One PEZ to Rule Them All...

Any of you who've been reading my blog for a decent length of time probably know by now that I love nothing more than when two of my geeky interests collide into one single roiling mass of nerdocity. And as a fan of the Lord of the Rings (both the books and the movies) and a lover and former die-hard collector of PEZ dispensers (I sold off my entire collection to one person and made enough money to live on for almost a year back when I was first in college), you can imagine my unbridled joy when I opened this surprise birthday box from my big bro (who has made giants strides in understanding his little brother's weirdness) and laid my peepers on this brilliant box collection of LOTR PEZ...

Good... gods... the sheer... awesomeness...

Here we see Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the White reminiscing about the good old days of traveling with a party of dwarves and battling dragons. And also being filled with small, fruit-flavored bricks of candy.

Despite their boxy fuselages in lieu of anthropomorphic bodies, the PEZ dispensers below show the harrowing journey of Frodo and Samwise, with Golem in tow, toward the flaming pits of Mount Doom. One can almost hear Samwise uttering the word, "POE-TAY-TOES." 

And no epic journey would be complete without the fearless vanguard of Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli. In fact, the plastic sculpted visage on the Aragorn PEZ dispenser shows more range in facial expression than the actual Viggo Mortensen. Now to see if the Legolas dispenser can shield-surf down a flight of stone steps.

With any hope, the Bearer of the One Ring will reach the end of his quest in the foul depths of Mordor, destroying the ring of Sauron, and the armies of Gondor, lead by the fearless son of Arathorn, will push back the Uruk'hai horde, and peace will reign once again in the age of dwarves, elves, men and Hobbits. And also with as much hope, there will be extra strawberry PEZ in the pack, and not too much lemon.

YOU SHALL NOT PASS!!!

So, I was digging through a few of the gazillion boxes that we moved from storage to the new house and I came across this figure that I had bought 2 years ago at the Emerald City Comic Con and never opened and I thought, "Oh snap! I'm gonna open this up and take pictures of it!"

So I did.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you Gandalf the White from Middle Earth Toys!

Who the hell is Middle Earth Toys, you ask? Good question. I do remember these toys hitting retail about 2 or 3 years before the movies came out, but at that point, I had only read The Hobbit so I didn't really care about them. Soon after, I would devour all three novels in one Summer and be a true blue Tolkien fan forevermore.

As I said, I spotted this figure in a cheap-o bin at the ECCC, and despite the $9.00 price tag, I got him for $3.00.

Looking on the back of the card, these folks had some high hopes for their toy line, with their claim of "Over 40 figures planned!" Yeah, I bet there were. But it looks like they only made the first 6 or so.

Here we see the figure itself, which actually has some nice features and details, like the stitching on the hem of his cloak and the real metal chain around his neck. Not bad for a 6" figure. Oddly enough, however, he only has one elbow joint, on his right arm.

He come with a slew of accessories, and as an accessory junkie, I admit that this is what pobably sold me on him in the first place. He come with his Sorting Hat (Gryffindor!), his staff, what appears to be a money pouch, a bag of marijuana, a pipe to smoke it with and of course, Glamdring, his bad ass shiny sword complete with scabbard.

Here he is all decked out, calling Pippin a "fool of a Took!"

And I wanted to make this cool group shot of him with all of the nine Fellowship members, but since I don't have any Lord of the Rings figures (isn't that kind of weird?), I had to make do with what I had. Here we see the Fellowship; Boromir, Gandalf, Legolas and Aragorn in the back row, and in the front we see Gimli, Merry, Pippin, Frodo and Sam.

Now that's a fine group of adventurers!