We thought we were missing a couple, and we were right-- there's a fifth smaller Playmobil Dinosaurs sets which, interestingly, includes no dinosaurs. It's set 3194 and it's $5.99, which we spotted in a Mesa, AZ Target yesterday. Or last year, rather.

Target stores are blowing out their remaining Nemesis Prime toys from TransFormers UniverseEnergon to $31.98 if any are left. No other Universe, Energon, or Alternators toys are being marked down at press time. (That we can see, anyway.)

The latest addition to the Real American Hero collection has been spotted at Target, and it's cheap-- you get a big box with a playset, five ninja figures, a DVD, and a comic book for $14.99. It's called Ninja Battles and is available now.

It appears the first of the Energon "Bonus Value" sets to show up at multiple stores has surfaced. Now Wal-Mart is stocking a (as the pegs say) "BOGO Energon Basics," a two-pack of Energon basic toys which, unlike the Toys "R" Us version, has toys in red cards packaged together. We spotted the likes of Energon Strongarm, Doomlock, and Command Ravage in these new two-packs which, aside from the contents, are the same as the ones sold at Toys "R" Us, except only $6.94 or less-- a truly fantastic deal. The only assortments not seen in these thus far are the combiner limbs, which doesn't surprise us in the slightest.

Apparently some DVDs may have fallen through the cracks, so says TVShowsOnDVD.com. They claim Amazon.com has had Samurai Pizza Cats available on DVD for over a year but nobody seems to have noticed.

While we will not be viewing/archiving this set, we will take a moment to sing its praises. Despite being made completely of repaints with some new accessories, they're all very well decorated, nicely constructed, and priced to move-- the toy's about as perfect as you can get for the "birthday gift" price point ($15), and it includes so much junk it's hard not to love. We haven't watched the DVD yet but the comic was worth the read and the playset, while small, is gorgeous for what it costs. It also has a delightful backdrop for the packaging which we will most likely be saving.

Galactic Hunter has posted their weekly Q&A column by yours truly, bringing the 2005 Q&A season into being! We look at 10 questions with 10 answers from you, the readers, about all sorts of things from Revenge of the Sith to the latest Star Wars Trilogy things you just gotta know, or have a passing interest in. Read on!

The scholars at TVShowsOnDVD.com posted what word they have for the second season of Sledge Hammer-- it's vague, but positive as the set is coming in 2005. Read the article for the rest.

While it's most likely a leak from Hasbro's side of things, this auction is for Flame Convoy in a (mostly) unpainted state. The three-headed dragon doesn't appear to have any faction logos molded in, and he doesn't have a "traditional" Convoy head-- which might mean this character won't carry an Optimus/Convoy name stateside.

Target stores have marked down their exclusive King Mathias figure from Knight's Kingdom in record time-- most stores had it down to $4.98 or less over the weekend, but last night we started finding them for $2.48. No other toys in the holiday clearance were marked down that much, so if you're holding out for this one or are looking for a cheap, durable toy for someone you know, this might be worth tracking down.

The never-ending parade of Turtle variants is what made Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles one of the longest lasting boy's toy franchises twice. Now, there are new chromed souped-up turtles under the banner Battle Nexus, and there are only four-- the main turtles, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Raphael, and Donatello. The line seems to be going through a massive push with new product, so fans of the heroes on the half shell should be pretty busy this month.

The wonderful people at The Magic Box posted a gallery of new screens from a brand new Castlevania for the Nintendo DS coming out later this year. The site's news section also speaks of a PS2 Castlevania in the works (no further info) and talks about Super Monkey Ball Deluxe for Xbox and PS2. In other words, 2005 is looking good if the expected announcements of the new Xbox and Nintendo consoles weren't enough.

While selection varies by store, Wal-Marts are getting in large displays of kiddie books, including-- if you care-- activity, coloring, and beginning reader varieties for a $1 or $2.50 per. We personally spotted a TransFormers Armada Beginner Reader book from DK for $2.50 and some sort of activity book from the same property for $1. Many books from other licenses were out as well but few looked worth reporting on, and this one barely qualifies given the nature of the product.

