5 Questions With > Mint Condition Customs

April 6, 2012 | Poe


MINT CONDITION CUSTOMS
Real Name: John Harmon
Base of Operations: www.mintconditioncustom.com
History: John Harmon is a lifelong Texas based toy collector. In 2007, he started his own Webcomic Mint Condition, which is currently on hiatus as he works full time as an action figure customizer. He showcases his work on his website Mint Condition Customs. He also repairs action figures, and likes to imagine himself in his own primetime drama called “The Toy Doctor”. He’s not well.

PG: How long have you been a toy collector?

Well that all depends on what you consider collecting. My parents bought me toys and action figures all the time when I was a kid, but I wouldn’t necessarily call that collecting in the strictest sense. I’ve never actually taken a break from having and buying toys, but the earliest I can remember actively collecting is when I was 13 when the Spider-Man Classics figures came out. I wanted those. Badly. Those were the figures that taught me what “points of articulation” were. From there I got really big into the Spider-Man 1 movie line in 2002, making sure to only buy the figurse that said “super posable” on them, and then Marvel Legends, etc. I think when I discovered Spider-Man Classics that was when I definitively transfered from a kid with toys, to a collector. (more…)

5 Questions With > Phil Reed of Battlegrip.com

February 22, 2012 | Poe


PHILIP REED
Real Name: Philip Reed
Base of Operations: Battlegrip.com
History: Philip Reed has worked professionally in the game industry since 1995 and has been a geek ever since he first encountered comics and action figures in the late seventies. He can often be found walking on the abandoned roads of America, head staring down at his BlackBerry as he answers e-mail while avoiding pot holes and spiked pits.

1.) First, the basics: what are your toy collecting credentials? What were your first toy(s), what were your favorite lines growing up, and have you been a lifelong collector or did you lose interest and get back into it at some point?

As a kid I was a fan of Star Wars, then G.I. Joe, and then Transformers. At different stages of the seventies and eighties I collected those toys, but it wasn’t until 2007 that my attention turned to designer toys. In late 2008 I had the idea of creating my own site dedicated to toys — www.battlegrip.com — and since that time my collection has exploded. I don’t really focus on any one line — or even type of toy — but instead grab whatever I think looks fun. (more…)

5 Questions With > Josh Van Pelt of the Power and the Honor Foundation

September 28, 2011 | Poe

The Power and The Honor Foundation is a fan-funded, non-profit organization that is dedicated to documenting, archiving, preserving, and sharing the rich history of He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra Princess of Power. Their first product, The Power and The Honor Foundation Catalog Volume One: The Art of Masters of the Universe Toy Design, is now available for order.

I got in touch with PHF executive director Josh Van Pelt to find out a bit more about the project.

Poe: Tell us a little about yourself and your history with MOTU/POP fandom–when and how did you become a He-Fan/She-Raver, and how has it developed over the years?

JVP: Since I was born in 1977, some of my earliest memories are of playing with my He-Man figures in the early 80s. I can remember getting a Castle Grayskull for Christmas in 1983 and always having a large box of figures, vehicles, and playsets that I would drag around the house. After school each day, I watched Masters of the Universe on TV and recreated the battles between He-Man and Skeletor with my action figures.

Most of my original childhood He-Man figures disappeared over the years and I did not restart collecting MOTU until I went to college. When we needed a break from schoolwork, my girlfriend (now wife) and I would go to fleamarkets, toy shows, and comic book stores, mostly picking up loose figures.

Still in college, I decided to start a website, The Cafe Wha?, where I created a very amateur site that sold MOTU figures, accessories, and minicomics. This was a great way for me to build my own collection and help other collectors complete theirs. It also allowed me to meet hundreds of fellow collectors, many remaining friends even after The Cafe Wha? closed.

Since graduating college in 2002, I have had very little time to dedicate to my MOTU collecting but I continue to keep an eye out for one-of-a-kind pieces that I might never see for sale again. The past few years, my action figure and toy collection has remained relatively stable but I have been able to preserve a large collection of prototypes, original artwork, and rare items. (more…)

Guest Post > Interview with Spy Monkey Creations

July 11, 2011 | VENENOR

I recently had the pleasure of talking first hand with the three-headed weapon-making machine known as Spy Monkey Creations, Inc.

Team members Jeremy Sung, Brian Stevenson and Bill Murphy are the minds behind some of the coolest custom-produced weapons and accessory packs for action figure collectors today. And as a fellow collector it’s always a bonus when you can find top-notch items that compliment your figures perfectly. From energy-based accessories to swords and shields, Team SMC has amped up many of our action figure arsenals and have made playing, er, posing that much cooler.

