Competition makes us better. Take for instance the jerk who beats you into the office one morning. You wake up earlier the next day to be the first. You know you do! Look at the most watched TV programs, at least in the United States. It's sports. Football (not that Soccer sport!), basketball, baseball, hockey. Competition is fun to watch. For comic books (well sales have plummeted lately) you have Marvel & DC. Movies have various studios making movies vying for your money. Heck, toy companies have it to. Mattel has Masters of the Universe, Barbie & Jurassic World. Playmates has Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Star Trek. Hasbro has not only Star Wars but also GI Joe and Transformers plus Marvel toys. McFarlane is knocking it out the park with DC Toys (the Walmart Exclusive Jean Paul Valley Batman from issue 500 looks INCREDIBLE!), and now doing Super Powers (figures under $10, vehicles under $30, good value!). Hasbro has competition at least in the 6 inch (1:12) scale ...

  Payoffs sometimes happen with toys. A feature will be added to a toy, and as a discriminating collector who goes over every inch of a new toy sculpt you wonder what comes next. When VC 186 Boba Fett came out, fans and collectors asked that question. Especially with the helmet, as it looked removable. Well, after almost 2 years we finally get an answer. Although it's an expensive answer. But the Tattooine Boba Fett is more than just a new figure. Right off the bat, he's a Deluxe figure and is in a cardboard box attached to a Kenner card. The card is the same size as a standard VC figure, however the placement of the peghole is different. Now Hasbro will only be doing this for Deluxe figures. Boba comes nearly wrapped in paper, along with his accessories. But before you open the box you might want to give it a gentle shake. If stuff rattles around inside you might have loose accessories or the figure has lost a leg. For a lost leg don't worry: reattaching it is easy. Arms,...

  Ah, 1985. What a year if you were alive back then. Back to the Future came out, GI Joe and Transformers came on everyday after school, She-Ra debuted as He-Man was winding down. And Saturday morning cartoons were shown on the big 3 networks of CBS, NBC & ABC. If you were me, you got up early, and dined on cereal while turning on the TV and having the volume low enough to not wake anyone and watch TV while loudly crunching cereal. Well, for this review you need to find a box of C-3PO's as I review the Kenner Droids versions of our favorite droids, C-3PO & R2-D2! Debuting on ABC in the Fall TV season of 1985 was the Droids/Ewoks hour, which was on the tail end of ABC's Saturday morning cartoon lineup.  While there was no Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie or Lando there was Boba Fett, IG-88 and new characters introduced in the 1st Droids story arc. The 1st story wave characters all got action figures: Thall Joben, Jord Dusat, Kea Moll (only the 2nd female Star Wars figure Kenner ...

  I haven't talked much about Andor, or Acolyte since nothing much has been revealed until recently. Since Acolyte is in pre-production and Andor is ready to launch this September, I'll give my hopes and expectations for the show (including merchandise), and to ask the question: will this show be any good? I'll give what I think the show will cover, and how the involvement of Tony Gilroy who also worked on Rogue One will be something positive. Sadly, it doesn't look like K2-SO is in the 1st season (2nd season is in pre-production right now), so that's a slight negative, but maybe they meet up in season 2? WHAT MY HOPE'S ARE FOR ANDOR First of all, I hope there's a good story. I hope that with all the Disney Plus shows. Just as The Mandalorian is in good hands with Jon Favreau & Dave Filoni, Andor seems to be in good hands with Tony Gilroy. Bringing back Genevieve O'Reilly as Mon Mothma, as well as Forest Whitaker as Saw Gerrara is nice to see. Since...

  One thing I love about the Fan Channel (online stores) exclusive repacks of VC 1.0 figures is it gives new and old collectors a shot at getting figures to add, or if they missed out on beforehand. As a bonus, Hasbro applies photo real updates to the head sculpts to improve them, and to give collectors something besides the package date to see when it came out. When it comes to Obi-Wan Kenobi, VC 31, this is the 2nd time it has been repacked. It was originally part of the Legacy Collection in 2009 and was hard to find. Here, it returns a 3rd time. So is it worth getting? Read on to find out! The original release made some slight color changes to TLC AOTC Obi-Wan that involved the boots and outer robes on his outfit. But he sports 14 POA and can achieve most action poses. His photo real head sculpt update makes what had been a good looking portrait even better. The paint apps are clean, so no smudges or weird eyes, at least on my samples. Could this figure be improved? Well, yes. B...

  Time for a change of pace, and I thought I'd throw in a figure from the wave that inspired me to go back to doing Kenner reviews, the Retro Mandalorian 1st wave! Today I'll go over what I like and don't like about the figure. The likes outnumber the one thing I don't like about this figure. Din Djarin makes his Kenner style debut and comes with 3 accessories: his disintegration long rifle, pistol and removable vinyl cape. He has the standard 5 POA (head, 2 arms, 2 legs) and has a very well done paint job. On the surface, he looks as he would had he appeared in the 1980's Marvel Comics Star Wars monthly series. Naturally he has no removable helmet. He isn't onscreen accurate (his VC and Black Series versions are), which is fine with me. But the paint apps are clean, no smears, no smudges at all. Noticeably absent is a molded jet pack, which of course Din didn't wear or use in early Mandalorian episodes as this is his non Beskar version. But for fans of Kenn...

  Every so often Hasbro releases Darth Vader in both Black Series and the Vintage Collection and fans buy as many as possible. When the Black Series Vader came out he would quickly sell out. Hasbro has used that same 6 inch Vader multiple times. When it was announced that Vader would get a Kenobi card for the VC, many thought it would be a repack of the popular 3.75 Black Series Vader (26 on the blue lined card, I believe is the number. His head didn't easily pop off, unlike the previous version. I have a few pictures of that Vader in this review for a simple comparison). But no. Hasbro made an all new Darth Vader. And I'm not lying when I say it might not only be Hasbro's best 3.75 inch Darth Vader, but possibly the best Vintage Collection figure of all time. What stands out the most to me is how tall this Vader figure is. The Rogue One VC Vader was tall, this one towers over it. So they seem to have a better grasp on height (which makes me nervous that Mando Luke will be ...

  Just finished Shadow of the Sith by Adam Christopher. Now, as with the comic books, some of the best new Disney content comes from the novels and the comic books. SOTS is no exception to this. I found this to be an entertaining, yet sometimes frustrating book, only because we know what happens to Luke Skywalker in the Disney Trilogy. But for fans of Lando Calrissian he takes center stage in this story as most of it revolves around his struggle to find his missing daughter Kadara Calrissian (we all think/know that it's Jannah from Episode 9). But we also get to know Rey's parents, and learn a little about Rey as well. Minor spoilers ahead, so if you read past this point, don't say I didn't warn you! Instead of a plot summary, I'll go over the main characters who make appearances in the novel. I feel it's a better way to cover this book, and it helps to see how they relate to others in the story. Dathan, Miramir & Rey. Rey's dad is named Dathan, no last...