Yo Joe added nine new figures from the three latest comic sets which cover issues six through eight at their web site. This includes the Oktober Guard, a lot of people in bright green suits, and a clever reuse of the 30th Salute Astronaut which modified him into Flash.

More figures in the Battle Nexus range have been sighted including a dragon called Drako that bears a passing resemblance to Chu Hsi's Warrior Dragon character from the old Archie TMNT series. There are several others hitting, so happy hunting!

The fine folks from ShowBIZData.com posted this great article on the top box office draws for 2004, the top draw of which was Shrek 2. Spider-Man 2 and The Passion of the Christ rounded out the top three, and the top 10 was a fairly diverse list of films this year.

Since before the holidays, there has been rampant speculation about the future of Dreamwave Productions out of Canada, and today, the speculation has ended. The comic company has ended its publishing life and the future of its properties are up in the air, meaning a lot of TransFormers series are, by no fault of their own, cliffhangers. More as it develops, if/when it develops.

Numerous stores, especially Wal-Marts, are marking down a ton of their 2004 selections of Harry Potter, Star Wars, and other LEGO toys fairly significantly. While we've seen a lot of instances of 25-33% off, we've had a few reports as high as 50%. As such, happy price scanning!

News.com is reporting that Ken Kutargi of Sony mentioned March when asked about the release date for the PlayStation Portable in North America and Europe. A number of game sites were also mentioning that an MMORPG is expected to be a launch title in the USA-- an interesting choice to say the least.

Wasting no time, the new site for the TransFormers Collectors' Club is online, and they announced a treasure trove of goodies. As it's run by the people that did the G.I. Joe club, odds are better that they will actually deliver this time around.

The first two Godzilla toys from Microman have been released and the cats at Microman Forever added a big gallery and review of the Final Wars Godzilla as well as a preview shot of the other figure. Neat stuff! Although from the sound of things, these have the potential to be fairly frustrating in assembly.

GameSpot posted a report revealing some additional facts on CastleVania DS, which it seems is its current name. It's set after Aria of Sorrow and you once again play the role of Soma Cruz, and it appears there's a bunch of wireless options to trade stuff and one of the screenshots looks like you fight Cthulu. It's original, we have to give it that.

The cats over at The Digital Bits posted their early review of the upcoming two-disc special edition for the very cool and oft overlooked film The Fifth Element. While there's no director commentary, there's a trivia track and scads of featurettes, apparently both old and newly produced. It comes out next week and so far it seems Best Buy stores have the lowest price in the USA at around $15.99.

It appears that TransFormers toys may be jumping from one line to another-- in the USA, the Universe Constructicons are Kay-Bee Toys exclusives for the line of that name. Now, several sites are posting six language packaging for these toys, but this time, it's on the Energon red style cardbacks with the appropriate graphics for that line. Neat, eh?

It was only a matter of time-- now Wal-Mart stores are carrying two-packs of Energon Deluxe toys for $9.87 or so each. We saw random combinations of the following packed on black cards in a large "bonus value" envelope: Hot Shot, Demolishor, Snowcat, Inferno, Starscream, Prowl, Rodimus. There were no signs of Rapid Run, the Armada Sideways repaint from the very first assortments in 2003, or of any of the newer toys like Downshift, Towline, Sharkticon, or Slugslinger.

It appears Babbages (and possibly Software Etc.) stores are blowing out all their new Anime DVDs for 50% off. The prices are pretty good on the whole, we picked up TransFormers Season 2 part 2 for $19.99. Yes, we know it isn't actually anime, but they don't-- as such, happy hunting!

The X-Files had a spin-off that lasted a few weeks, and it's coming to DVD in its entirety. There's an article on TVShowsOnDVD.com that reveals the box art which, we gotta say, doesn't seem to tie in well with the sets for its television ancestor. Still, it's nice to see a show come to DVD that really didn't get that much in the way of a decent first run.

