December 18th, 2020

Shake a hand, shake a hand, because it’s that time of year again! I can’t afford to give out toys to all of my friends, so I make an update based on my favorite toys (mostly from the 80s), including toys based on preexisting licenses. This year, G.I.JOE and Masters of the Universe made some strong comebacks, even if some were ridiculously hard to find on store shelves. That’s enough from me, go open your presents!

G.I.JOE: Clutch (v.1 toy, v.1 comic, v.2 tan recolor)
Street Fighter: Chun-Li, Ken and M.Bison (all G.I.JOE figure v.1, made from parts of preexisting Joe and Cobra bodies with new heads)
Masters of the Universe: Zodac (last figure needed for original line-up of figures), Hordak (highly-requested)
Thundercats: Tygra (finishing the original crew of adult Thundercats who weren’t ghosts, sorry Jaga)

All new sprites added to the main image generator!


Whatever it is that you’re celebrating this time of year, I hope it’s a great time for you!

BTW: this WON’T be the last site update for the year… stay tuned…

4 Responses to “Toys and ‘Toons 2020”

  1. Happy Holidays!

    You’ve really captured the GI Joe Street Fighters perfectly, while at the same time making them feel authentic to their video game incarnations. Awesome!

    [I gotta say though, I never understood why Hasbro chose the Storm Shadow 3 body for Ken (or the Slice body for Ryu), when there were plenty of other pre-existing body casts, which looked more accurate.]

    I’ve been marking to see your takes on both Hordak and Tygra (I had both vintage toys, back in the day!), and now I get them both in one go!

    Consider my hand well and truly shaken, Sir!

  2. Thank you, Eddie!

    Yeah, there were a lot of obviously better choices to make for parts. I’m not sure if they were doing this back then, but I’ve read that Hasbro rented/leased/whatever some tools/molds for some of the line to other companies (I think they did this with Funskool) and some of the molds never came back. In a few cases, they may not have had them at the time or ever again. Still, Zangief’s legs will forever be a mad weird choice.

    Hordak had multiple requests over the years, just wanted to make sure I did him justice. Probably one of my favorite MotU designs, period. I had plans to finish all the original ThunderCats this year, but you know how this year went for most of us.

    Happy Holidays to you, too!

  3. i remember those GI Joe Street Fighter figures, god they were terrible – poor blanka only one i remember looking legit was guile hahahaha

  4. Hey, WMX! Hope you’ve been doing well! The characters lucky enough to get all-new figures weren’t bad, like Dhalsim, Honda and Sagat. The later movie versions, which were based on the game looks (*shrugs, I’m not trying to figure that out*) improved a few (Ken’s face was still way off), but it took Ryu DECADES to get a good figure in that scale (Hasbro’s Marvel vs. Capcom set with Black Widow) because his movie figure was never released.