I am a huge Thunderbirds fan. In my younger days, I used to own a Ford Escort panel van that had the same body shape as Thunderbird 4. My dream was always to paint it golden yellow and put a big scoop on the front and a giant “4″ on the side. I came short of doing that, but have kept the interest going through various Thunderbirds-related toys, such as the “Soundtech” Tracy Island. (more…)

As you can see, a lot of of my recent collecting efforts have been around Mighty Muggs. The more than I’ve gotten, the more that I’ve been determined to grow the collection. I’m sure at some point either I’ll collect them all, or will slow down at least, but that time is still a way off!

For this Mighty Muggs Alert, I wanted to especially mention that I’ve finally added the last missing Mugg to the Indiana Jones part of my collection – The SDCC Exclusive Fertility Idol! I was looking like having to import him from overseas which (at the moment with the Aussie dollar exchange rate) was looking like being quite an expensive little exercise. Luckily I found him from a local supplier and now have all of the Muggs from the short-lived Indiana Jones range.

Of course, I’ve also picked up some more recently as well:

• Indiana Jones: Fertility Idol (SDCC Excl.)
• Star Wars: Shocktrooper (Target Excl.), Grand Moff Tarkin, Darth Vader (Unmasked), Darth Maul (v1), Admiral Ackbar and Shadow Stormtrooper (Diamond Preview Excl.), Commander Gree (SDCC Excl.)
• Marvel: Captain America (Classic), Punisher and Jigsaw (TRU Excl.)

My Muggs have started to really dominate the collection, and the new shelves and bookcases that I recently put into the man-cave are fast filling up. My next round of Mugg hunting will center around the new Star Wars and Transformers waves, and slowly back-filling the Marvel range. I’m just not a big GI Joe fan in general, so I’m not in any real hurry to start on those, although I’m sure I will eventually.

I’ve been so under the pump of late with my day job that my various blogs have been slightly neglected. Rest assured I’ll be fixing this situation shortly, but thought I would write quickly to let you know about what you can expect to read about soon on Toy Tragic:

• Mugg hunting has been still in full swing, and I have another Mighty Muggs Alert to release! These things are starting to take over my man-cave
• Thunderbirds “Sound Active” Tracy Island
• Star Wars Fact Files
• Homer-Sapien Robot

Stay tuned!

I went on a Mugg hunt into the city today and took my 7yr old daughter with me. We had a lovely afternoon together, and she didn’t even complain at the amount of time we spent in the comic shops! Isn’t it nice when you can spend quality time with your kids AND Mugg hunt at the same time?! It was also very exciting because I picked up my first “exclusive” Muggs today along with a few others :

• Indiana Jones (Entertainment Earth Exclusives) – Short Round, Sallah
• Marvel (Preview Exclusives) – Thanos, Red Skull
• Marvel – Thing, Dr Doom (Wave 2)
• Star Wars – Plo Koon (Wave 6)

I’m hoping to pick up some more Star Wars exclusives shortly, namely Admiral Ackbar, Shadow Stormtrooper, Commander Gree, Shock Trooper … and then I’m onto Wave 8 & 9 of Star Wars and keeping on through the Marvel releases. I only need to get the SDCC Exclusive Fertility Idol now and I’ll have the full Indiana Jones line, but trying to find him locally is proving a bit difficult. But that’s what makes the hunt so much fun! You can see the full list of Mighty Muggs in my collection here.

Just seen via Action Figure Insider’s website, Castaway Toys will be producing some exclusive 8″ action figures of my favourite comic cook here – The Phantom. These will be for the upcoming FX International Toy Show in April, and will feature a regular Phantom as well as limited edition “Gray Ghost” variant (limited to 500 units) and Skull Throne (100 units).

They look fantastic and would be an awesome addition to any Phantom collector’s box of goodies. Anyone going to FX and would like to pick one up for me!? Hmmm!? I don’t there are too many Phantom action figures out there to be honest.

Even though he is the original masked hero, he hasn’t captured the action figure world’s imagination (or marketing dollars) like his peers, but has relied on a strong following amongst die-hard fans – and after 60+ years he’s still going!

Had the thrill of being able to go on a huge Mighty Muggs spree today, and did extremely well. I managed to pick up for myself …

• Transformers – Optimus Prime, Megatron, Bumblebee, Soundwave (all Wave 1)
• Marvel – IronMan, Wolverine (all Wave 1)
• Star Wars – Chewbacca (Wave 1), C3-PO (Wave 2), Clone Commander Cody (Wave 3), Anakin Skywalker, Captain Rex (Wave 5)
• Star Wars Exclusives (Target) – Biggs Darklighter, Bossk, Teebo, Snowtrooper
  

Guess I’ll be spending my weekend putting up some more shelves!

Let me just say that this is very out-of-the-ordinary for me to get this much  in one go, and is only because I was able to offload some other items recently. Plus I have a very loving wife who was happy for me to indulge myself I’ve been limiting new purchases recently to Mighty Muggs and Phantom Comics (cause all my Cubeecraft is free!) and so at least I have a very specific range of items to try and find when I do have some cash allocated to my collection. And when you find those ones that you’ve been wanting to add to your collection, doesn’t it feel great!

This weekend I plan to head into Comics Etc in Brisbane for some more “Mugg hunting”, and will issue another Mighty Muggs Alert if anything cool turns up!