A news clip has been making the rounds, and on it there's some footage of a Cabbage Patch Doll birth certificate from a recently produced toy due to an obscenity in its paperwork. Why is this notable? Well, the "adoption certificate" for the toy has a serial number that's unique, and randomly generated with 6 numbers followed by six letters, all in caps. The numbers were partially blurred out, as was the first of the six letters. What were the last five letters? "UCKME."

In addition to seeing Energon Barricade all over the place, we're pleased to report that a North Phoenix Target also stocked the Alternators toy Windcharger.

Want to see something strange and mystical? Galactic Hunter just posted shots of Hasbro's new Bogar from Revenge of the Sith. It's basically a big lizard and it's in the new movie. It may be the Emerpror's true identity. Just look at it, the similarity is clearly there. Best ye visit them for the link as it'll be on the front page (for now).

Mattel has released a set of six three-packs based on the popular show Justice League Unlimited. While lacking in accessories, each set is tailored to a specific episode, the title and production code of which appears on the packaging. While mostly repaints, there's some neat figures here-- some clear, some normal, and they're showing up at Targets for $9.99 and Kmarts for about $11.99. For fans of the animated-style super hero, this is an excellent idea.

We're sick of not posting more toy review-based original content and are devising a solution to get you more things to read while you're at work. Stay tuned.

Galactic Hunter has posted their weekly Q&A column by yours truly, bringing the 2005 Q&A season into being! We look at 10 questions with 10 answers from you, the readers, about all sorts of things from Revenge of the Sith to the reasons why Hasbro makes a lot of things for kids-- in a toy line, of all things. Read on!

Looking through the listings at Amazon.com, we were suprised to see several listings for new items, such as:
Green Shirts Six-pack
Tomax Crimson Guard Six-pack
Xamot Crimson Guard Six-pack

While we've all seen the shots of the revised Armada molds being rereleased for Galaxy Force (and possibly Cybertron), nobody knew what the extent of this revision would entail. Well, thanks to some pics posted at the 2005 Boards, we now know what it is we're getting.

Target stores have marked down all Christmas merchandise 90% off, it seems. We found the Santa set for $0.99, and we assume the advent calendars are about $1.49 if any are left-- we have yet to see one at that price as all stores are sold out. These are great deals if these are things you're a-lookin' for.

While gaming news was reasonably thin at the CES (and has been since the game industry ditched it for E3), a lot of sites are posting impressions on the games that were present. For example, Wario Ware Twisted! seems to be getting a lot of positive press, and this GameBoy Advance title is due out in March. Bungie is denying that a portable Halo is on the way... pity.

Microman Forever posted a gallery with the new Material Force, lady edition! The gals come in flesh, black, and yellow... with busts in small, medium, and large. Interesting variant choice. As many Japanese 12" figure manufacturers have produced interchangable bust sizes in the past, this isn't anything new, but oddly amusing in a small scale.

DVD File posted this list of the HD-DVD titles coming out this Fall with the new format. Included are titles from Paramount, Universal, and Warner, and not surprisingly there's not a lot in the way of five-star titles here... but there are a lot of new movies and if the format takes off, at least they're trying to hit the ground running. Although why anyone is ready to ditch their current DVD player is beyond me.

After snagging G.I. Joe a few weeks back, Diamond Select has snagged the license for TransFormers. While no products have been announced at press time, odds are some signs are in the works.

Big Apple keynote this week at the MacWorld Expo. Rumors include: "headless" $500 Mac, $150 1 GB iPod, an office suite, and all sorts of other stuff-- although we have it on good authority that those are all pretty much confirmed.

The guys over at Action-Figure.com posted five images of the unpainted Voltron prototype for the new ultra-deluxe mega figure coming out... soonish, we presume. The 12-inch Masterpiece Edition comes in a fancy box and sounds like a neat piece.

