action figures

#1213: Ghosts Of Summers Past

RECORD STORE TALES 1213: Ghosts Of Summers Past

I would have met Searle over 45 years ago now.  Our cottage was built on this land in 1980, and we have a photo of Searle straining to look at a load of wood siding and windows, being delivered here, dated July 1980.  Indeed, it was his curiosity that brought him here.  A project as big as building a cottage draws onlookers, and he was only a couple properties over.

We were the same age and both of us from Kitchener.  In fact, his other step-brother Paul taught science at a highschool in my neighborhood.  Paul Marrow would become my favourite science teacher in grade 10.  He even appears in a music video I made in the 11th grade.

Since Searle and I were the same age, it stood to reason that we had in common the only thing that mattered in 1980:  Star Wars.  He and I were playmates during that eternal, infernal stretch of time during which Han Solo was frozen in carbonite at the end of the Empire Strikes Back.  Any games that we played with our figures had to work around that time frame if we wanted to incorporate Solo into the story.  As it happened, Kenner’s Empire Solo figure, in the snowsuit with the working gun holster was one of my favourite figures of the entire line.  Still is!  Of course we wanted to use Solo in our games.

“It’s weird how Han Solo got frozen, but it was hot,” I mused to Searle one afternoon while playing Star Wars in his cottage’s yard.

“Yeah,” he responded.  “There was smoke but he got frozen.”

“I should freeze my Han Solo in ice,” I suddenly thought.  “I’ll put him in a glass and freeze him.”

From that point on in my young life, my mom was never surprised to find a glass with water and an action figure in her freezer.  Part of being a mom to a Star Wars kid.

The last time I saw Searle was in the early 1990s.  He was big, and bald, and very tough looking.  He stopped by the cottage to say hello.  By then, I remember he was into the music of Phil Collins.  And that was it.  Never saw him again.

Until August 31, 2025.  Forty-five years after the fact, a big bald man and a smaller companion walked right past me down the road.  He was unmistakable, but he didn’t look or stop.  He probably assumed there was no way the same guy still lived here.  He walked up the way to his parents’ cottage, and stopped to linger a while.  Then he moved on down the road and away again, like a ghost.

The ghosts of summers past still live on, and with them the memories.  I should try to freeze my new $2 Darth Vader figure in the ice.

 

REVIEW: Ghost Super 7 Ultimates Papa Emeritus IV figure

So close… but rite here right now, so far…

SUPER 7 – Ultimates Papa Emeritus IV figure

7″ of satanic panic?  Absolutely, for here is a Papa Emeritus IV “Ultimates” figure from Super 7.  These limited edition deluxe action figures offer supreme poseability, lots of accessories, and supreme packaging.  But is it worth the $70 that Amazon was asking for this evil doll?

Let’s take a close look at the figure, his accessories and packaging.

Photos and packaging can be seen in above video

The box is a cathedral-like window, which looks great as a backdrop for your figure.  Papa can be displayed in his cloaks and mitre, or more simply in a shiny blue suit.  He has options for interchangeable heads, and a selection of pop-off hands for either guise.  The plain Papa has hands in plain black gloves while the more decorative Papa has hands with skeleton-like designs on them.  He has two soft-goods pieces of clothing to dress him up:  A vest-like undercloak, and a poseable wire-blacked cloak.  Both are intricately decorated.  Take care to keep both in excellent condition.

While it is easy to swap out Papa’s parts and clothing for any display option, this is the point at which the figure loses some character.  Fully cloaked, his articulation is limited.  You can’t lift his arms very high, which makes the “devil horn” hand kind of pointless.  He has a hand that can hold his microphone, but it works best with the two-piece mic stand so Papa doesn’t have to lift it.   Without the cloak, he can pose much better, simulating his dance moves from the video for “Rats”.  His shiny shoes look perfect for this.

Unfortunately, Papa needs at least one head with an open mouth.  Otherwise he never looks like he’s singing, which makes the microphone somewhat useless.

Super 7 got a lot right on this figure.  The articulation is good enough on the base figure.  The paint and details are spectacular, which is important for a premium figure.  Not enough attention was paid when it comes to his accessories.  Extra hands with varying finger positions are a standard feature now, but keeps like a cheat to include all of them in an accessory count.  You can only use two at a time, after all.   Instead of so many hands, an alternate “singing head” and perhaps Papa’s staff would be more useful.  I’m also quite fond of miniature albums coming with action figures, but Super 7 didn’t ask for my opinion.

If you can get one of these with free shipping or on sale, go for it.  Imperfect figures get imperfect scores.

