Toy Tribute: My 10 favorite modern Star Wars figures

And now for the next chapter in the Favorite Star Wars Figures Saga... Modern Figures! This article covers my 10 favorite figures from Power of the Force 2 onwards. Again, these aren't necessarily the best figures but those that I hold near and dear to my heart. This time I'll stop fence-sitting and rank the figures in descending order with my favorite last. Let's start off with...

Fan Art: Custom Gaiking VHS Cover

Back in the day, I was big into creating custom covers for VHS tapes. I bought a bunch of these plastic tape cases (very similar to those used by video stores) that had a sleeve through which you could slide a cover decal.  Tragically, very few of my custom covers still exist in electronic format, but fortunately this Gaiking cover survives.

Retro Toy Review: Psycrow (Playmates Earthworm Jim)

Playmates Toys from the early 90's had a gold mine in its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles toyline. Because of its success, Playmates produced a number of other toylines using the TMNT template.  I guess the mindset was, if kids have a bunch of TMNT toys, they'd be more likely to buy other figures in the same size and style.  So, Toxic Crusaders look like they come straight from the TMNT line.  And, as I discovered on a recent trip to one of my favorite comic shops, so do Earthworm Jim figs like Psycrow.

Fan Art: Star Trek Garbage Pail Kid

Every month, the Little Rubber Guys forums holds a Fan Art Contest, with a new theme every month.  The theme of the July contest is near and dear to my heart: Garbage Pail Kids!  So, given my current obsession with Star Trek, I knew I had to incorporate it into my entry, and this is the result!  The painting above is 18" x 24" and uses watercolor, with Sharpee to bring out the details.

Toy Review: Batman and Element Man The Brave and the Bold Action League

Everybody has to have a preschool mini-figure line these days.  I suppose it all started with the Playskool Star Wars line (now called Galactic Heroes) way back in 2002.  The trend took a while to really catch on, but eventually everybody wanted in on the action and we now have cutsey versions of Transformers, G.I. Joe, Marvel, Hellboy, Toy Story, Indy, and now, Batman.

Toy Review: Glyos Armodoc

The Glyos line continues to sink its talons into me ever deeper. I'm a huge fan of vinyl Godzillas, so when I heard that Glyos would be releasing a vinyl figure called Armodoc, I was all over it. I was fortunate enough to get to the website early (as with most Glyos figures, they sold out almost immediately) and I decided to buy two of them: Standard Armodoc and Reverse Armodoc (which is the same figure except the pink and white areas are reversed). Armodoc, don't let me down!

Toy Pix: Ghost of Nemica Scar Pheyden

Glyos is a great toy line, but you have to stay frosty to get the goods. Much like Nillin Scar Pheyden, this Pheyden was available for a very short time before they were all snatched up. It was sort of a video game exclusive: if you completed the latest Passcode game, you got the opportunity to purchase this Scar Pheyden, which sports a super-cool color scheme from the game.

September Poll: Your Favorite Summer Movie, plus Intergalactic Duel to the Death Results

Now that we've trudged through this Summer movie season, this month's poll asks which of the movies from the Summer 2009 movie season (from May through August) was your favorite? It will be interesting to see how these results match up with the results from the March poll which asked "Which spring/summer 2009 movie you are most looking forward to seeing?"