One of the sad cold facts of making a program these days is that there are lots of rights to clear if you didn't create everything yourself-- like in the case of Fox' Married with Children, where music from Queen was replaced by soundalikes in syndication and now it goes a step further with new opening and closing theme songs on the DVDs starting with season 3. .WAV files of both as well as a review can be found here, at Sitcomsonline. It certainly sounds like someone tried to capture the sound of the original song "Love & Marriage," as well as possibly something from the 1950s, all wrapped up in some sort of oddball synthesizer-heavy package.

While not news, as such, Palisades has announced they're bringing Sesame Street characters to plastic, much like their popular Muppet Show line. Right now, we know Grover and Elmo are coming but beyond that, who knows? We're hoping for The Count and Oscar the Grouch.

After selling millions in minutes in Japan, Square Enix confirms that the USA will get a release of Dragon Warrior VIII by way of its own homepage and GameSpot. No official release dates are available, but it's a bit of good news, that's for sure. DQ7 was released in 2001.

Boy howdy, did Apple show off a lot of crap today. Apple.com has pictures of everything, but the name of the game seems to be "small" with their pack-of-gum-sized iPod. Cute. Check it out, as well as the Mac Mini.

It's original if nothing else-- an online store has created a limited run of five custom Black Zarak figures based on the Energon Scorponok mold, and you can see it right here in both modes.

Art Asylum finally revealed the third series of their Star Trek Original Series figures-- there's four of them, and they were revealed on Art Asylum's forums here. The links were dead at press time, but you can also find pictures at Action-Figure.com.

Wasting no time, Mattel's Batman Begins line has appeared (with images) at Action-Figure.com. You can see the new villains from the movie, plush toys, Hot Wheels, all sorts of crap.

Something neat surfaced yesterday-- it's an unpainted figure that looks like Galaxy Force Starscream, except it has a flip-out gun instead of one of his swords, a crown, and is supposedly bigger than Unicron. This thread has several very large photos, dial-up beware. As of now, it was undetermined if this was in fact a prototype from Cybertron or some other thing.

Several months ago we reported on (and bought) a $10 Conquest of Cobra Mountain playset from a Target, and now we're happy to report KBToys.com has them in stock, right here for $9.97. We perused their other Joe offerings are were not impressed in terms of prices. Coincidentally, we opened our Cobra Mountain yesterday and were largely impressed by it. The exclusive figure was neat, but a repaint-- and while it was largely based on an existing Star Wars toy, the playset was tweaked enough to be largely a worthwhile purchse. Thankfully, Hasbro went through the trouble of resizing the foot pegs.

Some updates: one, Targets are putting these down on extreme markdown. The two-packs are down to $3.74 at one local store, and the basic figures are about $1.68-- the entire line is priced to move, but price and selection varies by store so best ye go look.

The Magic Box put up several pictures of the new and remixed graphics for the PlayStation Portable edition of Namco Museum. It actually looks really cool-- do go check it out.

All we can say is that we want one. e-hobby added a page revealing the black (and green and such) repaint of Victory Saber which will be an online exclusive. Most e-hobby toys find their way to eBay and American toy importers, so odds are you'll be able to get one at/near the $32 or so it would cost in Japan. (Actually, more like $40, but who knows.) Be sure to check this one out as it's an above average repaint.

While you've no doubt seen a few if you've been out and about, Target and Toys "R" Us stores have started to receive the eighth series of Marvel Legends with the likes of Man-Thing and Ultimate Captain America. These look great-- we daresay much better in terms of quality than we're used to-- so keep your eyes peeled.

...or so we're told. The game was supposedly released this week but our initial hunts have not revealed any copies in stores-- odds are it's just popular or was shipped in small quantities, but still, this is quite curious. Happy gaming if you found it!

One of the competitors to the military toy throne has been 21st Century Toys' Ultimate Soldier line which has, well, eroded. There's a lot around unsold at retail and today we saw some leftovers as part of the 75% off sale going on at Toys "R" Us. You can find 3 3/4" scale bombed out buildings and fountains from WWII in the stores now, if there are any left, for about six bucks. We snagged a fountain, and are quite pleased with it. If we can find additional buildings, we smell makeshift Cobra HQ playsets in the works.

