A Whole New Bin of Awesome Pt. 1: Most of the Robots

I know that there are probably people out there who call bulls**t on some of the stuff they read on this blog. Like: "No one would just find a Castle Grayskull at Goodwill STUFFED FULL of action figures, for a few bucks..." But I am telling you guys, I do not fabricate any of the stuff I write on here. I don't secretly go out and buy stuff from eBay or Nerd Rage Toys or Instagram sellers and present it on here as stuff I have found in the wild. I am always 100% honest about where I find the stuff I showcase here. If I do buy something cool from eBay, I will let you know! 

I preface the following post with this statement because I realize how completely unbelievable it is going to sound. I know this, and I realize that some folks may say I have "jumped the shark" here in believability. But I need you all to know that what I am about to tell you is true. 

I swear this is NOT ME.

Last summer, I finished writing a series of 5 posts about a bin of neat toys I picked up for 40 bucks at a yard sale the previous September (That went down in 2013. The five parts can be found here: 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5) I had kind of slacked off writing about the bin after the second installment back in September of that year, and I didn't pick it up again until the following Summer... THIS PAST summer. July 13th is when installment number 3 went up, meaning there was about a 10 month gap between the second and third installments. 

And then on July 15th, something very awesome happened to me. 

If you have read any of the posts I linked to about my Yard Sale Bin of Awesome above, you will know I picked it up at a yard sale just down the road from my house. There is an older woman, a nice lady from Germany who has a house just three or four houses down from my own. She was the one having the yard sale but it was her son who was selling the bin full of toys. The rest, as they say, is history. 

I bought the bin, I wrote a couple of posts about it... and then I let it go for almost a year. July 13th 2014 I started wrapping that all up. And then two days after that, on July 15th 2014, I pulled into my driveway after a day at work, and was headed into my house. It was sprinkling rain very lightly, building up to a drizzle. A toy-filled truck drove past my house just as I was about to walk inside.

Not this truck. But almost as cool. 

The truck stopped. "Hey!" I turned around. "You want to buy some more toys?" 

It was the bin-selling son from last year! Two days after posting about the bin I had bought from him, the guy (Arthur, I found out) was driving past my house on his way to his mom's place, with toys in the back of his truck. Said he was on his way back from a show (toy show? I don't know.) when he saw me. Remembered I bought the He-Man stuff, etc. last year. Wanted to know if I wanted to buy another bin for 50 dollars. I saw something in the back of the truck that made me want to say yes almost immediately (I will not be revealing this item in this particular post... more on it later...) except I knew that my wife would divorce me if I bought another bin of toys... for that price. 

I told him this. He began dropping his price like an anvil in a Roadrunner cartoon. I didn't even dicker with him. He just kept going down, until he landed at 25 dollars. 

I couldn't resist. Just the stuff I could SEE was enough to convince me. The bin was also probably twice the size of the bin I got last year. (I know this all sounds like a fish story. I promise its not. I really do). I ran inside the house to get the money and pay the man. While I was gone he tossed a few more items INTO the bin. 

As I mentioned earlier, it was raining, so I grabbed the bin and brought it inside as fast as I could, to prevent stickers from dissolving right off the toys that had them... and I began to catalog the contents. Unfortunately, I didn't think to photograph the bin with the toys in it, but as I said, there was a serious water issue to deal with IMMEDIATELY. Not everything in that bin was in pristine condition, but almost all of it is a part of my collection now, with a few exceptions. For this introductory post I'm just going to show you 6 of the items from this new bin, and this first batch all share the theme of robotics.  

First up there was a pair of Robo Force figures in the mix. These guys are from around 1984 and have an interesting design, basically having a suction cup for a base and drier hoses for arms. They have a sort of Dalek-y vibe to them in my opinion. The guy above is named Vulgar the Destroyer. He used to have a drill bit where that hole in his face is now. He's really not in great shape at all to be honest. His sticker's messed up (in some part due to the rain damage mentioned earlier) and as mentioned, part of his face is gone... so he's seen better days.

Next up we have Maxx Steele from the same toyline. This was the Leader of the "good guy" robots. He's missing a chest piece and his right hand. So again, not in the greatest shape... but good enough for me to be honest. This line was not one I collected and played with as a kid, but I was vaguely aware of it. I definitely like having a couple of representatives in my collection. 

This handsome fella comes from the Captain Power line from 1987. He is the Soaron Sky Sentry. He is actually supposed to have a pair of wings clipped onto his back and a blaster rifle. We discussed the Captain Power television show back in August on the Geek Fallout podcast episode #91: "Top 5 Shows We Watched as Kids" That was a fun conversation. 

This Robeast "Scorpious" from 1984 put out as a part of the Panosh Place Voltron line is fun but also of severely questionable play-value. Since they made the decision to make this giant, Voltron-sized robot the same size as the human figures in the line, it made it hard for this Robeast to be any kind of credible threat to Voltron. He was anywhere from slightly too short to ridiculously too short depending on which version of Voltron you were playing with. But I have a soft spot in my heart for this guy mainly because of this Robot Chicken segment:

(I especially love the moment at around 1:52 when Robeast full-on twerks in Voltron's face.) 

This guy appears pretty unassuming at first, being a simple rubber robot with bendy limbs and not much else going on... but wait! That's before you get to know him! This happens to be a Mighty Bend-A-Bot, produced by Marty Toy back n 1985. This guy's name might Might MIGHT be "Umda" unless different colors of robot denoted different characters (His buddies had names like "Bongg" and "Zango") . These guys were obviously cheapy-charlie knock-off toys but have enough of a history that they can still be identified. They were packaged in two packs or single packs, and came with awesomely anachronistic knights' weapons like swords and shields.

One f my absolute favorite finds in this whole bin is this guy right here. He is a Starroid Raider from Tomland toys, produced in 1977, or possibly a Space Fighter produced in 1979. Either way, this guy's name is "Koga". These things were produced as cheap knock-offs to the Star Wars action figure line, and they were probably the bane of every child who received them, back in the day. Personally, I took one look at this guy and fell in love. He's blocky and goofy looking, has no knee or elbow articulation, and has a soft rubber head that vaguely reminds me of the soft-headed first wave of TMNT action figures that would come out a decade later. His limbs have a loose, floppy almost marionette-like quality to them that makes him a challenge to get him standing upright and I'm not sure if that came with age or if it was just how they produced them.

So here is: just the first batch of toys to come out of this second bin of awesome. I wish I'd gotten to write about this thing last year before Halloween hit, because now my first impressions and immediate passions have faded and cooled a little bit... but there was still so much neat stuff in there that I can squeeze out a bunch more posts! It'll be nice revisiting all the stuff I got on that fateful day.

That's it for tonight boys and girls! I'll be back soon with Geeky Goodwill Goodies (or more likely, goodies I got in the mail or in the bin mentioned above) very soon. Until then, Happy Hunting!