New Monster Hatch Acquisitions

Latest additions to the stuff on my desk collection:

Ultra Monsters Gomess (left) and Jirass (right) attend the first meeting of the League of Substitute Godzillas. (Gomess was created for the TV series Ultra Q, and Jirass for Ultraman, from modified Godzilla costumes.)

These two kaiju both came to Earth from outer space, but couldn't be more different: Seabozu (left), who just wanted to go back to the peacefulness of the Monster Graveyard, and Spacegodzilla, who just wanted to kick Godzilla's ass.

I've finally acquired Giganto the Mole Monster (the big green guy above) to round out my collection of Marvel monsters. This display represents part of Mole Man's kingdom beneath Monster Island, made up mostly of Heroclix figures.

There is (in no particular order) Mole Man, a Moloid, the Mad Thinker and his Awesome Android (a.k.a. Awesome Andy), Bi-Beast, Sasquatch, Man-Thing, Man-Wolf, the Lizard, a Brood warrior, one of the Mindless Ones, Dragon Man, Devil Dinosaur and Moon Boy, and the Hulk. And to drive home that this is a mash-up between the Monster Island of the Marvel Comics Universe and the Monster Island of the Godzilla movies, there is also a Destoroyah creature out front, and a Baltan alien (from the Ultraman universe) hiding in the back. The gorilla ripping open his cage door is from Horrorclix and is there because he reminded me of Konga. And the 2 human females are Elsa Bloodstone (daughter of the monster hunter Ulysses Bloodstone) and her Nextwave team member Monica Rambeaux (formerly Captain Marvel, Photon, and Pulsar of the Avengers).

Like the rest of my Monster Island collection, I'm still adding to this one, but now that Giganto is in place, I felt like it was time to post a picture.

Giganto is of historical importance to the Marvel Universe because he was on the cover of Fantastic Four #1, reproduced for the FF Omnibus below:

And here is his first appearance immortalized by Alex Ross:

 A Giganto by Art Adams:

And my current desktop wallpaper:

So here is the layout, with the subterranean area of Monster Island on the left, the surface of Monster Island in the center, and NYC on the right:

And that's your Monster Hatch update.

Know Who Else Talked to Chairs?

Here you go: I created this template so that everyone can design their own Twisted Toyfare Theatre cover commemorating Clint Eastwood's historic conversation with a chair at the 2012 Republican National Convention. Just add word balloons!

If you post yours on Twitter, please include the #TwistedToyfare and #Eastwooding hashtags. Enjoy!

(For those that are unfamiliar with Wizard Magazine's Twisted Toyfare Theatre, it was the precursor to Adult Swim's Robot Chicken, and consists of comic strips made from posed Mego action figures.)

And considering the topic of today's blog post, for some reason I find it highly amusing that the only Clint Eastwood action figure I could find on the internet is for "The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly."

Also, I'm just going to leave this here as the last piece of the puzzle:

Behold the Kuratas Mecha

This is why I love Japan. While Americans stockpile handheld weapons and survival gear for the zombie apocalypse, the Japanese are preparing for the REAL threat: giant radioactive monsters.

Kuratas is a 12' 5" tall, nearly 10,000 pound, fully-functional Mecha built by Suidobashi Heavy Industry at a cost of 1.4 million dollars. It can be controlled from within its one-man cockpit or remotely from a 3G smartphone. It fires both rockets and 6000 rounds of ammo/minute.

More details about the debut of Kuratas at WonderFest 2012 here and here. These guys are definitely ready for Godzilla Wednesdays:

Muppet Labs' Mechani-Kong Revisited

Yesterday I blogged about the Muppet Labs' Gorilla Detector, and the confusion that the toy version of it brought me.

But today I found myself wondering if perhaps the REAL question should be: How did Dr. Bunsen Honeydew get his hands on the severed head of Mechani-Kong in the first place?!?

Is it possible that he is, in fact, in league with the evil genius Dr. Hu, Mechani-Kong's creator? Muppet Labs always struck me as an awfully shady operation. This would explain a lot.