G is for Guardians of the Galaxy

Really it's a bit of a follow-up to Jada and some recent developments in their range of Nano Metalfigs 40mm, die-cast figures. Namely, that one range has been cleared though Poundland, and another is now in that annoying vehicle; the blind bag!

I found these back in June, in the aforementioned Poundland, on each occasion there was only the one sculpt, in multiples, which I took to be a clue that it was wholesaler stock being cleared, but at a quid each they were pretty much half-price on the supermarket stuff we've looked at previously, so I grabbed one of each.

 

Close-ups of the two generations of Groot (a portmanteau word from 'Guardian' and 'Root'?) in the opposite order to how we were introduced to them! As you may have discerned, I'm not a great fan of the Marvel/DC universes, all far too formulaic, repetitive and convenient for me, but I love Guardians of the Galaxy, because it is a stand-alone sci-fi movie, with the tongue-in-cheek humour of Star Wars or the Good-Bad-Ugly trilogy, and while I have now got both sequels on DVD I haven't watched them yet, so I don't know if there are any crossover appearances from other Marvel characters, but I hope not?

 

Keeping my eye out for them after the initial finds I picked up two more, Rocket racoon (my favourite!) and Thanos, branded-up to The Avengers, who IS a crossover-character seen in the Galaxy movie, but so long as none of the spandex-clad, flying, transforming, super-powered loons' turn-up, I can bear his being in the background driving the plot!

 

The 'promotion' seems to have ended, I haven't seen any in Poundland for a couple of months now, so if I ever get the need to finish the set, it'll be me off to evilBay, or keeping my eye out at Sandown Park (where the Poundland-visiting scalpers will be wanting 4 or 5-quid each for them, I have no doubt!), but as a sample they'll do for now!

Meanwhile, on my recent trip to London, Peter Evans gave me this pair for the Blog, we have seen the Jada take on the Harry Potter franchise before with contributions from Brian Berke and show-reports/catalogue images, but as you can see they are now being sold somewhere in blind-bags, a most annoying trend!

G is for Gurt Galaxy Guardians

As I've said before I think, I've not seen this in the cinema or since, and haven't followed any comics related to it, so I'm not particularly eau fait with the whole thing, story or character wise, but the toy figures are nice!

Good guys, from the left; Star Lord and Yandu, Groot and the alliterative Rocket Racoon, when I say 'good guys' I get the feeling they are more Han Solo than JC?

Which highlights my first piece of ignorance . . . if they pre-date Star Wars, there is a feeling quite a few SW characters are taken from GotG, but I don't remember ever seeing anything about them until quite recently - in which case Marvel are the plagiarists, except of Groot who's clearly an Ent?

I think these are also good guys, but one or two of them might have questionable loyalties? Not least the two girls Gamora and Nebula who are sisters serving different masters, but I'm not sure how seriously they try to kill each other? Marvel - everyone's there again next issue! Also I'm not sure who is who but I think Gamora (green?) is the good guy? And . . . err; they're not Rylothians twi'leks, oh no! Oh no-no-no-no-no-no-no; absolutely not!

The others are Drax Korath (good? See comments!) and a mini Groot?

Pretty sure these are all bad guys? From the left we have Ronan the Accuser, The Collector and Korath the Pursuer Drax (see comments!). There's also Thanos who's even baderer . . . badiest . . . badly-bad . . . I said that! But he's not in the set, which he could have been as the 12th piece was . . .

. . . a crappy micro-space-ship. I have a drawer somewhere with all the sub-scale sci-fi Micromachines that accompanied the Galoob figures; Star Wars, Aliens, Star Trek and even a set of fantasy stuff, this pretty-well matches them and will join them!

T is for Toy Fair 2019 Reports - Amerang - Nano Metalfigs

Jada Toys 'Metalfigs' are also being shipped into the UK and distributed by Amerang, and I shot a few while I was in London the other day.

This is probably more of a display-unit than a 'playset' per se, and has points for about 12 figures with room for a few more, themed to DC's Batman, it might look a bit silly draped in Disney figures, but each to his own!

