Well, now, the Star Wars shop has available...wait for it...a wampa rug! Yep, like a bear rug but made from a wampa instead.
I don't think it's anywhere near as cool as the tauntaun sleeping bag, but I do think it's funny. I'm just wondering why slave Leia from Jedi is laying on a rug of a wampa that appeared in Empire.
The space slug oven mitt amuses me too. That might turn a few heads at a barbeque.
And for good measure, since Howard from "The Big Bang Theory" likes to wear funky belt buckles that make me uncomfortably stare at his crotch to see what belt buckle he has from episode to episode, I think he totally needs one of these.
Disney has a set of collectible figures that are pretty tall, usually two or three feet in height, so they're called "big figs". They have a new release that we saw a couple of weeks ago that we thought was pretty awesome.
Mickey dressed as Indiana Jones himself! His hat is flocked so it has a soft feel to it. And you can see from the picture below that the idol he's holding is pretty authentic-looking!
This year's Toy Fair is this weekend, and it looks like there will be lots of fun things coming out. I'm excited to see what new "Toy Story" merchandise there will be for the new film, probably related to the new characters we expect to see. There's one new character that I hope they have a plush for because I think he's cute and funny. A talking version of him would be nice too, though I hope "Toy Story 3" doesn't end up being as expensive as "Wall-E" was with regard to cool toys.
Which new character am I talking about? Well, here's the imdb listing of his name. We saw a picture of the character at the D23 Expo last year, and we also heard a bit about his character. I think he's gonna be a riot.
From joke to delivery of finished product in 8 months' time! The wonderful folks at ThinkGeek were able to get permission to actually make the damned thing, we put in our order, and our tauntaun arrived today!
This is the tauntaun on our bed. The bed is a California King, so that gives you an idea of how frickin' huge this thing is. And yes, the tail is really long too.
He's really soft, and he's kind of bulky when rolled up because of his plush leg and arm. And yes, the detail is awesome.
This is the tauntaun "cut open" by the plush lightsabre (blue blade) that's attached to the zipper.
The detail of the "intestines" inside the tauntaun.
A close-up of the tauntaun's head.
The head is fully designed on both sides, though this picture makes it look more like a dragon, I think.
And the tauntaun comes with its own certificate of authenticity. I love it!
But the tauntaun is not just awesome-looking. It's practical and comfortable too.
The husband is 6' tall, and he fits just fine inside the tauntaun.
And how is Orkid dealing with our new pet? She just commandeered the box - jumped in and sat in it until we had to put the tauntaun away.
We've spent the last two days at the D23 Expo, and operational problems aside, we've really had a good time for a number of reasons, including that we've seen a lot of friends there, including some we haven't seen in many, many years.
We are also collectors of Robert Olszewski's work, and the Olszewski Studios has a booth in the dealer's room equivalent of the Expo, so we've stopped by there a few times to see the booth and to talk to Bob himself or to Travis, the general manager of the studio.
On Friday, the husband and I had gone to purchase an item related to the Pixar short "Presto", which was released last year in front of "Wall-E". Well, with our purchase came free a plush of Alec the bunny himself. He is a cutie! I was playing with him a bit (yeah, no big surprise there), and we took him to show some friends. We also stopped by the Olszewski Studios booth for another reason. Travis was talking to someone else, so we were just waiting to talk to him, and Bob himself was away from the booth because he was at an official Expo signing. We had seen Bob's personalized embroidered chair the previous day, and with Bob away and Travis otherwise occupied, I couldn't help myself.
I propped Alec in the chair and took a picture. Yes, I did pose his one ear because I thought it was just too cute and funny.
Seriously, isn't he a cutie? For the moment, this picture has also displaced my prior picture of Orkid as the wallpaper on my phone.
I had thought about carrying Alec around as a sort of "flat Stanley" to take pictures of him in different places, but because he's white, I didn't want to risk getting him dirty, so we just went to put him in the car. And because I'm a nut as well as the fact that Alec has really long floppy ears, I carried him upside down. Yes, I did in fact get a lot of looks - what's your point? ;)
Some new Lego sets in the Star Wars and Indiana Jones universes have been announced, and I think some of them are really cool.
This is a motorized walking AT-AT, which I think would be awesome to have, though I'm not sure about actually putting the thing together. I love all the little details and that it even comes with a dangling Luke!
This set depicts the Battle of Endor and comes with a lot of figures (including Ewoks!) and the glider and the chicken walker too.
Even though I'm not a fan of certain aspects of this film and this sequence, the Temple of Doom set still looks pretty spectacular. However, I think I might be tempted to just burn the Willie minifig...
