Raving Toy Maniac

RTM is taking a look at the Collector-Actionfigures.com (DASH for short). DASH has been online since 2009 and the site offers tools to help manage your collection. There are also tools for buying, selling, valuation and trading as well as showing off your collection.

Full disclosure: RTM was asked to review the site by DASH and they are also an ad sponsor for RTM at this time. We were granted a premium membership free of charge to facilitate the review. The review itself was sent to Collector Dash for fact checking, but not editorial input.

Working with DASH, we have a redemption code that you can use to get a paid subscription at a discount. The code is listed at the end of the review and RTM does not receive a finder’s fee or any payment if you use that code.

DASH does some things very well, and some it does not. We’ll cover those areas and a little more in this look at both the free and premium (paid subscription) service.

(Updated on September 20th after we bought two more bags and filled in the last three codes.)

September 2012 - Our local Toys'R'Us restocked their K'NEX Angry Birds section, and the boy had stars in his eyes when he saw the $190 worth of new sets. Sadly for him, he has cheap parents, so despite the "buy one, get one 40% off" sale, we quickly zoned in on the $3.99 blind bag figures instead of the larger sets. The K'NEX web site shows that the blind bags ("Mystery Figures") are exclusive to Toys'R'Us.

We had really good luck using the cheat codes for the Mario Kart K'NEX blind bag figures, so we were happy to see a similar code on the back of the Angry Birds bags.

Along with SyFy’s Collection Intervention there is another show this fall that may appeal to toy collectors, Toy Hunter. While Collection Intervention (my look at the first episode here) changes the collections from show to show, Toy Hunter is about one and only one thing – toys.

The show is on the Travel Channel and highlights trips to parts of the US with Jordan Hembrough while he looks for toys to sell in his business. He is a large toy dealer and runs Hollywood Heroes, based in New Jersey. If you wondered how he gets his leads, you can find it on their website where you can contact him to buy your collection. He uses these trips to find things he can sell for a profit. Each show is a half hour and he usually sees 2 or 3 people per show and each show has a bunch of smaller deals and one big deal.

September 6, 2012 - The boy scored just one additional McDonald's SpongeBob SquarePants toy last month. Don't feel bad for him, though, as he hit the jackpot in the form of the K'NEX Angry Birds sets during a trip to Toys'R'Us. So he's getting new toys... he's just not eating fast food to "earn" them.

Let's see what's out there in restaurants this month!

A quick check of the web sites for the more popular fast food restaurants reveals the following:

- Wendy's Kids Meals have Where's Waldo toys, with Animal Planet items coming soon.

- McDonald's has Power Rangers Super Samurai and "Hello. I'm Julius!" (by Paul Frank) in their Happy Meals, with Hotel Transylvania shown as the next promotion.

- Subway Kids Meals have reusable lunch sacks. The sacks now feature Frankenweenie.

August 28, 2012 - Hasbro has sent along press images of their new Star Wars toys unveiled at the Star Wars Celebration VI convention - we've posted all 80 of them in a gallery for your enjoyment.

The new action figures shown were from Build-A-Droid Wave Two, Movie Heroes Wave One, Clone Wars Wave One, and Star Wars Fighter Pods, as well as new vehicles.

Here's the Mara Jade action figure from the second wave of Droid Factory action figures:

There are two new shows that may be of interest to toy and pop culture collectors this year – Collection Intervention and Toy Hunter. Collection Intervention is on the SyFy Network and Toy Hunter is on the Travel Channel. Today we will take a look at Collector Intervention.

The premise (per SyFy) is a show where Elyse Luray (a collectibles expert) ‘helps couples, families and individuals whose pop-culture memorabilia collections … have become damaging obsessions, creating financial strife and a huge strain on their lives.’

These impressions are from the opening show of the series, and they may change as the show continues.

The format is to introduce a collector, highlight their collection and to highlight the ‘damage’ that their collections inflict on their lives. During the show they will try to find a solution to help with the problems from the collection and the result is (at least so far) to sell off some of the collection. The first show has two subjects, so they split time through the show going from one to the other. Since it is an hour long show, I would expect it will stick with the two subject format for the immediate future.

I opted to respond to some questions and concerns here in a blog rather than a forum post. The length made more sense away from the forum and this will let it stand alone better. It is more a case of providing insight rather than answering questions or debating ways to do things. This is just a look inside what drove the changes and why we made the choices we did.

I want to make it clear we made the decisions, just the two of us. We didn’t take a vote or anything like that. Since we run and own the site and do not have any staff beyond us, it was on us to do this. We have a couple of friends who help look over things when we travel, but that is it in terms of help on the site.

Go ahead and settle in – it will be a long one.

From my perspective I can say the change has been mostly positive. However I had different goals in mind with the change and upgrade. And my perspective is different than that of a reader.

August 5, 2012 - The boy saw a McDonald's commercial last month and decided that he needed the Ice Age toys, even though he's never actually sat all the way through any of the Ice Age movies. The service at our closest McDonald's is less than stellar, so after getting him one toy there, I bought a set via eBay and thought that was the end of it, but he convinced his grandparents to take him to McDonald's two more times. Lots of Ice Age toys in our house now - I can't complain, because the toys are actually quite nice.

The new promo at McDonald's is SpongeBob SquarePants, which the boy again learned about from a commercial, so we stopped on the way to the Bronco's Saturday Scrimmage, and he got a cute Gary toy. You push it along a flat surface and his eye stalks move.

Let's see what's out there in restaurants this month!

A quick check of the web sites for the more popular fast food restaurants reveals the following:

July 18, 2012 - Hasbro has sent along press images of their Marvel action figures unveiled at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International - we've posted all 17 of them in a gallery for your enjoyment.

Hasbro has also uploaded a few videos from Comic-Con to their http://www.accesshasbro.com/ web site.

Here's a Jean Grey action figure from the second wave of 2013 Marvel Legends:

July 17, 2012 - Hasbro has sent along press images of their new Star Wars toys unveiled at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con International - we've posted all 55 of them in a gallery for your enjoyment.

Hasbro has also uploaded a few videos from Comic-Con to their http://www.accesshasbro.com/ web site.

Here's a Boba Fett action figure from a Target-exclusive multi-pack:

Matt from AwesomeToyBlog.com attended Comic-Con and has a gallery of presentation slides from Hasbro's Star Wars panel and another of the display cases from Hasbro's booth.