My friend Paul over at Toy Bender has got a lot of his old toys and stuff for sale over on his Dinosaur Toy Vault. There you’ll find old Transformers, Star Wars, G. I. Joes and such, but what caught my eye was the Star Wars collector’s plates. I can just imagine Luke or Darth Vader sitting down for a big dinner before a lightsaber battle and only wanting to use their favorite Jedi themed plate. Perhaps the plates have midichlorians in them. So if you had the plate, you might become a powerful Jedi just like those other guys. I’d buy the plates myself, but I’ve already got some super powers and I don’t want to be greedy.

It was a nice surprise when Shocker Toys graciously sent over one of their new ShadowHawk Variant action figures. It’s from their great, new Indie Spotlight series of popular comic book characters of yesteryear. Series 1 includes five collectible action figures such as Terry Moore’s Katchoo from Strangers in Paradise, Rob Schrab’s Scud: The Disposable Assassin, David Mack’s Kabuki, Sam Kieth’s The Maxx and Jim Valentino’s ShadowHawk. Each figure comes with its own accessories, like a white/black Isz or Pink Fairy.

When shopping for a toy and perusing the shelves, the first thing that catches your eye is the packaging. This ShadowHawk figure comes in the classic carded packaging with a bubble shell. While the “busy orange” background does get your attention, I don’t think it helps this stylish figure stand out. What I do like about the packaging is the fact that it is collector friendly. You don’t have to tear it apart to get your figure out and it’s easily resealable so you can put the figure back in for displaying. Yeah!

The ShadowHawk figure itself is solid, nicely painted and well balanced for an action figure. It’s great that it can actually stand on its own and with the many points of articulation you can pose him just about anyway you want. (I noticed that the chest articulation is similar to the 25th Anniversary G.I Joe figures.) He looks quite cool in all different types of poses, so you can show him off in a number of ways.

If you’re a fan of ShadowHawk, you’ll definitely appreciate this cool action figure. Overall, I’m quite impressed with this figure.

Note: I’ve got more pictures of the figure over here, if you’re interested.

Our friend Dan Goodsell has come out with a few more sweet plush toys for your enjoyment. These new Candy Corn dolls arrived just last week and they’re sweet enough to eat. (Please do not ingest said plush.) There’s three styles – Candy Corn, Vampire Candy Corn and Indian Candy Corn. They are 9″ tall and ready to sweeten your day. You can order them from Dan’s (Mr Toast) website. Get your Halloween candy fix early.

This was my first visit to WonderCon in San Francisco and I really enjoyed myself. WonderCon is known as the sister-show of San Diego Comic-Con. I’d say it’s a smaller sister, but even though it wasn’t as huge as SDCC, it has it’s benefits. Since it’s a smaller show, that means there’s less of a crowd and you could get more face time with the stars, which is nice. (Speaking of stars, I met and talked with Henry Winkler (Fonzie) and saw artist Jim Lee.) I also finally met Daniel M. Davis of Steam Crow Monster Commute and Michael Fleming of tweedlebop!

WonderCon features the best in a variety of specialty programming including the very best from, pop culture, Hollywood film and television, but comics are still king at this 23-year-old event. Watchmen was prevalent, but so was Star Trek, Star Wars, G.I. Joe and other comic heroes. This was a nice warm-up for me, as I await SDCC in July. Please enjoy my photos from the show with my slideshow or visit my WonderCon 2009 Flickr set. Perhaps you should consider going to WonderCon next year.

After seeing the photos from the 2009 Toy Fair, which included this Duke themed G.I. Joe Rapid Roller, I can see that toy makers are preparing in a big way for this summer’s G.I. Joe movie. I think that this toy is cute, but I don’t think I’ll be purchasing it. It’s something the kids will definitely enjoy though. When the movie comes out August 7, I can’t wait to see shelves full of G.I. Joe of all shapes and sizes. Even if it’s covered with toys that I’d probably not buy. This time they were thinking of the children (and their parent’s wallets).

Water! Wood! Wood beats water! When Battle Beasts were first released I collected as many as I could. They were little anthropomorphised animals with body armor and each had a unique weapon. Too bad I can’t find any of them now. I was so into these toys, I’d draw new ones out on graph paper in my free time. The reason I was so into them was probably that they were a spin-off of Transformers, which I also collected like crazy. (Both sets of toys had heat sensitive stickers on them too.) What a great way to take advantage of the already popular game of rock, paper, and scissors.

When you were a youngster in the early 80’s and wanted to entertain yourself with an electronic game, you were pretty limited. Before I was lucky enough to own an Atari 2600, I played with an original Speak & Spell. It was a gift from my parents and my dad hooked up an AC adapter to it, to save on batteries. I’d play with it for hours learning how to spell. Just hearing that familiar electronic voice again and a rush of memories flood my brain of days past. Perhaps it was my fondness of the game that’s helped me be such a good speller today.

You can still enjoy the classic fun of Speak & Spell with online emulators like the one from Kevin St. Onge or Jake Smith’s version. My favorite game was the hangman styled game called Mystery Word. The only problem I had was the pronunciation of words. It was difficult to tell the difference between certain words it wanted me to spell. For example “specific” or “pacific”, they both sounded the same on that single-chip voice synthesizer and I usually guess wrong.

Take a gander at this sweet collection of vintage toys that TCM Hitchhiker (aka Jason Jerde) has up on flickr. He’s got a spectacular set of photos of vintage Mego toys (which includes Star Trek, Marvel, DC and even KISS), some Remco Universal Monster figures and even some the 12″ Joes, all from the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s! It’s a classic toy overload!

I’m a big fan of vintage toy figures. If you like this post perhaps you’ll like Superhero Pajama Party!

Yes America it’s true! You can have your very own Topps’ Obama Trading Cards! The cards will be available in 6-card packs for a suggested retail price of $1.99 and will ship on January 3rd. It seems kind of odd to make Presidential Collector Cards. Does every president have a baseball card?

As a kid I used to collect baseball cards. Just a few mind you and I traded them all away. I really didn’t collect them since I’m not really a baseball fan. Years later I started collecting Marvel cards and Garbage Pail Kids cards. I’ve still got tons of those somewhere and I still enjoy looking at them. Even as a Obama supporter and card collector, I can’t see myself ever owning these. But if you want to give these to me as a stocking stuffer, I won’t be upset.

I just saw this at FAO Schwarz – it’s a Make Your Own Muppet Whatnot Workshop! The choices are limited, but where else can you make your very own Muppet to play with? Choose the color, eyes, nose, hair and outfit. Order now and get your Muppet just in time for the holidays. It’s too bad there’s not more body colors and shapes to choose from. I’d pick a Gonzo or Dr Bunsen Honeydew character.