So Comic-Con was this past weekend, and of course, Hasbro had a huge presentation about the new Star Wars toys coming out for the rest of the year as well as previews for next year.
There are some interesting things coming out, but they're mostly in lines that I don't collect.
In the "little squat people" line, formally known as Galactic Heroes, there aren't too many things coming out that I want. The characters in the paired sets don't really interest me, but a few of the bigger scenes look interesting.
I like the Endor celebration set because it has an Ewok and the ghost figures.
The Slave 1 with Boba Fett is pretty cool, but I really like the Endor attack set. More Ewoks! (Or do I already own some Ewoks? I can never remember.)
So, yeah, yesterday was April Fool's Day. Someone I follow on Twitter posted a link to a product on thinkgeek (which I love, btw - they have a ton of cool stuff) - tauntaun sleeping bag with intestinal inside lining.
Here's what the sleeping bag itself looks like.
I love that it even comes with a mini lightsabre, you know, to have cut the tauntaun in half so you can crawl inside it.
Here's the full ad for the sleeping bag.
Really cool, huh? Yeah, not real. Totally made up for April Fool's Day. If you clicked on the "BUY NOW" button, here's the page it took you to.
I did like that they also messed with the little tagline right underneath the thinkgeek logo on the top left of the main page. Guess that should have been a clue!
But, APPARENTLY, a ton of people wanted it for real. Later in the day, a friend tweeted that thinkgeek had put up some more information about the "product".
On the Star Tours ride at Disneyland, they always tell you to stow your carry-on in the compartment below your seat. The husband and I, being language geeks, have instead decided that they're actually telling people to stoy their CARRION in the compartment below. Well, in the Star Wars world, the carrion would be your dead tauntaun. So how perfect would it be to bring this sleeping bag on the ride and stow it under your seat?
Yeah, I can see you looking at me that way.
I hope Lucasfilm actually either licenses it or makes it themselves.
Oh, and the Squeez Bacon was pretty funny too! :)
And, speaking of thinkgeek, here are some more spiffy products from them:
Adler lined Barbie's bedroom with wall-to-wall pink carpeting emblazoned with her initial.
Wall to wall pink carpeting emblazoned with her initial. I can't even begin to imagine what that would look like. Like someone had poured Pepto Bismol on the carpet? Even pinker than Circus Circus in Las Vegas?
Following the festivities, most of Barbie's custom decor will be shipped to the Palms Casino Resort in Las Vegas to furnish a special pink-tinted Barbie Suite that will be available for bachelorette parties, birthdays or anyone who wants to live like Barbie.
OK, someone go and rent out the place and take pictures, ok? I'll admit I'm not all that familiar with the Palms, but they don't seem like a Barbie-type place to me. Isn't/wasn't there a woman who really had a billion surgeries to make her look like Barbie? She should get a free weekend stay there.
Yesterday would have been the 105th birthday of Dr. Seuss, so Google had an appropriately themed logo.
On a separate note, I've been meaning to look and see if there are any toys out for "Coraline", and I've found a few things, but they're all online and some are fairly expensive, so I'm going to wait until more merchandise is released generally, which I hope/expect it will be. But, in browsing around, I also found out about this "Coraline" exhibit that was presented at the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco. I love the picture in the article, and it would be so cool to see the maquettes and other figurines and sets and such used in the making of the movie. I'm really hoping that they decide to take the tour around because I'd love to have the chance to see it.
Yeah, OK, so it's been almost two months since "Wall-E" came out, and I'm apparently still obsessed with the movie and all the toys. We finally had a chance to see the movie again this past weekend, and I still had the best time.
We had to drop by a Toys R Us anyway to look for some Star Wars toys that were supposed to have been released this weekend (we didn't find them), but we did find the ever elusive Space Adventure Wall-E toy, which is listed on Thinkway Toys' website in the Wall-E toys section.
The husband has been wanting this since we first saw it on the website. I think the only thing left that we're waiting for that's shown on Thinkway Toys' page is the electronic truck play set, which I can't seem to find any release information on.
Oh, and I had mentioned previously that we'd only seen InterAction Eve at Disneyland, and that was some time ago, and we've not seen her anywhere since. Well, we came across two boxes of her at Toys R Us - maybe they've finally started to make more?
So a friend had told me a week or so ago that the Disney Store had gotten more Wall-E toys in. When I'd been in a store a while ago, they didn't have much stuff, other than some cute t-shirts, one of which I bought for myself. So I finally got around to visiting a Disney Store on Monday, and oh my goodness - they had Disney Store exclusives that I hadn't even heard about. They had three smaller figures (of Wall-E, Eve and M.O.), but I wasn't interested in those. The ones I was interested in were the remote control Wall-E and Eve figures, different from all the other ones I've seen or heard of. Or have.
