Adventure
Superstars
Hanna Barbera
Characters!

Toynami & I-Men are
putting out incredibly cool
Kubrick-style Hanna Barbera
60s/70s characters like:
Thundar the Barbarian &
Dynomutt & Blue Falcon!

See the ad close up!

(July 15, 2002)

Fisher Price
NEW Line of
Medieval and
Rescue Playsets

Geekspeak star reporter,
Jack Dickens informs
Geekspeak of new stuff
from everyone's favorite
kids' toys company F-P!

Go to the F-P Imaginext site

(July 22, 2002)

Star Wars Mos Eisley Cantina

In return for doing some graphic design work, I received the original Star Wars Cantina Playset in its original box. The box was a little battered and the cardboard backdrop was a tad worn as well, but it's the principle of it all... the IDEA that now I have an authentic cantina for all my alien Star Wars figures to patronize is really exciting to me. (Do I need a life or what?)

Because I had the Cantina, I now had to seek out the original aliens that came with the playset. I made a deal one night with my niece & nephew that for $20 I'd buy their original Greedo, the power droid and a medic droid. I found on-line the original Hammerhead and Walrusman figures LOOSE with no weapons (which is fine by me because I'd rip 'em out of the packages lickedy split anyway).

I know that SOMEWHERE at my Mom's house, there's the original Snaggletooth figure (short alien guy clad in purple), so I have to come up with a reason to drop by and start searching...

In the past months, I've really gone nuts over looking for Star Wars aliens to collect. I've even ordered a Chewbacca sitting at the chess table (from New Hope, mid-way through, Chewbacca was playing R2D2 at chess) and duplicates of Oola & Salacious Crumb so I could open them up and have them in the cantina as well. My friend Cheryl got me, as a housewarming present, the Jabba the Hut with oozing slime and little plastic rats, which I just so happen to have NOT gotten yet.

Also on the waiting list right now (but more than likely are already on order by me through some company or another): Wuher (the Cantina bartender), all of the bounty hunter figures (I'm missing the one that has the bandages allover his head, Dengar...) and hopefully a Watto's Box set which has that cool RED female alien in it...

Star Trek Strike Force

Thank god for those Kay-Bee Toy Stores. In the past year or so, they have been drastically reducing the prices on toys from only a few years out of date and on toys that just didn't get as popular as the manufacturer might have liked. (Or, quite possibly, it was a matter of the manufacturer WAY over-producing and then realzing that the item or line didn't take off as expected.) Well, anyway, I've made it a point to routinely check in at the Kay Bee's in my area (there are about 5 of them) and see what's up...

Lo and behold, one Saturday morning, I went to the Kay-Bee at the Greendale Mall in Worcester and found these MicroMachine-esque Star Trek Borg heads that are about 6-7 inches tall and open up to reveal a miniature playset of a Borg "temple" from Star Trek The Next Generation. I'll go into more detail about the GREAT detail work on this toy in a second, but what really drove me insane was that it was a mere 99¢ in price! I immediately snatched up two of these things (one for play, one to collect intact in its original box, a new compulsion).

Inside the Borg head, there are many little room area including a detention room, a rooftop communications array tower/pole thing, a workshop area (where you can attach two action figures onto this rotating workbench thing), a hidden regeneration bay (that took me forever to locate even with the instructions) and more... It comes with four miniature action figures: Data, Lore, Hugh (friendly Borg) and a random Borg soldier/drone. The mini's may be mini, but they are articulated enough so they can move their arms and bend at the waist to sit. For 99¢, it's a really fun toy!

There was also the Klingon Great Hall available, but I haven't as of yet picked that up... but I just might.

Micronauts / Microman

I started collecting Micronauts back in my pre-teens. I don't remember how I first discovered the line of toys, but I do remember being nuts over the ones I had. My favorite character in this line of interchangeable parts toys was Force Commander because he was one of the "magno-powered" characters, meaning that his head and limbs magnetically attached onto the torso. You could swap his head with his leg, his arm with his other arm. You could turn him into a centaur with any of the magno-powered horse characters (that I never had) like Andromeda or Megos. AND, as if that wasn't enough, you could shoot his fists off of his arms like missiles and shoot tiny little red missiles out of his spring-loaded chest. Man, my sisters got really sick of me firing those things off at them... And there were other characters, too... the aliens (like Antron and Membros who had removable weapons and glow-in-the-dark brains), the Time Travellers, the Pharoid and a whole bunch of others...

Then, years later, I re-discovered them as being something really cool that alot of people had seemingly forgotten about. AND I found that the Micronauts line was really just the American-ised releases of the Japanese Microman line of toys that had an even more complex background. PLUS, the Takara company is still making NEW Micromen characters. I bought the Japanese-release of the character to the left of this text. AND, I started corresponding with a collector in Wisconsin who sold me some original out-of-the-box Micro's from the 70s. Pretty soon, I'll set up my own little devotional site to the Micro's I've collected... keep your eyes peeled...

In the mean time, here are some good Micro-links:
Microman Rescue Base Seattle
Kimono My House (store)
Micronauts Homepage (great source for Micronauts history)
Microfever (great source of Microman history)

The Simpsons

The idea is great! Various Simpsons environments with very true-to-the-show-looking action figures that TALK when placed in the environments! The reality is close, but not exactly as cool as I thought the whole thing had been billed. I first bought the Bart figure for Chantal (complete with skateboard, spray can, slingshot and his dog, Santa's Little Helper) and eventually I picked up Montgomery Burns, Grandpa and Krusty the Klown. I kept hoping to find a Barney or Waylon Smithers or perhaps a nonplused comic store owner figure, but from what I've read, a whole slough of characters are on the way. THEN, I broke down and bought the Simpsons living room environment because it seemed that alot of the figures "spoke" in this one, or so the packages said. The living room came with Marge and Maggie and they said quite a bit. When there's no figure on any of the three "pads" or "sockets", the doorbell rings when you press the activation buttons located around the room. But there's no real "interaction". Just because Marge and Monte Burns are in the room together doesn't mean that any different lines or line of conversation with spew forth. The characters look damn good, though & come with alot of accessories. I can't wait for the Moe's Bar , Quickie Mart and Bowling Alley sets to come out. (Check out the Simpsons website)