Anyone here collect toys/Action Figures?

HornheaDD

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Going to set up at a toyfair next saturday and the organisers asked some dealer shots.
Holy cow you collect som stuff over the years...View attachment 79218


Yoo.. what is that Robotech box you got there? Or is that an RPG book?

edit: ah, had to zoom in to see the Revell logo. Damn. I suck at scale models.
 

SouthtownKid

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Yoo.. what is that Robotech box you got there? Or is that an RPG book?
It's a model kit. Before Harmony Gold did what they did with Macross/Southern Cross/Mospeda, Revell licensed the rights to a bunch of model kits from various anime (mostly Dougram), renamed them, ditched all of the original stories, painted all of the kits wrong, and then released them on an unsuspecting American public under the combined Robotech banner. There was even a tie-in 2 issue DC comic with an all new bland story with nothing characters and no connection to any of the original anime.

707765.jpg


The model kits were fine (I had the Dougram) for early '80s models. But nothing worth tracking down.

edit: And definitely don't track down the comic. It's terrible.
 
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FAT$TACKS

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It's a model kit. Before Harmony Gold did what they did with Macross/Southern Cross/Mospeda, Revell licensed the rights to a bunch of model kits from various anime (mostly Dougram), renamed them, ditched all of the original stories, painted all of the kits wrong, and then released them on an unsuspecting American public under the combined Robotech banner. There was even a tie-in 2 issue DC comic with an all new bland story with nothing characters and no connection to any of the original anime.

707765.jpg


The model kits were fine (I had the Dougram) for early '80s models. But nothing worth tracking down.

edit: And definitely don't track down the comic. It's terrible.

Back in the late day we used to buy up those model kits so we could use them for large scale games of Battletech.
 

Arcademan

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It's a model kit. Before Harmony Gold did what they did with Macross/Southern Cross/Mospeda, Revell licensed the rights to a bunch of model kits from various anime (mostly Dougram), renamed them, ditched all of the original stories, painted all of the kits wrong, and then released them on an unsuspecting American public under the combined Robotech banner. There was even a tie-in 2 issue DC comic with an all new bland story with nothing characters and no connection to any of the original anime.

707765.jpg


The model kits were fine (I had the Dougram) for early '80s models. But nothing worth tracking down.

edit: And definitely don't track down the comic. It's terrible.
Was Murphy Anderson desperate at the time to do artwork for this book?!! A famed Superman and golden age art fanatic doing a Robotech: now I've seen it all!

EDIT: Scanned through the story. Utter garbage. Like how they explained at the start of the second book how it suddenly became a 2 issue mini instead of a 3 :tickled:
 
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SouthtownKid

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Was Murphy Anderson desperate at the time to do artwork for this book?!! A famed Superman and golden age art fanatic doing a Robotech: now I've seen it all!
Unfortunately, this is super common as artists get older. They get shifted to whatever comics-version shovelware is left after the hot new artists get all the good books. And they basically have to work forever, because the pay isn't super high for most people, they're considered independent contractors, so there's no union, no health care, etc.

Murphy Anderson specifically though was still inking Superman on and off at this time, and had other gigs here and there. DC at least kept him working. But yeah, I groaned when I saw his name on this cover.
 

Taiso

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Since we're talking about old comic history and economics...

Yesterday I listened to an hour long podcast interview of Roy Thomas talking about the origins of Conan at Marvel Comics.

Super insightful stuff and we are lucky to have some of these great older luminaries still around and coherent enough to recount the past with such vivid detail.

Regarding artists, he said that the first guy he chose for Conan once Stan Lee agreed to publish the book was John Buscema, but his page rate was too high ($50/page at the time) and he was busy with a lot of Marvel's cape books. Apparently, Buscema wanted to draw Conan more than anything and he didn't like drawing superheroes at all but he couldn't justify working below his market value for a passion project that had no clear stable future.

Then Thomas wanted Gil Kane, who was apparently a huge cheerleader for a Conan comic when Marvel was still considering the idea, but his page rate was too high as well.

So Thomas decided to ask Barry Smith, who was living in England at the time and not doing much of anything, and his page rate was significantly lower so he agreed to do it.

Stan Lee sounds like quite the character. He was kind of a spectacle in public according to Thomas. When the creatives were in a public space discussing a project and Stan was among them, Stan would get up and pose dynamically, using furniture to help him with positions, angles and leans and was quite enthusiastic about demonstrating what he was looking for on covers and splash pages.

Apparently one of Stan's frustrations with the Conan comic was the number of animals Conan was fighting on the covers. According to Roy, he would say 'get these damn animals off the covers and have Conan fighting men of menace on them! You got a spider and a snake with a person's head and a tiger woman. It's not even a tiger man!' The next issue after that conversation, Conan's enemies were skeleton warriors and a giant insect.

Lastly, the first seven issues of Conan had declining sales and Lee wanted to cancel the book not because the numbers justified it (it was still selling well, but declining numbers issue to issue isn't a good sign) but because he wanted to put Smith on a different book. Roy argued for the survival of the book and he got to keep Smith up through issue 13. Gil Kane came in and illustrated a couple of issues and expressed frustrartion at the level of effort required to draw what Thomas was writing. Kane said it was exhausting having to draw an epic every issue and it was too much work. Roy, of course, argued that if you're going to do a book like this, every issue has to feel epic.

Smith came back after Kane's two issue stint and worked on the book for a few more issues but by that point Conan's sales were skyrocketing and the book was making real money. At that point, Stan gave the go ahead to put Buscema on the book, since the profits justified his page rate, and the rest is history.

Love old comic stories.
 
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HornheaDD

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Randomly found Studio 86 Transformers the Movie Springer, which I guess is kinda hard to find? Found him in the back of a bunch of bots from whatever show wasn't good (armada or whatever).

I think someone was trying to hid him lol.
 

SouthtownKid

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I don't even know what the fuck this is,

Voltes V ("Five", not the letter). A very beloved 1977-1978 super robot show produced by Yoshiyuki Tomino, who would go on the following year to create the first Real Robot anime, Gundam. Very typical setup for a robot show of that era. Five pilots-- straight laced leader, a bad boy, one girl, a fat guy, and a kid -- each piloting a vehicle that combined into a giant robot. Same formula that would become famous in America with Voltron 5 or so years later. Although I guess the formula was actually originated by Gatchaman back in 1972. Exact same pilot archetypes, each with their own vehicle that combined into a larger vehicle rather than a robot. Anyway, I'm rambling now.
 

terry.330

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I always liked the designs for Voltes and Combattler. Used to have the Soul Of Chogokin releases of both, really nice sets.
 

FAT$TACKS

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I had one of those gun robots when I was a kid. It mostly just got used as a toy gun. Though it was cool to flip the grip down when he was a robot.
 

wataru330

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I had one of those gun robots when I was a kid. It mostly just got used as a toy gun. Though it was cool to flip the grip down when he was a robot.

Same here. I saw the pics I posted in a FB group, and was like-daaaaaaaaamn. I forgot all about this bot.

IMG_4443.jpeg
This yellow button unlatched a hinge; he opened up like a double-barreled shot gun, and you could insert caps.
 
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