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| Enter, ye pilgrim, and browse silently... |
This week the Emcat and I took a trip out of town, and as
always when we end up anywhere other than here I was spoiled by the selection
of geek wares available to purchase. This amount of capitalist envy may necessitate
yet another move in the near future…
To begin with we stopped in at one of my favourite stores,
Leicester’s Forbidden Planet International. I’m a big fan of both FP chains, and
I always try and drop into them when I can (FP Coventry
served as my LCS from Civil War through to NYX, and it was somewhere I always enjoyed going). The Leicester store is no different and
over the last three months they’ve sold me plenty of Transformers, TMNT and
Spider-Man comics and TPBs. This was the first time I’d been out this way since May, and
there were a few standout items that really caught my eye this time around:
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| Yes please! |
Here we have IDW's Last Stand of the Wreckers, Play Arts Kai's Arkham City Robin, and NECA's Gypsy Danger from Pacific Rim (something I had little interest in until actually seeing it on the shelf). Unfortunately at the minute
these are all consigned to the ‘one day’ list – but given that I started my
new job today, that’ll hopefully be one day soon!
A brief sojourn into the Disney
Store scored me a look at the rest of the first wave of Star Wars 12” talking
figures, and whilst I’m not sure about Luke, Han Solo and the Stormtroopers
look as good as the Darth Vader. Given the size, great sculpting, poseability
and action features on these guys, it’s actually criminal that Hasbro is
selling the 6” Black Series at the same price point. Something is going to give
there, and soon.
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| The standard attractions... |
We saw a few other cool sights as well, including a market
place which was trying its hardest to entice me back to vintage video games, which
reminded me that I’m interested in Titanfall and led directly to a look around
Game. Verdict: I have no time for video games. This makes me feel sad on one
level, but productive and ever-so-slightly ‘adult’ on another…
Of course, all these boasts of adulthood were undone with a
follow up trip to Northampton’s Toys ‘R’ Us, the finest purveyor of
Transformers toys that I’m aware on in the Northants area. This is in large
part because other than the supermarkets there’s nowhere else to actually buy the
things, of course…
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| The state of brick and mortar today... |
I’ve not really been too smitten with the AOE line, but I
think that Scorn looks quite nice. This trip also gave me my first glimpse of
Evasion Mode Optimus Prime ‘in the plastic’, so to speak, and I have to say
that it looks even better in real life than it does online. I’m still not
convinced that it’s the Prime for me though, although I’ll reserve my full judgement
until I see the Evolutions two-pack version up close. It’s a definite case of
facemask FTW.
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| Double Optimus! |
So there you go; in the world of ‘If I Had Money’, these are the kind of products I’d be coming home with after a Saturday afternoon out. The thing is that even with all this brick and mortar love, I know that online shops provide a much wider selection at highly competitive prices – sites like the excellent Kapow! and Star Action Figures bear me out here – but I maintain that there’s nothing like seeing an item in hand and weighing it up before committing to buy it, and that’s where TRU, with its FOC Generations Deluxes and Voyagers gathering dust, holds the slightest of advantages.
This is an area where I struggle with buying 3rd Party products (as opposed to any moral/copyright concerns). I’ll caveat that by saying that I own Fansproject’s Quadruple U and I’m really impressed with the build quality; but that was a purchase I had weighed up for a long time before going for it. Maybe it’s the case that it is worth waiting on those pre-orders until the figure is in (someone’s) hand, with the trade-off being that you just pay a slightly higher price later down the road for a figure that you know is worth the cost?
So anyway, there’s that idea… And then FP comes along and teases
Classics style not-Dinobots.
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| Targetmaster Dinobots! |
Well, there goes that resolve.
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