3/5 stars

 

On This Day: June 16 2023 & 2024

On this day in 2023, June 16 fell on a Friday.  As usual, Grab A Stack of Rock was scheduled to go live that night with our very first Iron Maiden episode (which I shall re-edit and re-broadcast in 2025).  It was Iron Maiden rarities with Harrison, Aaron and a cameo by Jex Russell.

It almost got cancelled at the last minute.  Why?  See below.

I’m glad we re-ran the Adventures in Epilepsy episode last week so you can understand how it effects our lives every day of every week of every year since 2008.  She fell, and as you can see, she took a faceplant.  She insisted the show go on.  She never wants to be the reason a show gets cancelled.  And so the show went on.

On a brighter note, on this day in 2024, it was a completely different story.  Well, not completely:  Aaron was there with me once again, as we embarked to Toronto for our very best record shopping excursion to date!

Check out these episodes of Grab A Stack of Rock, and be sure to like and subscribe on YouTube!  WordPress is fun but it doesn’t keep the lights on.  If you could support us YouTube, it helps a lot!

 

 

VIDEO: How far can a TRANSFORMERS G2 Rotorforce toy actually fire?

Some long-awaited TRANSFORMERS content for you today!  Yes, it has been a few years since we’ve done a posting on those robots in disguise.

My main focus in collecting is Generation 1 (1984-91) and Generation 2 (1992-95) Transformers toys and characters.  “G2” began with a lot of recolours and reissues of G1 toys, but new molds started arriving in the early waves.  Many of them were gimmicky, with firing weapons being a popular accessory.

In 1994, Hasbro issued the Rotor Force:  four toys (two on each faction) that featured firing rotor discs.  I managed to acquire a couple nice samples of two figures with rotors intact.  Each toy came with two, in case you lose one.  I have one with two rotors, and one with a single rotor remaining.

The idea was you wind up the mechanism, twist, and fire!  But how far could those rotors fly?  Today’s scientific experiment featuring Dr. Kathryn will tell us.

 

 

REVIEW: Gene Simmons – The Vault (2018) Final Score, Best Tracks, Worst Tracks & Summary

Previous Reading: 

Record Store Tales #600:  The Vault
Disk 1 Review
Disk 2 Review
Disk 3 Review
Disk 4 Review
Disk 5 Review
Disk 6 Review
Disk 7 Review
Disk 8 Review
Disk 9 Review
Disk 10 Review
Bonus Disk Review

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are the best tracks of the 165 included?  What about the “action figure” and coin?  What’s the final score?

GENE SIMMONS – The Vault (2018) Final Score

Part One:  The Best Songs

Every song that was scored 4/5 or higher is listed below, in disc order.

Disk 1

    • “Are You Ready”   5/5
    • “I Confess”  4/5
    • “Legends Never Die”  4/5
    • “In My Head”  4/5
    • “I Wait” 4/5

Disk 2

    • “Hate”  4/5
    • “Within”   4/5
    • “In Your Face with Ace”   5/5
    • “I Wanna Live”  4/5
    • “If It’s Too Hot, You’re Too Cold”  4/5
    • “Rain Keeps Fallin’”   4/5
    • “Bells of Freedom”   4/5

Disk 3

    • “Christine Sixteen”  5/5
    • “Tunnel of Love”   5/5
    • “Got Love For Sale”  4.5/5
    • “Hell Or High Water”  4/5
    • “Domino”  4/5
    • “Only You”  5/5
    • “True Confessions #2”  4/5

Disk 4

    • “Plaster Caster”  4/5
    • “X-Ray Eyes”  4/5
    • “Charisma”  5/5
    • “Radioactive”  4.5/5
    • “Calling Dr. Love”   4/5
    • “It’s My Life”  5/5

Disk 5

    • “See You Tonite”   4/5
    •  “Once More Chance”   4/5

Disk 6

    • “Whatever Turns You On”  4/5
    • “Hold On”   4/5

Disk 7

    • “Suspicious”  4/5
    • “Everybody Wants”  4/5
    • “Promise The Moon”   5/5
    • “Pride”  5/5
    • “Mirage”  4/5

Disk 8

    • “We Rocked It All Night”  4/5
    • “She’s Rotten to the Core”  4/5
    • “S&M Love”  4/5
    • “Bad Bad Lovin’”   4.5/5
    • “Chrome Heart”  4/5

Disk 9

    • “It’s Gonna Be Alright #2”  4/5
    • “Everybody Knows #1”  4/5
    • “You’re All That I Want”   4/5
    • “Damn, I’m Good”   4.5/5

Disk 10

(none)

Disk 11

    • “Obnoxious”  4/5
    • “Just Begun to Fight”  4.5/5
    • “Dorothy Lamour”  4/5
    • “My Uncle Is A Raft”  4/5

Part Two:  The Worst Songs

Because there are so many songs in the two star range, every song score under 2/5 is list here in track order.

