Hot Wheels K.I.T.T.!

I have to be completely honest here. When I was a kid, I was never a huge fan of Knight Rider. The stories were all pretty boring and I seemed to have been born with an innate dislike towards David Hasselhoff. However, I am a sucker for pop culture vehicles, like the General Lee or the A-Team van, so I would occasionally tune in to Knight Rider in hopes of catching a minute or two of K.I.T.T. talking and doing other cool talking-car things.

This lukewarm attitude toward the show, however, has had no effect whatsoever on my burning desire to find one of the new Hot Wheels K.I.T.T. toy cars. As soon as I heard about them, I immediately started checking toy store shelves. No luck. Then I went to eBay. Holy crap! These puppies are going for up to $15! I then scoured some comic conventions. Only found one and it was priced at $10, still too rich for my blood. I was just about to give up hope until last night's quick stop at a local grocery store.

I found myself, with arms full of Hot Pockets and Coffee Mate, being drawn to the cereal aisle, where a few toys often hung, trapping moms into impulse buys to quite begging kids. There was a small stack of Hot Wheels cars hanging between the Fruity Pebbles and the Cinnamon Life, and the fourth car down was none other that K.I.T.T. himself!

$1.09. Take that scalpers!

This find really pleases the collector in me, as well as the TV and movie car lover. Like I said, even though this isn't exactly my favorite pop culture vehicle (I mean, it's basically an '82 Pontiac Trans Am with a Cylon eye in the front), it'll look great with my other cars, Like the 1966 Batmobile, Back to the Future Delorean and my Ecto-1.

One nice detail that the designers added to the toy is this killer dashboard display. This is a detail that could have easily been skipped, but its presence is an absolutely brilliant touch and ups my opinion on the toy by several degrees.

And, of course, K.I.T.T. wouldn't be complete without his signature pulsating red Cylon eye. There is a part of me that wishes this lit up somehow, but that may be asking a lot.

So, anyway, a killer score if you ask me.

And finding this yesterday just happened to coincide with me drawing a K.I.T.T. for my VROOOM! series (which I'll have some major news about very soon).

Lite Brite Brutes! Masters of the Universe Part II

Tomy Robots Are On The Loose!

Any regular reader of this blog (or its previous incarnations) should know that I'm a sucker for those old school wind-up Rascal Robots from Tomy. You can see me ramble on about them in another post HERE.

Well, one version of the classic Rascal Robot that I had seen only once, way back in 3rd grade, which was sadly in the possession of another kid, is the elusive white/black/red version. I even tried to hunt one down on eBay several times, but they tend to go for $15-$25 each! A little steep for this cheap frugal collector.

However, the collecting gods were shining on me at Wondercon a few weeks back when I spied these two beauties in a vintage toy dealer's display...

BAM! I was stoked to finally find this albino beauty! 

I also spotted this close cousin to the Rascal Robot in the same display. He's also by Tomy. Although I never had this guy as a kid, I do have vague memories of him, probably from either seeing him in stores or possibly in the hands of a classmate.

When I asked the vendor how much he wanted for the Rascal Robot, bracing myself for sticker shock, he simply shrugged and offered him up for $3. Then, after he saw me eyeballing the other robot, he told me I could have both for $5. I couldn't throw a wadded up Lincoln at him fast enough!

So, now they're home, and the usual droid welcoming committee has come out to greet them. I think they're going to love their new home.

While looking up info on these robots, I found out that there is another vintage Rascal Robot variant that I need to hunt down! Note the gray model in the center...

Gah! Will the hunt never end?! Well, no... I hope not.

John Carter, Warlord of Mars Comic Score!

Despite the meager box office take of the new John Carter movie, I have to say that it was one of the best fantasy/sci-fi movies I have ever seen. I'm not kidding. And from what I've been reading on other blogs, I'm not the only one who feels this way.

The sad thing is that I never even read any of the original John Carter books by Edgar Rice Burroughs until I finally curled up with a copy of Princess of Mars about 2 years ago. I know, it's shameful.

