Toys 'R' Us' True Heroes toy line

I've reviewed toys from Chap Mei before and my initial impression of them still stands.

They are an excellent substitute to G.I. Joe figures when budget is a concern, with relatively good sculpting, play value, and quality. While the vehicles make great additions to your Joe or Cobra army forces, the accessories that the figures come with scale nicely with 1:9 scale figures (6-7 inches). The figures are a little less impressive on their own (they're not really in scale with anything they come with, and nothing really fits right), but any kid will tell you they don't care about that crap.

Though I had the chance to pick up some of the bigger toys a few years back, I just couldn't bring myself to buy any of the Raptors or the big tanks, since I don't really have the space for any of it. Seeing as I've dropped the G.I. Joe line from my current pull list (I didn't really like the last few sets after Pursuit of Cobra, but it has more to do with finances than anything else), it's probably a good thing that I didn't cave back then.

However, Toys 'R' Us' proprietary True Heroes toy line is making that resolution really hard for me.

Universal Studios Deluxe Evac

I don’t get many exclusives. Exclusives usually cost money and a lot of time to collect, two things that I just don’t have a lot of. Would I like to have picked up the Million Publishing exclusive Transformers United Stepper? Sure. What about the Revoltech Danboard Sakura version? Yes. And the various Figma Black Rock Shooter exclusives? Hell, yeah. But we’re talking toys that cost more than Php 3,000.00 each. In the case of the Black Rock Shooter figures, we’re talking nearly 20k a figure.

No way am I dropping that much cash for a toy that barely scrapes the 6 inch mark.

Marvel Legends 2012 Wave 3 released TOMORROW!

Hey guys, quickie announcement from http://cybertronphils.proboards.com:

Re: Toy Expo Philippines 2012 @ SMX
« Reply #161 Yesterday (Friday, 8/24/2012) at 2:23pm »

Heres the news you have been waiting for.
(Return of Marvel Legends) wave 3 will be distributed tomorrow at the Toy Expo (SMX).
SET OF 6 - Php5400

Princess Merida

I am the worst god father.

It’s not that I’m antisocial (though I am rather antisocial) or that I’m not particularly good with kids (though I’m not particularly good with kids), it’s that every time I need to buy a god kid a gift, I eventually end up standing there with the perfect toy in hand, wanting to either keep it for myself, or put it back so I can afford something else that I’ve got my eye on.

So when I had to find something for my god daughter’s second birthday, I went to Greenhills and started looking around. I found the perfect thing at one of the Blue Lane shops in Shoppesville, but I couldn’t afford to drop Php 3,000.00 on a baby Merida doll (especially when there were Return of Marvel Legends series 3 figures down the hall for Php 1,500.00), no matter how adorable it looked. Eventually, I settled on the more traditionally styled Princess Merida doll from Mattel.

Samus Aran

I haven't bought a Figma figure since back in 2009 when I bought figure No. 10, Kanu Unchou. I was impressed as hell with that figure, but the prohibitive price of Japanese import toys stopped me from going full completist with the line. I couldn't even go has-handful-of-cherry-picked-figures with it, they're that expensive.

This one here, No. 133, Samus Aran from the video game Metroid: Other M.

Ben 10 Ultimate Alien

Another Happy Meal toy set, another Burger McDo hangover...

At least it's not as bad as the last time, when I had to scarf eight McDo’s so that I could complete the Philippine set of the last Sponge Bob Squarepants figurines. This time I only had to get 4 Happy Meals to complete the four toys in the Ben 10 Ultimate Alien set that was released at the beginning of the month. The other four slots were taken up by Hello Kitty, so they can be readily ignored.

Brave

I loved La Luna.

That’s a weird thing to preface a review about Pixar’s latest feature, Brave, but the short that preceded the film was far better than the film itself. Not that Brave is that bad: it’s just that Pixar has already set the bar so high that at some point, they’re bound to produce something that doesn’t reach it. For me, Brave is the first of their stories that doesn't quite make it.

Brave is the story of Merida, a teenage Scottish princess, who is at odds with her mother the queen. Instead of sewing, cooking, and doing courtly things as her mother instructs her to, Merida wants to ride her Clydesdale, shoot arrows, and fight bears. Eventually, she finds out that as princess, she’s expected to do her duty, to accept her “fate” to be married off to the eldest son of one of the other Scottish clans.

Of course, she’d rather not.

Madelman 2-Packs

Ever heard of Madelman?

Yeah, neither had I. I had to look it up. But to my surprise, there's barely anything on this toy line available on the World Wide Web. How is that possible in this day and age? I mean I found it in a toy store, the Net should have some info on it, right?

Turns out that the line was hugely popular in Europe, but was cancelled in 1983. From what I can gather, there was a brief resurgence of popularity when the company, Popular de Juguetes, re-launched the line with a slew of new designs, but they have since gone out of business.

Jollibee's The Green Force Collection

For the most part, McDonald's has a better track record than it's local competitor, Jollibee, when it comes to the toys they create for their respective kid's meals. The McDonald's Happy Meal used to boast the best toys largely because it had the best licences, including the Disney line and Marvel Superheroes. However, since their falling out with Disney (which also includes the Marvel line-up now), they've had to resort to the lesser animation studios' characters.

Jollibee's been able to take up some of the slack, but they just can't really field the same quality of toys that McDonald's can. Most of the time they seem satisfied with tiny role-play toys that sport silly action features: great for kids, but they kind of suck for the collector market. They don't hold a candle to McDo's old 101 Dalmatians line or the Changeables from the 1980's.

Snow White & the Huntsman

Snow White is probably the worst fairy tale for little girls to read. She isn't much of a role model. She gets by on her looks and sex appeal. She was the favorite of her father and made her mother (or stepmother depending on the version) jealous to the point that she wanted her dead. Then she suckered the wood cutter hired to kill her into letting her go. He probably died when he was found out. Then she charmed a bunch of dorks into letting her crash at their pad (can you say, “friend-zoned?”). Then she fakes her death (come on! That whole “poisoned apple” is about as plausible as Superman’s “disguise”) marries into money and lives happily ever after. And despite her uncanny manipulative skill, she’s still as dumb as a stump, falling for her mother’s attempts to kill her 3 times (according to the original folk tale anyway).

Didn't she ever hear the phrase, “never talk to strangers?”