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"Can you para-dig it?" Toys to Life and More with Heather's Boyfriend
399 Plays6 years ago
On this episode, Heather's boyfriend joins Dave and Erik in the studio to play Name that Toy and talk about Toys to Life – from Skylanders and Amiibo to Lego Dimensions and more, join us as we explore this super niche world of toys and cover the latest news and hauls.
Follow Heather's Boyfriend on Instagram & Twitter @ohthattyler
Follow us @aic_podcast on Instagram, Facebook & Twitter
Intro by Joe Azzari
https://www.instagram.com/voicesbyjoe/
Theme Music is "Game Boy Horror" by the Zombie Dandies
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Transcript
Introduction and New Year Greetings
00:00:02
Speaker
Hey folks, this is Frank from the Nonproductive Network wishing all of you a happy birthday 2020. That's not what anybody says. Happy New Year from everyone here at NomPro. Yeah, that's
Survey and Audience Engagement
00:00:14
Speaker
it. In this new year, we need your help to make our network better than ever just by answering a few questions.
00:00:20
Speaker
go to non-productive.com forward slash survey and tell us a little bit about what you want from our shows and you can enter for a chance to win a fabulous thank you prize and of course get the opportunity to sound off about everything you think about our station. Once again that's non-productive.com forward slash survey and thanks for all your support.
00:00:47
Speaker
Hi, Dave.
Podcast Introduction and Special Guest Tease
00:00:48
Speaker
Hi, Eric. Hey, Dave. Do we curse on this podcast? Yes, Eric. Yes, we do. Test. Test. One, two. One, two. Are you ready, kids? Get your parents' permission, check your mailbox, and grab your shopping cart. It's time for the Adventures in Collecting podcast.
00:01:12
Speaker
I'm Eric. And I'm Dave. Welcome to Adventures in Collecting, where we talk toy news, culture, and halls, along with our journeys as collectors.
00:01:25
Speaker
All right. And we're back. Yeah. And we have we have a special guest who we'll we'll introduce in in just a moment. But so just some some house cleaning. Thanks so much last week. Dusty two weeks ago. What house cleaning? That was housekeeping.
00:01:45
Speaker
Hey, hey, we didn't intro you. Shut up. Shut up you. Shit, we're gonna redo this intro. No, no, we're not. No, we're not. No, this is staying in. No one knows who I am. Nobody knows who the hell I am. We cleared up some cobwebs and taken some stuff out to the trash and then we're...
00:02:04
Speaker
We're ready to talk to you and also we're gonna tell you about what you've missed over two weeks.
Previous Episode Thank Yous
00:02:08
Speaker
Yeah that um, thank you. Thank you so much to Ryan weapon X customs for being on the last episode great interview It was so much fun getting a chance to talk to him and and thank you to Ryan for for sharing the episode the way that he did much appreciated on today's episode we have
00:02:31
Speaker
I guess this is part two of the second episode in theory? Yeah, it is. It is a continuation of episode two. I almost said his name, and I had to pull back. It's not Revenge of the Sith. We have Heather's boyfriend. Yeah, Heather's boyfriend's here. The real Heather's boyfriend. As promised, he's Heather's boyfriend. As far as I know, she may have other ideas.
Main Topic: Toys to Life with Expert Insight
00:02:56
Speaker
along along with uh with heather's boyfriend we are going to play another edition of name that toy in a bit yeah and our main topic for today is going to be toys to life because that's what heather's boyfriend is an expert in and uh i was on vacation too yeah we'll cover sneak my name and i i'm going to
00:03:13
Speaker
and we'll fuckin' bleep it out. Ah, I know you will. Damn it, they're gonna take it out in post. Here's the thing, if we're referring to Aerosmith, then your name will be mentioned. Yep, yep. And there's a chance, because I'm gonna talk about vacation. Otherwise, if somebody says, it's gonna be bleeped out. Ah. I can't deal with the post or anything.
Pre-Toy Fair News and Surprises
00:03:35
Speaker
Alright so it's been a while since we've had a news and hauls and there has been a near literal shit tone of news since last time we were on. There really has been. It's been a lot. I honestly
00:03:51
Speaker
I know we said the last time that we were here that leading up to Toy Fair there was going to kind of be a lull in news. That's true because I even posted something while on vacation. Yeah, that's true. I haven't talked about that yet. Wow, okay. Yeah, that's what I mean. We said leading up to Toy Fair that it was going to kind of slow down and it didn't.
Sideshow's Star Wars Replica Frenzy
00:04:13
Speaker
I'm gonna I'm gonna jump in with the one that we it's kind of like the the newest and freshest one at this point We got to talk about the child Sideshow collectibles just just killing it putting out your day Yeah, yeah today today is what the we're recording this on Thursday the 30th
00:04:32
Speaker
And just yesterday, yeah, Sideshow actually broke their website by releasing a life-size replica of the child, and it looks incredible. And it's only 350 bucks, which is crazy. What a steal. Yeah, compared to some of the other stuff that they put out, it is just wild. Is it like the rock that they made like the Dwayne Johnson?
00:04:55
Speaker
It's like 500 bucks more than that. Yeah. Some of those premium format figures, even like the Star Wars ones, like they have a really great. I forget the term that they use for it, but it's a, it's a Ben Kenobi. Like it's a Tatooine Ben Kenobi, but it's supposed to be Ben Kenobi between.
00:05:12
Speaker
Um, revenge of the Sith and a new hope. So like, he's kind of like, he looks like a younger Alec Guinness, Sir Alec Guinness. And, um, even that figure's like 500 bucks. So like, you know, you're getting effectively a movie prop for 350 bucks.
00:05:28
Speaker
Right, but when you think about it, all the detailing is in the head. Like, he's wearing a burlap sack. He's wearing potato sacks. Oh, wait, I was wrong. The rock is $750. But, you know, think about it. Like, you do the head, you're good. The body is kind of just like a blob with little, you know, little green arms poking out.
00:05:47
Speaker
Yeah, I'm curious to see how it's going to articulate. That's that's the big one. But I already have a few a few of our our social media friends like a yak face. And I think Touches, I think they they both grabbed it. So hopefully we'll see some pictures. And I know our our friends at nonproductive, they're they're looking to like all chip in and get one to like keep in their studio. So maybe we can we can pull some strings and borrow and get and get them into our
00:06:15
Speaker
Quote-unquote studio for an episode just so that we can get hands on them as their resident toy podcast But I mean I could just bring over the 10-inch pop when it comes out
00:06:27
Speaker
I have the, what is it, I think it's like seven and a half inches tall, the $25 Hasbro one, the one that like the talking plush, I have that pre-ordered. It comes with a bone broth cup and a frog, what else do you need?
DC Multiverse and Toy Releases
00:06:41
Speaker
Other news, the McFarlane's like literally kicking off 2020 with a bang. We talked about the leaked photos and then very quickly announced photos of the DC multiverse figures on the last episode.
00:06:56
Speaker
or two episodes ago. Well, they are officially out. Street date has happened. People are picking them up. They look incredible in person. I've I've seen I've seen a couple.
00:07:05
Speaker
They're much larger than I thought they'd be. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And especially at that $20 price point. I mean, they're charging the same thing as the Marvel Legends or it's about a whole head taller. Yeah. Yeah. I'd say that would mean they're they're calling them seven inch figures and that's exactly what they are. They're they're big. I haven't seen the whole wave, but the ones I have seen look great. And they see out. I saw Batman who laughs. Oh, you've seen that wave already. You've seen the with the with the Batmobile pieces.
00:07:35
Speaker
Yes. Wow. I haven't seen those yet. The only ones I've seen are the animated series ones. So like I saw Harley Quinn and I saw Batman. I haven't seen Superman. I haven't seen the other Superman. Green Lantern. I haven't seen any of those. I haven't seen Superman or Green Lantern, but I saw Nightwing and Batman Who Laughs. Oh, that's awesome. At Newberry Comics.
00:07:54
Speaker
Yeah, I in Palisades Mall, there is there is a list. There are live listings on Walmart to preorder. I'm not doing it until I see what they look like. But the Arkham Asylum, I don't I don't I why would I think I didn't? I don't know. I mean, there are there are DC collectible versions of those figures. Yeah, but the pieces of the Batmobile, I remember because the box was bigger. Well, there you go. Yeah, I believe they had them.
00:08:23
Speaker
But those officially came out and- I may be wrong about the store, but I definitely saw them in the Palisade Mall. And what's the comic magazine? Previews Only? Previews World? It's one of those like, it shows up in comic book shops, but there's an ad in it for something that you'd think McFarlane would have made already, but they're doing a seven inch super articulated spawn figure, which looks incredible. It's based off of his Mortal Kombat look, because they're adding him as DLC.
00:08:52
Speaker
but the figure looks unreal. I can't wait to see that. Hopefully there's more of this stuff at Toy Fair and maybe they're gonna show a little bit of Wave 2. Star Wars news has been relatively dead in terms of new products. Some of the Mandalorian stuff is finally
History and Evolution of Toys to Life
00:09:09
Speaker
reaching shelves. There's a Mandalorian mask, there's the Mandalorian gauntlet nerf thing that looks awesome. Some of that stuff's starting to get out there.
