front, but those prices. The most exciting Star Wars news is from LEGO, but again, man, the prices. Finally, the best things from MOTU are 3rd party homages at a relatively reasonable price.