Disk 1

    • “Something Wicked This Way Comes”  1/5

Disk 2

(none)

Disk 3

(none)

Disk 4

(none)

Disk 5

    • “Dreamer”   1/5

Disk 6

    • “Beautiful”   1/5
    •  “I Dream 1000 Dreams”  1/5
    • “First Love”   1/5

Disk 7

    • “Dog”  1.5/5
    • “Never Gonna Leave You #1”  1/5
    • “I Ain’t Comin’ Back”   1.5/5

Disk 8

(none)

Disk 9

(none)

Disk 10

    • “Granny Takes A Trip”  1/5

Bonus Disk

    • “Feel Like Heaven   1.5/5
    • “It’s Funny, But It Ain’t No Joke”   1/5
    • “Love By Invitation”    1.5/5
    • “Queen of Hearts”   0.5/5
    • “Leeta”   1.5/5
    • “Put on Your Slippers”  1.5/5
    • “Nancy”   1/5

Part Three:  Action Figure, Coin, and Book

The much-ballyhooed Gene Simmons “action figure” is…a statue.  It’s a very nice statue, but there are no moving parts.  You can’t pose Gene with your other Kiss action figures.  Even the MacFarlanes were slightly poseable.  It’s quite large and heavy.  Very solid.  Though mine is sealed and hard to examine up close, You can see the sculpt is excellent.  It’s a very high-end likeness.  The paint details on the face appear to be quite nice, and you can even see a silver zipper going up Gene’s black leather jacket.

The coin is just a hunk of metal.  Drill a hole in it and hang it around your neck for fun.

The book is loaded with info, but not as much as you’d like.  Gene sometimes repeats stories, especially when it comes to Ace Frehley and Peter Criss misbehavin’.  Though Gene usually tries to highlight who is playing on which songs, it’s not always clear.  In some cases this information is lost, but it would nice to see credit breakdowns in the notes.  It’s loaded with sketches, lyrics, unreleased photos, and other assorted curiosities.

Though heavy, and housing all 11 discs within, the book does feel flimsy along the spine.  It is also a dust magnet.  It is a shame it didn’t come with some kind of slipcase.  Fans are going to have to improvise their own storage methods.  I’ll probably put mine inside a tote bag.  It is also a shame that the CDs themselves slip in and out of cardboard sleeves, but that was expected.

Part Four:  Average Score

This isn’t to say there isn’t a lot of filler on the Vault.  It only looks like there isn’t because I chose to list songs under two stars only.  There are simply too many 2 star songs.  It would get tedious.  However, there is a surprising amount of good stuff on this set too, and otherwise perfectly listenable tracks.  “Mongoloid Man” may be offensive, but it does rock.

One cannot overstate the importance of finally have the three historic Van Halen recordings.  This is something that never seemed particularly likely until the Vault.  Other demos of value include “Only You” and the Bob Dylan sessions.  There is clearly enough good material here to justify buying.  The amount of repeat songs under different titles is irritating, but that’s how Gene writes.  He re-uses ideas until they either make an album, or don’t!  For better or for worse, you’re getting a lot of those unreleased tapes right here.  Most of them involve material for his two solo albums.

Let’s face it:  Kiss die-hards want these collectible demos, for a number of reason.  One is that we’ve been reading about some of these song titles for decades.  Second is that many of them feature Kiss members in addition to Gene, such as Eric Singer, Eric Carr, Tommy Thayer, Bruce Kulick, Ace Frehley and Paul Stanley.  They also include almost-members such as Bob Kulick and Anton Fig.  For all intents and purposes, many of these tracks can be considered Kiss demos, released under the Gene Simmons name.

The disc with the best score was Disk 3 at 3.83/5, with its Van Halen demos elevating it.  The lowest scoring disc was Bonus Disk at 2.16/5.

The average score for all 11 discs:

3.04/5 stars

However, here’s something important to note.  The final score doesn’t matter.  Not at all.  Gene Simmons throws everything at the wall.  He writes, and he re-writes, and he keeps going until he has 165 songs jammed onto a box set.  The value here isn’t simple.  It’s not something you can break down into numbers.  The joy of hearing Eddie Van Halen doing whammy dives on “Tunnel of Love” cannot be quantified.  The value of certain demos like “Only You” overshines mere numbers.  This box set’s value will continue to pay musical dividends as we listen and listen again for years to come.

