Yoda has finally made it to Sideshow's 1/6 Star Wars line, soon to be followed by his hut on Dagobah. They have plans to release a prequel Yoda, but here we get Yoda from The Empire Strikes Back and he turned out great, though he does have a few issues.
Packaging **
Sideshow has continued with their great looking boxes that really show off the character well, though the green on the box is off some. The inside really took a step back though, replacing a plastic cover to hold the figure and contents in with twist ties. The ones around the snake even pulled through the plastic. It is really unfortunate that Sideshow has decided to go this route. I would rather pay a few extra bucks to get the nicer packaging.
Articulation *** 1/2
Being a new body for Sideshow, they have done a good job on articulation. He has wrist, elbows, shoulder, knees, ankles, hips waist and neck. His neck is a little limited in the up and down movement, but overall there aren't really any issues with his articulation.
Accessories ****
They did an awesome job on accessories. He comes with his cane, pan flute, a brown and white snake, a total of 3 sets of hands and feet and a log to sit on. The exclusive version also comes with an orange snake as a throwback to the vintage Kenner figure. Since he doesn't come with a standard base, the log is a nice touch and really looks nice. The orange snake is a pretty cool accessory for anyone who collected the original Kenner figures and all of the extra hands and feet are a nice touch.
Outfit *** 1/2
He comes with his outer and inner tunic, pants and belt. Nothing to complain about the inner tunic and pants. The outer tunic seems a little too thin and frayed at the ends. That isn't too say it looks bad, but could be a little improved.
Sculpt ***
His sculpt is almost there but not quite. He definitely looks like Yoda, but his face looks a little too squished on the bottom of his face. Another problem is that there isn't any hair on the top of his head, just on the sides by his ear and his back. They sculpted on hair and the effect is good, though doesn't really capture his look as well as it might have.
Paint *** 1/2
They did a really nice job with the paint, not a lot of slop or problems overall. The accessories are painted really nicely. His green is slightly off, but is pretty close and much better than the pics on the box.
Overall ***
I'm very happy to finally get Yoda and though he may not be perfect, he is still pretty awesome. The orange snake was a pretty cool exclusive. He should look great with the Dagobah set once it is released. Hopefully they will get around to a Dagobah Luke sometime soon.
It is that time of year, when collectors get to drool over all of the new toys coming out later in the year. While there is a lot to see, here are few of my favorite releases coming this year.
First is that we finally get to see the final wave of Indiana Jones figures. After being clogged with KOTCS figures, the later waves were hard to find followed by the cancellation of the line, but Hasbro is releasing one last wave of figures as a SDCC exclusive. This is awesome news and I can't wait to pick these up.
Hasbro does it again this time with the new Sky Striker painted to look like Starscream from an episode of Transformers featuring Cobra Commander. While he doesn't transform, this is still and awesome little crossover, much like the earlier release of Matt Tracker. He comes with Cobra Commander, who comes with Megatron in gun mode. Very awesome indeed. This will be another SDCC exclusive.
Futurama lives!! Between the release dates slips and lack of info I was wondering if the line would live on, but was pleasantly surprised to see that the lineup this year looks pretty good. First the Deluxe figures of Lrrr and Morbo, who look rather large next to the normal figures. This will be followed by the Robot Mafia and Flexo later in the year. Great news for all of the Futurama fans out there.
Of course there was a lot of other cool stuff from Thundercats, MOTUC, Star Wars and much much more, but a few of the cooler things I saw around the net.
Not much in the way of details of what extras will be on there, but 30 hours and a lot of new scenes and extras. Can't wait to see what they have in store for us. Would be awesome if they included the original versions of the movies, but I doubt that.
Scored some great collectibles for Christmas. My Wife got me a vintage Star Wars Luke in Stormtrooper disguise. She also got me Sideshow Exclusive Toht. Also got a few Blu-Ray movies, the newest Toynami Futurama figures, a couple vintage figures, Sideshow Lorne and Sideshow Admiral Piett.
I plan on updating my Vintage collections pics soon and hopefully will have some updates for the Jabba's Palace diorama I'm working on.
There are probably several reasons you may want to expand the status bar in Android, but my reasoning involved working on a custom Home Screen. Unfortunately, Android hides the necessary calls to expand the Status Bar, but there is a work around that isn't too difficult.
The service we need, STATUS_BAR_SERVICE, is hidden, so we are unable to call getSystemService using that to retrieve the status bar controller. But STATUS_BAR_SERVICE is a string, so we can pass "statusbar" to that function to retrieve what we want.
But, we have to declare mStatusBarManager as type Object, so we don't have access to the member functions, but through a little Java reflection, we can pull out the needed function rather easily.
Method[] methods=statusBarManager.getClass().getDeclaredMethods();
for (Method method : methods) {
if (method.getName().compareTo("expand")==0)
expandStatusBar=method;
}
I was looking for the function to expand the status bar, but this can be used to pull out any needed function. From here it is simple as calling the invoke to call that function.
The function expand doesn't take any arguments, but if it did, they would just be passed through invoke. And it is as easy as that to expand the status bar in Android, even though it is hidden by the Android framework.
I've started working on my Jabba's Palace Diorama and have the basic layout started and started created some of the architecture for the palace. So far I'm using MDF and insulation board with Water Putty. Hopefully I'll have some more time to work soon.
Sideshow is running a great promotion where you can get a free 12" figure with orders over $50 now. It appears your free figure will either be a Medicom Blade or Venom as Punisher figure. Either way very cool. And with Krauser Transformed going for $51 right now, this is a really amazing deal. Hurry it ends April 1. I have a Cobra Officer, Clone Trooper, Blade and Venom as Punisher on the way. And you can get Bing cashback for your order which makes the deal even sweeter.
One of my favorite anime's is returning with a new Trigun movie. Given that Wolfwood is in the trailer it looks to be set before the end of the show. Now I can't understand a word of what they are saying, but it looks awesome. Take a look:
With the new collectible room, I finally have time to put up my vintage Star Wars figures. The collection I've been working on since I was 3 is so close, so hopefully I'll be able to fill in the gaps quickly. One disappointment was that my Imperial Dignitary figure has disappeared in the last five years.
Hopefully I can have my vintage Star Wars ships up soon as well as a few other things once I make another trip to Ikea.
I have my Clone Wars battle started. Right now, I just have it on the floor, but eventually I'm going to build a table to put it on and create some background for it. Here it is now though:
I was a big fan of the 200x line of Masters of the Universe and when the released the classics, they seemed to be a step back and I wasn't into them. But as the line goes on between the improving designs and great character selection I'm becoming very interested in the line. But between the problems ordering online and the costs of the figures, as cool as the line is, I'm glad I'm not trying to collect this line. So here are some suggestions as to some things Mattel could do to draw me in.
Received my newest acquisition today from a collector on Rebelscum. Sideshow's 1/6 scale Derajik Holochess set. And to my surprise it ended up being the exclusive version. Woot!! And a big thanks to obibobkenobi....
I'm going to try and start updating the site again. I'm hoping to have time to work on two projects and am going to try and post updates on the progress of both.
The first is I have an awesome new collecting room. Finally I can get all of my boxed up collectibles unearthed. I'm getting everything moved into the new room, but I should be dropping some major money at Ikea soon to get some shelving.
The second project is a MAME arcade cabinet. I've looked into the parts and I should hopefully be ordering these soon. Should be fun.