Josh Coldiron's #TopTenToysof2018

We are at the end of another year, and oh what a year it has been. School has ramped up as I am getting closer to the end, and even though I have continued to collect toys. I have done less YouTube reviews as of late, but I have continued to post most days on Instagram. Back in May I had a chance to go back to Malaysia, and then visit Taiwan for the first time, which of course means I got to go on a toy hunt while on my travels. In Malaysia, I ran across some interesting bootlegs, some good, and some bad. I ran across one that was so bad, that it was good and I regret not getting it. It was a bootleg Transformers Megatron that had a Transforming Olaf packed in. That’s right, Olaf, the snowman from Frozen. I didn’t get it because I was tight on space and did not want to risk not being able to pack some gems I was hunting on my trip. Of course, now having two kids takes up luggage space between diapers and clothes for them.


[ Above image via @NoriToy Twitter ]
I had hopped from KL, to Ipoh and Penang and managed to find all sorts of interesting toys stores ranging from official Gundam shops to little shops that only carried bootlegs of anime toys. I spent a single day in Taiwan on the way back and discovered an underground mall that seemed to go on forever. One section was loaded with video games and toys and had me wishing I packed less clothes to have more room for toys. I had also gotten some gems when I was back home. I had gone up to Chicago for TFCON and got some pretty awesome things. While there I got to chat with another reviewer, Kuma Style. Without further adieu, let's jump into the top 10 things I picked up this year.

#10: GKR BOARD GAME
"Last year I joined in the Kickstarter for this board game designed by the folks at WETA Studios, you know the guys who worked on Lord of the Rings etc... It didn’t show till this year, and it was packed with 4 awesome figures like this, as well as 4 more unpainted ones I planned to customize. The mechs are very cool, plus I have a reason to interact with them. Sadly I still have not found time to actually play the game though, which is what puts it on the tail of my list."

#9: FUNKO BARB (from STRANGER THINGS)
"Oh, poor Barb, we know her fate, even though some do not want to accept it. Funko has been a power house in the toy industry, and honestly only a few things of theirs has caught my eye from their main POP line. They have managed to do some interesting sub-lines though. I do not know who designs their figures, but this set had a nice “art toy” feel and some well thought out uses of materials to make it a nice figure overall. It was good enough for me to get the other Stranger Things set, but out of all of them Barb was the best designed one."

#8: HASBRO MIGHTY MUGGS CHEWIE
"I’m not a huge Star Wars geek, but I can appreciate some of their characters and story elements. What I really like is this reboot of an early 2000s line Hasbro already made. I had actually sat down and reviewed the old version with this new version, but never had time to edit it or post it. With that said, the new version blows the previous entry out of the water. The application of the design was far better done, and the faces have so much character. And that is faces as in multiple. If you press the head, the face spins like that He-man character and you get different expressions. They even designed the case for collectors which lets you change the face yet keep it in the case and display them. They have had other characters from this line among others, and I really like the direction they took it and I will likely get some more. "

#7: SAD RONALD MICRO BLOCKS
"Bootleg lego? Well, kind of. The patent ran out, so construction blocks can be done by any company now. The character itself, is not a bootleg of another set as far as I know, but the line is inspired by lego’s brickheadz, and the character is inspired by McDonald’s mascot. It’s not that I love fast food, I'd take some hawker center food over that any day. I just love the irony of this iconic character depicted in such a cuteish morose manner."

#6: SUPER LOONEY TOONS HAPPY MEAL TOYS
"Oh, take me back to the day when Happy Meal toys were great. Maybe nostalgia makes me think that, but there are certainly some old kids-meal toys I would love to have again in my collection. I got lucky with these, I had been hunting on eBay for them, and kept finding them in subpar condition. I was then at a used game store and behold I found these for a buck each. The looked like they never even had never even been played with. I was raised with looney tunes, and these have a nice design to them yet have sort of a hokey bootleg-ish quality that makes them interesting by modern collecting standards."

#5: SUPER MINI PLA VILE & RIDE ARMOR
"Mega man, and Mega man X were some of my most beloved times in classic gaming. For so long I wanted good Mega Man toys, and most of them were awful. Over the past few years we finally have gotten some great MM toys. Bandai, sentinel, and kotobukiya had made some toys that really captured the designs and finally made my collection complete. Sadly, the ride armor was not being made. Prototypes would pop up, and then nothing would ever come of it. Bandai made this gashapon action 66 toy line and incorporated their new model kit line into it. Now finally we have a glorious ride armor to display. When I found it at a local book store, I was able to get it, but it felt weird having MMX ride in Vile’s armor. I had to hop on ebay to complete the set with his evil pilot. While I do wish the D-Arts line had their own ride armor, I'm happy enough if this is the only way I ever have this in my collection."

