It’s Figure Friday, the US of A is becoming a police state, so of course Hasbro decided that the move would be to reveal a new GI Joe Classified Series that’s a cop…complete with riot shield. You’ll notice that he doesn’t come with a body cam (not that it would be turned on anyway).
Oddly, this figure that was announced a few days ago was seemingly pulled from the pre-orders that went live on Thursday. I wonder why…
Now on to the fun toy news, I guess.
If You Build It, I Will Come…
I took a much-needed day off on Thursday. I pretended to sleep in, picked up my new car, went out to lunch and took a trip to the toy shop by my folks’ house. My FF co-writer Josh made the baller move to start shopping small and supporting local businesses over big box stores like Walmart and Target. I chose to follow suit and have been able to cancel some preorders, putting money back into the community.
Just last week, I was able to snag the Studio Series ’86 Ultra Magnus from a local shop and cancel my preorder that wasn’t set to ship until September. All told, I only ended up spending five dollars more, but the instant gratification and sticking it to a larger retailer more than made up for that.
Anywho, since it was payday and I’ve been busy as all get out (lot of dreams about assignments I should be doing but forgetting to do) I thought it would be a fine idea to snag some figures. It also didn’t hurt that I had nothing teed up for today’s column, so I was walking into the shop hoping the universe would deliver.
And deliver it did.
Now, I know nothing about Blokees as a brand. A few months ago, it seemed like anyone I follow on social media was absolutely raving about the Transformers Blokees figures, so I texted one of my TF fan friends asking, “Should I care about Blokees?” They told me that they had been gifted some of them and found them to be pretty fun.
I was somewhat skeptical since Blokees are small, inexpensive, blind box figures. For the uninitiated out there, a blind box figure is just that…a box that obscures what’s inside. Generally, you have a 1 in 9 chance of getting one of the common figures with this brand and a 1 in 32 chance of getting a “chase” figure.
Mystery box toys have always been around in one form or another, but Japan elevated it to a true art form. I remember being in college, and the comic shops that trafficked in import stuff started stocking Star Trek blind box ships. At the time, they were better than the Trek MicroMachines, which captured my interest. Both the upside and the downside to these were not knowing what you were getting. Sometimes you wound up with doubles, sometimes it was a really lame ship, and every once in a while you’d get EXACTLY what you were after. I don’t think there’s a drug out there that comes close to that feeling. Please note, I have next to no experience with drugs that have not been prescribed to me.
Time to bring this piece home, I was mildly interested in Blokees, but only one figure in particular: Cliffjumper. This Autobot has arguably been one of the breakout characters of Skybound’s Transformers series over the last couple of years…it’s kind of what happens when Bumblebee gets shot in the face in the first issue.
Just last week, I was checking eBay to see if I could skip the middleman and get a Cliffjumper figure without the hassle of having to roll the dice on a blind box. The shop I was at had some Blokees from the wave that Cliffjumper was a part of, I picked up a couple of boxes weighing both in my hands, selected the one which was the lighter of the two (Cliffjumper is one of the smaller figures, dig?) and proceed to make my purchase.
I’m happy to report I executed an absolutely legendary pull getting a Cliffjumper on my first attempt. So I think it’s safe to say it may be my first and last Blockees figure since none of the rest of them are really doing anything for me. But, dang, this figure was fun to assemble and it’s super poseable…all for just $10! Heck, I may snag some more down the line to just assemble for the fun of it.