00:09:19
Speaker
Yeah, it's just been like it's been a wild, wild ride with with all of the DC and McFarland stuff. And like I mentioned that that baby Yoda or the child, excuse me. Oh, Fabro. It's going to be mad at me. Found him. That's going to be mad. Dave, you want to you want to hit some some wrestling, some wrestling stuff?
00:09:42
Speaker
Um, yeah, out of nowhere, uh, Elite 75 and, um, the new basic series, basic, um, what are we up to at this point? I want to say it's like 105, 106, basic 106 and Elite 75 showed up at ringside, uh, collectibles. Those are out. Um, they also have the exclusive, um, black costume, Jushin Thunder Liger up for pre-order.
00:10:09
Speaker
Um, but also just, you know, the, um, network spotlights are starting to hit target. Um, 74 is hitting Walmart, which has the Jim, the anvil, night heart store exclusive. Um, and the store exclusive Peyton Royce is starting to hit target from elite 73. So, um, that stuff is out there.
00:10:29
Speaker
I still haven't seen that Gorilla Monsoon. I keep looking for it. I haven't seen Gorilla Monsoon either. I've seen the wave that he's supposedly part of and I haven't seen him. I haven't seen Cassius. Oh no, I haven't seen Paige. I've never seen any of these.
00:10:42
Speaker
But the other thing too that I saw, and I actually talked about this while I was on vacation when they announced it was Lego, put out the Manchester United Stadium Old Trafford to the point where while I was walking around Disney Springs, we went in the Lego store and they were starting to build it. It is a large item.
00:11:05
Speaker
Yeah, and they've been, Lego's, they have like a weird social media strategy, like how they advertise stuff. The Lego Ideas stuff is awesome and that's what it was born of. And that is, I've seen it built, because I've been to a Lego store since. It is, it is a big, it is a big scale item. Like it is, it's pretty cool. It is every bit of that $300 price tag. Do they have any soccer minifigures? That come with it.
00:11:34
Speaker
Oh, there are ones that come with it. But there it's almost like a like purchase bonus. Gotcha. Yeah. Gotcha. Gotcha. Like if you're VIP and you purchase this, you get these three figure these three players. Is there. Well, since since we have Heather's boyfriend here, is there any I know we're eventually going to get into the toys to life stuff, but do you have any news from that front?
00:11:57
Speaker
Not really. So the thing about Toys to Life is people kind of think the bubble has burst. So Nintendo is still continuing to develop. I know the last kind of set they put out was for Link's Awakening on the Switch. They put out a cute little figure.
00:12:18
Speaker
But that was probably the last one. The only thing I see now is like restocks for a lot of the Smash Bros figures. So those are what we kind of stay tuned for. They're still releasing those. They're putting out one for every single character in the game. I'm not sure if they're doing DLC as well, but every base character in the game, like 80 characters are all getting an amiibo. So that's probably it on that front.
00:12:43
Speaker
Yeah, I'll kind of go into that a little more when we do fully break into the history of toys to life. But I was going to talk about the child. But, you know, we already addressed that. I still hear thunder. Baby, baby, baby.
00:12:59
Speaker
Funko announced those contra pops which are oh yeah and and and that was the other thing that was the other thing I want to talk about that London toy fair where Funko was just like hey look we're doing everything now yeah like the they have a whole new line coming that's they're in on soda cans soda cans which I actually think they those look incredible they look and like of course they have that blind bag element to them and
00:13:22
Speaker
Um, but the packaging is cool. Like the, the figures, um, come in soda cans and you pop them open and you don't know which one you have. And of course there's a chase and you know, Funko has, has, has us all, um, you know, Kind of glued to the whole chase game. Is that, is that the one with the Han Solo and carbonite that I saw? That's just, that was announced at London toy fair. Yeah. Um, that's just a regular moment, but now it's just a regular pop.
00:13:48
Speaker
And that's for the 40th anniversary of Empire. I will be buying that. There's a whole line of Black Series figures that leaked out too. They haven't been officially announced yet. Similar to how they did the 40th anniversary of A New Hope two years ago last year.
00:14:10
Speaker
where they have the six inch figures, but they're on that kind of like vintage collection card. They're not in like the Black Series box. They have like the nice like, you know, old school looking card, which looks really fun on those six inch figures. It's, you know, there's a there's a really nice like display factor
Nintendo's Amiibo Impact
00:14:25
Speaker
there. Some of them look like they're going to be straight repacks. Bespin Hahn looks like he's a straight repack, but fine. That figure is gorgeous. If you didn't get a chance to get him the first time around, you know. Oh, I did. Don't worry.
00:14:39
Speaker
But yeah, there's gonna be so much stuff for the 40th anniversary of Empire Strikes Back. I think there's already, Yak Face was reporting there's a six inch black series, a probe droid, Imperial probe droid that's coming. But Funko at London Toy Fair, they announced a whole line of Star Wars, they announced a whole line of. So many music, like so many rocks in the rocks line. Aerosmith. Slipknot. Slipknot. Yeah, so they're making a Steven Tyler pop.
00:15:07
Speaker
with the big mouth. And it's incredible. He has- Great name on that guy. Great last name. Oh, who? Steven Tyler? Yeah. Great last name. There's a Steven Tyler pop. Steven Tyler of Aerosmith. You know how we feel about our fans. Well, that's Joe Perry, who there also is a pop of.
00:15:30
Speaker
So and didn't they announce Papa Meredith? No, Papa Neil, Papa Neil and ghost or nil. It was not Papa Neil, like not nil, Neil, like. Um.
00:15:49
Speaker
What did I say? Slipknot, ZZ Top, ZZ Top, EZ-E, Salt and Pepper, Ollie Nelson. Yeah. It's been a ton. A ton. They're doing the rest of the killer clowns from Outer Space. Yeah. Yeah, they are.
00:16:04
Speaker
Yeah, so many. There's a lot. Marilyn Monroe. We could be here a week. Farrah Fawcett. Yeah. Well, those were after the fact. That's right. Those were after. Yeah, but I like the black and white. I think it's an FYE exclusive, maybe? Or is it Entertainment Earth? Oh, the Marilyn Monroe. One of them, the others. And it's like the famous skirt vent scene. That was a cool one. There's some like it hot. Yeah. I love how the Farrah Fawcett one is lying down.
00:16:30
Speaker
That's the her famous poster. Yeah, I know but it's just like it's fantastic. They crushed those Yeah, they did a really good job with the the new ones announced them You know, I'm curious to see what else they have left in the tank at this point I don't know if they just took London Toy Fair to be there some more some more soccer players. There's there's always gonna be a pop culture thing. Yep. Yep. Oh, that's right Yeah, they announced finally some Chelsea players. So you've had some already did we yeah, I
00:16:57
Speaker
Well, I'm probably going to get that Christian Pulisic from my desk. Fair. That's probably that's probably going to happen. But yeah, so tons of news. Expect more. You know, now we're reaching that point where like.
00:17:12
Speaker
The leaks coming into toy fair are going to start to happen because as, as the vendors and everybody in the manufacturer start to prepare for their trip to New York and they start to, you know, get stuff set up and stuff starts to go into like pre-production, this is usually when, when leak city starts to happen. Um, especially, I think we only have like two weeks left to go, uh, before toy fair. So, you know, um, I'm, I'm expecting the leaks to start coming in now for, for sure.
00:17:41
Speaker
in terms of halls, which is, oh wait, nope, I forgot something before we move into halls. We do have one other piece of news. We do. We do.
00:17:50
Speaker
we have a sworn enemy now. So checking our Twitter account, I noticed that we had a really interesting mention from this podcast called the Reluctant Adult Podcast, which without any context, the end of the tweet said an update on our feud with Adventures in Collecting.
00:18:19
Speaker
Yeah, I listen to it, so we have a sworn enemy now.
Playful Rivalry with Reluctant Adult Podcast
00:18:23
Speaker
So they're another toy collecting slash culture podcast, and they have designated us as the podcast that they want to have beef with. So here it is, challenge accepted. Dave, do you have anything you'd like to say to the folks over at the Reluctant Adult podcast? Yes, hello.
00:18:50
Speaker
And I would like to say that you smell. That's my message. Reluctant Adult Podcast, you smell. That is all. Yep, that's all I got. All right. It's getting real heated. Yeah. So of course, give them a listen. They name dropped us on their last episode. The last episode was great. They talk about American gladiators and stuff. But just remember that when you're listening to them, they also smell. That's it.
00:19:20
Speaker
Sick burn. Sick burn. In terms of hauls, I'm gonna make this super quick for me. I actually, I have only one thing to report. So I bought two Transformers since the last episode.
00:19:34
Speaker
OK, not a thing that I would normally say, but I have it's a guilty pleasure. I granted I love the Transformers cartoon. I love like the original Transformers movie. I I have a huge, huge, huge guilty pleasure in the Michael Bay Transformers movies. Love them. I could watch them right now from start to finish, all of them, including the batshit crazy one with Anthony Hopkins, the one that just came out.
