In which I slip the chains and make it to a store aside from our shop.
So one of the side effects of the Christmas season is that it actually gets me into toy stores looking for presents. I haven’t been in a toy store since…well, probably since last Christmas when I was busy buying myself something that pal Dorian was planning on buying me.
One of the things I saw that was new to me, but probably old hat to a bunch of you, I’m sure, is the Hot Wheels Mystery Car:
(Image totally stolen from an auction on the eBay, by the way.) I know this isn’t a new idea, particularly in the comic market where we’ve had several permutations of the “mystery item in the box” products. In this case, if it’s not clear from the image, a car is sealed in a solid black plastic bubble, and you have a chance of getting one of a series of twenty-four cars. Of course, in the stores I saw these in, the cars were racked out of sight of any consistent observation by employees and therefore most of the packages were cracked open, which shows just how much those customer bases love a mystery.
Something else I saw while I was out and about was the Malcolm McDowell “Linderman” figure from Heroes:
Just thought it was notable because, dude, MALCOLM MCDOWELL ACTION FIGURE. Comes with an alternate head, apparently, which I didn’t realize until I was, ahem, borrowing this image from the Toys R Us site:
I think (SPOILER, if you care) this is supposed to represent Linderman during his death scene. That…that’s kinda weird.
We’ve had McDowell action figures before, such as this one: Dr. Soran from Star Trek: Generations:
Not much on the likeness front, but the face comes pretty close in the “disturbing” category to the Linderman death mask:
“Why, Captain Picard! You surprise me!”
I also spotted in Toys R Us one lonely “Comics Collector Pack” holding two comics. It grabbed my attention because it contained a copy of Marvel’s Weird Wonder Tales #22 from 1973…flipping it over revealed the other book in the pack as Warlock and the Infinity Watch #13. Didn’t spot a price. Wonder which store’s closeout stock supplied these things?
A couple of links of note:
Reader Monty, triggered by discussion of movie novelizations in recent months on this site, has refocused his movie weblog upon those very books. First out the gate: the Grease novelization. It’s as terrifying as you may imagine.
And I’ve been meaning to link to this for a while, but former employee Josh #2 has started a blog of his own, so go visit the boy and make him feel loved.
SUDDENLY:
It was pal Dorian what made me do it, Your Honor.
