Check it out on Amazon

This is the first post in a recurring series on SMC aptly titled “Expensive Toys”. It’s for the things we all see when we duck into the toy aisle at our local Mega Store, and desperately want to take home with us, but rarely do.

Jabba’s Rancor

I’m not a Star Wars toy expert by any means, but I don’t remember ever seeing a Rancor toy that looked this awesome. I saw this the other day at Target, and the sticker indicates that it is a Target exclusive toy, but I’ve seen it on some online stores, like Amazon. It’s in the $60-80 range, so it definitely qualifies as an expensive toy. Needless to say, it didn’t come home with me, but someday it will be mine. Then I can reenact Luke stuffing a giant chicken bone in it’s mouth.

Are your GI Joe figures dying of boredom? Why not fix them up with a bunch of custom mini arcade cabinets from flickr user Big J.W.? He makes them to order, and I just put mine in for an Asteroids cabinet. Now I just need to get some GI Joes!

Check out his flickr set, and send me your pics if you order anything awesome.

As you all probably know, Friday was Avatar Day. I’m getting pretty good at explaining what Avatar is. I had to explain to my wife that we were going to the IMAX theater to see a 15 preview of a movie that doesn’t come out until December. The rest of the weekend was spent explaining to people that Avatar is going to be awesome.

I’m typically not one to buy into the hype machine, and I usually stay as far away as possible from motion capture, but upon seeing the Avatar preview on Friday, I am thoroughly excited. The CG may not be as eyeball-bursting as the hype suggested, but the scenes I saw were pretty amazing. The Na’vi have very expressive faces, and when they’re together (and not mixed with live action humans), I totally forgot I was watching CG.

But this is Saturday Morning Central, so lets talk about something really important…Avatar toys!

Avatar Toys

Forget the toys based on the movies based on the toys of our childhood. Avatar is going to have some awesome, totally original toys for kids to play with and in twenty years, blog about. Who wouldn’t want the Sigourney Weaver figure, or the Mech suit, or the cool helicopter-with-fans?

I can see some pretty epic action figure battles going on with these toys. The inner geek in me hopes that the Na’vi figures will be to scale with the humans, which would put them an inch or two taller. If not, I’ll survive.

Make sure to head over to Mattel’s Flickr stream to see more Avatar toys!

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Ever since they came out, I’ve been dying to get my hands on the NECA TMNT figures, but have never gotten around to it. I read about the awesome amount of articulation in them, and so I’ve always thought they would be great to use in some silly stop motion videos. This guy beat me to it, and the result is surprising.

Most stop motion videos on YouTube look like the ones I made when I was little, but the animation in this is smooth.

Nerf guns are fun, and if you work in an office, are the perfect distraction. I’m readying a video post on this topic, but in the meantime, here’s a classic Nerf commercial from the 90s. Enjoy.