[ludovicotek]

MU DIORAMA

Unlike years past, none of the exclusives had me dying to get them this year. There was a lot of cool stuff, but not one thing that I felt I just had to have. Instead, I was completely in awe of Hasbro's Marvel Universe diorama. They perfectly showed off one of the strongest points of this scale of toy. I loved the Doom castle with the battles going on all around. And the mixing of Cobra Commander and Storm Shadow in there with Marvel's villains is another example of why so many people love this smaller scale for toys. Above everything else, this thing just looked so damn FUN!!! Who of us didn't want to have that display case in our homes and just lock ourselves up for a week while we set up our own scenario in there. Just plain awesome.





MOTUC RAM-MAN

MOTUC had another stellar year at SDCC. I was already incredibly excited to see the preview night pics with that display case based on the vintage poster artwork even before the figures went in. The Matty panel was one of the strongest of the whole con, revealing the remaining characters for this year and the first few from next year. Most important among them: RAM FU**ING MAN!!! Finally! But the good news didn't stop there. Jitsu is another figure that I'm really looking forward to. And the Fighting Foe Men were actually a very nice surprise. Also, the create a character contest winner, Castle Grayskullman, is actually pretty damn cool looking IMO, despite the goofy name. All in all, very happy to into this line and couldn't be happier with how the 4H handled 'ol Rammy.




DUTCH

This one came out of nowhere. I'v been collecting movie based figures ever since McFarlance came out with Movie Maniacs series 1 back in '98. I have all of them, right up to the last series. When NECA took over I was right with them the whole way as well, buying just about every one of their Cult Classics. Even other, smaller lines have come along (Sota's Now Playing) and if they had a character from a movie I liked never hesitated to pick them up. NECA has just been carrying the torch now for the last several years and they never cease to amaze me with the licenses they choose to pick up and produce figures for. This year they showed off plenty of stuff that I know I'll be buying. Gremlins, Rocky, Rambo, Promoetheus, T2... the list keeps going. But the Dutch figure from Predator just blew me away. I've been wanting a figure of this character since forever and they totally captured the likeness perfectly. I couldn't have been more excited to see this reveal and it was one of the highlights of the entire con for me.