Parry Game Preserve - Latest News

Preserve Favorite Joe Hill Makes Bank

I've mentioned author Joe Hill here several times, and his excellent ongoing comic series Locke & Key. The popularity of his comic has rightly grown month by month, and he himself has just announced on his Twitter feed (with a longer post here) that Locke & Key has been optioned by Fox! That's great news for Joe and artist/collaborator Gabriel Rodriguez - two excellent guys who are meeting with the success they richly deserve.

Note: I'm the one in the picture who doesn't look like a creative genius (San Diego Comic Con 2008).

G.I. Joe Rise of Cobra PIT Playset - $20 at TRU!

I admit it - I was a very poor supporter of the G.I. Joe movie line. Here on this site one of the things that I like to talk about above all else is how great the '80s were, in particular due to the sheer lunacy of the toys, measured primarily through the size and scale of the vehicles and playsets. Companies these days can't stop beating the drum of how items like that are just no longer feasible - they take up too much shelf space, the costs are much higher now, they think buying habits have changed and there isn't enough market support....yet Hasbro took a chance.

Hasbro took a chance and made their absurdly large PIT playset as the keystone of their Rise of Cobra line. And what did I do? I took lots of pictures of it at Toy Fair; I talked to the reps excitedly about what a great sea change it was in the modern action figure industry; I waited excitedly to see it on store shelves; then I looked with peace and satisfaction at the $100 price tag, and walked on by. I was part of the problem, not part of the solution! That's why, as happy as I am to have just scored this massive playset from toysrus.com for $20 ($30 shipped) it is a little bitter-sweet, and I had to confess my failing here on the Preserve. Sure I've just saved 80% on this massive set, but by waiting I contributed to the lower sales numbers that resulted in this clearance price, and may have tanked the chance for such sets in the future.

Phew, glad I got that all off my chest! Let's hope that the numbers were still good enough for this set that Hasbro doesn't lose all hope and interest, and that we can see at least one more large set every couple years - the Star Wars ones seem to be working out so far with that massive AT-AT hitting shelves right now, even though the Big Falcon from a few years back did see similar clearance prices so there is definitely not a perfectly linear relation. As such, go take advantage of this fantastic deal at toysrus.com today, if you've been holding off on buying this fun set, complete with mini-cardboard-ping-pong table! Thanks to Adam at 16bit.com for this killer tip!

Mezco Toyz - Living Dead Dolls Retro Halloween Sets

Press Release:

Mezco Toyz - Living Dead Dolls Retro Halloween Sets

Living Dead Dolls Retro Halloween Sets Are Scary Fun For All

Mezco unveils it's best Halloween treat ever: Three retro Halloween-themed boxsets that include an old school-styled plastic mask, exclusive 10" doll and a coordinating T-shirt (XL only). The trio consists of three of the most popular Halloween Living Dead Dolls ever created: Calavera The Skull, Pumpkin- The Jack O' Lantern and Gabriella- The Ghoul.

Each set harkens back to your favorite childhood Halloween memories with an adult-sized plastic mask with elastic straps, cut-out eyes and mouth hole; a limited edition exclusive Living Dead Doll with glow-in-the dark mask that coordinates with the set; one exclusively designed extra large tee shirt by Dave Cook and packaged in a fantastic retro-style Halloween costume window box. Choose from: Calavera -The Skull, Pumpkin - The Jack O� Lantern and Gabriella The Ghoul.

Limited to 500 pieces of each set, worldwide. These are sure to go fast and become a super-rare prized addition to any collection.

For more information, visit:
http://www.mezcotoyz.com/store/SearchResult.aspx?CategoryID=15

Machete - Danny Trejo Interview on G4

I've enjoyed the fine work of Danny Trejo, the original Bad Hombre, for years, and it is just so awesome that this hard working, honest guy finally got his first leading role in 2010's Machete. I just noticed that G4's Kevin Pereira recently sat down with him for a quick chat and felt obliged to pass it along. It's well worth a watch, and he even discusses his upcoming video game voice work in Fallout: New Vegas! With upwards of 15 projects currently listed as 'in-production' on imdb, that sir, is a MexiCAN.

Transformers: Generations 2010 - Drift

Yes I know he's everyplace, though not to as great an extent as the Cybertronian Optimus and Bumblebee figures from the Generations line, but after the good relationship the Preserve has had with this figure, it was high time to front-page Drift. Hailing from the brand new and currently-shipping Transformers: Generations line, which is a sub-group of Hasbro's More Than Meets the Eye 2010 initiative (as I'm calling it) - Drift has leapt from the pages of IDW Comics (All Hail Megatron series in particular) and into his very first figure!

