Retro Week: ToyBiz Psylocke in the Snow

Betsy, waist-deep in snow.

I've been saying that I'd get around to doing a few retro week posts for a couple of months now, but it took being snowed in to get to it!  Out of the basement today is Psylocke from ToyBiz's X-men Classics with Light-Up Weapon series from the 90s.  Amazingly, her batteries aren't dead!

It's all photos from here!

Out of the Box: Batwoman (Tonner's DC Bombshells Series)

Batwoman

Even though I'm always complaining about the hinge-jointed knees on dolls from Tonner, every now and then they release something that overrides my aversion.  This time the exception is Batwoman from their DC Bomshells line.  While the original retail price ($179.99 USD) struck me as being too high, when the doll popped up on Zulily at a decent discount I decided to pick her up.

The DC Bombshells line included three characters (Batwoman, Wonder Woman, Harley Quinn and Supergirl), each designed to have a 1940s pin-up style version of their traditional costume. For whatever reason, Batwoman's outfit is baseball themed, which seems a bit like a silly pun (she has a baseball bat, because she's the bat-woman, buh da bump!), but at least it got her some interesting accessories.

Out of the Box: DC Super Hero Girls Bumblebee

The DC Super Hero Girls are a cartoon that involves teenaged versions of heroes and villains from DC comics in a high school setting.  Full disclosure: I haven't watched it, but even so it's been hard to miss the merchandise.  Mattel has put out two versions of the six main characters (Wonder Woman, Supergirl, Batgirl, Bumblebee, Harley Quinn) - an action figure and a fashion doll (which is being branded as an action doll).

This line seems to be bringing up a lot of the old discussions about the line between dolls and action figures (and about gendered toy marketing), which I'm thinking about making a separate post about, since it's such a huge topic.  But in the meantime, let's take a look at the action figure version of Bumblebee. I'd actually planned on picking up Batgirl, but they'd actually sold out of every other figure at my local store - although they still had all the dolls, which makes me wonder if the figures are benefiting from more of a crossover market.

Out of the Box: John Constantine (DC Collectibles)

I have a few of the Hellblazer-related collectibles from the late '90s in storage (you can see the DC Direct action figure in the background of the introductory photo from my first ever post on this blog), but not being a fan of the non-Vertigo/post New 52 version of the character (and I still haven't gotten around to checking out the full run of last year's TV series), I haven't picked up anything new for years.  But having recently reread Peter Milligan's run on the old series, I was weakened by nostalgia and when I saw a sale on the new John Constantine statue from DC Collectibles on Big Bay Toystore, I ended up ordering this statue.

Before I get into the review, can I just take a minute to complain about some of the box openings I watched while waiting for this statue to ship? Nearly all of them call John a Londoner (one even referred to him as a "Cockney magician") - but the character is supposed to be from Liverpool! 

*ahem* But never mind that, on with the figure!

Out of the Box: Union Jack (Hasbro's Marvel Universe)

I haven't had time to restring the Ginny dolls yet, so how about an action figure while we wait?

I've been catching up on the All New Invaders series recently (the final issue comes out next week), so it feels like the perfect time to share Union Jack, the Captain America equivalent from the UK (despite the name, Captain Britain has a very different role/history in the Marvel Universe).

This particular feature is labelled as the modern/Joey Chapman Union Jack (there have been two others in the comics), but given the face-covering uniform, you could easily put him on display and tell people he's the Lord Falsworth or Brian Falsworth character and no one would need be the wiser (unless they noticed the belt that looks exactly like the one from the covers of the 2007 mini-series).

Out of the Box: Kotobukiya's "Marvel Now" Hawkeye

I'd been catching up on Matt Fraction's run on Marvel's Hawkeye comics recently, and while I've been enjoying the series, I hadn't considered buying any tie-in products.  But then I read Traci's posts over at A Wild Review Appears about her Kotobukiya Nightwing and Green Arrow figures, and was taken by the amount of detail on them - so I started looking at Kotobukiya's back catalogue, and somehow (*cough*) this figure ended up in my cart.

Kotobukiya's figures are non-articulated, so it would be fair to call them statues rather than action figures, although I tend to see these as slightly closer to toys than decor (although they're clearly not designed to hold up to play, as I'll talk about later).  The figures come on a with a magnetic base (and magnets in his feet), which would be brilliant on an articulated figure since it increases the display options, but on this static figure, just means that the figure is never completely secure on the stand.

Out of the Box: DC Direct's Planetary & The Authority

Planetary's The Drummer
The Planetary figures included a stand
with the comic's logo.

We've all heard the saying "vote with your wallet", and that's always one of those dilemmas when you collect anything that's related to a particular property - when the first tie-ins are released, do you need to buy them to show that there's a market for that property?  And is that true even if the product isn't that great?

That was my dilemma back in 2001, when DC Direct released three figures from the Wildstorm series Planetary and then again a year later when they released another four from The Authority.  As with an unfortunate number of DC Directs figures from that era, the figures have minimal detail and less-than-ideal articulation, but as with any property that hasn't had any non-comics merchandise, there's always a temptation to pick them up anyway.

I initially decided to compromise and pick up one figure from each release - Snow from Plantary and the Midnighter from The Authority (those two would spend several years as desk decor at my office).  In 2007 I came across the rest of the series on sale at ComiKazi (my local comic shop when I lived in Calgary), and picked up another two.  I'm still on the fence about these toys, but I can't lie - they've grown on me.  And hey, at least the Authority figures aren't in the terrible costumes from the new DCU versions of the characters!

The Midnighter & Apollo from The Authority
This release didn't include stands.

Elijah Snow from Planetary.
This figure is currently in storage, so this is an old photo
of him at my desk at work.  Amusingly, two different co-workers
mistook him for the Glad Man.

The Captain Britain wall

Before we moved, I had the clever idea that I would frame some of my favourite comics and let the rest go into storage.  I searched for comic frames, decided they were overpriced, found Youseph Tanha's Ikea Comic Book Photo Frame Hack post, discovered that the Ikea in Burlington didn't have those frames, and then finally discovered that Dollarama did have the size and picked up a few.  And then our move was bumped up by a month and the project fell by the wayside.

But the frames (and the longboxes) made their way south with me, and this week I finally put a few of them together along with a couple of figures in/on a shadowbox.  Making the cut for round one (I still have a couple more frames waiting to be used) were issues #1 and #100 of Excalibur and #1 of Captain Britain and MI:13.   I'm not 100% sold on the spacing (I may rehang to get the gaps a little more even), but overall I'm pleased!

On top of the box is my mystery Captain Britain figure - I picked him up from the loose figure box at Chinook and Hobby West back in 2008ish, and there were a couple of releases with the same look, so I don't actually know which one he's from.  The smaller figure in the 70s-style uniform is from the recent "great battles" release, which I found in the clearance bin at Winners about a year ago.