Raving Toy Maniac

(click the 'read more' link if you are seeing this on the front page)

Update: May 6 - RTM reader Jeff posted in the forum that he found where the Avengers fast food toys are, but they are not in the United States. Jeff shared these two links:

- ComicBookMovie.com reports that in the Philippines, Petron Corporation has Avengers figures as cup toppers, and that in Brazil, the fast food chain Habib's has Avengers toys. (The article has some pretty neat images and a video clip of commercial for the Habib toys.)

May 2, 2012 - The third day of CustomCon 31 is now online!

The Day Three galleries include:

• New Avengers
• Tim Burton's: The Batman Minimates
• Marvel Legends Golden Age The Crusaders Two Packs
• Being Human - Wave Three
• 80's Action Figures as Minimates
• Marvel Legends: Soldiers and Scientists

May 1, 2012 - The second day of CustomCon 31 is now online!

The Day Two galleries include:

• New Avengers
• Tim Burton's: The Batman Minimates
• Guardians of the Galaxy Minimates
• Marvel Legends Golden Age Series 2 Two Packs
• "Before the Fall" Series 1 Minimates
• Heroic Commandos in Action!

April 30, 2012 - The first day of CustomCon 31 is now online!

The Day One galleries include:

• Archer Minimates
• New Avengers
• Tim Burton's: The Batman Minimates
• Marvel Legends Golden Age Series 1 Two Packs
• HEROES4US
• Age of Apocalypse Minimates

April 2012 - CustomCon 31 (Spring 2012) is coming soon! But if you just can't wait, why not take a walk down memory lane and look over the previous thirty CustomCon events.

Some of the more memorable moments for me were the Justice League Unlimited: Locker Room from CustomCon 16, the use of a Brett Favre figure in a Buffy the Vampire Slayer custom from CustomCon 21, and Sillof's many Steampunk interpretations, including this one from Dune from CustomCon 24.

One wall in our living room has a fireplace, a cubbyhole for a television, and a built-in shelving unit for electronic equipment. Above all of that is a giant display niche, where most people would put big vases and fake plants. Since we are both collectors, we've had several different ideas of what to display there. Until we can decide on a single cohesive display, we've just been sticking things up there as the mood strikes us.

One week, my pile at the comic book store included three Wonder Woman statues. I gleefully opened them (one included a live spider as a free bonus pet!) and placed them in the big niche next to another Wonder Woman statue that was already up there. It was an instant theme and I knew I could expand it, so I ventured into the basement and found two Wonder Woman busts.

Most of Hasbro's toys for The Avengers movie are in stores now, but just in case you have missed them, Hasbro has released a press release summarizing the product line. They were also kind enough to send along 63 press images, which we've posted in a gallery. (We might be adding a few refinements to the gallery format in the future, but for now sit back and enjoy the Black Widow picture.)

I turned on the new site map overnight, and it has RSS feeds as far as the eye can see. Not just for the front page and each separate blog section, but for each part of the Forum, each category of Classified Ad, and each 'tag' that we put on posts and articles. (For example: Do you like Toy2R? There's a feed just for items tagged with their name!)

If you click just the link, you'll go to that part of the site, so remember that you'll need to click on the orange symbol next to the link to get to the corresponding RSS feed.

February 2012 - We have moved a few things around and have updated the look of the site!

The news section can now be found at: http://www.toymania.com/blog/153. We've also added a fancypants RSS feed for the news posts for you modern folks.

There is also a separate RSS feed for the items that stream through the front page, but just as on the older version of the site, the front page won't be changing on a daily basis.

The ToyBuzz forum format has changed to something written in this century. The new forum can be found here, although your old bookmarks should still work to get you there. We've split the forum into two parts: toys and off-topic. We've also added registration, so now you can have avatars and sig files and whatnot. Both forums have spoiler tags, so there's no reason to be ruining the ending of movies for anyone anymore. (If you are reading this on the front page, click the "read more" link to get the rest of this post!)

Updated on 2-4: it seems to be working again now!

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(December 2011) - It was working on the test url, but until I move the new site out of the subdomain, it's not working over here. (It did work pretty well on the test site, which was exciting. I was even able to post in the forum with my nearly-featureless cell phone over wi-fi.)

I'm leaving the links at the top and side of the page, though, as a reminder to myself to make sure I fix it when the time comes.