One last left-over from October:
So
I went to winter MCM London Comic Con in October but didn’t post about it
because it was still Countdown to Halloween Month and there was no way I could
even tangentially relate it to Halloween (there wasn’t even that many
horror-themed cosplayers). I go to both MCMs every year, it’s held in the ExCel
Centre, a convention complex that’s about the same size as my hometown and I
mostly go for the comfort of being surrounded by 1,000s of people who won’t
judge me (until the find out I like Star Wars better than Star Trek anyway),
it’s not as popular with my group of friends as LFCC and with one of them
working and the other in America only two of us went and when we are left to do
something together by god we’re efficient, we got in, out and spent loads of
money within 3 hours. This should not reflect on the size or quality of the con
though, in fact it’s probably one of the nicest laid out I’ve been to in years
[Ok I want a qualifying statement before I go on, the dealers were not nicely
laid out, they were in three different patterns and it played havoc with our
organised brains, you have many, many nerds to cater for MCM, make it logical
or else we will have issues]. The
summer MCM was horribly laid out, it was all stuffed into one area leaving
everything – dealers, talks, video games, signings, feeling short-changed and
me feeling frustrated, I did get a vintage Action Man Astronaut & Space
Capsule and a bendy Ivan Ooze so it was fruitful, but laid out like crap; this
was far, FAR better with the inflatable dome things they’re using for smaller
talks and the big loud stands in a separate area and eating and ATM machines in
another room which meant people could sit, eat and draw money out without being
cramped and/or it taking forever – when you’ve got hundreds of people in bulky,
inconvenient cosplay lots of room to sit and queue is really appreciated by
all.
My
main use for conventions is as a treat-myself shopping spree but I didn’t come
back with the usual bagfuls of shit from this con –MCM isn’t as useful to me in
general when it comes to shopping, though it has a lot of dealers there’s a lot
of focus on Anime and Japanese culture and modern collectors figures and
merchandise and I’m really specific when it comes to all of that shit, and I’m also
cutting down big time in the build-up for an expensive 2016. Of course I still
had enough purchases to get a good Examples of Crap I Waste My Money on Article
out of, aren’t you all so lucky?
Care Bear Cousins!
(The
Care Bears, 1984)
Vintage
Care Bears are one of my real toy loves, I feel no shame about it nor should I and
this could indeed be a major contributing factor to me being single. I thought
these two – Swift Heart Rabbit and Gentle Heart Lamb for the philistines -
completed my set of World Care Bear Cousins1 but it turns out I’ve
somehow misplaced Bright Heart Raccoon so that’s the weekend’s achievement
ruined (and £13 spent on eBay). The girls…wait, are they girls? Seriously it
can’t just be me and the Nostalgia Critic that has trouble telling/remembering
the sexes of the Care Bear Cousins can it? I’m a big Vintage Care Bears hoarder
and even I can’t get it straight – I THINK Swift Heart, Treat Heart, Proud
Heart and Gentle Heart are girls and Loyal Heart, Bright Heart, Brave Heart,
Lotsa Heart, Cozy Heart and Playful Heart are boys. I’m sure there’s a Care
Bears Wiki2 that could tell you but my point is it must be bloody
hard to keep this shit straight if I’ve never really manged it and I’ve been a
fan since childhood, it doesn’t help that Swift Heart Rabbit has changed sex
more times than a pack of Jurassic Park Velociraptors over the franchise’s
history – I know Care Bears has always had horrendous continuity but you’d
think they’d be able to stay consistent on basic things like whether or not the
character has a cock (mind you, Poison, and Birdo, hmm…). I completely forgot
what I wanted to say now so I’ll move on.
Mosquitor!
(Masters
of the Universe Classics, 2012)
I
am pretty much done with ‘back stock’ for Classics, with the exception of Tri-Klops
and Shadow Weaver (who are both way too expensive) I’m pretty much good for
figures released before I found the line, but then one vendor at the con had a
whole box of them, loose and bagged like they were old G.I. Joes or something –
you NEVER see this for Classics, everyone’s too busy selling them on eBay for the
price of a car - maybe it’s a sign of their star fading and it should depress
me but it didn’t, the novelty made me all excited and I had to rummage through
even though I didn’t need nor want any figures, just to have the experience. I
ended up buying Mosquitor almost in homage to this great stall and its bucket
o’ Classics. He’s the only Horde member from the vintage line I didn’t own and
because he’s such a let-down after the awesome NECA Staction I could never be
bothered to fuck around bidding for him on eBay, he’s a lot better in-hand
though I still wish they’d given him his 200X tanks – and eyes that face
forward.
Throttle With Parachute!
(Biker
Mice From Mars, 1993)
Now
here’s a seemingly lost art, the Random Character as a Parachutist. Cheap
shitty parachutists are still available in all good cheap shitty shops but the
old tradition of moulding any old character from a then-popular licence to
attach to the parachute seems to have died out – there are no Frozen
parachutists or Minion parachutists or John Cena parachutists and that makes me
sad because these things were made for EVERYTHING in the 70s and 80s, if you
don’t believe me you should seriously see the various ones archived at Plaidstalions.com
and in his book Rack Toys, these were just a staple of cheap cash-in
merchandise (official or otherwise). I didn’t know that Biker Mice got one,
which is odd because EVERYTHING was Biker Mice for me for a while in the early
90’s and my nan and mum both worked in exactly the sort of shop that would sell
this sort of shit. I was delighted to find this these toys survived into the
mid-90s and delighted it was Biker Mice from Mars, not just because I horde
those toys but because it so perfectly fits this type of toy – Throttle never parachuted
in anything, not in the toys, not in the cartoon, not in the SNES game, he has
a space bike, he does not need a parachute, there is no logic to this other
than ‘these things always sell and we can crap ‘em out cheap and fast, let’s
make one for this Bike Mouse thing going on’ and that is exactly what these
toys are all about. I’m actually torn whether to open it or not though, on the
one hand the packaging it awesome (and so 90’s) but on the other hand I want to
throw Throttle off the top of my stairs.
