Open Your Toys Cast

We try to make up for lost time with our longest episode ever. And I do mean EVER. Can you say 3 and a half hours? That’s right kids. I have finally started to let go of my obsessive need to try to keep the show short. However we still had to cut a couple segments just to maintain our sanity. During the marathon we discuss the Joe Club’s new incentive figure and possible Joecon sets. Is Hasbro starting its own Transformers con? Probably not, but we can dream. A legend wins an award for a really crappy toy and we fawn over the new Masters mini-comic collection. It truly is an amazing collectible. So please, sit back, relax and enjoy the toy goodness.

We're light on news this time around, but still manage to tangent this thing out to an hour and a half. We got to some a very disappointing size comparison for Masterpiece Bumblebee. We review one of my most anticipated MOTUC figures of the entire line. One of my most anticipated episodes of TV premieres tonight as well. Here's hoping they do it justice. For lack of any better Star Wars news, this happened.

This time around we discuss the first true 3rd party Gobots homage. We get the very reasonable pricing on the G.I. Joe 50th Anniversary TRU exclusives. Leland Chee posts what I'm considering the best way to watch the Clone Wars from beginning to end, literally. Lastly, could we be seeing Lego compatible Masters of the Universe? Find out why we may not even have to wait until a "movie year". All this and more on our first regular episode in almost a year.

Mrs. McFavorite wanted to bring the cast back and I thought there would be no better time than one of the two largest yearly milestones for news in our community. That's right, they're doing that again. While this year was a little lackluster, there were still some amazing reveals across the board. First Matty revealed Rio Blast. Being from New Mexico, cowboy themed toys always have held a special place for me, especially ones armed to the teeth. Something a lot of people had doubts about was Joe, but as promised at SDCC, Hasbro came with the goods for the 50th Anniversary. Especially this little snow-themed two-pack with two of my favorite vehicles and modern take on one of my favorite drivers of all time. Transformers brought the heat as usual, this time figuratively in the form of a Generations Leader Jetfire. Lastly, while seeing this made me this most happy, a certain gangster slug was the big reveal for Star Wars. Unfortunately with the rumor a version with dais and Salacious Crumb is planned for SDCC i

In the same fashion as two years ago. It's 4 am, we leave for our flight in 12 hours. I still have to pack, send out BMF's first birthday invitations, put together our swag, clean out our back room for the in-laws, do a return and most importantly get some quality time with BMF since I worked a 12 hour day. Sleep? Who needs sleep. Watch the feeds for live blogs of all the big toy panels. See you after the con!

Wow, just WOW! That was our initial reaction as we approached the Denver Convention Center on Friday for our first taste of the 2nd annual Denver Comic Con. As we neared the entrance I overheard a door person explaining that this was the beginning of the line and that the end of the line wrapped around block. The most shocking thing was he stated it would be shorter to go the opposite direction to get to the end of the line. It was at that moment I knew we were in for an AMAZING show.

Hey, hey, hey, it's con season and we got some reporting to do, and we are going to talk about a panel or two. You'll have some fun now with me and the Mrs. here. Learning about StarFest while we drink some beer. Na, na, na, we had a good time. Na, na, na, your gonna have a good time!

This is one my favorite shows of the year. As usual we had some amazing announcements this year. Mattel blew their load involuntarily and in those leaks was one of my favorite things from show. It is perhaps one of my favorite figures from the entire line in his best homage yet. While most of the G.I. Joe toys had already been shown, we did get this treat. No matter how many versions of this figure we see, every time he just gets better and better. Transformers had my best of show yet again. No it wasn't the largest Transformer to date; it was one of my favorite characters from the '86 movie. Finally Hasbro rocked the community with its announcement of a new Star Wars 6″ line. Black Series is possibly the "crossover" that may save the Star Wars line. Only time will tell.

So what got us excited before what was one of the best Toy Fairs to date? The biggest news in years was the announcement of the Gentle Giant sculpted Star Wars Black Series 6 inch line. This has got me incredibly excited. Robot Kingdom once again teased us with a preorder outta left field for the Transformers brand. While not necessarily a preorder, a major retailer's computer system revealed yet another amazing item, this time for the G.I. Joe franchise. While not necessarily action figure related, Masters of the Universe had some great new items as well and it's finally something Mrs. McFavorite can appreciate.

Project Genesis continues to amaze us. Now we just need some alt mode pics. On the opposite end of the size spectrum are these new Lego Star Wars polybags. I'm loving the Umbarran MHC, both scales. One of my favorite figures this year is MOTUC Granamyr. Find out if he was worth the almost $100 price tag and if you should hunt him down on the secondary market. Bringing up the rear yet again is G.I. Joe, but at least Wave 2 of the Retaliation was in stock at one retailer.

Here's our fifth annual Black Friday cast. As you're gorging on turkey and/or deals, remember as collectors we have hundreds, sometimes thousands of things to be thankful for. But, please do not forget to be thankful for the things that really matter, friends and family.

