Good Smile Escaflowne moderoid kit review

Back in the 90s, it was rubbish being  an anime fan. Pre-web2.0, if you liked something you had to hope there was a magazine dedicated to it or else that was you left in the  dark- bar the odd tv special about the “adult cartoons from Japan'. Which was only slightly worse than having to scour all your local newsagents for Manga Mania, so you can be drip fed video release dates once a month, and maybe get the address of people who import anime merchandise. And let me tell you, most of said merchandise was pretty bad (don’t act so high and mighty, those old Dragon Ball Z figures were big, yeah but barely moved). Despite it seeming like the apocalypse has just started,  this is the golden age of anime fandom in the west. Shows are translated to English within a year, highstreet bookshops sell multiple volumes of manga, and the merch is so much better. Some of which are even sold at retail as well as multiple websites. The days of staying up all night to watch Legend of the 4 Kings and paying over the odds for a brittle model kit or a  gashapon are long gone. And how apt that one of the best anime series of the 90s, The Vision of Escaflowne, is the basis for this new model kit from Good Smile Company- better known for producing the nendaroid and figma series of figures- who are now expanding into the world of plastic models with their new "moderoid" line of kits. So how does it fare in a market dominated by Bandai? Now, where did I put my side cutters...

London Toy Fair 2020: Neca, Mezco, Cobi

That's London Toy Fair 2020 wrapped up. But not before I show a mixed bag of extra stuff I saw courtesy of Star Images, who distribute Neca and Mezco products (amongst others) to the UK. On display were the yet to be released Warriors four-pack in Mezco's 1:12 line, as well as the 1:12 Freddy Krueger. Another figure yet to see UK shelves is Neca's "ultimate" Pinhead and the retro style Candyman.  Also there was a new brand of building block toy from a Polish company, Cobi, that specialised in World War 2 era planes and battleships (and the titanic), and some tank sets branded with the mobile game World of Tanks.

Unbox Indistries Marshal Law review

Many years ago, at age seven or eight, I was reading through the only comic I read at the time, Marvel UK's Transformers, when I turned onto a page advertising a new comic. It depicted a Superman-like character with a T-rex's head, and he had a massive hole blown through his torso. Opposite Super Rex stood, what looked like, a leather bound, German prison guard aiming two massive guns. Long after I had finished reading the 107th variation of good robots punching bad robots I would go back to that advert and pour over the artwork from Kevin O'Neill over and over again. I had never seen anything like it. "They must have to lock this guy up at night" I thought to myself as I obsessed the tiny details O'Neill would include on his art, right down to the puns scribbled on guns and bits of the background. A year later- thanks to a randomly bought issue of fantazia- I would find out the fascistic cop was the (anti)hero of this unknown comic strip, his name was Marshal Law and he hunted super heroes. Having eventually read Pat Mill's scathing satire of the super hero genre (Law is cited as a huge influence on Garth Ennis' The Boys) the last thing I expected to ever see was a figure of Law himself,  but Unbox Industries - who made the Zombo figure I reviewed at before- have only gone and produced a vinyl figure of San Futero's top hero hunter. If only he could find some.

Cult Vinyl Judge Dredd review

When Dredd 3D came out in the cinemas, one thing that was sadly missing (apart from box office success) was the lack of  merchandise one comes to expect from a comic book movie. But recently, there's been a statue of Karl Urban's Dredd, an unofficial 1/6 scale figure, and now a vinyl figure. Take that, Judge Dredd bubble buddie! There's just one catch...