- ItsAllTrue has been running a bunch of 2013-assessment posts, such as It’sAllTrue.net’s Top Ten Action Figures of 2013 and NoisyDvL5′s 2013 Highlights & Disappointments. Definitely worth checking out.
- The amazing ED-209 by NECA is now in stock at Amazon.
- CollectionDX has announced a new convention, Super Robots Giant Monster (SRGM). It will take place in Lowell, Massachusetts on March 29, and I plan to be there. Check out this page for more information. I’ll probably put up a separate post about this later.
- Phil Reed of Battlegrip is putting together an unofficial guide to Star Wars Mini-Rigs. This is the future – extreme niche coffee table books. Frankly, I’m psyched. I love coffee table books. I fondly recall whiling away many a study period paging through The Ultimate Guitar Book…but I digress. I actually picked up two Mini-Rigs recently, the MLC-3 and the MTV-7; however, my motivation for picking them up was because I thought they would make great generic vehicles for the Alien ReAction figures. If you’re interested in learning more about the Mini-Rigs, visit your local library. Kidding! Here’s a Starwars.com article about Mini-rigs. But you should visit your local library anyway. They’re awesome. You can read books for free.
- The 1980s animation-themed magazine Cereal:Geek has a bunch of issues up for pre-order. I’ve read an issue here and there and it’s always fun reading, if you’re into the subject matter. Which I’m guessing a good number of you are. Because you’re here. Reading this website.
- I haven’t gotten on the Instagram bandwagon yet, but I do like the funny “toyselfie” project they’re running.
- Alien: Isolation might be the game to persuade me to invest in a next-gen system…but I don’t know. I’m not really a big survival horror fan. I absolutely hated Doom 3 and what it did to my beloved Doom gameplay. I loved the Dead Space games, but those were pretty action-oriented (and more so as the games progressed). I had hoped for a Dead Space-like Alien game, and Isolation seems close, and yet I find the first-person perspective really disappointing (and rather outdated, frankly). I’ll wait for the reviews before making a purchase decision.
- I don’t watch The Goldbergs, a show about the titular family set in the 1980s, because life’s too short to watch dozens of television shows. But Dinosaur Dracula has catalogued the ridiculous amount of 1980s toys that young Adam Goldberg has in his room. Holy crap, is that kid spoiled.
- ThreeA has announced that their 2000AD line will be 1/12th scale moving forward (i.e., 6″ scale). This doesn’t matter to me per se because I’m not a 2000AD fan, but it does remind me of the painfully cool 6″ Boba Fett we will never get to have. ThreeA is the only company who does fabric in this scale that I don’t hate.
Tag: Kenner Page 1 of 5


In the early 1980s, Mattel famously passed on an action figure line for Conan the Barbarian after seeing just how violent the R-rated film really was. Meanwhile, Kenner was still making money hand over fist off their massively popular Star Wars toys.

One of the more popular posts in the history of this blog is my comparison of the McFarlane and NECA Robocops. Now that I also own the Figma Robocop, I thought it was time to revisit the topic.
If we set aside anything 12″ or larger, there are two significant Robocops missing from this comparison: the Aoshima Robocop and NECA’s spring-out holster Robocop, which seems to be generally considered superior to their first release. Aside from the holster and paint work it’s identical to the first release, so I don’t consider its absence a big problem for what I’ll be looking at today. As for the Aoshima Robocop, well, I just don’t own one so it gets left out.

A reader sends this along:
I need help! I just purchased this figure. It’s not any known color variant. I’m not sure if it’s a custom (it doesn’t appear to be) or a prototype. I haven’t received it yet so I’m not sure if it has any tm/manufacturing stamps. do you know any experts? Any help is greatly appreciated!
Collectors appear to be excited about NECA’s new TRU-exclusive Nightfighter Robocop (Pixel Dan’s review here, AFP’s review here). It’s a homage to one of my favorite childhood action figures, Kenner’s Robocop Nightfighter (Pixel Dan’s review here). The vintage figure was initially a mail-away promotion, though later it was sold on card. I’m proud to say that as a kid, I actually mailed away for mine.
Before I go any further, let me say I absolutely love NECA and everything they’re doing right now. I will forever owe them for the well-articulated Evil Dead 2 figures they’ve given us, and once I get a super-articulated classic masked Predator and the new Aliens warrior, my debt will be upgraded to full Wookie-life-debt status.
But…