Thursday, June 22, 2023

JUNE TOYS: The Impulse Buys

 


June was split about 70/30 between pre-orders and impulse buys, although there’s still a week left to bring that impulse buy percentage up. Unlikely, but after seeing Guardians 3, the appeal of the entire Guardians 3 wave which I decided against because everyone was in the blue uniforms rose sharply now that I have context for the blue uniforms. Anyway.

Again, my Funko Pop purchasing has dropped way off as I’ve focused more on 6” figures, and also as the number of new characters I care about dwindles. Gmaestop was having a bonus clearance sale, and in it was a Funko Letterkenny 2-Pack of Stuart and Roald that I didn’t know existed and had to have. So, despite some hefty challenges determining if, first, the bonus percentage was actually being applied, and second, what exactly their free shipping rules are these days, I grabbed it for what ended up being still cheaper than regular price shipped.

Funkos are weird because more often than not, the style and format aren’t conducive to capturing a character in a meaningful way, and this many years in, most of the good ones have been done. So it was a pleasant surprise to see that Stuart and Roald follow the excellent other Letterkenny pop tradition, with pelnty of character-specific details to keep you from looking at them a year down the road and asking yourself “who the fuck is this again?” 

Speaking of sales, BigBadToyStore got a BigBad pile of the Andor / B2EMO two-packs and sold them for cheap.

I assume they got a big pile of them because tried to sell a Guy In A Jacket And Pants and a Square Lump Of Droid Bits for almost sixty fucking dollars before the show even came out, and the audience, rightly, suggested that Hasbro engage in marital relations with that noise.

BBTS’s e-mail advertised price was $19.99, so yeah, I jumped on that right away. They later sent out a correction that the price was $24.99, which was still reasonable, but when shipping time came around for me, they honored the original price I bought it at, which was nice. Anyway, it’s not a great pair of toys, but it is a very accurate pair of toys, and my connection to these characters has now been established by a very good show, so they’re a nice addition to the collection now that the pirce is reasonable.


Marvel Legends Ultimate Captain America was always going to be an “if I saw it on the shelf” toy. I want a workable comics-style Cap, and the existing options are both a little weird and a lot unavailable tat a reasonable price, so if I was gonna get one anhytime soon, this was the option. But the angry faces and the lack of head-wings meant it’d wait for a moment of weakness, which predictably came at Target when I needed water filters and snickerdoodles. 

Cap falls squarely in the “very good” category of Marvel Legends otherwise, with an excellent shield, very good sculpt and paint, and very good mobility. I may scour eBay to see if I can get a different Cap head cheap, but I doubt the colors would match right.


No comments:

Post a Comment