However, I did grow up with our hero's adventures on Barsoom in the form of the classic Marvel comics from the 70s. I scored a few issues of the comic back in middle school and was immediately in love with the pulpy take of Earth's nearest neighbor and was quite taken with the melding of science fiction technology and the sword and sandal fantasy aspects of the stories, which reminded me of the original Masters of the Universe mini comics (which I now see were highly influenced by Burroiugh's tales) and the Saturday morning cartoon Blackstar (which was a borderline rip-off of the John Carter stories).

As the movie premier loomed, I found myself thinking back on the comics I read as a kid and had place a little post-it note in my brain to pick some up if I got the chance. And that chance came during my recent visit to Emerald City Comic Con when I stumbled onto a trove of John Carter comics, all in spectacular condition, in one dealer's dollar boxes.

$10 later and I was the proud owner of the first 10 issues of John Carter, Warlord of Mars. Just flipping though them shot me back in time to when I first discovered the Civil War soldier turned alien hero that I came to know in my younger days.

You can jolly well bet that I'll be hunkering down with these books again soon, and it'll be so good to be back on Barsoom.

Salvatore the Sasquatch & George!

Welcome to another installment of Stuff I Bought at Emerald City Comic Con! That's not an official title, but it might as well be.

I've never really been one for those "artsy toys", or "collector vinyl" or as the savages in the /toy/ boards on 4chan call it, "hipster garbage", which basically includes any toy designed and produced outside of the mainstream that doesn't have a major motion picture or animated series attached to it.

But I know what I like and when I saw this set, Salvatore Sasquatch & George, I knew I had to have it. These characters are apparently based on a poster for the Sasquatch Festival (think Lollapalooza with more flannel) here in rainy Washington state that takes place in a concert arena known as the Gorge (hence, the little lumberjack named George).

You can read more about it HERE.

I don't mean to sound like an uncultured mainstream zombie, but I couldn't give two gently hovering farts about any music festival (I seem to have had my fill of live music back in the '90s). Music just doesn't "speak" to me like it used to. So I'm sure this is a lovely festival and all, but I just don't care about that.

What I do care about are stunningly adorable toys of bigfoots...

I love the clean, simple shapes that make up each figure, as well as the crisp paint applications. Even the sort of matte finish of the toys is a refreshing change of the overly glossy toys that I'm usually spending my cabbage on.

I'm also a bit of a cryptozoology buff, so I get the feeling that I'm about this close to starting a Bigfoot focus collection. I love the idea that there are living oddities out there somewhere, evading the nosy looky-loos, leaving tantalizing hints of their existence.

I'll tell you one this, if I ever did find a real live Sasquatch, you know what I'd do?

I'd give him a big hug.

Awwwww... Bigfoot hugs....

Well, it looks like I may be turning into a collector of "hipster garbage". It was probably inevitable.

Vintage Star Wars Thursday!

League of Extraordinary Bloggers Weekly Theme: Baseball!

This week's topic: Take me out to the ball game! America’s past time has been prominently featured  in pop culture for over a century, so this week, we’re talking baseball!

This week's theme is pretty loosey-goosey and really gives us some room to play around. This is a good thing in my case because I was never the most athletic kid, and never a huge sports fan (although I have recently discovered a love for NFL football. GO BEARS!).


However, like any other red-blooded American kid, the great American past-time did manage to seep into my life in small ways. For example, I did play Little League baseball for a few years in grade school. I was on the worst team in the entire league. We were literally in last place every single year. We were like the Bad News Bears except we never got better. Of course, we were sponsored by a men's shoe store and although we were technically the Tigers, all the other kids called us the Loafers. Still, despite all of that, I do have fond memories of those hot summer afternoons at the ballpark, eating popcicles after the game and generally trying to look cool in our uniforms. And even though I was never a major sports nut, I do honestly feel that your childhood is missing something if you never road your bike home, covered in dust from a 3rd base slide, with your old leather mitt hanging from your handlebars.


Baseball also showed up in my life in the form of games and collectibles (of course), and those tend to be stronger memories for me, so I figured I'd ramble a bit about those.


My earliest baseball memory comes in the form a massively contagious fever that swept through my small hometown the summer after 2nd grade, when our local Tastee Freeze started carrying a line of collectible Major League Baseball mini helmets that acted as cups for your ice cream sundaes. 

