Heavy metal
There are toys you think you'll never own because they don't exist, but then they do, and there are toys you think you'll never own because you've never been able to find them. The toys that, be it as a child or as an adult, eluded you. For all the luck I (and my parents, and my grandmother) had hunting down those hard-to-find figures (I'll never forget my mum's epic hunt for a certain detective), we had nothing but misfortune with Kenner's Super Powers Collection.
But then again, so did everyone around the world.
Super Powers was one of the best-looking, most fun-filled action figure lines ever produced. Sadly, it never quite caught on the way Kenner had hoped (keeping in mind it wanted a repeat of its juggernaut Star Wars sales figures). The first wave of DC heroes was everywhere (though I recall problems finding Robin); the second wave was advertised on TV but rarely seen in stores; the third wave... well, I didn't know a third wave even existed until the internet came along - hence my delirious joy in having found Firestorm and Doctor Fate in years past.
A month or two ago, fuelled by my success in Canada and in tracking down GI Joe figures, I made peace with my long-time desire for Super Powers Cyborg. Sounds silly, but it was no small thing: Victor Stone is a wave three character, and therefore produced in very small numbers with precious little distribution (by the time of his release, Kenner had given up on the line). Cyborg's a pricey figure on the secondary market because of those factors. And, because he's a 29-year-old toy that's 50 per cent faux-chrome, finding a Vic in good nick is next to impossible.
So I made peace with the fact I'd have to part with a large chunk of change to secure a Cyborg, accepted my destiny and hit the search engine, expecting the search to take some time. Instead I found him right away. On the very first go. Near-mint and ready to be shipped. It's a funny feeling, being happy and angry all at once: happy you're about to achieve a goal with little effort, angry you're achieving said goal before you were really mentally (read: cash-flow) prepared to succeed. Not that anything stopped me, of course, but the feelings were there.
Cyborg arrived in the mail last weekend and, ohhhh man, is he a thing of beauty.
Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, Cyborg is Victor Stone - the athletic, somewhat rebellious son of genius scientists. An experiment involving inter-dimensional portals leaves Vic critically injured (and bereft of several body parts) and so his father rebuilds him as a cyborg. This doesn't sit too well with poor Vic but, after a time, he embraces his odd situation and innate heroism. He joins the Teen Titans and is a central member in that team's most iconic storylines.
My introduction to Cyborg came through the final season of the Super Friends show when, in conjunction with the toyline, it was renamed Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. Vic was one of two "audience identification" characters (the other being Firestorm) and, while I didn't like him as much as I did Ronnie Raymond, the concept of them as best friends and crime-fighting partners stuck with me (and, perhaps by osmosis, made it into LJ's games).
Cyborg the action figure is, as you can see, bloody amazing. The amount of detail in the sculpt is insane, down to rivets, bolts, vents and pouches on his belt. The chrome on this particular figure is even better in real life than you see here; utterly without tarnish and almost blemish-free (we'll come to that). Even the waist hooks, for his interchangeable arms, are intact and grippy. His "power punch" action (activated by squeezing his legs together) works but only grudgingly, so I'm being extra careful.
Vic was released with three interchangeable arms: a metallic fist, a drill and this tuning fork/sonic blaster configuration. If you find a Cyborg in this condition with all three attachments, expect to pay USD$1000 at least (or USD$1500 still in its packaging). Given my usual philosophy on old toys (I don't need every piece, I just want it display-ready), I'm happy to miss out on the other arms (besides: I'm reasonably confident the arm I have is meant to be the weapon he used in the cartoon).
The face sculpts on all the Super Powers toys (save for, perhaps, Captain Marvel) were gorgeous and unique: no two characters looked the same. This was an important attribute for DC characters in the 1980s: the publisher's heroes had spent the Silver Age looking more-or-less identical to one another (it was a regular plot point in Superman/Batman team-ups). Vic was obviously going to stand out from his peers - he's a cyborg, for crying out loud - but the attention to detail in the application of paint and chrome is sublime.
This photo, meanwhile, shows the only two areas of chrome damage on the entire figure: in the centre of the chest and on the upper-left pectoral, just below where his "singlet" starts. Any other areas of black you see are reflections from the camera flash and the room around him... Cyborg is a shiny, shiny boy.
My boys! My guys! My very first super hero bromance! It always irks me that it's yet to play out, on-panel, in the DC Universe. I mean, hell, so much of the company's output is influenced by the Bronze Age and the Super Powers show - why can't we have this, Dan Didio? Perhaps the crew behind the Arrow, Flash and Supergirl shows can make it happen? Please?
Childhood desire made real. I struggle to explain how happy this photograph makes me. Like I said before, these are three figures I was certain I'd never own - that I'd given up all hope of attaining - and to see them together, in my possession, in our comic room is a literal dream come true. And they look so good together!
And that, my friends, is a completed Super Powers Collection shelf. All of wave one, the main wave one vehicle, four guys from wave two and one from wave three. A damn good effort if I do say so myself. Like my Transformers shelves, I look at this arrangement and instantly recall a bunch of different stories... everything from the aforementioned cartoon to Hard Travelling Heroes and the 1981 Earth-1/Earth-2 crossover... which I read much, much later). Which is, as always, why I do this.
Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF
But then again, so did everyone around the world.
Super Powers was one of the best-looking, most fun-filled action figure lines ever produced. Sadly, it never quite caught on the way Kenner had hoped (keeping in mind it wanted a repeat of its juggernaut Star Wars sales figures). The first wave of DC heroes was everywhere (though I recall problems finding Robin); the second wave was advertised on TV but rarely seen in stores; the third wave... well, I didn't know a third wave even existed until the internet came along - hence my delirious joy in having found Firestorm and Doctor Fate in years past.
A month or two ago, fuelled by my success in Canada and in tracking down GI Joe figures, I made peace with my long-time desire for Super Powers Cyborg. Sounds silly, but it was no small thing: Victor Stone is a wave three character, and therefore produced in very small numbers with precious little distribution (by the time of his release, Kenner had given up on the line). Cyborg's a pricey figure on the secondary market because of those factors. And, because he's a 29-year-old toy that's 50 per cent faux-chrome, finding a Vic in good nick is next to impossible.
So I made peace with the fact I'd have to part with a large chunk of change to secure a Cyborg, accepted my destiny and hit the search engine, expecting the search to take some time. Instead I found him right away. On the very first go. Near-mint and ready to be shipped. It's a funny feeling, being happy and angry all at once: happy you're about to achieve a goal with little effort, angry you're achieving said goal before you were really mentally (read: cash-flow) prepared to succeed. Not that anything stopped me, of course, but the feelings were there.
Cyborg arrived in the mail last weekend and, ohhhh man, is he a thing of beauty.
Created by Marv Wolfman and George Perez, Cyborg is Victor Stone - the athletic, somewhat rebellious son of genius scientists. An experiment involving inter-dimensional portals leaves Vic critically injured (and bereft of several body parts) and so his father rebuilds him as a cyborg. This doesn't sit too well with poor Vic but, after a time, he embraces his odd situation and innate heroism. He joins the Teen Titans and is a central member in that team's most iconic storylines.
My introduction to Cyborg came through the final season of the Super Friends show when, in conjunction with the toyline, it was renamed Super Powers Team: Galactic Guardians. Vic was one of two "audience identification" characters (the other being Firestorm) and, while I didn't like him as much as I did Ronnie Raymond, the concept of them as best friends and crime-fighting partners stuck with me (and, perhaps by osmosis, made it into LJ's games).
Cyborg the action figure is, as you can see, bloody amazing. The amount of detail in the sculpt is insane, down to rivets, bolts, vents and pouches on his belt. The chrome on this particular figure is even better in real life than you see here; utterly without tarnish and almost blemish-free (we'll come to that). Even the waist hooks, for his interchangeable arms, are intact and grippy. His "power punch" action (activated by squeezing his legs together) works but only grudgingly, so I'm being extra careful.
Vic was released with three interchangeable arms: a metallic fist, a drill and this tuning fork/sonic blaster configuration. If you find a Cyborg in this condition with all three attachments, expect to pay USD$1000 at least (or USD$1500 still in its packaging). Given my usual philosophy on old toys (I don't need every piece, I just want it display-ready), I'm happy to miss out on the other arms (besides: I'm reasonably confident the arm I have is meant to be the weapon he used in the cartoon).
The face sculpts on all the Super Powers toys (save for, perhaps, Captain Marvel) were gorgeous and unique: no two characters looked the same. This was an important attribute for DC characters in the 1980s: the publisher's heroes had spent the Silver Age looking more-or-less identical to one another (it was a regular plot point in Superman/Batman team-ups). Vic was obviously going to stand out from his peers - he's a cyborg, for crying out loud - but the attention to detail in the application of paint and chrome is sublime.
This photo, meanwhile, shows the only two areas of chrome damage on the entire figure: in the centre of the chest and on the upper-left pectoral, just below where his "singlet" starts. Any other areas of black you see are reflections from the camera flash and the room around him... Cyborg is a shiny, shiny boy.
My boys! My guys! My very first super hero bromance! It always irks me that it's yet to play out, on-panel, in the DC Universe. I mean, hell, so much of the company's output is influenced by the Bronze Age and the Super Powers show - why can't we have this, Dan Didio? Perhaps the crew behind the Arrow, Flash and Supergirl shows can make it happen? Please?
Childhood desire made real. I struggle to explain how happy this photograph makes me. Like I said before, these are three figures I was certain I'd never own - that I'd given up all hope of attaining - and to see them together, in my possession, in our comic room is a literal dream come true. And they look so good together!
And that, my friends, is a completed Super Powers Collection shelf. All of wave one, the main wave one vehicle, four guys from wave two and one from wave three. A damn good effort if I do say so myself. Like my Transformers shelves, I look at this arrangement and instantly recall a bunch of different stories... everything from the aforementioned cartoon to Hard Travelling Heroes and the 1981 Earth-1/Earth-2 crossover... which I read much, much later). Which is, as always, why I do this.
Greet the Fire as Your Friend,
SF