00:20:03
Speaker
Bumblebee is legit great though. Great. I've heard that. I got to check that out. It's actually very good. I was in Walmart and I have always wanted an Optimus Prime from the films and they had the one from Revenge of the Fallen, which is great because he's got the two like huge swords. I just love the design of them. Right. So I was like, oh, Optimus Prime, like that's great. Like I've always been looking for a Voyager class one. You know, that's the slightly bigger one.
00:20:28
Speaker
And I was like, man, it would be awesome if I could get like Megatron from the original Transformers movie, like from the first Michael Bay one. And I literally picked up Optimus Prime and right behind him was Megatron. And I didn't know that these were coming back out. They're part of the studio series. They're priced super fair. They were like, I want to say Walmart had them for like 20 bucks a pop. And they're like 36 step changers. Like it took me like a half hour to figure out how to
00:20:56
Speaker
make Optimus Prime into a big rig. I was going to ask that because they're so they don't even look like they came from the vehicles in the movies by the time they're done transforming. So I was curious to see how they are able to pull that off in something that physically has to transform. It's it's there. I will. It's downright Optimus Prime is downright beautiful, like the way that that thing transforms and Megatron. He's so clunky. And the Megatron in the film, the first film turns into like a fighter jet.
00:21:25
Speaker
So when I was looking at him, I was like, man, there's like so many bumps and like lumps and like he's so just like these big chunky pieces of plastic. He turns into a sleek fighter. Really? Yeah. Unbelievable. Much he's much easier to transform than Optimus is. But like wild. Like I could not believe the ability with those. I've had Bumblebee the like the Camaro Bumblebee.
00:21:50
Speaker
But yeah, I'm so happy to have Optimus and Megatron now. That's all I've gotten. I got a lot. It's been a month. You also had a trip, so I'm sure you splurged a little bit. Well, we can talk about that too. Yeah, you're going to have to talk about that here. All right, we'll talk about the toys. Well, we'll talk about the normal weekly purchase material.
00:22:13
Speaker
Yeah, before we go to Beto. So I got a pretty decent price on Elite 55 Neville, just to continue to round out the cruiserweight collection. And then at some point, we always talk about the, hey, there might be a case of this figure somewhere. Whether it's those closeout online stores or like a big lots or somewhere like that. So sure enough, a wholesaler had
00:22:43
Speaker
I would think like 20 sensational cherries from Elite 65 which was a Walmart exclusive that were online and I was fortunate enough to grab one at $20 so it was like normal retail price which was kind of crazy.
00:23:04
Speaker
You found me the Lashley and Lita Royal Rumbles. I found Macho King Randy Savage. Oh, yeah. Bonesaw is ready. Which I'll talk about that in a moment. They need to make that. That's a figure we need in our lives. Well, that's three minutes. Three minutes of play time.
00:23:25
Speaker
You would get that in Marvel Legends, I'd imagine. That would be fantastic. And then I'm waiting to see another friend of ours, Mike, for The Rock. Oh, yeah. So we have this weekend's Super Bowl weekend is our little toy show in Wayne that they have every every month. So I'm looking for some some single Marvel Legends there, some Lucy's.
00:23:51
Speaker
I mean, I'll be looking for my usual compliment of stuff. And then, well, I found Roderick Strong Elite 73, which is a not easy figure to come by. Or actually, is he Elite 72? I believe he's 72. I might have wrote that down wrong. And then yesterday, I found Lince Dorado and Andrade from Elite 74.
00:24:17
Speaker
those and then King Mabel from Elite 68. So the odd thing is we went from like bear shelves to slightly better stocked shelves to oddly stocked shelves. Like I walked into the target near I believe that was in Riverdale.
00:24:42
Speaker
New Jersey yesterday to find freshly stocked Elite 68, which is the SummerSlam set. It's the SummerSlam series from this past SummerSlam. So we're talking July, August shelf time, and then walked into Walmart to find one case of
00:25:01
Speaker
Elite 74 minus the Goldberg, Natalia, and Jim the Anvil figure, but it was literally like the remnants of one case. And then, so two Finns, two AJs, one Linsei, one Andrade. And then, you know, found in the one target in the Palisades Mall, like freshly stocked
00:25:25
Speaker
Royal Rumble and Elite, the series with Roderick Strong, which I believe is either 72 or 73. Yeah, I'm looking that up now.
00:25:36
Speaker
Yeah, it's 72, I was right, where I was wrong on my notes. But yeah, like a freshly stocked Elite 72 and Royal Rumble series. So it's weird. Yeah, and I mean, to me, like as somebody who doesn't collect the wrestlers, right? Like I know what I'm looking for, mainly because we have our little mutual list that we go off of. But I was honestly blown away today to the point where I know you don't really collect the basics.
00:26:04
Speaker
but I stopped and sent you a picture of the WrestleMania basics that are out now. Yeah, for this coming WrestleMania. The Shane McMahon figure in that, if you don't have a Shane yet and you don't feel like going back to find one, it's a great figure. And the Becky Lynch figure is the same head that's on the Elite One. They're the same sculpts. You have that limited body articulation. Yeah, you don't have the articulation, but it's the same skin.
00:26:42
Speaker
And I guess this is, you can look at this at housekeeping too, there's some pretty good sales right now on Walmart, like that new AJ Styles Finn Balor Elite two pack, were they two-suited for the first time? That was 10 bucks off today, so you could get two Elites for $30.
00:26:56
Speaker
Great looking figures.
00:27:03
Speaker
Yeah, as a general rule of thumb, it's not a bad idea to hop on Walmart, or even Amazon for that matter, and just search. Vince McMahon is like, I think, $13 right now. Yeah, it's crazy. Like, I've been toying with the idea of getting the Carl Mordo Marvel Legends from the Doctor Strange wave. He's like $11. You might as well, like. Because I don't have him, and that's, you know, when it falls into the MCU category, and for 11 bucks. Like, tugboats, eight bucks. I just want to have something else to pick up in order to get
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah, like a few months ago I was able to get the vintage collection Chewbacca from A New Hope. That was part of that, who else was in that wave? It was part of that first face scan wave. $13 figure, I got him for six bucks. And he looks great.
00:27:47
Speaker
And then just other stuff I picked up, I was able to get my pre-orders for this current WWE pop series. So it was Diesel, John Cena from this past WrestleMania, Naomi, Miz, and Mean Gene. And the Naomi is the highlight, it's one of the best pops that they've made for a WWE figure.
00:28:09
Speaker
And then I got the Good Place wave, so Eleanor, Janet, Chidi, Michael, Jason, and Tahani in time for the series finale. No forking way. Yeah. Bully shirtballs. I love that show. And then, of course, on vacation, I did go to Disney. Oh, yes. Wait, this is our first field report from Batuu.
00:28:30
Speaker
Yeah, I spent a lot of time in Galaxy's Edge and money and money. Galaxy's Edge is fantastic. I hear like it is you walk in and you are not in Hollywood Studios anymore. You are in Batu. I might cry. I can't wait. I'm going to cry. Rise of the Resistance is fantastic. It's the best theme park ride of all time.
00:28:56
Speaker
Smuggler's run was a lot of fun, but I will give one tip. Your pilots need to be good. Yeah. So, yeah, apparently you can fuck it up. Yes. Your experience is based on how everybody does. So what I know what you picked up in Batu, but I did. What kind of merch did you get? I did. I picked up a couple of porgs. Maddie, thanks you.
00:29:23
Speaker
I got the magnetic shoulder porg, I also got one for Matty, and I got the little porg that's like the Jyn Erso toy from Rogue One. It looks like it hand stitched. Yeah, that's cool. Yeah, it was awesome, so I was like, I have to get this. The puppets, they have the puppet shop, those are all awesome, it's crazy.
00:29:45
Speaker
If you can, oh, I also got the porg mug from Ogas Cantina. You have to get a drink to get the porg mug, but I got the porg mug. I want me some yub nub. That glass is also cool. The Ewok glass, like it's awesome. But- What's the matter, Heather's boyfriend? You don't like, you got a problem with yub nub? I don't like the cute shit. Miss me with the Ewoks, miss me with the porgs.
00:30:07
Speaker
And I also was able to acquire some scrap metal that you can fashion into the weapon of the Jedi.
00:30:22
Speaker
It's a good thing they got all those crystals off of Ilm before they turned to Ilm into Starkiller Base. Yeah, so it is probably, hands down, one of the, if you're a Star Wars fan in any form or fashion, and you have the ability to make a reservation while you are in Anaheim or Orlando to acquire the scrap metal needed to make the Jedi weapon,
00:30:52
Speaker
Please do so because it is well worth the money and the time that it takes to do that. The experience is outright fantastic. The lightsaber is off the charts. Cool. Like it's right up there. Like I would say like one of the force effects. Yeah. Having having held it.
00:31:15
Speaker
being intimately familiar with the black series force effects and also some of the custom ones like I have an ultra sabers apprentice and it's got some heft to it. There's some significant weight to it. If you have the Kylo Ren force effects saber, or excuse me the black series one, it's very akin to that in both
00:31:46
Speaker
weight and like overall Handle circumference circumference, I guess you could say like it is a it is a thicker build both both yours and Christina's Yeah, it's it's definitely a quality item you you are 100% getting what you pay for and it is just I mean it is I
00:32:11
Speaker
I wouldn't wanna give anything away about the experience itself. But you can see, you definitely wanna do the research or at least have an idea in mind of what it tells you on the website. So on the website it tells you the four disciplines.
