Toy Story

Anyone whose seen my twitter feed this week may have been expecting a blog reminiscing about my gaming days playing Heroquest, Warhammer 40k and Blood Bowl. And you know what? I'm proabably going to write one fairly soon. But this isn't it! Nope, for while a huge wave of nostalgia basically mugged me this week, mugged me, dragged me to it's house and tied me in it's basement, I had already made prior plans for this weekend. And those plans had involved a little bit of toy hunting.

You may be thinking, 'a 30 year old hunting for toys? What?! This is madness!?' and if you are, then I can only assume you're severely lost and really have no business reading the blog of a nerd. If you're still here, meh, it's your time you're wasting reading my rambling nonsense...

So yes, I went toy hunting. I like my action figures. My collection is modest and basically consists of whim purchases and presents. I'm not aiming for complete sets really, just picking up odd ones that I like the look of.

My jaunt today was to a car boot sale. It's a regular and large event and on previous visits I've found a few gems.

This is today's haul

Batman and Robin are lead figures I found at a stall that had a huge bunch of them. I had some serious thinking time deciding which ones to get. Eventually I decided on these two over trying to start the Titans. They're completely awesome statues, the detailing is fantastic and it's an awesome paint job. I was quite pleased with these two and I'm hoping the same guy will be selling the next time I go there.

Shortly after that we found a stall with a bunch of random action figures dumped on some tarpaulin in front of the table. I glanced over it and there was nothing of any interest, I almost turned and carried on and suddenly I spotted a Kyle Rayner Green Lantern. Whaat? This looks to be Kyle's first costume as GL. You know how people tend to say that one particular actor who plays Doctor Who is 'their Doctor'. Often the first one they remember seeing, the one who means the most to them? Well, Kyle is my Green Lantern. Not my first as I read some Hal Jordan before he went Parallax, but Kyles the one I read most while growing up (yes, I said growing up while talking about reading comics) and the one I related to. Since Hal's return, while Kyle is still around and gets a decent role, the focus is back on Hal. I haven't seen a Kyle action figure before, so spotting this one was pretty exciting. The shame is, it's not actually a great figure. The details are off, there's no symbol on the costume, the ring is painted flesh colour and the positions are terrible. I'm not sure why it's set up so he can only be posed in ridiculous, splayed legs poses, it's a little embarassing for him I imagine. But it's a Kyle figure, and it cost 50p, so I'm happy with it.

The last couple of times I went, there was a stall with a huge amount of random out of packaging figures of many varieties, including plenty of Star Trek and Star Wars. Sadly this guy didn't seem to be about, which was a shame, as I was hoping to increase my Next Gen set. My original series new movie (has anyone come up with a better way to reference this version of trek yet?) which began with a birthday present last year is now a complete primary crew and I hope to do the same for the Next Generation crew.

Obviously I still have a little way to go! My bigger set so far is the Doctor Who toys. This started a few years back when my lovely fiancee bought me a radio controled Dalek. Soon after I was given a smaller radio controlled K9 which came with a 10th Doctor figure. And it's slowly increased a little from there, with my patient, long suffering fiancee contributing when christmas and birthday's roll around. Bless her. I hope she doesn't come to her senses before the wedding.

There's a Tardis, a tiny Dalek keyring, the 10th Doctor, Jack Harkness, a weeping Angel, the Master, Professor Yana, a Time Lord, K9, a Sontaran trooper, the sun infected guy from 42, the Moxx of Balhoon!, a Cyberman and a natural Ood. Oh and a Sonic Screwdriver.

So I end my short trundle through my toys with my favourite figure. My Hal Jordan Green Lantern! It's a brilliant figure, it has about a bazillion points of articulation, it's huge for an action figure and wonderfully detailed!

And yes, that is a Green Lantern Ring at the base, alongside a Blue Lantern ring.