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First, let me get to some old business. A few months ago, I made mention that Playmates Toys was producing a line of playsets and action figures based on the television show "The Simpsons" and over the last few weeks I have been hunting for them. Until the other day, I had abandoned all hope for finding anything related to the Simpsons toy line for about another month or so, but I got lucky. I found both the power plant playset and the Simpson's living room playset. I picked up a living room playset because it has Maggie and Marge in it. The playset itself is made of vary rugged plastic that can take lots of abuse. There's a couch and end table attached to the background and are very well detailed. Separate from the playset, is a television that has a sticker of the Itchy and Scratchy show on it, and it is also vary well detailed. The figures themselves are molded with vary durable plastic and are vary good three-dimensional molds of the characters from the show. Because of Marge's bizarre hairstyle, she stands about six inches tall and her arms are jointed at the shoulder so that provides vary limited playability, and she's jointed at the waist so that means she cannot sit down on the couch. Maggie is basically a statue rather than an action figure, but she has her arms stretched out in a `hug me' position, and looks vary cute. The best thing about the playsets are the fact that the action figures coming out with the line are designed to work with them. For example, the Maggie figure makes her pacifier sucking sound when placed onto the playset and a button is pressed. Marge says about six things when attached to the playset. My only problem with the line is that I cannot make a full evaluation of the line from this one playset, but if the figures are anything like this, they should be well worth the price.
Time to get to new business. When I was making my rounds of various sites that I normally visit for information, I learned that the Toys R Us chain was having a clearance sale of various high dollar items for ten dollars. What kind of high dollar items you ask? Well, how does a normally $90 AT-AT walker for $10 sound? The only problem with this was that by the time I got up to my local Toys R Us, everything good was gone. This made me mad to no end. Sure, probably some of that low priced merchandise was put into respectable hands, but probably most of it went into the hands of hoarders that will be selling it at their stores or at shows for such high mark-ups that the common man/collector will not be able to get it. If you are a collector like me, you get really mad that hoarders will swoop in and get all the good stuff at once. So here's my challenge to all of you collectors that read these articles month after month, try to stop them. I do not mean by violent means, but by other means. Start a collecting club/group and try to get enough hot items for the people in your group and not more. Also try to see if you can have your group members go out at various times to various places and gather information and then spread it by e-mail, fax, voice mail or just by phone. That way if someone wants or needs something really bad, they know where to get it or they can tell you what to get and then pay you back for it.
Other new business. A reader e-mailed me today, and wanted some information from me about a certain toy line they were collecting. I tried my best to accommodate them, but alas I came up short. So here's some homework I would like you to do to help out a fellow reader. In the Toy Story 2 line of toys, there are a series of marionettes based on the characters Woody and Bullseye, and the reader also found a listing for a marionette character of Jessie (I think that is the name) from the movie. The only problem is that when they tried to order it, they were informed by the place they ordered it from that it did not exist. So my question to my loyal readers is, did the Jessie marionette exist or was this just a mistake by the company they ordered from?
Thanks a lot for reading, and hopefully next month I'll have more to talk about.
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