Real Ghostbusters Ghosts!
(The
Real Ghostbusters, 1987)
I
overpaid for these, I knew it at the time – MCM is very short on vintage toy
dealers and thus they get to set their own prices and that pretty much means
they get to take the piss; one stall in particular irritates me every time I go
- £15-£20 for Stratos? Fuck off mate. I like to complain loudly so the stall
holder can hear me, passive-aggressive yes but so satisfying. This was from a
different stall who was by far cheaper but still very pricey for stuff you can
get in the same condition from bootsales for £2-3 and at other conventions for
£5-£10 but I’d already written off the money for the con and I could afford it
so I picked up the Brain Blaster and Bad-to-the-Bone ghosts, the only RGB figures
I wanted to get from a dealer rather than a bootsale – simply to make sure they
were complete and unbroken. Bad-To-The-Bone is the filmiest fucker in the line
and I come across ones with missing ribs, heads and arms with a depressing regularity,
as for Brain Blaster it’s just so uncommon to find one with all four of his
little brain-men – what are they anyway? They look like the things you put in
trifle – those cake-biscuit-sticks? Actually for that matter what is Brain
Blaster even a ghost of? Ah whatever he’s a big green head that shoots brain-willy-trifle-sticks,
I didn’t question it as a child and I can’t see the point now, he still works
too.
Knock off Hulk Hogan and Adam Bomb!
(IWC
International Wrestling Champions, 1998-ish)
So
between the sex scandals and the steroids trial Hasbro decided to stop making
WWF toys, they’re funny about stuff like that apparently. The story I’ve heard
is that then a company called Mannix then got the moulds for a few of the heads
and put out some knock-offs to tie into the whole wrestling boom that was
happening with the Attitude Era and nWo and all that. Originally under the name
IWC they used Hogan, Lex Luger, Diesel, Razor Ramon, Adam Bomb and Shaw
Michaels and put them out in all the colours of the rainbow – my favourite one
being the Shawn Michaels they repainted to look like Crow-era Sting, though the
Adam Bomb painted to look like Hollywood Hogan’s pretty great too3.
I’ll believe that these use the proper molds because the heads look great,
even painted in wacky ways, in fact the wacky repaints is why I love ‘em so
much - who doesn’t want a Razor Ramon/Adam Bomb hybrid? In general I’m quite a
fan of Mannix-body lines (there are many)
but I see these as just two more figures for my Hasbro WWF selection (aaaand I
totally forgot to see if I could find Lex Luger and Bam Bam Bigelow this con,
bollocks)
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit!
(Disney
Parks, sometime around the release of Epic Mickey4)
I
said on maybe the second or third isle, “I can’t buy any more cuddly toys” – so
I then bought three. BUT, but, but, but, two were Care Bears and one was this
Oswald, who has a little story to justify his purchase (shit, this post is
already way to long): I bought this exact model of rabbit from the same stall at
LFCC in the summer, I was VERY excited… then it disappeared – I don’t know if
it fell out the bag, if it was nicked, if Mickey Mouse had him rubbed out
before too many people could notice that Oswald is was better at being Mickey
than Mickey is before Mickey was even around, but he was gone and I was
annoyed. My delightful (and delightfully
ginger) accomplice this con spotted him on the same stall this time around and
I bought him instantly, we spent the whole rest of the con checking on him
every so often to make sure this one stayed the fuck in the bag, he did, and now
he lives with me, after years of trying to get one (since Epic Mickey came out)
I finally have my lucky rabbit pal –and he’s already had Swift Heart, twice5.
Also
purchased were Joy and Lily Munster in POP! Vinyl form because I was clearly
thinking with my dick for the first part of the con, the werewolf from Matt
Hatter and Satan’s Little Helper on DVD, because I was clearly thinking with my
dick for the first part of the con. Thanks for reading; I promise I’ll have
something less indulgent next time. Also I just realised that I bought two
ghosts, a werewolf and a space vampire, I totally could have tied this into
Countdown to Halloween via them somehow.
1 Five Care Bear Cousins
were only released in the European market and two of them (Playful Heart Monkey
and Treat Heart Pig) may not have been released at all, I actually have one
(Proud Heart Cat) and am intended to buy another (Noble Heart Horse) but with a
couple of exceptions I’m just going for a complete set of world-wide releases
for the 13” plush bears (8 Care Bears were also only released in Europe, I have
two and am on the lookout for a third) and I’m sure you needed to know all
that.
2 I actually did trawl
through the Care Bears wiki to check this out, Proud Heart was in fact a boy in
the vintage era but is a girl now (and also blue) and Cozy Heart is a girl,
even they don’t know about Swift Heart Rabbit.
3 I suppose I should address
the Hogan racist thing as I’ve (sort of() just admitted to buying a figure of
him – Terry Bollea is and always has been a dickhead, since long before we knew
he once used the N-word like a comma, but he isn’t Hulk Hogan, Hogan is a
character and any toys I buy/own of Hogan are of that character – I’m not going
to stop watching Mad Max because Mel Gibson is a wanker and I extend the
same logic to wrestling: the actor’s views are not the character's views and
vice versa, just because the actor playing a character is a prick doesn’t mean
you can’t still like a character they’ve played – if it did you’d hate a hell
of a large percentage of characters in film, TV and especially wrestling (but
not Mick Foley – he’s genuinely lovely).
4 I couldn’t find a
copyright date on him.
5 and no he doesn’t know
what sex they are either, but all are welcome in Oswald’s pants.
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