“Spring is in the air”

Yesterday I visited the Spring 2011 edition of the Collector’s Convention, which is being hosted twice a year in Utrecht, the Netherlands. It has grown to become the biggest convention of vintage collectables in the whole of Europe. Several giant halls are filled to the brim with everything you’d want to collect, ranging from stamps, coins and postcards, to antiques of all sorts and one hall dedicated exclusively to vintage toys and comic books! It’s as close as you can get to all those major conventions you find in the U.S. The Spring edition is traditionally a little less crowded than the Fall edition, but I had a great time nonetheless with some great bargains that I snapped up!

“Yo Joe!”

Right off the bat upon entering the convention I found a nice MOSC (mint-on-sealed-card) motorized G.I. Joe Cobra vehicle on a European card for the measly sum of 3 euros. After pocketing that I encountered another MOSC Batman: Animated Series character that I swiftly added to my growing collection of this wonderful toyline.: Bane! Can you believe this was just 5 euros?

“And now the leg, huh…”

Strolling along further across the countless of rows of vintage toys I soon saw these two posable Scarface action figures. Scarface is one of the coolest gangster flicks of all times (“Now the leg, huh…”) Truely one of Al Pacino’s coolest roles ever. Mezco Toyz created a total of eight 7-inch Scarface action figures in 2005 and these are “The Player” variants in white and blue suits and at 13 euros a piece I just couldn’t pass up on snapping them up both! They look amazing up close with real nice paint jobs. You can even see Tony Montana’s tattoo on his left hand. How cool is that!

“Masterfully crafted classics”

Most of my money went to a set of 4 Masters of the Universe Classics from Mattel. Now, I usually only collect vintage MOTU stuff, but I have been sitting on the fence for quite a while wondering whether I should buy some of these amazing MOTU Classics that have been coming out since 2008. They’re basicly the same as the vintage He-Man action figures, but crafted masterfully by the Four Horsemen and with way more articulation than you ever had with the vintage stuff. Having been on the verge of buying one of these online for so long, I finally decided this was the time to invest in this toy line and I bought a MOSC King Randor, Buzz-Off (which I originally owned when I was a kid), Orko and the Mo-Larr vs Skeletor set! I wasn’t disappointed!! The articulation and detail on these action figures is so frickin’ cool it’s unreal! Just look at King Randor here with his big ass sword!

I busted open the Mo-Larr vs Skeletor set and placed the MOTU Classics Skeletor next to a loose vintage Skeletor I had lying around. Just look at the difference.

Pretty cool, huh? I have a sneaking feeling these won’t be the last MOTU Classics I will be adding to my collection….I will leave you now with some more cool poses that I quickly whipped up of the dark lord Skeletor!!