If you saw my last post, you know I'm not really feeling these as of late. So I'm taking a break. We're not taking a break, just me in regard to writing posts to accompany the shows. I just need to want to do these and I right now I don't. FYI our 5th Annual Black Friday show will be out tomorrow. Spoiler, there's not that much on sale at least in the stores. Here's hoping my online research turns up more deals tomorrow.

Perhaps the biggest news, literally, is the MOTUC Castle Grayskull. The thing is massive and we're creeping up towards the minimum. If you haven't pre-ordered yet, do so NOW. G.I. Joe actually had some news this time around. Hasbro announced Kre-O is finally repping Joe-style. Most of it looks pretty bad, but there are a few pieces I can't wait for. So everyone knows this is a thing. I'm excited about the game, but I could care less about the toys. Finally, I'm so happy to see that we'll be getting the GDO G1 Deco ROTF/HFTD Leader Starscream. Man that's a mouth full.

You will hear about the amazing reveal at the MOTUC panel at Power-Con. Did you know there was a missing Star Wars figure? Me neither. G.I. Joe was abysmal this week (as usual). No wonder they preempted their NYCC event with Kre-O news. Finally, Transformers, as usual, had a slew of news. Not quite as exciting as what we found out after the cast, but still interesting nonetheless.

With that out of the way, now on to the happy. Here are my favorite things from the show. First up, Celebration VI gave us our first in hand look at the Vintage Collection Royal Guard. I bought an extra opener and now I wish I had bought ten. I talk about focus characters during the show and the Royal Guard is to Star Wars as Soundwave and his minions are to Transformers. That makes this e-Hobby/TFCC colabo an absolute must. Joe news is almost non-existent as usual, but another focus character rears his beautiful shoe? Finally while I couldn't keep the focus character train rolling, we did review one of my favorite Masters of the Universe Classics piece of the entire line.

SDCC 2012... If you can't think of at least a half of a dozen things you're excited about you need to find a new hobby. I don't think I said this on the show, but here are my favorite announcements from each line. For Masters this guy was killing it for me. Nostalgia will usually trump everything and Jitsu was one of my favorites as a kid. While Joe fans got the shaft once again panel-wise, fan sites got the opportunity to talk to the man with the plan, Derryl DePriest. He sounds excited for the 50th anniversary next year. He let it be known while it's the 50th for the brand, it will still focus on ARAH and that makes me excited. For the transforming giant robot lover in me, the news that we'll be getting the Asian Exclusives/China Imports trumped even a mechanized space dinosaur from a video game. And you know how much I love all of those things individually, let alone all in one toy. Lastly Star Wars was pretty lackluster, but again the nostalgia came through. We didn't just get the nostalgia of a Speeder B

This week is mostly catch up with all the craziness leading up to SDCC. Not a lot news, but ridiculous amounts of sightings and new pre-orders which is about par for the course. With Joecon came The Concept Case. This thing has instigated a lot of discussion and as with all fandoms a good share of negativity. These two Kreon "combiners" kicked off what we would find out at SDCC is basically an amazing new direction for Kre-O Transformers. Star Wars has been a little lack luster as of late, but we have a little more Vintage on the way, but not much else. SPOILER, the first part of 2013 is going to suck. Lastly, Matty had an amazing (in my opinion at least) albeit expensive month. The Griffin, Atrocitus, Green Lion, Horde Prime and Snake Man-At-Arms were superb.

As usual, we get plenty of toy talk in during the show which was recorded in its entirety at Denver Comic Con 2012. In Masters news, we're getting a great quarterly variant in one of my favorite vintage toys, Dragon Blaster Skeletor. While we're in a holding pattern with Joe for the next 7-8 months, we got an amazing Joe compatible product in Marauder "Gun-Runners" Series 6. In the "coolest thing I've seen in a while" category is this Star Wars Lego hologram display. My favorite news of the show? Masterpiece Soundwave with a MP Laserbeak and his other minions are not only confirmed, but displayed. While the uncharismatic bore is a pretty simple Masterpiece relatively, the Laserbeak is amazing. His guns actually fold in on his cassette mode. I CANNOT wait for this, no pun intended, masterpiece.

Did you know we're finally getting Mekaneck? Oh and what a neck it is. Speaking of Meka's, we're also getting a mechanized Darth Maul in a Battle Pack with one of the hardest to find Clone Wars figures and a fan favorite. Even if the Voyager Fall of Cybertron Soundwave poops out his data discs (never knew difference of disc vs. disk), I still love him with all my heart. Something else I love is YoJoe.com's new Toy Archive. It's amazing when the best get better.

The reason why we normally don't do interviews or have guests on is we love the dynamic of just "kicking it". From the get go Gary "Commander and Chief" and Mike "Beach Head" Irizarry of What's on Joe Mind fit right in. It was literally seconds until we were all laughing and that's what really matters. We all felt so at home that just our con segment took over one and a half hours. So we decided to just scrap our regular format and spend the next hour talking about the postponement of G.I. Joe: Retaliation. We talked what it meant for the movie, the franchise and most importantly the toys. Since Gary and Mike didn't say too much on the What's on Joes Mind Special Edition 13: The Retaliation Reaction, this is the first opportunity to hear all their thoughts on what is arguably the most significant news in the Joe fandom in recent history.