TVShowsOnDVD.com posted a story at their site concerning a possible release of the little seen CBS program that ran in the 1990s. It was notable because it featured Christopher Lloyd in live action segments at the beginning and end of the show, but for the actual cartoon Doc Brown was voiced by Dan Castellaneta, aka Homer Simpson.

We were surprised by a new release for fans of the Gremlins films-- NECA put out a large size rotocast Brain Gremlin for $19.99 and it's at the likes of Sam Goody and Suncoast stores. It looks great and appears to be well worth the money for the kind of quality you're getting. We're not aware of any other figures in this larger line at this time.

Galactic Hunter has posted their weekly Q&A column by yours truly. This week we look at Rebel pilot figures, silver figures, twist ties, and of course, your favorite place to buy chicken sandwiches. Read on!

Hasbro has created numerous low-cost single packs of figures from its G.I. Joe line in Valor vs. Venom-esque packaging. The third wave has been spotted-- and we found links to pictures right here on the YoJoe! forums.

If you're the kind that can't get enough of "twisted fairy tale" type toys, boy are you in for a treat. McFarlane toys posted a preview showing a glimpse at their upcoming Little Red Riding Hood figure, and as an added bonus the cats at Action-Figure.com posted a story revealing the full line-up... which sounds like there's a lot of potential here. (Or also, potential to suck.) Keep your eyes open on the web for the latest on McFarlane Monsters 4: Twisted Fairy Tales... or don't, see if we care.

We came up with a way to do daily reviews on this site-- yes, daily toy reviews. Here. Isn't that amazing? We'll be starting these on February 1. We're also going to try to scrape together some advertising for the first time ever because, well, we don't make money from this site-- actually, it costs us money.

Boy howdy it's a busy day for He-Man-- I daresay the busiest in quite some time. He-Man.org posted shots of the first two 6" statues. They couldn't do action figures so they're doing $20 mini-statues scaled to the figure line. First up are Hordak and Clawful, one of which has apparently been more or less finished for three years. The designs seem heavily influenced by Mattel toy desires, and as such should be right at home with the regular toy line.

After the mail-in Agent Faces, Hasbro started another mail-in promotional figure-- Storm Shadow Unmasked. Hasbro's page for the offer has the redemption form and a list of questions & answers about the offer, but no pictures of the toy. The artwork on the page most closely resembles the version sold with the Ninja Lightning motorcycle, currently (we think) still a Target exclusive.

The cats at The Magic Box posted shots of six USA PSP titles... and it ain't none too exciting. Still, go look to see what you can expect.

The reports are around the web-- UPN's Star Trek: Enterprise is in its last season and will be wrapping up in the Spring. While we did not get the opportunity to watch the show, the spoilers posted about the end of the series sound pretty cool with some alien races from the original series making some appearances. Gorn, anyone?

It seems to be a good week for once-doomed toy licenses. Action-Figure.com is reporting that McFarlane toys will be releasing some action figure multipacks based on specific scenes from The Simpsons. This is surprising and sudden as Toys "R" Us is still blowing out the final figures, repackaged characters from the early days of the Playmates run. Specifics are as of yet unknown but they expect release later this year.

The cats at Cobra Island posted a list-- currently unconfirmed-- of numerous items that may be coming in 2005. Highlights include Kamakura with Ninja Lightning (pictures available), new Comic Three-packs, more vehicles, and a lot of new vehicle two-packs. Even more surprising, a new HISS-- which HISS, nobody knows, but hey, who doesn't love the HISS?

While we forgot to make a post, Curb Your Enthusiasm season three hit DVD yesterday. $27.99 at Circuit City, $29.99 at Best Buy, and... something elsewhere. This set includes some extras, too, unlike season two.

The guys at Fan2Fan added a bunch of nifty pictures of new and previously unseen Galaxy Force toys including a new guy that appears to combine with Galaxy Convoy! Also shown: in-package (and finished) Robot Masters Leoconvoy.

