Star Wars: The Black Series Inferno Squad Trooper

 

Two years ago the Thanksgiving holiday was spent intensely playing Star Wars Battlefront. This year, Battlefront II has been taking up a significant portion of the break. Seemed like a good time to talk about this Gamestop exlcusive game tie in figure.

Star Wars: MAFEX Stormtrooper

 

Not much is known in these parts about the higher end Star Wars figure lines. Spotted on multiple occasions at C2E2 or among the pages of online retailers, there has been a general curiosity and appreciation for the offerings of lines such as MAFEX, but official forays into them had never happened until very recently.

Iron Factory: Tyrant’s Wings Clone

Here’s something that’s a little different. There has been a vein of the third party mine that has focused on making small, Legends scale figures as opposed to the larger variety. As an idea, this has been one that has been well received, and one that at times has piqued Coffin interests as well. One such company is Iron Factory, and when their TFCon USA 2017 exclusive Sunstorm repaint of their Starscream was announced, it seemed like as good a time as any to jump in to this area of third party merchandise.

So, Iron Factory’s Legend scaled Starscream is called Tyrant, and the other Seekers fall under the group moniker of Tyrant’s Wings. Sunstorm, as established by the Dreamwave G1 continuity, was a religious zealot who identified Starscream as his brother, so it kinda makes some sense that here, in the unofficial realm, that would translate to Clone.

Kinda.

Mass Burial: Giant Squid, Monster in the Creek

So, I got a request for this Mass Burial. Maybe a suggestion would be more accurate. My ten year anniversary of my relationship with my wife is rapidly approaching, and in the time leading up to our dating, I had been investing a lot of time in the band Giant Squid, a now defunct progressive sludge outfit from California. Not entirely defunct, so much as they have morphed into an incredibly similar “new” band with a different name: Squalus.

TFC Toys Hades: Thanatos

 

Thanatos was the second member of the Hades team to be released, and was the second to last member of the Hades team to be obtained. He is the analog for Killbison on the team, transforms into a tank, serves as a leg, and is the same body in both modes as Hypnos. Symmetry.

Grave Considerations: Apple Music

Your boy Moby Richard is notoriously slow to embrace new technology. It was 2012 when he decided to move on to the iPod and ditch the giant CD wallet that was always under the driver seat of his car. The early stages of iPod acceptance were not pretty, as technological misunderstandings and a general sense of frustration with things he doesn’t understand really, really overwhelmed him. But man, did he end up loving that iPod. 148 gigs of music, in his pocket.

Shift in forward in time (and in pronoun) to 2017, and my iPod was starting to cause me more stress than I wanted. It was getting old, and it had been host to many, many albums that were added and removed again and again, and I’d read online that Apple had discontinued the model (the 160gb iPod Classic), which meant that if something happened to mine, I was going to be without my massive music menagerie until I found what would undoubtedly be an inferior replacement option. See, I’m a creature of habit. I don’t so much resist or oppose new things or new technology so much as I find something I like and stick with it because I like it; it’s comfortable. My father, he hated technology, and basically decided against ever even trying to learn how to use it. My sister, who is younger than I for what it’s worth, shuts down at the possibility of technology, preferring to act like a senior citizen from the days of old, decrying new things as crap and bemoaning their adoption by and into society. My dad died without knowing how to operate a DVD player; my sister gets angry because Blu-Ray has replaced DVD. I guess being technophobic runs in my family. But I’m not against technology, I just like what I like, and I stick with what I know and what is comfortable.

TFC Toys Hercules: Neckbreaker

Neckbreaker is the first of the Hercules set that feels not so great. The TFC Toys analog for Bonecrusher, this figure shares a lot with Exgraver, but executes not as well.

By now, the general positives of the Hercules figures have been well documented. Fun. Good looking. Nice Cybertron aesthetic. Amusing to transform. Decently but not excessively posable. Neckbreaker exhibits all of those things. But he is a figure that generally disappoints.