00:32:28
Speaker
of which you can choose from. Okay. So I did the elemental nature one with the pieces that I did. Just from the second you walk into Batuu though, it is unreal. And everything is in that land. So like you are being spoken to by cast members as if this is happening.
00:32:56
Speaker
Yep. Yeah, it's so for those of you that don't know Batuu is actually not only the first of its kind as being a Star Wars fully immersive Star Wars theme park experience, it's also canon.
00:33:11
Speaker
So it is a very specific part of the story when you're there. And the things that you experience there on whatever length loop they have are canon events. So there are characters that you won't see there because they're not there at that time.
00:33:37
Speaker
And there are characters you will see there because they are there. Yeah. And how you interact with them and how they interact with you is based on.
00:33:48
Speaker
what you do. So you can choose to follow directions or you can choose not to. It's up to you. And that's about the extent of what I'll say about it. But just know if you're a Star Wars fan, it is a place where you need to spend time. And you're just gonna find something new every time and just be like, it's brand new all over again.
00:34:16
Speaker
Yeah, I can't wait. We're planning that we have a family vacation planned for May and I I can't wait. It's funny. I was watching on Disney Plus, which I steal from my girlfriend, Heather. I was watching the Imagineering documentary. And when it got to Star Wars and everything on Batu and
00:34:37
Speaker
I was like, well, this is nice. And I shut it off because everything was so good. But I was like, no, I'm going in fresh. I did the same thing. I stopped watching the last 10 minutes of Imagineering. And if you if you can avoid commercials for it, because there is a moment in the rise of resistance that like, even if you're on Disney's website, like immediately scroll below the banner.
00:34:57
Speaker
because there is a moment in the ride that I confirmed with my brother here that happens in the ride that they show in that, and I'm a little upset that I saw it. And I had never seen it, so I'm like, wait a minute, they showed that? Yeah, so when that was his reaction to it, my heart sank a little bit, but yeah, if you can...
00:35:21
Speaker
I watched it for you. Let's put it that way. You don't need to see it. Yeah. So as we said, lots of lots of news, lots of hall things. This is already our longest episode ever. Yeah. All right. Thanks for joining us, folks. Catch us next. We're already at the 35 minute mark and we haven't even we haven't even dealt.
00:35:43
Speaker
Yeah, we haven't even dealt with you yet. Yeah. Yeah, we haven't. Thanks. I was going to say we didn't even dive into the main topic yet, but sure, we haven't dealt with this guy. And you have one other thing you want to do before we do that. That's true. All right. So we're going to we're going to we're going to go back to our game. So for those of you who are listening for the first time, we have a game called Name That Toy.
00:36:02
Speaker
where Dave and I give each other five hints at a specific toy line and the hints get more narrow as we go on and if
00:36:17
Speaker
In this case, today, I'll be reading the hints. If I can stump my brother, I get a point, and he doesn't. And if he can't get it, or in this case, we have Heather's boyfriend is playing along with us too. If he can't get it,
00:36:34
Speaker
We will kick it out to you on Instagram and maybe we have something fun to give you. I have some really cool buttons from, exclusive buttons from when they reopened the Toys R Us here in New Jersey. We'll figure out something fun to do with you. But since we're already just chewing up time here, I'm gonna go ahead and start the music and we're gonna play Name That Toy.
00:37:02
Speaker
Yeah, the music plays in the background. I put it in post. It's always- No, no, I hear it. That's nice. That's nice. Hey, listen to that music. Yeah. Yes, I listen to our show. Great. I'm glad I made this one hard for you, Dave. All right, so.
00:37:21
Speaker
Name that toy. Based on this short-lived but well-loved Mattel toy line, DIC Productions produced a cartoon that ran from 1994 through 1997. One more time, please. Based on this short-lived but well-loved Mattel toy line, DIC Productions produced a cartoon that ran from 1994 through 1997.
00:38:01
Speaker
over the course of six series or waves the line featured 34 figures ending with the quote-unquote Space Force wave in 1996 Oh Trump action figures
00:38:19
Speaker
Yes. No. Oh, I got it. Damn it. I'm making so much work for myself. Yeah, you're doing it. It's not like I've known him since I was in kindergarten or anything. Is it cops? Is it what? Cops? No. All right, I'm going to keep going. These anthropomorphic characters' backstory involve one Dr. Paradigm manipulating his di- Paradigm? Paradigm.
00:38:49
Speaker
Para dig them. I like how we both did that at the same time in the same like. He was so confident, too. All right, we're going back. Do not edit that out. Please do not edit that out. Edit what out? All right. So, Para done. It's staying in. Don't worry. Don't worry.
00:39:10
Speaker
Don't worry, I'll fuck you guys. Dr. Paradigm. Dr. Paradigm manipulating his diabolical gene slammer to create these anthropomorphic characters. The machine was later turned on him to create the main villain, Dr. Paranoid.
00:39:34
Speaker
That's not just paranoid, is it? No, Dr. Piranoid. Like piranha, but annoyed? Correct. Remember, we have anthropomorphic heroes here, so it would make sense that the villain, when the machine is turned on him. And you said me and you played with these growing up. Yeah, 100%. 100%. Oh my god, I'm a failure. This next one might- Is it Street Sharks? Son of a bitch!
00:40:06
Speaker
I'm actually mad that you got three clues. That's impressive. Now. I'm gonna read the last two. Yeah, let's hear them. Sorry listeners. You don't get shit. So mad. I am so because that was so like you were not like you never played with. No, I didn't.
00:40:23
Speaker
My personal favorite character, Blades, encapsulated the 90s love affair with Rollerblading, sporting a ripping pair of rollerblades, giving him his namesake. That was the next one. That would have helped me. While the name of the line focuses on a specific aquatic life. You remember the cartoon. The show featured a few different species, as well as an eventual spin-off into dinosaurs.
00:40:46
Speaker
Fuck you, street sharks. I was a big fan of the Hammerhead one. Big fan. Yeah. They were great figures. Yeah. They were really great figures. They looked cool. Yeah. And they were packaged cool too. Like the... I can't. I was like, and you knew. When I said is it, you were like, he's got this.
00:41:06
Speaker
My my voice may not be conveying it, but my face is just pure rage. It is. Yeah, I can confirm because like we so the idea was we both tested the waters. So that way, like we knew the game would work. So that way we each have a point. Now that I have clearly tried to challenge Dave, he's going to fucking beat me the next time we do this. Yeah, I have a couple ideas I was going to hit with like like this toy line was made out of sheet metal.
00:41:33
Speaker
and debuted in 1942. That's what's gonna happen to me next. I'm begging. I can confirm that one. All right, so Street Sharks. The ride soaring was based off of this wreck. So Dave gets another point and you, the listener, get a chance at nothing. So you could thank Dave for that. You get to think about Street Sharks. Yeah. I can't wait to post pictures of Street Sharks. That's something I am actually excited about.
00:42:00
Speaker
They're so cool. I feel like Yuma probably has some street sharks. Yeah, I feel like he'd be a big... Actually, I'm gonna... Send pics. Pics or didn't happen? Yeah, pics of street sharks. All right, so as I mentioned at the top of the show, our main episode today, or main topic of the episode today, and the reason why Heather's boyfriend has joined us is to talk about... Graciously has joined you. Graciously joined us, is to talk about...
00:42:28
Speaker
is to talk about toys to life. So without any kind of context, I'm just gonna kick it on over to you. What are toys to life toys? Well, can I give context on me? People don't know who the hell I am besides I'm dating Heather. They don't know that me and you have known each other for like 27 years. Accurate. Yes, we've been friends since kindergarten.
00:42:51
Speaker
So my name is Heather's boyfriend, AKA redacted, AKA which I'm sure will be edited out in post. Yes. I grew up with Eric and obviously I know Dave through that as well. Eric and I have been inseparable for nearly three decades. It's almost disgusting. It is. It is. I hate it. But I've been listening to the podcast ever since it debuted and I'm really happy for the success and everything that they have
00:43:20
Speaker
found and I'm really happy to be part of it and it's it's so cool to do this because I you know when we hang out it's just kind of this but now the the microphones are on and and we could share it with the world and I think it's so cool um but anyway toys to life uh so I have a little bit of the history on it and kind of where it is now and and a bit of everything in between uh actually first let me kind of tell you my collecting style I don't collect sets of things I kind of say oh I like that or I like this character and I get that
00:43:48
Speaker
So I'm a big Star Wars fan, but I have a soft spot for Han Solo and Plo Koon and Darth Maul. So I'm going to buy their figures in every form and not much else. And that's kind of how I thought it would be with my toys to life figures that I do have. But let me start. I do remember when you got that Plo Koon pop.
00:44:07
Speaker
I do. I got the pop because I asked Dave. Dave was like, oh, it's a Walgreens exclusive. And I was like, uh, that's that's not good. So that ended up generally that is correct. That ended up being a eBay exclusive to me. But no, I got I got for a good deal. I didn't pay much more than retail if I even did.