Thanks for joining us for this journey through the Vault!

 

 

Scream For Iron Maiden, Grab A Stack of Rock!! Mr. Books & Harrison bring the collections, with special appearance by Jex!

“The show must go on.”  That’s the saying, right?  That’s what the most supportive wife in the world said to me tonight when I was debating whether to cancel Grab A Stack of Rock this week.  Another seizure, another fall, thank God no broken jaw.  We’ll have to fill you in on the details later.

An exhausted Mike (physically, emotionally, and mentally) relied on his co-host and guest, Harrison and Mr. Books, for carrying the weight.  Jex Russell also stopped by with some rarities.

We looked at:

  • Rare bootleg CDs
  • Rare DVD
  • All my Maiden vinyl with stories to go with
  • Maiden beer, Maiden menu
  • Books
  • And some tangents.

A great show all things considered, and now I need to go take care of Jen.  See you next week if all goes well.

 

Next week, the summer tour of 2023 rolls on with Nurse Kat and the Arkells!

Iron Maiden’s Gonna Grab A Stack of Rock, No Matter How Far! Tonight at 8:00 PM E.S.T.

GRAB A STACK OF ROCK With Mike and the Mad Metal Man

Episode 24:  Grab A Stack of Iron Maiden

Harrison thought it was time to look at Iron Maiden again.  After all, Iron Maiden was the subject of two of our most successful shows in the past.  Enough time has passed that people will want to see our Maiden collections again.  I’ve dug up all my vinyl, and I have plenty of action figures from Super Seven to show off, as well as other assorted Eddies!

Joining Harrison and I tonight will be Mr. Books from the KMA.  It has been ages since he’s been on the show, so please give a warm welcome back to Mr. Books!

As always, we will start the show with “Ask Harrison” and some unboxings.  Hope you can join us!

SPECIAL TIME!

Friday June 16 at 8:00 P.M. E.S.T.  Enjoy on YouTube or on Facebook!

 

Next week, the summer tour of 2023 rolls on with Nurse Kat and the Arkells!

Grab A Stack Of Rock Bonus Episode: Jen’s debut as we unbox Marvel Legends Black Panther!

A fun test stream with Jen’s live debut!

“I Love My Dolls” – The Snow & Tell Collectables show

A terrific show tonight, as we (literally in some cases) dusted off some rare rock and roll collectables.  All apologies for showing off my ample stomach; fortunately you got to see some equally ample collections as well!  Kiss, Leppard, Maiden, Sabbath…we brought you some of the coolest vintage items and stories to go with them.  Ticket stubs?  Lots!  Tour programs?  Got ’em.  Things you didn’t know existed?  Check that box off as well.  Random stuff sent to us by Aaron?  Aye carumba!

Guests tonight included John Snow who has a nice collection of autographs, and Harrison Kopp with some rare old CDs.

Next week is the 2 year anniversary LeBrain Train with Rob Daniels and Tee Bone (and hopefully more)!  Thanks for watching, as we roll into a 3rd year of the Train!

 

“Snow” and Tell: Rock and Roll Collectables on tonight’s LeBrain Train with John and Harrison

This is a show that people have been wanting for a long time! So what do we do? We give the people what they want!

The LeBrain Train: 2000 Words or More with Mike & Friends

Episode 102 – “Snow” and Tell: Rock and Roll Collectables

Tonight on the LeBrain Train, Mike will be joined by John Snow of 2Loud2OldMusic fame once more, to compare collectables!  “Show and Tell” shows are always casual and fun, and this one will be special!  While our collections are modest compared to some, they aren’t too shabby and should be more than enough to keep you entertained on a Friday night.  We will be joined by Harrison the Mad Metal Man who has a couple cool things to show off as well.  What will we see?  Action figures, Funko Pops, tour programs, ticket stubs and lots more!  (Personally, I hope to see the world’s only Blaze Bayley bobblehead.)

As for me, I intend to tear apart my music room live tonight, to show you everything I can!  Some items, like my Spinal Tap and Beatles figures, are in storage.  There’s still plenty here to enjoy!  I have old newspaper clippings and all sorts of cool stuff to rediscover here.  Grab a beverage and settle for a fun Friday with us tonight!

 

Friday March 18, 7:00 PM E.S.T. on YouTube, Facebook and also Facebook!