Toytober

Even though I previously said I wasn’t going to buy these McFarlane Toys’ Fallout action figures on account that it’s too expensive ($35 for regular and $60 for Elite). That was before I saw them, in person, at Walmart earlier today and I just had to buy the NCR Ranger. And let me tell you – I was really, really tempted to get that NCR Power Armor as well.

Let me explain why I ended up buying the NCR Ranger figure. It is mostly because it’s a Red Platinum. If you’re into McFarlane Toys, you know he has two types of chase variants: the Silver Platinum and the Red Platinum. The Silver is usually just a different color or paint variant or different figure, and they’re random. You might get a variant if you order blind. The Red Platinum are figures that you can only find in retail stores. You can’t really order these online, you just have to find them in stores.

That’s the main reason why I got it, I figure I’d probably never see this Ranger again and I know down the road, I’ll regret not buying it when I had my chance. The next reason is that I didn’t have a ranger yet. I refused to pay $60 for the Elite Ranger, and this Red Platinum figure is basically the same figure – only recolored in camouflaged, and different deco. Since the figure was $35, you only get one sniper rifle and two sets of hands. Otherwise, it’s a cool figure… but in the back of my mind, I would have rather have the NCR Power Armor.

The good news is that since you can buy those Power Armor on Amazon, I’ll just wait for a sale.

The photo attached to this article shows you the scales of the Fallout figures I own: The Power Armor, the NCR Ranger, and Lucy (the smallest figure in this lot).

I was at a random Walmart and noticed they had a whole endcap of Mini Brands Vinyls capsules and record player. I haven’t bought the record player, but I have bought two capsules. I like Mini Brand’s vinyls much better – they’re larger and sometimes they have color vinyls (instead of boring black vinyls). I think Mini Brands treats their vinyls more realistic, so you also get an inner sleeve, as well as a plastic cover. Unfortunately, it’s not compatible with MGA Miniverse. I just refused to pay $20 for the record player… so these teeny vinyls are it for me.

Speaking of small vinyls, I finally drove to Target to see the real-working Tiny Vinyls display. They had everything in stock, from the tiny record players to the tiny storage solution to a wide selection of Tiny Vinyls.

Each Tiny Vinyl contains two songs, one song on side A and the other song on Side B… essentially a single. Unfortunately, the price point is way too high at $15 per single. As a recent vinyl convert, it would be cool to have some of these in my collection – but when you think about it, it sort of sucks. It’s not a standard 7” or 12”, so you can’t use the turntable automatic needle drop (you have to manually do this).

Plus, one of the perks to collecting 12” records is for the massive beautiful cover artwork. With Tiny Vinys, you only get 5 inches of art.

P.S. It looks like the next gimmick is the Tiny VHS from MiniVerse. You get random USB-C connected tiny VHS tapes and it contains a 30 second clip of the movie that will play on the tiny Television set that is sold separately. No way, I’m not buying this. The TV is probably $20 and the tapes are going to be random, probably same price point as the Mini Vinyls. My biggest complaint is that the vinyls only play 30 second samples. It’s simply not worth it, outside of the novelty of a tiny record player.

Yours,