00:44:25
Speaker
And you got that super cool Plo Koon lightsaber. Yes, that's true. That would that would probably be my haul. Not that any of you people know who I am or what I have. But over Christmas, I was gifted an ultra saber from the lovely Heather, my girlfriend, my namesake.
00:44:43
Speaker
And so it's the classic Plo Koon hill. If you've seen Clone Wars, if you've seen the prequel trilogy, you've seen it. It's kind of a basic looking hill. But when you ignite it, it's his Legends orange yellowy blade, which is really cool. My love for Plo Koon comes from the
00:45:04
Speaker
Just like a dreamcast game Jedi power battles, which me and Eric played when it came out and Plo Koon Was always the one who I picked because he could use electric judgment the the Jedi force lightning So that was really cool, and I picked him and I've been in love ever since The only reason he had a yellow lightsaber was because everyone else had blue yeah like the purple and
00:45:26
Speaker
Yeah, Mace Windu actually had a blue one because of before. Oh, yeah, that's right. That's right. The only one who had a purple one was Keanu Mundi, who was an unlawful character. But it's a great game. It's not a good game, but it's fun. It was it's such a product of the era. But it's really a fun play through with a friend. It's not a great game. It's infuriating. But it was it was fun to us then. I haven't played it since. But but anyway, back to back to toys to life.
00:45:53
Speaker
So a lot of people will know some of the later iterations of this technology. It essentially uses NFC technology, near field communication technology. And what's cool about that as opposed to, you know, like a QR code is you're able to read and write to this chip, to this technology. So we'll kind of, I'll go into that a little later on, but the year is 2007.
00:46:16
Speaker
And a game called you be funky's by Mattel is released. And this is the first instance of us seeing this NFC technology and a toys to life game. Essentially the content would be unlocked through these figures with these chips inside and it didn't do much. It wasn't well received.
00:46:40
Speaker
I don't even remember it. No, I've never heard of it in my research for this, which consisted of me being like, oh, shit, I'm doing that podcast and I better look up what toys to life are. Accurate. You know, revealed that and they they basically said that they're like, it was popularized by some of the later the later iterations of it. But this was the first real instance of it.
00:47:04
Speaker
And that lasted from 2007 to 2010. And kind of fell off, you know, they did keep it updated for about three years. There was consistent updates. But 2011 is when it kind of came into the mainstream with Skylanders. Oh, yeah, those are remember
00:47:20
Speaker
I now all of a sudden was like, okay, I know what we're talking about. Yeah. I just didn't know. I never knew of it as the phrase toys to life. Yeah. Yeah. So that's essentially Skylanders took this toys to life concept where the game and the content and the characters are unlocked through these collectible figures. So essentially it's like DLC that you're getting a physical item for and it's used to unlock content throughout the game, which is
00:47:49
Speaker
a great concept because you're, you know, you're locking the content behind these, these nice figures, these nice sculpted figures. Um, they didn't feel cheap. They were really nice, but you know, you're paying a premium for it. Uh, so that's, that kind of blew up and Skylanders released a game, uh, I think every year for about six years until.
00:48:09
Speaker
Yeah, it's like it was incredible. You don't realize until I didn't really realize how much is out there until, like you said, Toys R Us was closing and you see all the extras kind of being liquidated. Well, that's that's exactly what I was going to say, because so not I never got into Skylanders, but at the very during the liquidation of Toys R Us, I bought the Disney infinity. Don't skip ahead. I was getting to that. All right. All right. All right. All right. Yeah, because there's another big one, too.
00:48:37
Speaker
Yeah. So so Disney Infinity followed suit in 2013. You know, you've seen it. It's kind of the same where you have like a sandbox game and the characters in the game are populated in the game by the statues by these figures. It was so cool. Like it was so cool. Like they made Cora. They made Sam Flynn. Yeah. Yeah. They had like so. So the I actually I had it. I still have it actually.
00:49:05
Speaker
Of course, me being a Star Wars collector, I bought, when they were all like pennies, I bought all the Star Wars ones I can get my hands on. I actually got, how I got the game was with the base that came with Anakin and Ahsoka. They're very stylized figures. They're cool figures. There wasn't a lot else out there that looked like them. So they were cool. You know, I looked at the Han and I was eyeballing the Han. It's like everybody was in the style of Clone Wars. Yeah.
00:49:31
Speaker
Yeah, it was kind of that like it looked like they took the CGI character and plopped it on a little stand and and sold it for 13 bucks, but it was cool because like the so With the the Disney infinity the base actually had three spots on it Yeah, so you had a spot for two figures, you know, so that way you could have two players and like the power up
00:49:51
Speaker
The third spot was actually how you unlocked a world. So for the Star Wars one, if you put, I think one of them is a Death Star and the other one looks like a Republic ship. So if you put the Republic ship on, when you're in the Disney Infinity Hub, it gives you access to the Clone Wars world. Whereas the Death Star one gives you access to Tatooine and the original trilogy content.
00:50:21
Speaker
And then they had a Finn and Rey two pack that came with
00:50:28
Speaker
The force awakens stuff. Yeah, like I know there was ones that like if it was a single figure It was only like a side quest or you could use that figure, but there were also power-up coins Yeah, the power-up ones Yeah, it's exactly that like it just gave you more ability a multiplayer multiplayer I remember playing the Guardians of the galaxy one and that was awesome
00:50:54
Speaker
Well, yeah, because Disney Infinity, that was after the acquisition of Star Wars. It was after the acquisition of Marvel. So I feel like the game came first.
00:51:05
Speaker
So it's 20. I don't have the month in 2013. It's close. Maybe it might have been after. But it's I do think the game because the game had waves. Yeah. But I mean, when you would get Disney Infinity three. Yeah. Because three point. Oh, it's PS four. Yeah. Two point. Oh, it was PS three and then PS two. Maybe the early PS three was the original.
00:51:24
Speaker
Yeah, I don't think it was ever on PS2. Yeah, I think it was really PS3. It was definitely on the Wii. Yep. They had a Wii version. It was multi-platform, so they were selling a ton of these. Yeah, I had it for the X-Bone. Still cracks me up, Xbox's naming conventions, but that's a whole other episode.
00:51:41
Speaker
Why did you throw your notes? Oh, I didn't do it on purpose. I threw it on the ground. It's written on a penguin because my girlfriend likes penguins and my mom found these in her house and gave me a notepad that looks like penguins. There you go. So.
00:51:58
Speaker
In the same year as Disney Infinity, Nintendo kind of tested the market. They didn't fully go in on what would later be called Amiibo. They released a game on the short-lived Wii U console. The serving tray? Yeah, it's another. It looks like a tray you would put hors d'oeuvres on. You want to talk about bad naming conventions. People didn't realize it was a new system. They're like, oh, I have a Wii.
00:52:27
Speaker
I don't need a little gamepad for it. I already have a TV. Well, it's because it used the same controllers, right? Yeah. It used all the Wii remotes. Except for that big gamepad, like that big tray. Well, yeah. People thought that was an accessory. People thought that was a peripheral for the original Wii. They didn't realize this is a brand new system. I just thought it was the largest controller I've ever seen. It is. It's heavy. The battery life sucks.
00:52:46
Speaker
I have played every Nintendo console. I have never touched Wii U. Well, because Eric likes to wait for the Zelda. It literally looks like the size of like your record player that's on your desk. It's about the size. It's like a chunky switch. It's like a switch with thick. Thick. Thick boy.
00:53:03
Speaker
But yeah, it was kind of like their stopgap for before the switch. Like we know what we want to do. We're just not technologically there yet. So we're going to put out this kind of stopgap hybrid ish console that doesn't have full portability. And then obviously they've kind of translated that into this switch, which has been such a huge success and has kind of made people forget about the Wii U altogether. But
00:53:30
Speaker
On the Wii U, there was a game called Pokemon Rumble U. And it was like literally Pokemon toys. That was the game. They were toys in the game. So you would scan with the Wii U gamepad, there was an NFC reader in the controller. So before that, you had to have a hub for Skylanders, for Disney Infinity, even for Lego Dimensions, which comes out in 2015. Which was awesome too. Yeah, very cool concept. I'll get into that a little bit.
00:53:59
Speaker
But they came with a separate hub that you would have to plug into the system or plug it in the controller. However, it was interface with the Wii U. And later with the switch, it's built into the controllers, which was a big upgrade because you didn't need an extra peripheral. So they were able to keep the price down. You had it built into your console.
00:54:17
Speaker
Now, when the Wii U launched, there was no support for it, but it was eventually coming down the road. That's something they build. They were like NFC technology. Everyone was like, I don't know what that is. And essentially it's just, you can read and write to it. You can read this chip onto your system and then save data back to the chip.
00:54:37
Speaker
Yeah, at its simplest. Yeah. Definition. So Pokemon Rumble, you it had every Pokemon up to that point. It was like almost 700 Pokemon. And not all of them had a figure. It was the big ones. Your Pikachu's, your Eevee's, your Mewtwo's, Bulbasaur, Jacob Puff. There's there are more than seven. You know what? We're going to we're going to table that. I'm shaking my head. It's a whole nother episode. Yeah. That's a lot of all to get.
