Out of the Box: Dragon Age Alistair (ThreeZero)

I've posted a few times now about this Alistair figure from ThreeZero: while at first it was excitement about finally seeing a 1/6th scale Dragon Age figure, as the release was pushed back from November to the new year, to January, to late February some of that excitement had started to turn into frustration.  But the wait is over, and he arrived today!

ThreeZero is a Hong Kong-based company that produces 1/6th (and some larger) figures from a variety of game, TV, and movie franchises (you can check out some of their past and future releases here on their Facebook page). The figures are similar in size and style to the same-scale figures from Hot Toys and Sideshow and sit at a similar price point.

This particular figure has 15 points of articulation (head, chest, waist, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, ankles) and is wearing a well-constructed fabric outfit. His accessory set included a large shield and sword and two pairs of option hands (one pair with sword grips and one pair of fists).

Preorders and Thinning the Herd

The Volks USA online full choice system was only live for 10 days this month, and while I managed to hold out until the final day, I did surrender and place an order for the new sculpt (Amethyst) in  ebony, with the "vibrant" faceup.  They're not expected to be ready until early January, so plenty of time to decide what I'm going to do with her.

The FCS (Photo credit).

The Continued Adventures of Isabela in England

After leaving Liverpool, we drove to Manchester (with a quick stop in Northwich, so my husband could pick up a pastry at his childhood favourite bakery).  We had more rain there, which meant fewer toy photos, but Isabela did get to hang out by the water in front of Media City (across from the Imperial War Museum North).

The Adventures of Isabela in Liverpool

I'm back from my week-and-half in England on the annual "friends, family and football" tour, so how about a few photos?  My travelling figure for this trip was one of Titan's Dragon Age mini figures, Isabela (a ship's captain seemed like the right character to bring along to visit rivers and canals, I thought).

As with the adventures of mini Ivy in Thailand, I'll be breaking this up into a couple of posts to keep it from getting too unwieldy.  Now on with the photos!

Random Toy of the Day: Dragon Age MiniMates

Back in May, I posted about planning to unbox by new Dragon Age MiniMates as soon as a moved - I didn't quite get to them as quickly as I'd intended, but this morning I finally got around to it.

The Dragon Age MiniMates: Alistair, Morrigan, Varric & Leliana

As I'm mentioned a time or two before, I'm a fan of the Dragon Age franchise, but haven't always been happy with the tie-in products that they've released, and this set is no different.  I was looking forward to seeing characters from the franchise in block-figure form, and I wasn't disappointed with the details on the figures themselves, but the character choice and packaging were weak.

Out of the Box: Titans' Dragon Age Mystery Minis

It was just a few days ago that I was saying it would be a while before I added any more vinyl mystery minis to my collection; But those were apparently famous last words, because almost immediately after posting that, I realized that Titan had released their Dragon Age blind bag series.  And given my love of Dragon Age, I had to bring a few of them home.

Titans' Mystery minis. L-R: Fenris, Anders, Isabela, Morrigan

Coming up after the move...

Moving day is just over a week away, so while I do have a few unboxed items to photograph, I'm going to be spending the next week putting things back into their boxes, so I think I'll wait on opening those up.

Still, before I get into the packing, I thought I'd take a quick photo of the toys that are newly arrived but being packed away immediately:

Coming soon...

It's not a huge backlog: just two Minimates sets (a Dragon Age set of four and a Marvel set of two) and two American Girl mini Dolls (Grace, the 2015 Girl of the Year and the new version of Samantha), but they'll just have to wait! ;)

A Tale of Terrible Packaging

The outer box.

This isn't quite toy-related, but it's close enough:  I've been a little weak with getting posts out these past two weeks, in part because I went on holiday (I spent a little less than a week doing site-seeing in Boston), but mostly because my entertainment time has been eaten up by the mid-November release of the latest instalment in one of my favourite games franchises, Dragon Age: Inquisition.  

The game itself I've been impressed by.  It's a solid RPG (although there are still some issues that need patching) and has plenty of lore for people who love the world-building,  but the packaging of the collector's edition was quite possibly the least competent professional packing job I have ever seen.  I'm not generally a fan of CE releases either, and this set is certainly not making it more likely for me to buy any others in the future).

The box itself looks great (and exactly like a chest that appears in-game), but upon opening it I found this:

Everything had a slot, yet everything was loose inside.

Two of the chess pieces were all broken (surprisingly, nothing else appeared to be damaged):

The damage

I'm not terribly upset by the breakage (I really only wanted the tarot set, fabric map, and the box itself, and luckily those items met my expectations), but I was shocked to see such poor package design on a release like this.

A sampling of the tarot cards.

The Wish List: Dolls, Figures and... throw pillows?

I haven't been making any major collection purchases this summer (in part because of all the travelling), but every now and then a preorder item pops up somewhere and catches my eye - and just these week there have been several, so I thought I'd take a break from sorting through the older items in my mother's basement and share a few upcoming items that I'm watching.

Photo credit.

First up is a re-release of Soom's Chrom, with brown tan as one of the resin options.  He's on their Super Gem body which, while not their largest, is still 65cm tall - and I've been holding off on adding any SD+ sized dolls to my collection for three years now.  Still, I've admired this sculpt before, so it's tempting.

He'll be available for pre-order through the end of the month, so I have time to think it over.








Next up is Titan's upcoming (January 2015) release of a series of Dragon Age mini figures, to be sold as blind bags (or boxes).  I'm generally grumpy about the idea of blind bags over the price of $2, but knowing my ridiculous fondness for the Dragon Age games (and the franchise as a whole) that fan-feeling is probably going to get the better of me.

Photo credit

I didn't follow SDCC this year (aside from checking for a couple of game demos), but when I noticed the new Monster High Vandala Doubloons, she ended up on my watch list as well (both because I like the pirate concept, and because she needs to join the figure-with-prosthesis collection).

 And then last night I came across this Captain Britain throw pillow over on Studio6.  It might not be my favourite piece of fan art, but I can't help but think that it would look fantastic in my Captain Britain-themed guest room...

Photo Credit

And finally just this morning I was scanning recent posts over at toyhaven and discovered that Fewture/ArtStorm is putting out three figures based on characters from Fringe.  I was slow to get into that show (I'm currently working my way through season 4), and I'd always wondered why there wasn't more merchandise.

The Olivia isn't a great likeness, but the other two look decent.

And that's it!  At least for now...