Every kid I knew went gaga over collecting all of them, even though I didn't know a single kid who completed a set. If I remember correctly, the most elusive helmet was the Phillies. This was during the heyday of Pete Rose, so everyone wanted one. Quite frankly all I wanted was my beloved Detroit Tigers helmet (growing up in Michigan and all), and it probably took me 8 trips to Tastee Freeze to finally get one. Oh, darn.

It did my heart good to see that Baskin Robbins has revived the collectible helmet/cups, even though I hardly recognized some of the newer teams.

Baseball also made its mark on me in the form a of hand-held LCD game from Mattel that my brother got for Christmas one year (he being the total jock of the family). My brother is 9 years older than me so I tended to get a lot of his hand-me-down stuff eventually and this game was no exception.

I would spend hours playing this game, getting caught up in the flashing red lights and trying my best to digitally knock a ball over the fence. By today's standards, this game might as well be a rock with a stick tied to it, but back in the late '70s it was loved by me and several of my friends.


Speaking of friends and digital baseball games, I do remember a kid in my neighborhood having a slightly different version and I was shocked to find one on eBay...

And finally, I have to drag my big brother back into this article to talk about my last example of baseball memories, which came in the form of an Intellivision cartridge way back in 1984. My brother bought an Intellivision set that year and it quickly became our favorite past-time, especially since it was our first game console (no, I never had an Atari, much to my dismay). 

One of the games I remember playing most, of course, was baseball. Again, these games look positively prehistoric these days, but we were blown away by the interactivity they contained back in '84. I remember spending hours inside the house playing this game with my brother, which was fine with this sensitive little artist kid, since it meant that I got to stay inside and not risk getting hit in the face with an actual ball (a big fear of mine back then).

So, despite my efforts to avoid sports in exchange for the wonderful worlds of fantasy and science fiction, it seemed almost impossible to be a kid in America without baseball having some sort of effect on you. 

Even those games of Whiffle Ball held in our backyard, with the bees buzzing by and the bases made of whatever you can find; a trashcan lid, an errant roof shingle, an old pizza box, are held in a place of high regard in my heart. For a kid that claimed to hate sports, I did spend a lot of afternoons bat in hand, wad of Big League Chew in my cheek, ready to take a swing.


And even today, I occasionally stumble onto a game being aired on TV and think back to those afternoons where the sound of a game would waft from the TV set throughout my house, and I can still smell the grass of the outfield of my Little League ballpark, and every now and then I catch myself in a store gazing at the packs of Topps baseball cards fighting the urge to pick up a couple, just to smell the gum and cardboard one last time.


But then I imagine a ball hitting me in the face, and I decide to just go back inside and draw.


Please see the complete list of posts from the Extraordinary League of Bloggers and show their blogs some love. Thanks! 

Lite Brite Brutes - Masters of the Universe Part I

She's a Wonder, Wonder Woman!

Okay, Stettmeier, get ready to talk some serious anti-dollies smack. ;)

One of the few toy scores I made at Wondercon actually came in the form a gift from my boss, Mike. And I'm talking about Mattel's Retro Action version of that Amazon princess with the star spangle short-shorts, Wonder Woman.

I've gone back and forth on whether or not I'm going to collect all of these. The temptation to start a collection focused on mego-style figures has almost got its claws in me, and when I saw this Wonder Woman figure, the collecting beast reared its ugly head, and that combined with my undying love for Lynda Carter practically gave me a case of the shakes.

Now, even I have to admit that this crosses the line into full-blown dolliness. There's nothing "action figure" about this toy, so there's no point in trying to front.

But Great Scott! look how gorgeous this figure is! 

She definitely got a '70s vibe. Here we see her in her best Farrah Fawcett pose.

So, yeah. I totally own a doll now. No way of getting around it. But I'm only so strong. I just couldn't fight the desire to own one of these, and besides, she was a gift, and a thoughtful one at that, making her even more dear to me. May the gods help me, but it looks like I'm spinning down into the center of the Mego-style collecting whirlpool.

And it looks like my Retro Action Batman has no problem with that.

I Survived 2 Days at the Emerald City Comic Con!

Just two weeks after my trip to Wondercon in Anaheim, I found myself gearing up for our local annual comic convention, the Emerald City Comic Con, right here is scenic Seattle WA.