00:55:03
Speaker
So then that was 2013 and 2014 Nintendo dies in head first with Amiibo and that is where I joined in. So Amiibo were really billed with the launch of Smash Bros for Wii U and
00:55:20
Speaker
No one really knew what they were. They were like, is it just a high level computer? What is it? What do you get from this? And I was like, you know what? I don't, I'm not into toys to life. I don't think this is going to go anywhere for me, but I love Fox and cloud. It's a really cool sculpt of a figure.
00:55:35
Speaker
There's so many details, his blaster is so detailed, his reflector is so detailed, you know, his uniform, his boots, everything had so many fine little details. And it really, when I unboxed it, I was just like, this could be a problem. I might have to buy several of these. And so essentially, Nintendo has been really good with their support, which is why I think that the Amiibo line is still going on. Whereas, spoiler alert, Skylanders, Disney Infinity, Laguna Mentions, they've all gone under, they've all discontinued their lines.
00:56:04
Speaker
Um, but Nintendo has so many iconic characters, even if you don't care what they're unlocking. The figure is such a nice size. They're probably about two and a half, three inches high, depending on who you got. And they're nice to display, even if you never utilize them for what they're meant for. Because the NFC chip, I have one here. It's, it's a small, it's almost like a sheet of paper.
00:56:25
Speaker
And you just scan it onto your controller and that's it. You don't need the figure. The figure is just a plus for, you know, to be able to sell it because selling a little sticker is hard to do. But I did that on all the Zelda figures for Breath of the Wild because I was like, you know, your man is not made of money here. And most of them are very hard to find. So I found someone who's selling little amiibo cards and you can check that out, Dave.
00:56:50
Speaker
Yeah. Heather Heather's boyfriend has has taken out of his switch case. What effect it looks like a tops baseball card or it's like a baseball card sleeve sleeve. It's about the size of a quarter. The actual chip.
00:57:05
Speaker
And, um, I can actually speak to the, the Zelda ones because that's my only real experience with, with the, um, the amiibos. I, I didn't have the, the Nintendo DS, which are the, the, um, the 3DS, which had an NFC chip. Right. Original 3DS didn't you had to buy a little hub or the XL, the new 3DS did it had right in the bottom screen. You could just scan them in like that, which is really cool.
00:57:30
Speaker
So I had Smash Bros for that, but I had a 2DS, so I didn't get to use any Amiibos with it. But when I got the Switch, of course the first game that I got with it was Breath of the Wild, and I found out that there was basically a way that if you scanned an Amiibo once a day,
00:57:49
Speaker
on it you would get a treasure chest would drop from the sky and would have kind of rarer items in it and correct me if I'm wrong but there were certain amiibos that if you had them you could actually get
00:58:05
Speaker
articles of clothing. There were so there were special costumes kind of locked behind these amoebas, which is why I really wanted to get them. So I'm I'm a completionist when I play a game and I'm really into it like I was with Breath of the Wild. I want to experience every inch of that game. I want to experience everything the developers put in that game and that involved.
00:58:23
Speaker
Uh, scanning amiibos way too much for way too long, uh, to get gear that is really kind of superficial. Like it really doesn't offer you, uh, any staff boost or anything. It's not game breaking. It's just, Hey, here's the, you scan the Ocarina of time link. You get his outfit from that and it looks like, and it's rendered.
00:58:40
Speaker
in the Breath of the Wild engine. It's really cool. Like you get this Twilight Princess outfit with the chain mail. It's nice looking. It's really I was like, I got to have that. So that's why I bought all the chips on eBay. But different games had different content they would unlock. For example, like Mario Kart 8 would grant specific amiibos would grant you with costumes. So Mario amiibo gives you a Mario themed outfit, a Luigi themed outfit, et cetera, et cetera. Yeah.
00:59:07
Speaker
you know, and then something like Breath of the Wild would give you items at random or it would have, you know, specific items for specific amiibos. Whereas Smash is probably the fullest implementation of it. That figure, you know, my Fox McCloud is scanned into the game as a Fox McCloud fighter.
00:59:25
Speaker
And he starts at level one and he can go all the way up to level 50. And as you fight against him, as he fights, he learns to adapt, which is really cool. Cause if you just set the computer to level nine, they're tough, but they're, you know, there's a cap with amiibos. They kind of the AI learns and constantly develops new strategies and it's.
00:59:46
Speaker
it's really cool to see because you could fight it you know at level one and it's terrible by level 20 he might be able to kill you by level 50 you're you're not gonna win so I would host like amiibo tournaments and I'm up to over 40 amiibo amiibos I don't know the plural I think it's just amiibo amiibo I counted right before I drove here
01:00:04
Speaker
I was going to say, what's the current count? Not counting just the cards that I bought, which do count, but I really only use them for Zelda. I have 42 actual figures. Some of them are really cool. My coolest one.
01:00:21
Speaker
Yeah, I was going to say, what's your what's your favorite amiibo? So I have my favorites, like for my favorite characters, I'm holding King K. Rool and he is majestic. It is. It is awesome. It's a cool figure. Yeah, boy. Shiny, shiny gold belly, shiny gold belly. He's got the crown. He's got a beautiful cape. I love my King Dedede. He's King Dedede has the heft of like a baseball. I should have brought that like he is.
01:00:44
Speaker
He's a girthy boy. Yeah, there's a lot. There's got to be a lot of plastic there because they are. So so looking at it again, they look like they are, you know, like Tyler said, like two and a half, three inches tall. But they're just they're they're all to scale. So like if you like King K rule is appropriately sized. So like if you had a Diddy amiibo that was standing next to him, it would be Diddy would be the appropriate size to King K rule. And so he's like half his size. Yeah. Yeah.
01:01:11
Speaker
And they have like, um, like I know when breath of the wild came out, they had a set that was the, um, help me out the, the ancient, um, Oh, the, uh, Oh my God. What are they called? Why can't they sentinel? Guardians. Thank you. Yeah. And like, it was like link and a guardian and the guardians like massive. He's gigantic. So essentially they all have the same base. It's a little base. It's probably, you know, the diameter is probably like an inch and a half. And, uh, that's where the chip is stored.
01:01:41
Speaker
Everything else on top, there's nothing in there. There's no guts in there. The chip is in the base. If you have a base, you're good. You don't need the character on top, like I said before. Um, but I'm not going to collect a bunch of chips and display like they're, they're there for it to be displayed. And then the content, a lot of it is kind of secondary for me anyway. Um, some people may really enjoy the content pulled out. It hasn't been, you know, like I said, a lot of it's kind of superficial.
01:02:05
Speaker
I think Smash is probably the best utilization because you can save it. You can constantly upgrade it. You can constantly fight him. So like in Smash Brothers, you have normal Fox who's part of the game and then you have Amiibo Fox. So Amiibo Fox is essentially instead of turning on a computer player, you get a figure player. Okay. So he, if you're fighting a level one,
01:02:29
Speaker
He's a chump, you're gonna kill him easily. Once he gets up to level 50, he's gonna be stronger than any level nine computer. So is it like silly putty in the sense that you can make that whoever or you have to have the figure? So yeah, you have to have the figure.
01:02:45
Speaker
But it's only one figure player. Yes. Yeah. So essentially, if you buy a Mario, you don't get to select, you know, Luigi or Bowser. It's a Mario. Yeah. So if you have Mario and Fox, you can switch between the two.
01:03:01
Speaker
You can enter, uh, I think it has support up to eight players at a time. So you can have eight amiibo in there, just duking it out, which I did a lot. We did, uh, like I said, I would do tournaments with my, my former roommate, Wes, and, uh, you know, play some drinking games. We would pick two amiibos amiibo and, uh, bet on them. I bet. I was like, you know, my nest is really good. I bet you, I bet you a six second chug that.
01:03:28
Speaker
Ness is gonna win by the way Wes's name is not being yeah, we're not believing Wes's name I'll make him listen to it and we would do you know we were as degenerates did we would bet on amiibo and drink of course as you do Totally what they were designed for see my favorite my favorite amiibo is actually man My favorite amiibo is actually a cereal box
01:03:52
Speaker
Yeah, so they like I said, since it's a thin, almost paper thin chip, Super Mario Odyssey cereal had a built in amiibo. It had a built in NFC chip. And if you were fortunate enough to find the cereal, like Eric and I both were, you could scan it into the Super Mario Odyssey game. It was just cereal that was at ShopRider. Yeah. So they had in the cereal aisle and part of the box, part of the cereal box had an embedded NFC chip in it.
01:04:19
Speaker
So what I did is I cut out the chip and put it in like a card sleeve to preserve it. But it acts like any other amiibo would. Were there people who were just ripping through boxes? Unfortunately, I did see that, which was disappointing.
01:04:35
Speaker
It's like the figure swap of cereal. It was a $3 box of cereal. Give me a break. Seriously. And the cereal wasn't bad. It was like a Lucky Charms kind of thing. It was a fun tie-in. It was a fun novelty. And the fact that you could scan it onto your switch. So it was basically like booty-os? It was your typical, like, when General... I think it was General Mills did it. But when General Mills has the Frozen cereal or the Star Wars cereal, it's like...