He-Man.org posted some great shots of a He-Man action figure standing side by side the new Hordak and Clawful statues, giving you a good sense of scale. Clawful is delightfully larger, as one could hope for.

After a few years of modest success, rumor in the comics world has it that they're going to reboot the continuity yet again. This is especially interesting as they just started a brand new continuity within the last year. There's no official confirmation yet but a post on Josh Blaylock's blog gives a little weight to the rumor.

Almost too odd to not report was this blurb from TVShowsOnDVD.com in which they say Magnum will also include episodes of Knight Rider and The A-Team. Odd, but why not? Cross promotion never hurt nobody.

We're rebooting the format (but not look) in a little over a week to bring you what we want to bring you more of-- toy reviews. Buttloads of 'em. To prepare for the upcoming breakneck speed for which we are aiming, we need to revise some templates and make a few phone calls. In other words, we'll be back on January 31 to update you on some of the Star Wars things we're doing over the next few weeks and we'll be back on February 1 to usher in an exciting-- to us-- new format. And what is that format?

The Magic Box posted some new shots of upcoming titles like Touch! Kirby's Magical Paintbrush and Catch! Touch! Yoshi! for Nintendo DS. It looks like the system is up for a pretty good year!

After a lot of jumping around, this blurb from TVShowsOnDVD.com has the latest and hopefully final official release date for season two of Chappelle's Show-- May 24. The story has a lot of info about extras, pricing, and more so feel free to go read that.

Lots of new goodies to see today if you haven't yet seen them, including:
Sega-branded arcade stick for Mac and PC
CastleVania DS: 4 Pages of pics
Lost in Blue: New DS RPG from Konami
PS2 Castlevania: Curse of Darkness info, pics & more pics
Namco vs. Capcom RPG

Apparently Star Trek Enterprise is ending, and Trek Today is reporting Riker and Troi from The Next Generation will make an appearance on the show. As any Trekker knows, no Trek show is official until it gets an unnecessary, unwanted Next Generation cameo.

A lot happened with Star Wars over the break-- there were some reviews, of course, but what really mattered was the release of Revenge of the Sith's first assortment of action figures-- a whopping four figures hit Wal-Mart near the end of the month. Nice, eh?

We did post a review, but just one-- Lando Calrissian. He's the most posable version of the figure ever produced at the small size, and aside from the elbows is the most perfect Lando ever. So be sure to read the review today!

We updated the Galactic Hunter Q&A column. You can read the update for. January 24. In it, we look at Revenge of the Sith repaints, Entertainment Earth's exclusive Clone Trooper packs (and why they come in so many flavors), Darth Maul merch, and more!

Also, there's today's update! We look at more Revenge, more Clones, Kmart exclusives, and well, more. Be sure to read the January 31 Q&A today!

--AP

Over at the He-Man.org Forums the Four Horsemen added this List O' FAQ with info on the upcoming 6" NECA Statues for Masters of the Universe. Namely, the contents of the first two waves, packaging, and more-- sounds promising if expensive. What's particularly interesting is that while these are $20 or so, similarly sized TransFormers and G.I. Joe statues from Palisades are $60. So let's see if they can keep the prices down...

Last week, Phoenix was invaded by new Joes-- the next three comic book packs arrived, as did the newest assortment with the new Fan's Choice Bazooka and Sgt. Bazooka! We snagged these items and are currently working on them for the review pile, which is moving along smoothly.

Fans of the Japanese band Polysics, take note-- they're going on tour in the USA! Namely, Washington, Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, Oregon, California... and places that aren't anywhere else. The first show on the tour will be here in Phoenix, AZ and I for one can't wait.

Starting tomorrow you'll be witness to a grand experiment. We're looking into taking on advertisers, which is a stark contrast to how we ran things for the past four years and change. We're going to be posting toy reviews every day, fairly in-depth but not to the extent some of our more ornate features.