#4: DREAM WAVE TCW-06
"That is a weird name for a toy isn’t it, well it’s not quite all the toy you see before you. The Transformers POTP line brought us back the first real rendition of the Dinobots in a very long time. And get this, they combined into a giant robot. What!!!??? My inner 9-year old’s brain just exploded. The problem was, only parts of it were cool. The shoulders were weird, the waist was weird. Actually, other than the head and a few other parts, it didn’t hold up to a lot of other combiner robot forms. So, Dream Wave makes an add on kit, and it reshapes the robot and makes this combined mode into something fierce. It’s pretty dangerous actually, I think I cut myself on it when I put it together. Seems fitting for such a metal looking figure."

#3: SUPER MINI PLA VOLTRON
"Voltron, I know you know who that is. I had a Voltron as a kid, I wish I still had one. I was hunting for a classic one in Taiwan, but it fell through. I ran across Mad Toys Voltron in KL, but the shop owner would not sell it. Bandai released a SOC one for a few hundred. I hesitated because I felt something was not perfect about it, of course I regretted it because its price doubled than tripled after that. There was a mass retail plastic Voltron with design cues inspired by the SOC release, but it had some weird flaws that kept me from buying it. There was even another plastic Voltron made from the new Netflix show, which you should be watching. Sadly, it just did not capture the look of the shows designs as I had hoped. I was hoping that we might see an SRC release of Voltron from bandai, but instead they surprised us with a model kit. It captures the design from the original show so very well. It is dynamic, and very poseable. The only gripe might be lack of tampo graphics all around, and the fact that you have to parts form it for the transformation. Honestly, I would be totally fine with a solid non-transforming Voltron figure. Besides the small gripes, it was fun to put together, and is so dynamic that it carries its own presence on my shelves. Certainly a top buy of the year. "

#2: MASTER MADE DESTROY SCORPION
"What an odd name? That is ok, it’s an odd name of a tribute figure that ends up being totally Awesome. Master Made seems to make a product that always ends up on my TOTY lists. They are well built, full of diecast, have a great aesthetic, and are totally fun to mess around with. So last year, I had put one of their designs on my list, which was sort of an upgrade set like the one I mentioned above for the dinobots. It was such an awesome head bust design, that I had to have the bot they made it for. And this is it. It is a tribute to the Transformers Scorponok, but they started out doing their figures in a Super Deformed style. Their add-ons turn them into a more serious proportioned design style. In this case, we end up with a tough as nails giant city bot, that is bigger than anything they have produced, also with sharp point bits."

#1: MASTERPIECE MEGATRON
"I got this guy while in Taiwan. I remember paying for this $200 figure, and the store wanting to charge me $2 for a bag to carry it in. I was all out of cash and coins at that point, thanks to the gacha machines, and as I was scrambling, they mentioned how ridiculous it was to try and charge me for a plastic bag for a purchase that big, so in the end they let me have the bag for free. These are little experiences you learn when shopping in other cultures as well as elements that enrich the story of the hunt for these great toys.

In the past there have been other Megatron figures. None of them were ever that great in my opinion. I am counting even the previous MP figure, as well as the OG G1 figure. Takara Browning was a much better robot design from a gun, but Megatron got the lucky straw when Hasbro repurposed Diaclone figures. Anyhow, the real charm of Megatron was his iconic cartoon role. Never before has such a likeness of his animation model been captured in toy form. On top of that, its poseable, and comes with iconic battle damage from the showdown in the animated movie. When considering the look, the engineering, the size, and memories this toy brings up he takes my spot for top toy of 2018 for me. "

And that wraps up another year for me. It’s been a crazy year, with lots of adventures and life lessons. I am already ramping up for my final year of school and gearing my channel towards blogging about a game I am making for my final project. I have my sights on some new toys coming out for 2019 and maybe I’ll finally get around to building some of my model kits. May you all have a great 2019 of toy hunting, and a happy New Year!

[ This blogpost has been authored by Josh Coldrion of www.noritoy.com ]