01:05:02
Speaker
vanilla flavored, you know, crispy pieces. Sugar oats with marshmallows. Yeah, that was like it was so basically like when when the new day cereal came out, it was lucky charms. Yes, exactly. New day pieces. So, you know, what I thought would just be like, oh, I'll get Fox, I'll get whatever character I like. The fact that we had so much fun playing with them and they were really nice to display and they
01:05:26
Speaker
there was quality put into it. There was a little dip from when they were revealed. Obviously, the initial sculpt looks so great. And then you put it into mass production and it dips a little, but it's still a high quality figure. They started at about like 13 bucks. I think they're up to around 15 or so now. But if I'll still pick one up, if I see what I like, I just bought an IV sore and he's so cute. And I love those at Walmart. Yeah.
01:05:50
Speaker
Like, and I just, I put them up in my, in my display at my house. And, uh, you know, games do come out that still support it. So Nintendo has really kind of put an emphasis on continued support where some of these other companies just weren't able, uh, to do that, which kind of leads me to Lego dimensions, which is a really cool concept as well. It was the same concept with little Lego minifigures.
01:06:14
Speaker
I got my girlfriend Lego dimensions. I thought it was like the greatest of all time. Yeah. And the fact that you know more about toys to life than you thought. I did. And the fact that they got all those IPs and I mean, well, Lego already has the relationships, but like the fact that like I just really think that wasn't in it was Disney. Yeah. But like The Simpsons Back to the Future, Doctor Who. They had Sonic the Hedgehog. Yeah.
01:06:38
Speaker
who's already a video game character as a Lego minifigure in a Lego game twice. It was it doesn't get any more meta than that. It was crazy. Yeah, they had Ghostbusters. They had and they had like Harry Potter. They know it was it was wild. It was and like the thing is like so to the point with with the amiibo. So I have I have one physical amiibo and it's it's Twilight Princess Zelda.
01:07:03
Speaker
which has now become Maddie's toy. She plays with that, she plays with a lot of the Disney infinity ones too. I think it had Mulan and Minnie Mouse and stuff. But to that point,
01:07:16
Speaker
There's no articulation on these things. They are statues, but the Amiibo ones are built really well. They stand up to play by a toddler. Zelda's delicate. Zelda's small and has thin arms. And she hangs, man. She can hang with all the other toys. But to the point of the Lego one, talk about bang for your buck. You're getting real Lego minifigures. Proper minifigs. And sometimes even
01:07:43
Speaker
Vehicles weren't there some vehicles smaller there were like so they're not System vehicles like you're the Doc Brown wasn't going in the DeLorean No, but it was like a little minifig think of like the advent calendar Yeah, like the Star Wars advent calendar where it comes with the little ship. That's maybe 20 pieces. Yep. Yep. Yep. It's that
01:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, but those were killer. I thought that was such a great concept. I never got to play the game, but... Have you ever played any of the LEGO games? Yeah. It's a LEGO game. Yeah, that's what I assumed. That's what I assumed. So that was one of the criticisms of it, was that the games, especially the Skylanders, the Disney Infinity, the LEGO,
01:08:25
Speaker
Lego more so was more, like you said, more of a Lego game. So that those are very solid. But the Skylanders and the Disney Infinity, there wasn't a lot of heft there. There wasn't a lot of bulk to the game. It was really just a vehicle to sell the figures, which wasn't going to last forever. And it didn't. And kind of shortly after Lego Dimensions, you know, came out, that's that was kind of the burst of the toys to life bubble. And
01:08:52
Speaker
There's still some here and there. Nintendo still chugging away with amiibos because Nintendo, their properties are just their fans are going to eat that up. Their fans are just voracious. Like if they put out, you know, another Luigi amiibo, I'm going to buy that because I like Luigi. I'm going to buy Fox. I'm going to buy, you know, whichever characters I like because they are nice figures. And I know I'm going to get a little something more as well. Did they have a Luigi with the vacuum?
01:09:18
Speaker
They don't. They didn't do a Luigi's Mansion. The support is starting to fall off a little where Smash literally every character in Smash Ultimate has an amiibo. I look for a cloud, which is nuts. So cloud is confirmed. I don't know if he's out yet. He may be. Do they? So in the like, you know,
01:09:38
Speaker
There's always like a one chase figure per WWE series or I don't know if there's any alternates for Marvel Legends. I don't think there are. But is there like any kind of like, you know, like there'll be a short pack or be like, so that brings me probably to my favorite.
01:09:57
Speaker
Not my favorite of me, but my rarest is a U.S. Meta Knight. Meta Knight was only, I only saw one release. A lot of these have kind of sold out and they weren't well stocked and well supplied when they first came out. Characters like Marth, like We Fit Trainer, these kind of niche characters.
01:10:18
Speaker
You know, Mario, they're sending millions. We Fit Trainer. I almost started. Yeah. Like Mario, they're sending millions. Link, they're sending millions. That's a great deep cut character. Like We Fit Trainer. You're not really, you know, flock into the stores to get a We Fit amiibo. Like it's just not. And they they thought that. But then people wanted the whole set and it became increasingly more rare. And on the secondary market,
01:10:43
Speaker
People are selling these for it's a $13 figure, maybe 15 max if you buy it, you know, out of Toys R Us where it was a little bit higher. They're selling on my line 50, 60, 80 hundred bucks. No shit. Now they did do limited edition ones. They would have like a gold Mario, a silver Mario. Now was that one you could just find in the store? And if you got that, like, is it like? Yeah, they were all out for, you know, they were all available through retail. There wasn't. Yeah, I remember the eight bit Mario jumping out of the pipe. Yeah.
01:11:09
Speaker
Yeah, they had him in both the classic colors and the current modern colors. So they did make alternates. Do they have ones for like Nintendo New York exclusive stuff? No, they didn't do a lot of that. They did some retailer exclusives like Target would have exclusives. I think Jigglypuff and maybe Rosalina were Target exclusives. They would have Walmart exclusive stuff like that. But they were usually fairly well stocked. I think like Falco was a Best Buy exclusive.
01:11:35
Speaker
um but they they were usually pretty easy to find it was just that initial wave uh and the second wave they kind of didn't realize i guess what they had on their hands so yeah they could accommodate the mario demand and like the link demand but everyone else was kind of hard to find and a lot of them did get re-released but like metonite has never been re-released i've never seen a second
01:11:58
Speaker
kind of influx of Mennonites. So I paid a little more for him, but it's such a cool figure. He's got the wings and the sword and everything. So I didn't mind. Uh, it's probably the rarest one I have. Um, but yeah, they, they dealt with that initially. It's like when the we initially came out, they didn't realize everyone and their mother literally was going to be playing this thing and they couldn't keep them in stock. And that's kind of how it was for amiibo. Now, I don't know if that was the result of people really wanting them for their collection or that they realized it was a lucrative.
01:12:26
Speaker
secondary market but there a lot of people were were upset and they've done a better job since then and the demand is kind of dipped but you know it was really difficult to find a lot of these kind of smaller figures uh like your wefit trainers like your marts your your firearm of characters your kind of
01:12:45
Speaker
Well, if you want any animal crossing ones, just go to five below. Oh my God. They're pennies.
Amiibo and the Oversaturation Issue
01:12:50
Speaker
Cause that was, you know, and that, that was one of the misguided kind of attempts. You know, they put out an animal crossing party game, but in order to play, you had to have an animal crossing amiibo. And if your friend wanted to play, you had to have one for them.
01:13:02
Speaker
so you couldn't just have one and play the game or have none and play the game it was literally unplayable without these amiibo and it wasn't a good game and it was a lot of backlash if you go to a game stop or they still have them they're trying to get rid of them they're like pennies they're a dollar they're like they cannot get rid of these and you know that's kind of what led to the downfall of the toys to life
01:13:23
Speaker
phenomenon, you know, it was kind of the oversaturation. Every company was putting out a twice a lifeline and not supporting it with good content. It was shovelware. It was it was shovelware. It was a money grab. It was saying you you want to play a game, you know, you gotta buy the figures. And if you just want to play with this one character, that's fine. If you want to play with anyone else, you gotta buy them too. And, you know, a lot of them sit and collect dust now, myself included. I still like looking at them and I still
01:13:52
Speaker
seldomly use them, but there was a recent one called Starlink, and that was out on the Switch. I think it was on other platforms as well. But on the Switch, once again, my boy Fox McCloud, Star Fox himself, was bundled. And this was like a space shooter kind of game. And the gimmick here was... Is it the same Fox or is it a...
01:14:15
Speaker
It's a different one because these are actually the ships are the figure that you're scanning in as opposed to the fighter. OK, so you would get an Arwing. You would get, you know, that other. Yeah, it was so cool. But here's the thing. I picked it up from Best Buy a couple of months ago for 10 bucks. You get the full game and Fox and his ship and a bunch of attachments for 10 bucks because they had so many of these and they couldn't get rid of them because the whole game in order to unlock these characters, you had to have the physical
01:14:45
Speaker
You know toy yeah, and well you well you tow that line, right? So like you first your first Dip into the water is you make a really great game that utilizes some free aspects, right? So like you you buy a couple of amiibos and it's like oh you get the you know, they're cool bonuses Then they up it where it's like alright now you're gonna use the amiibo and your amiibo is the DLC You're not paying for DLC you're paying for the amiibo and then you know It's just kind of like, you know, I hate to say it as much as I love Nintendo But like, you know that greed comes in where it's like now
01:15:16
Speaker
You have to buy the game, which is probably $50, $60 a pop when it comes out new.