Mass Burial: The Black Dahlia Murder, Nightbringers

This is an exciting review. It marks the end of another Mass Burial project, one that introduced me to a band I was unfamiliar with and yielded a lot of positive exposure. It made me a fan of a new band, one that I had consciously ignored for many years. And, it concludes with a brand new album, released in 2017, so I can add another current year record to my list of things I’ve heard this year.

Mass Burial: The Black Dahlia Murder, Abysmal

When I was looking up information on Ritual, I found a quote from vocalist Trevor Strnad where he says that, during the writing of said album, The Black Dahlia Murder just wanted to write the most-Black Dahlia Murder album that they possibly could. I would argue that the distinction of the band trying their best to write the most them record would go to Abysmal. Everything that you know and like or love (or hate) about this band in found in equal parts on this album.

Mass Burial: The Black Dahlia Murder, Everblack

Following the letdown (because I can’t think of anything else to call it) of Ritual, The Black Dahlia Murder returned with  Everblack. And things got right back to where they were, which is good. This is a record that is much more like it for the band, and even as an admittedly casual listener, I appreciate this a whole lot more than I did the previous outing.

Everblack returns to all the things that made the first four albums so much fun to listen to. There’s nothing out of the ordinary or revolutionary going on here, but the speed and the riffs are back, the Swedeathness is back, the fun is back. Where Ritual was plodding and dull, Everblack returns to that formula of fast and fun that not only the early works, but Swedish Melodic Death metal in general, possesses.

Star Wars: The Black Series Elite Guards

It was extra hard to get a decent picture of the package. This was the best one....

 

 

In August, a package arrived containing the Black Series Imperial Guard. Pretty new at that time, the objective was to get a review of it posted as soon as was possible. Then time got scarce, and that obviously never happened. At the time, it was speculated that, with a little bit of repainting, the Imperial Guard could be turned into the blue Senate Guard from the Prequel Trilogy, and even better, the Shadow Guard from “The Force Unleashed” game. If you follow the Coffin, you know that these e-tail exclusive boxed sets are completely beloved around these parts, and never is an opportunity to purchase one missed. At various points in time, ideas for future ones have been floated, from a Clone Commander set (possibly less likely now that Cody, Gree, and Rex have all been released) to an ARC Trooper set, and probably a few others. In August, when the single Imperial Guard arrived, thoughts turned to a multipack of different colored guards. Then came Force Friday, and this set was announced, and it was clear that someone had sold out ol’ Moby Richards’ great idea. Either that, or ol’ Moby’s going to be getting a royalty check in the future. Maybe.

Transformers: Titans Return Quake

 

 Quake was a figure that was greatly anticipated at the Coffin. A repaint of Wave 1’s Hardhead, Quake is a Decepticon tank. What’s not to love about that? The Titans Return line seems really light on Decepticons, so almost any such figures are welcome. Such is part of the motivation behind the scramble to find Misfire and Slugslinger, to not only complete the Targetmaster trio, but also to add some more bad guys to the roster of the line.

The figure itself has mostly been covered already, and so outside of paint and face differences there isn’t a whole lot to say. But much like wavemate Krok, Quake came along at a time (and a Walgreens) when new figures were fairly scarce, and since he was on the shopping list anyway, was an easy pickup to make.

Transformers: Titans Return Krok

 Titans Return Krok is a repaint of Skullcruncher with a new head. Thank you for reading.

Waiting for the last two Waves of Titans Return toys has been absolutely agonizing. This Wave, which also contained Kup, Perceptor, Topspin and Quake, first appeared in this area over the summer. It took forever for the entire Wave to appear, and even now, in November, it is rare at local retail. Like many of the early figures in this line, Krok was found and purchased at a Walgreens, a beneficiary of that “haven’t found figures in ages, so must buy this one” impulse.

Mass Burial: The Black Dahlia Murder, Ritual

Boy, you think you have a band figured.