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Greenberg’s Train and Toy Show Visits Reading, PA

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Tiny trains are breakable!

Tiny trains are breakable!

This past weekend Greenberg’s Train and Toy Show took up residence in The Greater Reading Expo Center in Reading, PA. The surprisingly large traveling event features seemingly hundreds of tables selling new, used and classic model trains as well as a variety of accessories used to build and maintain layouts. In addition, the event showcases a series of massive train displays in a variety of scales. There were even a few tables selling things we at MLD are a little more familiar with such as old action figures and computers(?!?!?). Admission to the events costs $7 for a two day pass and kids under 12 are free, which makes it affordable both to families looking for a fun day out and hardcore collectors looking for a new $500 locomotive. Read more of this article »

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I Don’t Even Like Marvel Vol. 5 – A Guide to Marvel’s Avengers Grab Zags

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I’m clearly late to the party in highlighting these items and Disney’s Avengers hit screens months ago and is now on DVD, but I just stumbled over them the other day. Grab Zags are another set of Marvel blind bagged toys. Each bag contains either an Avengers-themed finger scaled skateboard, disk launcher or “Marvel Mini” figure. As far as my recent search has dug up, there doesn’t seem to be any codes on the bag to decipher what’s in it. However, if you feel the bag it’s pretty clear which bags contain skateboards and disk launchers. Bags that contain disk launchers feel fairly flat. You can feel skateboard wheels in bags that contain them. Probably because I’m so late to the game, I’ve found that mostly what’s left in stores are disk launchers and skateboards. The bag advertises the possibility of there being 100 different toys in the bag. Based on the bag art, I’m not sure how that math works as I count 24 possible toys.

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New York Comic Con 2012: Mattel DC Figures on Display

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We here at MLD Central spent a good portion of our weekend in New York City for the 2012 New York Comic Con. We had a pretty fun time and took tons of pictures of all of the crazy happenings. While many of the companies we were expecting to see such as Hasbro did not have presence on the convention floor, Mattel had a large booth promoting Voltron, Ghostbusters, Masters of the Universe, WWFE and their various DC Comics lines. Despite being a massive DC Comics fan, I don’t really keep up on the latest news concerning all of Mattel’s lines because in my opinion it feels like their products tend to be overpriced with poor distribution, and the company regularly displays a poor attitude towards the customers who support their business. As a result, I’m not totally sure how many of the photos below actually feature newly announced Mattel product.

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I Don’t Even Like Marvel vol. 3 – A Guide to the Avengers Movie Heroics Figures

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This volume of I Don’t Even Like Marvel will be far shorter than the previous volumes because basically… I don’t even really like Marvel all that much and Heroics is a terrible line of toys in which to invest so much time and energy. Especially considering we’ve put almost no energy into discussing truly great lines like Funko Pop! or Mattel’s Action League. Having said all of that, I recently stumbled over a third set of Heroics figures at a local Toys ‘R Us.

This time the line was based on Disney’s Avengers major motion picture. I was tempted to buy the entire set just for the purposes of writing this article and because the figures looked pretty great in the artwork on the box. Luckily I came to my senses and realized that there was no real glory in continuing this mad pursuit of becoming the world’s foremost authority on the intentionally lowest quality line of comic book toys ever created. (I would have given that honor to DC’s Blammoids, but that line definitely wasn’t intended to be so low quality). Another reason I bailed on picking up more Avengers Heroics was that these were 20 percent more expensive than the previous lines. In the end, I decided to just pick up Hulk and Captain America which you may remember were the two characters I was so desperate to find back in Volume 1.

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I Don’t Even Like Marvel vol. 2 – A Guide to DC Heroics figures

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A few months back I wrote about Marvel’s Heroics figures. A series of tiny, blind boxed, 97 cent non-articulated figures. The figures walk an odd line between featuring detailed costumes while having almost blank faces. It was a sad tale about a quest for a Hulk or Captain America figure neither of which I found. This is a very different article. This is all about DC Heroics. And this time it didn’t matter who was in the plastic balls, because I wanted them all anyway. I’m a sucker for all things DC. Always have been. One thing I learned in purchasing this batch of DC figures is that if you turn the plastic ball so that the wrapper runs perpendicular to the split in the ball, you can place just a little pressure on the crack and it will open enough to allow you a peek at what figure is in the ball without actually opening it. Blind box foiled!

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