Marvel Legends - X-Men '97 Vintage Wave 2 - Goblin Queen - Hasbro 2024 Sometimes I feel bad for all the casual X-fans tuning into the movies and cartoons and trying to figure out the history of Jean Grey. She is an intriguing character that finds herself in the epicenter of the X-Men's greatest stories. But even as a longtime fan, I can't deny it gets a bit confusing. One of her most iconic incarnations (for me) is when her clone, Madelyne Pryor became the Goblin Queen in the Inferno storyline from 1988-89. I was an avid reader of The New Mutants (and X-Terminators) at this time so I w ..read more

DC Multiverse - Gold Label (Target Exc) - Cassandra Cain Batgirl - McFarlane 2024 One thing I have always loved about Cassandra Cain is that she is the first Bat-female to be unmistakably badass. As a specific sub-genre of comicdom (that I am wholeheartedly obsessed with), the female characters in the Batman universe are always strong, independent, and capable. But the comics community is inundated with fanboys who think Wolverine, Deadpool, and Lobo are the pinnacle of cool. And trying to convince them that characters like Barbara Gordon were deserving of their respect was always a tough t ..read more

Marvel Epic Hero Series - X-Men '97 5-Pack (Target Exc) Rogue - Hasbro 2023 X-Men women are some of the most interesting characters in all of comicdom. Their powers, personalities, and histories merge together to create a dynamic fully-realized person. I think the most widely-embraced example of this is Rogue. She's powerful, but delicate. She's flirty, but untouchable. And she is widely viewed as oozing sex appeal, but she is covered head to toe and is essentially chaste (out of necessity). And all that intrigue doesn't even take into account her villainous history and relation to Mystique ..read more

Marvel Epic Hero Series - X-Men '97 5-Pack (Target Exc) Storm - Hasbro 2023 I've been eagerly watching each episode of X-Men '97 on Disney+ since it debuted a month ago. Leading up to the first episode, I watched every episode of the original X-Men the Animated Series (which I had never completed before) and was excited to see how the adventures of all my favorite characters would continue. Without giving any spoilers, Storm's storyline was shockingly dramatic and upsetting (but by episode six it was all better) and I'm hoping she gets plenty of screentime in the final four episodes. Hasbro ..read more

Transformers Legacy United - Chromia (Cyberverse Universe) - Hasbro 2024 When the Cyberverse Arcee figure came out four years ago, I was certain we would be getting a Chromia in the line. All the original engineering for that new female body seemed wasteful for a single release. Plus I really liked the Chromia design. But we all know that never happened. And that Arcee became a shelfwarmer with an unfortunate trait of turning yellow over time. But the current Transformers Legacy line is intended to merge together characters from different Universes with a unified design aesthetic (I've been ..read more

DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms - Jun w/ Wu & Wei - Spin Master 2022 DreamWorks Dragons is a very impressive franchise. Since the first movie came out in 2010, there has been a non-stop flow of continued media. In fourteen short years, there has been: two additional movies, six animated shorts, thirteen video games, comics, novels, theme parks, live stage shows, and three animated series totaling 223 episodes. (Plus there is a live-action movie coming in 2025). DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms is the most recent addition - the series just ended in December 2023. The show featured ..read more

DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms - Alex & Feathers - Spin Master 2021 DreamWorks Dragons: The Nine Realms is the most recent entry in the long legacy of the How To Train Your Dragon (2010) franchise. It's a CGI-animated television series that ran for eight seasons and 52 episodes (ending recently in December of 2023). The series follows five young Dragon Riders in modern times (the leader of the group, Tom, is a descendant of Hiccup and Astrid) roughly 1300 years after the events of the first movie. Alexandra "Alex" Gonzales is one of the core characters and is the token technology e ..read more

Marvel Legends - Wolverine 50th Ann 2-Pack - Lady Mandarin - Hasbro 2024 Of all the X-Men, I've always felt that Psylocke has had the most interesting and extreme design changes. The fact that she was quite literally body-swapped in the 1990 Acts of Vengeance storyline just increased her number of unique appearances. Prior to 1990, Betsy Braddock was a lavender-haired British psychic telepath. But then she was brainwashed by The Hand and body-swapped with the East Asian assassin Kwannon and refined her powers to now present as her signature "psychic knife", a pink dagger-like energy spike e ..read more

Transformers Deluxe Class - Rise of the Beasts - Airazor - Takara Tomy 2023 I finally gave up and ordered this figure from a 3rd Party seller. When images of the Transformers: Rise of the Beasts movie products began being leaked online early last year, the very first item I saw was this Deluxe Class Airazor. The early images of this toy made me very excited for the movie and action figures. But ironically, this excitement was ill-founded because Airazor had no robot mode in the movie and this specific toy proved very hard to find. There was a US Hasbro release in a Target-exclusive "Ju ..read more

MAFEX #123 - Batman: Hush (Jim Lee) - Catwoman - Medicom Toys 2021 Hush is probably my favorite Batman storyline of all time. It ran twelve issues from Batman #608 (2002) through Batman #619 (2003) and featured nearly all of the active bat-characters at the time with a story by Jeph Loeb and art by the one-and-only Jim Lee. Everything about it was iconic and it's amazing to see it's still being celebrated (and merchandized) twenty years later. One of the unsung side-effects of Hush though was the elevation of Catwoman's utilitarian costume to permanent status. We may take this black goggled ..read more