By "Disney Store exclusive", they must mean the actual stores themselves, because I went to their website, which actually takes you to DisneyShopping.com, and there was no hint of the two robots. The only mention I could find about the Eve robot was in this ebay ad, which shows the toy.
I can't find anything that talks about or has pictures of the Wall-E version, which says it has a head and arms that extend and retract, which none of the other Wall-E toys do. Of course, I had to buy them. I'm not sure who makes these two toys, since I don't see the Thinkway Toys logo on them, like you see on their other products, and neither is included on Thinkway Toys' Wall-E page. Once I have a chance to open them, maybe it'll have more information about the manufacturer. They do look pretty cool, though, and they're also supposed to talk to each other, like the InterAction Wall-E and Eve. And no, I don't think these are the same - these are advertised as doing things that those didn't. The controllers are also different - Wall-E's remote control is actually colored to resemble him.
And then, of course, there's the granddaddy of all Wall-E toys - the Ultimate Wall-E, which is now available for pre-order. Toys R Us has it for $249.99 whereas it's $259.95 at DisneyShopping.com. However, I would presume that both places will add shipping, and this is definitely not a toy that I really want shipped to me in case something is wrong with it, so I expect we'll see if we can pre-order it in person at a Toys R Us store. If not, then we'll have to decide if we're going to bite the bullet and pre-order it anyway or just wait and hope we can find one actually in stores.
Toys R Us claims the toy will be released in September, but I've found other sites, including this one, which says it won't be released until October.
I found this picture searching the net for Wall-E info. Don't they make a cute family?
When we had previously visited the Disney Store, we noticed that they were periodically showing a short Wall-E vignette on their giant video screen. I found it online, and here's the one they were playing.
Wall-E playing with a hula hoop.
Well, then I found a whole bunch more, which were apparently created to be used in different places to promote the release of the film.
Here's a short one of Wall-E and Eve playing baseball.
Here's another short one of Wall-E playing with a soccer ball.
In this short bit, Wall-E investigates the camera.
In this vignette, Wall-E encounters a scatter of bouncy balls - I *love* this one.
Here, Wall-E comes across some cups - this one is tied with the bouncy ball one as being my favorite because it combines so many cute elements. The first time I saw each of these two, I literally laughed out loud.
Wall-E finds a magnet.
Wall-E encounters a fire hydrant.
Wall-E is break dancing. ("Wall-E 2: Electric Boogaloo"?)
Hip-hop Wall-E.
This one uses similar elements of hip-hop Wall-E when he meets the Mac. Yes, I *do* mean THE Mac.
Wall-E plays with a basketball.
This longer video shows InterAction Wall-E and Eve talking to each other.
Yeah, still obsessed. And much poorer. And waiting to become poorer still.
OK, let me first say that when I refer to "Battlestar Galactica", I mean the original one from the 70s. Yes, I loved that show. Yes, I've seen the miniseries of the current incarnation, and no, I didn't like it. I can't deal with Starbuck being a girl or Boomer being a Cylon. Yes, I know that many people like it, and it's so much more awesome than that stupid campy version in the 70s. Whatever. I don't feel that way. Besides, I couldn't watch the new version even if I wanted to since we're cably-challenged. And yes, I know they're out on DVD, and yes, can you tell that I'm tired of people wanting me to justify why I don't watch it and by the people who seem shocked and dismayed by my seeming betrayal to the genre of science fiction at refusing to watch it - though why people could possibly get that invested in what I do and don't watch, I'll never understand. So, ok, disclaimer done.
Back in the old days, it was easy for me to know that any Battlestar merchandise was going to be something I was interested in. Now, it's usually not stuff I want because it's all about the new show. I love having the boxed set of the original show in the Cylon head box. I don't actually have a lot of Battlestar merchandise, either because there wasn't much available or because at the time it was available, I didn't have any money for that kind of stuff.
A number of years ago, I heard about a Battlestar Galactica convention that was being held up at Universal City, which I ended up going to. It was fun for some reasons - I saw Richard Hatch up close and personal at one of his panels which was basically held in a sort of classroom. I got to see, take a picture of and wave at Herb Jefferson, Jr. (he waved back) when he was at a table for autographs. A number of the women from Battlestar had their own panel, so that was fun. (Whenever I read Soap Opera Digest, and there's something about John McCook, I always smile, knowing that's Laurette Spang's (now McCook's) husband.)