Starting his career as the violent and notorious Decepticon Deadlock, he realized the pointlessness and waste of war and changed his ways. Now as Drift, he fights against the wrongs around him as a vital part of the Autobot team. And he has a huge and awesome sword. Click the image below for more details on this most excellent new figure!

Star Wars - The Vintage Collection, Jedi Wave

Our pals at Hasbro have just sent out another blast of images, and this time there seems to be some excellent news coming at us in picture form. We have carded shots of the figures in the third wave of The Vintage Collection, which will focus on Return of the Jedi figures. Here's the assortment:

I'll have the excellent carded images added to the Preserve's checklist of this line shortly!

DC Universe Classics - The Atom (WalMart Exclusive)

In November of 2008, wave 5 of the popular DC Universe Classics line was released, and was only available at WalMart. This wave was sort of notorious as being the wave that wasn't - impossible for many collectors and kids to find on shelves and with subsequent eBay prices to match. Some WalMarts simply never carried this wave - in the same way that they get few if any store exclusives. There seems to be a threshold of store size, and if your store is under that level, tough beans for you. But, what have we here? It's The Atom, from the long lost wave 5!

Long since written off from many collections as another fine example of lousy distribution practices, Mattel then stepped up to fan demands and re-released this complete set of 5 figures exclusively through their mattycollector.com site several months ago! It didn't sell out in absurd Masters of the Universe Classics times, so was easy to get a hold of for the original retail price. What a delight to see the scalpers undercut on that glorious day, though prices are creeping back up on eBay since the reissue sets did sell out fairly quickly, and the wave is once again unavailable. Hopefully at least the large influx of new copies of these figures will help make them more available for collectors who still may have missed this second chance

Transformers: Power Core Combiners - Searchlight with Backwind

About a week ago the good folks at Hasbro sent a box to the Preserve with some of the new Transformers: Power Core Combiners figures inside. They just must have known that I was unsure about this new format, and wanted to rope me in like a good marketer will. I opened up the Searchlight and Backwind 2-pack, and have some pics of it packaged and loose (gasp!) that you can reach by clicking the image.

Overall I admit to liking them much better having gotten the chance to open and transform a set myself. The variety of combinations that one can make (the more sets you buy...) encourages the human to interact with the figures in non-pre-ordained ways which is definitely a welcome and refreshing 'play pattern' to use the industry slang. The figures are pictured below with tasty homemade pancakes, in case you needed extra convincing that they are awesome (recipe).

G.I. Joe - The Pursuit of Cobra: Wolf Hound with Whiteout

One of the reasons I have such a pathological inability to discard the packaging for toys, on the rare occasions when I do open them, is that historically it has been such a rich, vibrant part of the overall experience that doing so seems, to me, to detract from the object itself. One need only look at the gorgeous box art for the Air Raiders line or the first few waves of Transformers for all the examples you could want.

In recent years, though, and sadly in particular with the G.I. Joe line, things had changed a little. For a line that itself had awe-inspiring art in the '80s, there seemed to be a flaw in the marketing methodology now days in the 2000s. It may seem a small detail, but in particular in the Modern Era line, and then somewhat with the Rise of Cobra line, vehicles were almost always packaged with a clear window, the art being tucked away on the side flaps or as an accent to the window itself. We did see with Rise of Cobra a shift back to the fully painted boxes, at least for Bravo and Echo class vehicles. Back in the Modern era line, two of the Target Exclusive jets (that I have yet to post...2 years late!) also switched back to the full-art box, to some amount of fanfare from like-minded collectors.

That was all a very round about way of saying - aren't the boxes in the Pursuit of Cobra line great?! Well, I think they are, and here is the Wolf Hound for you to see today. It should be available on store shelves near you, though this line is selling well so, somewhat surprisingly, it's hard to be sure! Click the image for more angles of this still-unopened vehicle, and for the bio of Whiteout, figure #1019, cold weather specialist extraordinaire!

Callgrim Joins the Preserve

I spend a lot of time, effort and money on the name brand, major toy producer's goods, which can be found in every corner drug store. While I will still always cherish the vintage collection of the Preserve, I feel that after several years of keeping up with the onslaught of new product, which is itself already featured far and wide across the Internet, I'm looking to the smaller producers for more thoughtful, creative, and smaller run work.

Enter Callgrim - a line using the Glyos joint system which just begs for amazing back stories and scenarios to be created around lush photo essays of their sharp, detailed figures. I've added three of their number to the archives so far, though my long time spent in service of archival cataloging has left my artistic muscle a little underdeveloped, so it will be some time until I graduate into the more creative photos that unique, attractive (and opened!) product will allow. For now, click the image below to check out the great Dominus figure!