Another man-bat and a bunch of other DC superhero comic characters, they don't all have metallic paint, or not everywhere, but it does suit them, and I know I've waxed lyrical on these in the past, they really are lush to handle.

I struggled to get a good shot of this Marvel set - Gardians of the Galaxy, but between the three most-usable images you can - hopefully - get an idea of the finished item!

The Harry Potter line is being added to with the Fantastic Beast off-shoot, and you may just spot the Walking Dead set - bottom right.

Again designed more as a display vehicle than a full-on playset, but this one does have a bunch of accessories for little imaginations to sculpt adventures rund, and those who follow the ways of Nottingham will see that some of the elements may have applications in more grown-up gaming - I'm thinking of the arched windows and pilasters.

A large twenty figure set, I don't know how much this costs; but I've found the single figure blisters in Asda supermarkets to be reasonable and the five-figure sets can often be found in Smyths, sometimes discounted.

========================

Speaking of Disney - as I was a moment ago - Brian Berke sent these shelfies over from the 'States back in July and they either slipped-past the last round-up of these, or missed it and were waiting for a post like this!

Not specifically branded to Disney Infinity, but rather Disney-Pixar-Muppets, it seems to be designed to carry and carry nevertheless; with almost limitless characters to choose from!

The fact that these are out there in several outlets, more than two years after the Blog first became aware of them suggests take-up has been successful-enough for them to be with us for some time now, which also means they will be around at the fairs in numbers for years to come, Nano Metalfigs are 'part of the landscape' now

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Jada

Another company being handled in the UK by Amerang is Jada, a Hong Kong based Chinese toy manufacturer, clearly with some clout as they are in the business of buying into licenses for franchises like Harry Potter and . . . The Bat Man!

A set of 1:24th scale Batmobiles, from the original TV series and running through the movies of recent years. Each model comes with a figure which technically should be around 75mm for 1:24th, but they didn't look that tall to me, closer to 60mm maybe (1:30th), but I'm very bad a judging size away from a measuring stick. Still, the catalogue states 2.75-inches, which is about 71-and-a-bit millimeters by my measuring stick, when I'm near it.

The TV Batmobile is a nice little model, and - unlike the NJCroce one, does run, as a freewheeler. The boy wonder who is fixed in a sitting position seems to be on the [orange] Batphone!

There is also, as can be seen; a smaller version, as there seem to be for all (five?) of them. I can't remember if a scale was given but it looks to be half-size, so around the 1:48th mark and there don't seem to be figures with the diminutive models.

The back of the box suggests five man-bats to collect at the moment, and note that while they don't have the bases of the Harry Potter figures we looked at earlier; there does appear to be one on the pre-production figure used for the box-art!

'Hollywood Rides' suggests that if not Batman's enemies, there will be further extensions of the range into other film franchise characters. I think it's about time we had Clint Eastwood and 'pal'with a Confederate Wagon-team! "Three-cheers for the Confederacy!" . . . Pat . . . pat . . . pat .

Or . . . how about "The Laaast of the vee-ate inn'tercep'tuz", now - that's a toy I'd like to see!

Meanwhile, the catalogue has photographed them better than I did, but their snappers are probably paid well for the task, so they should be better! And it's another version of Batman.

Jada are also marketing these . . . sort of super deforms; in die-cast? Let's be honest here, this stuff is purely for kidult's man-caves, I mean; who wouldn't want 4-inches (that's half a small foot!) of deformed Halo Space Marine die-cast metal falling on their glass-topped coffee-table, during cleaning or because they caught the sideboard with an elbow in passing! If you drop that Hulkbuster on your foot; you're off to A&E!

However - my cynicism aside, any move away from polymers is a good thing, no matter how much we might like our vintage plastic figures . . . let's get them all to that position - vintage.

And that's four-more licenses! If there was one stand-out point being made at the Toy Fair it was that licensing is everything and everything can be licensed. For instance Monopoly (as we will see in a future post) is no longer just a board game from Hasbro-Parker (or even Parker-Hasbro!), it's a licensable brand-mark to be hired, with conditions, for specific periods, to third parties, hence the literally hundreds of versions out there, some of which don't even use the original play-mechanisms . . . but many of which have nice figures!