I was over at the local mall today buying myself a new pair of glasses. I decided to take a trip to Samgoody, aka the most over priced store on the planet, and see if they had anything cool. Samgoody is an awful store by the way. I was trying to browse through their Playstation collection and it was a nightmare. Nothing is in order, it’s this mix of old and new product, and everything is ridiculously expensive. There was a used copy of Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter which looked like it was wrapped up in a shit, and was going for 20 dollars, where as I bought a copy for myself at Gamestop a few months ago for 6.99.

Unfortunately, there are no more specialty shops in this mall, so this store is the only place where you’ll find cool American and Japanese toys that you likely won’t find at Toys R Us. Case in point, the new Jack Bauer figure from McFarlene. I wrote about this figure before, but it looks like it finally came out. At 20 bucks, it’s a little steep. Problem is, even if I found this thing on the net for cheaper, I’d probably still end up paying around 20 dollars with shipping. Since I’ve been looking so flipping forward to this figure, I didn’t mind the price so much. Heck, I’m on vacation too, I’m allowed to toss away some money if I want (glasses not included).

Of course he doesn’t look as good as the prototype, but it’s damn close. The problem is I don’t really have room for this figure anywhere. I’m debating taking it out of the box, not that I’m anal about that stuff, but sometimes certain figures look better packaged. This one might be one of them. For the Bauer fan, it doesn’t get much cooler than this.

We Jack Bauer fans have a lot of waiting to do over the next few months. Okay, so this past season of 24 certainly wasn’t the finest in the series, but that doesn’t mean I don’t miss spending Monday nights with my favorite CTU agents.

That said there is a whole world of 24 out there, including plenty of ways to spend time with Jack while we wait for Day 7 to arrive in January. You might be surprised by the amount of options, ranging from books to video games. Take a look.

I certainly was a child of the 80’s. I remember when the very first episode of Transformers was aired, and then witnessed the glut of cartoons based off of toy lines sprawl across television. It was quite a spectacle. In an earlier post, nerdlogger “tdb” suggested we do a post on one of the other cartoons with transforming vehicles: M.A.S.K. I thought it was a damned good idea.

M.A.S.K. stands for “Mobile Armored Strike Kommand”. Dig that “K” in there. Now, if you ask me, Ed Boon and John Tobais must’ve been a huge fans of this show when they came up with Mortal Kombat’s title. That “k” just gives it that 80’s edge it so rightly deserves. It already has an insane cast of wacky characters none of whom wear the same uniform yet all belong to the same klub (hah I’m so clever), so all it needs now is a jamming 80’s theme song sung by some hair band wanna-be. Lucky for us it does:

Remember when you used to go to the grocery store with your parents, and after checkout you would beg them to let you buy a little toy from those 25 cent machines? Yeah, those capsule machines were really cool when you didn’t know any better. However, once you hit a certain age, you realized that the toy inside sucked. It sucked big time.

When I went to Japan a few weeks ago, I discovered that feeling as a kid all over again. Capsule toys are huge in Japan, and some of those capsule toys are really cool. There are literally thousands of different machines to choose from, so the chances are you’ll find a machine you like and pump a couple hundred yen into one.

Honestly, before I went to Japan, I think I finally managed to squash my need for wanting toys. I had told myself that they are a waste of money, and that I simply don’t have the room for them anymore. The truth is, they are a waste of money and garbage, but when garbage is as cool as this stuff, it’s hard to resist.