01:15:20
Speaker
Plus, you need these amiibos. Absolutely. And that's one way to burst a bubble of success. Yeah, it was just the oversaturation. A Skylanders game every year with not much new content, slightly tweaked characters. And same thing with Disney. It's like you're kind of getting the same game. It's just you might get a new character here and there. But a lot of it's kind of recycled content. And people were not going to take it anymore.
01:15:48
Speaker
These are too expensive for us to be doing this every single time. The games aren't that good. And with the Disney Infinity game, so full disclosure, I bought all of the Star Wars figures because they were super cheap and they looked great. And they actually went on to inspire the Disney Store's toy box line. So their toy box figures are based off of the way that the Disney Infinity figures looked because they looked great. And the infinity, the hub was called the toy box.
01:16:16
Speaker
But the thing that sucked was they did this great job creating, frankly, a gorgeous sandbox world. So when you're in Tatooine and you're in Mos Eisley, it's awesome. It looks great. You can go into all the different buildings. But then you finish Mos Eisley, and you have the dumb little repetitive tasks you have to do. Go help this guy. Go collect this. That's a quest. Yeah. Get a number of these. And then you're like, OK. And then you get to Hoth.
01:16:47
Speaker
Do the same shit. Do the same shit again. So like, alright, cool, I'm on Echo Base. Like, when do I get to fight some AT-ATs? I'm moving this box across the floor. You know, and like I said, full disclosure, I never finished it. Like, it got to the point where the tedium was just so rough.
01:17:05
Speaker
And you have characters that you clearly favor, so your Han Solo's, your Princess Leia's, when they die in that game, when they run out of life, you have to put another player down to play as that character, and you have to wait a certain amount of time before you can put Han back on. And it's like, oh, well now my level 15 Han is dead, and I gotta use this level one, I don't even remember, C-3PO.
01:17:35
Speaker
I'll just have to go buy more, which is what they thought. But people, you know, people got tired of it. It's like you're paying for a game that should already be complete. And I think that's kind of why Nintendo still been able to continue with it because they make a full game. They're going to make a full game. They're not going to block aside from Animal Crossing, which is just a blip on the radar.
01:17:55
Speaker
But they're making a full game and Nintendo, you know, their first party games are usually of such quality that you're you're going to buy it. And then this is a nice little accent piece to it. But you're getting a full game like nothing critical to the story is locked behind an amiibo.
01:18:14
Speaker
like you're getting those because you want them not exactly exactly you don't feel like they're forcing you to do it you feel like hey you can do these if you want you might get some cool stuff but like you can play the full game you don't ever need to buy one of these and that is why i think they can kind of continue to put them out and have people buy them whereas other companies really base the game around you buying those they were like you can't play this game unless you buy the figures nintendo's like you can play the full game and you can buy these if you want and people like okay we will a lot
01:18:44
Speaker
Yes, we will. They're very pretty. Well, one of the things that I always found shocking and we're going to we're going to wrap it up. But like I felt like the toy line that would have would have gone perfectly with this, like if they had jumped on earlier would have been Funko because like you have these fungal pops with a circular base and well, not everybody's got a base.
AR and Future of Toys to Life
01:19:06
Speaker
No, but you don't even put it right in the box, put it right in the bottom of the box. So that way the people who like to leave them in the box or you can have a card, a collectible card, you know, that's the thing. These these and they lend themselves so well to just be like bunk, you know, like you just put the box right down and you come up with a cool little hub. And that's the thing. You know, it's it's kind of like I feel like this this era in gaming has has almost come and gone.
01:19:31
Speaker
Well, everything's moving to AR now. Yeah. So like Lego has their their AR game, which you use your phone, you build a build a Lego ship. You know, I noticed one of the ones that Maddie got for Christmas had instructions how to make it like it's a full Lego build, like regular Lego build. You download this special app on your phone. And as long as you have a phone with like a newer iPhone or a newer Android phone that has the Google AR, the AR kit through Apple, it brings your ship to life.
01:19:58
Speaker
You know, whatever you, whatever you made, you know, you put it, you look through it, you know, through your phone and all of a sudden, like literally, like if you have a ship, some kind of like spaceship, you, you actually see through your phone, rockets come out the back of the ship and like the ship takes off off the screen. You're like, you know, the thing you just built came to life.
01:20:16
Speaker
That's probably, yeah, that's probably the next phase and it's able to usually be implemented with a free app on your, you know, smartphone. That's already, you have that. Everyone has that. So I think the barriers to entry are much less for that. So I could definitely see that flourishing a bit more, but you know, toys to life still occupies, uh, cars out its own little, little area, but it's, it's not the behemoth that once was so.
01:20:41
Speaker
No, and I don't think I don't foresee it making a comeback. No, no, I don't think so. I think it's coming on and is, you know, a product of a bygone era. Yeah. You know, like I said, I still look forward to Nintendo to continue to put out the classic characters. And I don't care that not every game has every character in amiibo form like like a smashwood. It's nice to just have
01:21:05
Speaker
Not only new characters that that offer content, but they really let you use the old ones as well. You could scan in almost any amiibo to any, you know, any game that's compatible and you'll get something which is cool. They don't say, oh, those are the old ones. You got to buy the new ones. Like, no, we appreciate you bought the old ones. You could use those, too. Yeah, here's something. Yeah.
01:21:26
Speaker
Here's some extra coins. Exactly. So it's usually small. I guess it's usually not game breaking or altering that much. It's just you feel like you didn't just throw away your money for a little chintzy figure. Yeah.
01:21:36
Speaker
and we we talked about it very early on on the podcast our first our first game of name that toy but like really early toys to life you know you could technically say Captain Power right yeah you know I mean that was technically a video game theory yeah that involved the toy so you know maybe there there always will be a you know like you said like a little space carved out for this but you know it's it's certainly an interesting part of toydom it's very nice
01:22:00
Speaker
You know, toys and video games are have for, you know, the longest time been tied together, you know, whether they're sold at the same retailers or, you know, share
Social Media Engagement and Farewell
01:22:09
Speaker
an aisle. You know, the audience is very much so shared between the two. So, you know, it was it was interesting for a while to watch this boom kind of happen. But, you know, I guess we'll see what happens. So so Heather's boyfriend, where can we find you online?
01:22:23
Speaker
Well, I don't post much, but I am on Twitter and Instagram under the handle of that Tyler. That's technically all one word, so you're allowed to say it. I'll even spell it. Oh, T H A T T Y L E R. I don't post much on either, but I am there. I'm more of a lurker, more active on Twitter. You'll get some what I think are funny little tweets and everything. Hottest of takes. The hot only the scorching is hot takes from that Tyler on Twitter.
01:22:53
Speaker
Instagram, I don't think I posted this year. I posted about six pictures last year. So like I said, I'm more looking at your pics. So if you want me to look at your pics, follow me, I'll follow you back. I'll like some of your pics. But yeah, don't look for much on there.
01:23:08
Speaker
Well, thank you. Thank you very much for lending your expertise to to us for this episode, because we barely it's my pleasure. This is a blast. I'm sorry. I rambled on so much. You can take it out. No way. No way. One thing I did forget to mention before before we go. Shout out to the the country of Singapore.
01:23:28
Speaker
Yes. The whole damn country. The whole country. Because the month of January was very kind to us here at Adventures in Collecting. We had a banner month and a huge surge of listeners in Singapore. So thank you. Thank you for joining us.
01:23:45
Speaker
Yeah, whoever you are. I hope you're enjoying the show. Tell us on Twitter how you found us. Yeah, seriously. We're very curious. Yeah. And and and follow us at AIC underscore podcast on both Twitter and Instagram. And if you are if you are listening to us in Singapore, we would love to hear from you or anywhere. Yeah, for that matter or anywhere. Yeah. Yeah. So thank you again to Heather's boyfriend and Dave. Any any anything you need to parting words, parting words? No.
01:24:15
Speaker
All right, all right wait so real quick. I'm just gonna point who's winning the Super Bowl chiefs Yeah, sure, Kansas City. I'm also going with the Chiefs were super boring. Bye guys. It's gonna air after that It's gonna air on Monday at this errors on Monday. Yes, so all right if I was wrong 49ers put the one in that's right
01:24:36
Speaker
Thank you, dear listener, for hanging out with us today. Subscribe, rate, and review us wherever you listen, and then tell your friends to do it. Thanks also to Joe Azari, the golden voice behind our intro. Our music is Game Boy Horror by the Zombie Dandies. Find more about them both on our show notes.
01:24:52
Speaker
Follow us on social media at AIC underscore podcast on Instagram and Twitter. Stop by and say hi. Show us your toy hauls and share your toy stories. Maybe we'll talk about it in a future episode.
01:25:16
Speaker
This has been a non-productive media presentation, executive producer Frank Kablaui. This program and many others like it on the non-productive network is distributed under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial no derivatives license. Please share it, but ask before trying to change it or sell it. For more information, visit non-productive.com.