I was really looking forward to this convention because this is my go-to con that I have attended every year for the past 6 years, and always delivers when it comes to good old fashioned comic convention fun; rooting through comic boxes, hunting for classic toys and taking pics of tons of costumed attendees.

This year I tackled two days of the con (usually just going on Saturday in the past), and boy am I glad I did, because Saturday at the con was so unbelievably packed with attendees, that after battling the crowded aisle after just a few short hours, I had to admit defeat and just leave. I had never seen so many people at this convention, and although this was indicative of the rising popularity of geek culture, it just made for a claustrophobic maelstrom of sweating, grouchy humanity and where I usually stayed until the end of day at 7:00, I was jumping ship by 3:00.

I can't stress enough how unbelievable it was. The aisles were transformed into a slowly shuffling sardine-packed mass of people. If you were fortunate enough to fight your way to a booth to look at some wares, good luck squeezing into the booth to get close enough to buy something.

The few hours that I did spend the3re did have some bright moments, and I did manage to meet some cool people, score a few treasures and get some cool pics. You can see the majority of my pics (unfortunately, I didn't get as many as I would have liked) in an ECCC 2012 Flickr set that I made. But here are a few highlights...

It was cool to see my friend Tony Fowler (from Backyard Legends) and the prototypes of their upcoming Prince of Crystal release (I already have their Emerald Dragonrider figure, seen on the right, and still love it dearly)...

I also think I may have officially kicked off my love for "artsy toys" when I spotted this adorable Sasquatch and lumberjack figure (which I did buy and will be dedicating a post to in the near future)...

I was so tempted to buy every single one of these hand-made superhero bunnies (or at least the Batman one), but at $50 each, that would have severely stretched my budget for this year. But, seriously, how adorable are these?

It's funny, this year I found myself hunting for toys and comics a lot less than I used to before I made a conscious effort to curtail my "amassing" and focus more on actual collecting, and now taking more time to just look and appreciate the myriad works f art around me, something I probably always should have been doing at comic cons. By taking it easy and calmly soaking it all in, instead of running around, wad of burning cash in my pocket, from one vendor booth to another, I was treated to countless feasts for the eyes, and sopping up the inspiration like gravy. Take this painting below by Justin Hillgrove. I never would have seen this if I had been too busy digging through long boxes...

Another unexpected treat was this massive Lego display going on in the main foyer before the registration room. I had no idea this was going on, so it was a nice surprise to stumble onto this. 

And, of course, it wouldn't be a comic book convention without the scores of people in costumes. I have to say that the costumes this year were fantastic. I'm posting a couple of my favorites below. I may just be in love with that Poison Ivy.

Of course, you can see the rest in my Flickr set. (I'm sure there's a couple of Harley Quinns for you, Stettmeier.) Again, I didn't get to take as many shots as I wanted because it was just too packed and difficult to find room for people to pose, and if I did manage to stop someone, ask for a pic, back up to get them all in, then I felt like a jerk for bottle-necking the flow of people who had to stop behind me, stop behind the costumed person and not walk in between the us just so I could get a picture of a girl in body paint holding a giant sword made of duct tape and cardboard.

All that having been said, I have say that I did end up going again on Sunday (Sorry I missed you, Jon K! I just saw your message when I got home last night!), because I thought it was time that my friend's son, Royce, who is 13 and turning out to be quite the budding artist, got to experience his very first comic convention.

Let me tell you, I was so glad that I went back on Sunday, because the difference was like night and day. The crowds were much thinner. There were areas in the aisles where I could have done a cartwheel and not hit anyone. Isn't was still busy, mind you, but just busy enough in that perfect way where you could easily maneuver your way around while still having enough people to feed off of that classic comic con buzz.

So, I went from mild disappointment on Saturday to jubilation on Sunday which all adds up to this being my favorite comic convention of them all. Yes, SDCC is massive and epic, and you know how I felt about Wondercon, but ECCC is my hometown convention, with that certain personal something that it will always have over other cons.

You can be jolly well sure that I'll go again next year, possibly even making my two-day trip a new tradition.

Oh, and you know I scored some killer comics (I love the cheap boxes!)...

... but that is another story...