Be sure to check out their store if you haven’t already to pick up some of their current available stock.

Now enough of my rambling, let’s get to the interview! (more…)

Interview with customizer Masterenglish

April 5, 2011 | Poe

Masterenglish is the customizer behind my April Fool’s joke this year, a figure of 339/1 in Masters of the Universe Classics style. To find out more about this customizer and his amazing work, I followed up the custom commission with a few questions.

Masterenglish
Real Name: Jon English
Base of Operations: masterenglish.deviantart.com/
History: Born in 1764, I started customizing wooden and tin toys available to me through various outlets, including the local general store and blacksmiths. My very first custom was a branch I pulled off of a tree, it seemed much too ordinary so I embellished the branch with trinkets of silver tinsel and ornaments of various colors, soon to become very popular around winter time in what would become known as America of the States United.

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The Third Annual PGPoA Four Horsemen Interview

December 6, 2010 | Poe

PGPoA’s anniversary was December 1, and you know what that means–another interview with the Four Horsemen!

As always, I want to thank the fabulous Foursome Horse-some for taking time out of their extremely busy schedule to answer a few questions. In case you haven’t been following it, the Horsemen have been updating their website, FourHorsemen.biz, with frequent shots of the next Fantastic Exclusive, Scarabus. He’s looking incredibly awesome, and he might just be the best FE since Xetheus! (Not a knock on the other FEs, I just love Xetheus…like, a lot.) –PG

POE: For those who may not know, what is the concept behind Symbiotech? Do the figures work together in some way, or does the “symbiotic” aspect have it more to do with the “world” behind the toys?

Eric Treadaway: Symbiotech has been an ever-transforming property story-wise since it’s inception. We originally wanted to create a world where the characters that inhabited this world could look like nearly anything you could possibly imagine, and they’d be set up in pairs that would depend on each other in many ways.

Chris Dahlberg: Then, over over a decade ago now – before we even began making prototypes of the figures, we decided that it’d be cool to not only make an awesome action figure line of this property, but to also incorporate a game into those figures.

Jim Preziosi: That’s where the “tech” part of the Symbiotech name came in. The large characters – the Goleth – would have removable armor that would connect them to the smaller characters – the Pygma – to create a symbiotic link between the two. There were also various weapons and accessories that you could attach to the armor and other weapons and accessories to prepare your characters for battle. A spinner dial connected to the armor would decide movement and battle stats during the game portion, and the armor and accessories would have various values that would allow a character to become more or less powerful during battle.

Cornboy: Since so many other action figure/game hybrids have come along since then and most have failed, we’ve decided just to approach Symbiotech from the “awesome action figure” standpoint for now. If demand is there, once it’s released, who knows, maybe the gaming aspect will make a return in some form or another. There have been LOTS of technological advances since those early days that would allow us to have a lot of fun with that now.

ET: Wait… what was your question again? Haha… (more…)

5 Questions With > Penny Dreadful

December 3, 2010 | Poe

A few weeks back, I had the pleasure of being a guest on He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast alongside one Penny Dreadful, a bewitching horror host based in my own native New England. After a quick consult with my sources in the underworld, I was able to arrange an interview with Ms. Dreadful. Read on! –PG


PENNY DREADFUL
Real Name: Penny Dreadful XIII
Base of Operations: Haunted New England and www.shillingshockers.com
History: Penny Dreadful is the witch hostess of the horror movie TV program Shilling Shockers. She delights in the macabre and is known for saying “hex-cellent” a lot. With a withering wit and a dramatic gaze, she can be silly and sinister by turns. Penny’s mysterious powers were acquired in the late 1300’s. Whispered tales claim these powers came from an infernal pact made in her youth. Penny has neither confirmed nor denied these rumors, but becomes melancholy when reminded of those “tragic” times. She is assisted on the program by her “snarling darling” Garou the werewolf and by the semi-retired vampire hunter Dr. Manfred Von Bulow. In addition to winning the 2007 Rondo Hatton Classic Horror Award for Favorite Horror Host, Penny has also freed over two dozen villain overlords from evil dimensions, has displayed no shame in rummaging through the royal junkyard for psychotic robots, and has cloned at least twenty people.

1.) You’re a frequent contributor on the He-Man.org forums and have also participated on He-Man.org’s Roast Gooble Dinner podcast. What’s the story behind your love of He-Man & She-Ra–when did it begin, and how has it grown?