While I did have fun at the convention, there were also a lot of problems - it wasn't organized very well, and oftentimes, you didn't know the day before what was going to be happening the next day, and sometimes, you'd get there at the beginning of the day, and you still didn't know what was going to be happening. It was cool seeing various fans in the brown uniforms though - I've always loved the look of those. They had another convention a few years ago, and I was told by an insider that this one was going to be done right - I think this was still before the new show - and I considered going, but unfortunately, the timing didn't work out as the entire convention fell during a time when I was already doing something else.
One of the things I remember seeing a lot was a pewter/die-cast version of the Galactica that I really liked. I never picked it up, though, and I haven't seen it in a while, so if I happen to see it again and it's decently priced, I'll probably pick it up.
I figured I was out of luck for any good Battlestar merchandise, but on a recent late-night trip to Toys R Us, the husband happened to find something.
It's a classic Cylon raider from Hasbro's titanium collection. I was pretty excited to be able to get that, and I was hoping maybe they had a viper or even the Galactica itself to go along with it. But, in looking through Hasbro's site, there's only the classic version of the Cylon raider - all the other ones are from the new series. Oh, well, like I need more collectibles. I'm just happy to have this one.
Well, this seems an appropriate time to blog about this particular subject.
First, background on last night. I knew that new "Star Wars" toys were being released today (July 26), but I wasn't sure exactly what was being released. I had a note to myself about 2 new Galactic Heroes (aka little squat people) sets that were coming out that I wanted, but I didn't know yesterday that their release date has been changed to September. As I was browsing the Toys R Us site, the husband noticed the banner proclaiming midnight openings of stores to sell the new toys. Uh oh. We browsed through the list, and since we have no huge Toys R Us stores near us, none of the stores that were doing the midnight opening were near us. I wasn't exactly sure what was being released, but since at the time I had thought the 2 Galactic Heroes sets might be, we decided to go anyway and picked the Glendale/Los Feliz store since it wasn't terribly far away.
We got to the store at about 11:30pm, and there was already a line of maybe 20 to 30 people, some of whom looked like they'd been there for a while since they were in fold-up chairs. We were joined shortly thereafter by a friend to whom I had mentioned that we were going. He didn't end up buying anything last night - I think he just came to laugh and stare at us! ;) But he's a huge Star Wars fan too, and it was nice to be able to hang out with him a bit there.
By the time the store opened at 12:01, there was quite a line behind us as well, and as we got into the store, people were jamming to get close to the huge display of toys. It was pretty much a feeding frenzy. Everyone else seemed interested in the new action figures that I didn't even know about, but since the Galactic Heroes were right in the middle of all that, we had to brave through them to get to what we wanted. We picked up three of the new sets.
When the husband had seen the picture of the first set online, he had let out this gasp. I kind of looked at him and said, yeah, Leia's cute in that outfit as a little squat people, but I didn't think it was that big a deal. He quickly corrected me by saying that he loved R2 as a drink cart, and that was the one he really wanted. And yes, if you really want the Destroyer Droid (which I do - I love them - they've joined my favorite Star Wars things list, which the rancor has been on for some time), then you have to buy Jar Jar too.
I should have done some more research last night because today, I found this Hasbro release schedule. I've noted future release dates for things I want, but it doesn't include everything I've heard about.
Speaking of which, I'd heard about the Galactic Heroes landspeeder, which looked really cool.
But looky here - I hadn't heard about these. They look awesome.
These are the sets we had thought might be out last night/this morning.
Here are two new sets due out in February 2009.
As I mentioned, the rancor is about my most favorite Star Wars thing, and they've got this release coming in February.
It's ok, but I've already got an amazing rancor, so they're going to have to do something spectacular for me to buy another one. (But I am looking forward to seeing the rancors' planet in "The Force Unleashed".)
OK, so yeah, that was all background. Here's the real subject of today's blog. ;)
It does look pretty awesome with all the different rooms/scenes, but putting together mega-piece Lego sets is not my forte. I wish they're release a Death Star in the Galactic Heroes series.
Here's the official site on the piece. Lego had previously released a partially constructed Death Star II, but that one didn't appeal to me as much. One of the complaints I'd read about the new upcoming Death Star was that it wasn't proportional to the awesome Millenium Falcon Lego set, and wasn't the Falcon supposed to be able to fit inside the Death Star? I didn't really think much of the complaint until I happened to mention it to the husband and the friend who we had met up with at Toys R Us last night, both of whom said that it was a stupid comment because given how big the Falcon set was, the Death Star would have to be ginormous (ok, they didn't use that word, but you get the idea) to be proportional, and most people couldn't afford how much that would cost nor have the space to put it. Hmmm, good point.
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