MORE PREORDER: Peter Parker / Smythe

 I mean, these guys were both in the Sinister 11 picture, so yeah, I obviously got them.

DREAM GUEST: Alf on Hey! (EW)

“You’re always saying ‘I kill me.’ Why so negative? Why not ‘I love me?’”

I don’t know why the Alf figure gave me so many ideas. I go where the muse strikes me and I am not in control. There’s two more on deck for fuck’s sake.

PRE-OUT-OF-ORDER ACQUIRED: MMPR REmstered Red Ranger

 

Why did the worst Remastered figure shop three months early, and before the Black Ranger, which was supposed to be out in August? Do not question Hasbro or their ways.

FIG PHOTO: “Alf Ego” Ethalf Page

  So, this is mostly just for me?

NEW TOY: Schroedinger’s Cat-Eater (NECA Ultimate ALF)

 What’s the oipposite of an impulse purchase?

FIG PHOTO: Spider-Verse vs. The Sinister… 11?

 The genesis of this photo is very, very basic. “Man, I’ve been getting a lot of Spidey villains lately.” And I have! 

So I went through and grabbed every one I could find except Michael Keaton Vulture because one, I’m excluding MCU from this (I have VERY few MCU Spidey figures overall) and two, he’s an utter pain in the ass to photograph. So, ten villains.

So then it was “How many Spider-People do I have, not counting the three different “red-and-blue-costume” Spideys. Hey, that also makes 10.

I had originally thought about trying to pose each side as single pictures, or possibly two groups per side, but I did the math on the stands I have, the space I had available, and the verticality I wanted and quickly gave up on that plan.

So I posed and shot all 20 figures individually, composited them, layered them, rearranged them, found a few spots where I wanted a lower layer to overlap a higher layer (a lot with Doc Ock’s tentacles) and erased bits accordingly.

Then my Smythe/Peter Parker two pack charged to my card a couple months early so I realized I needed to wait a bit. 

When it arrived, I added Smythe to what is now the Sinister 11, and Peter Parker to where he needed to be. 

So then it was just doing some adjustments so that the lighting mismatches didn’t stand out too too much, and boom, done. The full list:

SPIDERVERSE: Marvel Legends Spidey (Amazing Friends 3-Pack); Spider-Verse 1 Miles, Gwen, Peter B. Parker, Noir, and Ham; Spider-Verse 2 Punk and Woman; Toy Biz Marvel Legends Symbiote Spider-Man, comics 2099. Animated Series Peter Parker.

SINISTER 11: Retro-card Tarantula, Lizard, Scorpion and Rhino; Animated 2-Pack Goblin, Doc Ock and Smythe; Into The Spider-Verse Wave Fog-Man, Prowler, and Stilt-Man BAF; Venom (Venom/Knull 2-Pack, wings off).

Mortal Kombat 1 (The Toy, Not THe Game)

 Arcade games are one of my favorite figure props. There have been a few lately as working toys that I’ve used, but none of the working miniature machines in the standard arcade game style are right. For various reasons, their proportions are off.

So when I was poking around for various 1/12-scale game-related items, I stumbled across this on Etsy. It’s a basic plastic cast arcade game mold and printed, applied stickers for a wide variety of games for 20 bucks plus shipping. It’s the right proportions, and a wide variety of sticker applications are available.

I went with the original Mortal Kombat, because, well, it’s absolutely classic. I would have gotten the original vector Star Wars game, but they don’t have unique molds for games with unique controllers or cabinets. I might have gotten like three if the Star Wars and/or the Tron had accurate controllers, but I understand why they don’t.

Anyway, it arrived quickly and looks good. But how well does it work with my figures?

Player 1 AND Player 2!

Not… bad. It’s a little small, because it’s strict 6” scale and most of my ostensibly 6” scale figures run larger than that to various degrees. Marvel Legends looks good, but my Jazwares Hnagman Adam Page looked huge next to it. One of the problems is that a lot of figures have longer than normally-proportioned legs, so while on a normal arcade machine, your waist would line up pretty good with where the controllers live, here they ride higher, so you have to do knee bends to get their hands anywhere near the controls. But it can be worked with, and it’s not like there are even better alternatives out there to choose from.