I’ve been a fan since 1982. I first became entranced by the world of Eternia when I saw the Castle Grayskull commercial with He-Man and Beast Man. The timpani drums and blaring horns, plus the announcer’s voice just made it all seem so epic. The colors on the Mattel figures really caught my eye too. The characters looked so vivid and unique. I used to stand in the toy aisle and look at them, and especially at the Castle Grayskull painting on the box. The box art for the toys was very sublime and mysterious. All of this was sucking me in. I finally got up the nerve to ask my parents for a figure, and they bought one for me! The first figure I got was Faker and I still have him! The Filmation cartoon soon appeared and I became VERY addicted to that. I’d come home from school and watch it with my sister every day. I’d also talk about the episodes with my friends at school the next day. “Did you watch it?” we’d excitedly ask each other every morning. Good times! (more…)

Interview > Matt Doughty, Part II (The Outer Space Men)

June 18, 2010 | Poe

You can read Part I of this interview, about the history of Onell Design, here.

PG: So tell me how Outer Space Men came about.

MD: I love toys that go all the way back into the 1920s. Anything that was a toy, I was fascinated. The Outer Space Men came out after Major Matt Mason…

And they were supposed to be kind of like those old Remco He-Man knock-offs–“plays with” Major Matt Mason.

Exactly. But what happens when someone “knocks off” someone else but they are superior to it? That’s sort of unprecedented now. Outer Space Men was so damned cool, it would replace playing with Major Matt Mason. (more…)

Interview > Matt Doughty of Onell Design (Part I: Onell)

June 17, 2010 | Poe

Real Name: Matt Doughty
Specialty: Toymaker
Base of Operations: Onell Design
History: Onell Design is a small, family run toy company that strives to create an environment filled with creative potential. Building out just a little bit every year, each person involved in the day to day operations does their work with a passion matched by a desire to connect with those that enjoy what Onell has to offer, however tiny it may be! Matt Doughty, Michelle Doughty and Marc Beaudette love running Onell, and it continues to grow only because of the incredible people out there who support all the crazy projects they get into! So get ready for more interchangeable figures, 8-bit games, special collaborations and sporadic blog posts as 2010 rolls on…and remember to stay creative!

(more…)

5 Questions With > Jonathan Gray

June 4, 2010 | Poe

Earlier this year I did an interview with Professor Henry Jenkins, a professor of communication and media studies who also had a lot to say about toys and their relationship to transmedia. In that interview he mentioned Jonathan Gray, another media studies professor who is even more interested in toys and the points at which they connect with media. Therefore I considered it my sworn duty to bug the very busy Professor Gray for an interview, which he gracefully agreed to. Enjoy! –PG

Real Name: Jonathan Gray
Specialty: Educator
Base of Operations: The Extratextuals
History: Jonathan Gray is an Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at University of Wisconsin, Madison. A Canadian-Brit, he grew up around the world, with Star Wars toys as the constant thing in common between all others and myself. He then fell in love with media studies and wrote a dissertation on parody, intertextuality, and The Simpsons, which later became his first book, Watching with The Simpsons: Television, Parody, and Intertextuality. His second single-authored book is Television Entertainment, and his third is the newly released Show Sold Separately: Promos, Spoilers, and Other Paratexts, though he’s also edited several books — Fandom: Communities and Identities in a Mediated World; Battleground: The Media; and Satire TV: Politics and Comedy in the Post-Network Era. He’s an avid media consumer, and as avid a media analyst.

1.) First off, street cred time: what were the toys you enjoyed playing with while growing up, and why?

There were a lot, but the answer must begin and end with Star Wars. My father got these plans from a friend for a massive space station, about 4 foot by 8 foot, standing off the ground, and it took him several months to build. The plan was for it to be our Christmas present, and then two weeks before Christmas, we weren’t allowed to see it, until Christmas Day itself, when we came downstairs and there it was in all its awesome glory, covered in Star Wars toys. It seemed wrong for any other toy to hold as key a place in my heart thereafter, and I still remember the sad moment when as a pre-teen I realized I was meant to stop playing with them. I just loved the Star Wars world, and it helped that everyone my age knew it world-wide, especially since I grew up moving. My father (who, as you can see, was my dealer too) also took frequent trips to Hong Kong, where they were made, and would come back with SW toys before they’d been released elsewhere, so they allowed me special status when I was otherwise doomed to be the awkward, odd foreign kid.

That said, I also had a fair serving of Playmobil when I was really young, then Transformers and GI Joe, but also Marvel and DC action figures, especially when I was a comic book fan. Mask toys were the best thing ever for a few months of my life. And Lego. Lots more that if you put in front of me I’d remember lovingly, but I’m blanking right now. (more…)