Top 9 Patriotic Toys for the Fourth of July

One of the first videos I did on my Big Anklevich on Toys YouTube channel was about my toy-related Christmas decorations.

I was a little sad that I had started my toy channel after Halloween had passed, because it would have been really cool to have done a video about my toy-related Halloween decorations too. I just had to bide my time, though. Halloween would come again, and when it did, I did my Halloween video.

Just after the Fourth of July passed last year, I started thinking of how cool it would have been to do a toy video on my channel about my Independence Day decorations. I even thought I could take it further and do a best patriotic toys list as well. List shows always rock it, right? Everybody loves lists. As long as you include a number in your title, then people are helpless not to click. At least, that's what I've heard.

Then, I decided that my toy channel would not be able to grow because of the new rules YouTube was going to implement as a result of their malfeasance with COPPA, so I gave up on that particular endeavor.

By the time I did that, however, I already had most of the toys that I was going to use in my top patriotic toys list show. What to do? Well, I couldn't abandon it completely, so here we are, I'm doing the list for you right now. Then, later, I'll do a post about my Fourth of July decorations. The video would have been better, but oh well, that ship has sailed. As someone--probably Aristotle or St. Thomas Aquinas--once said, "It is what it is."

Number 9 - Citizen V

Citizen V is not really a very patriotic character, at least this particular version, anyway. This version is Helmut Zemo. He is a fraud. He is a bad guy masquerading as a good guy to hide his own evil deeds. Some might say that makes him pretty darn American, and yeah, I suppose there are a fair number of folks who pull that here, but they do it everywhere. It's nothing we invented.

There were other, legitimate Citizen V's (how the heck to you pluralize V? There's no good way). This is the only one that they've done a figure of, however. He looks pretty darn patriotic, though, and to make number nine on the list, that's really all it takes. I added the mini-American flag to his hand as well. He actually comes with a sword, but the flag really adds if you ask me, so I ditched the sword.

Number 8 - Fireworks Team Leader

This is a Fortnite figure. I don't play Fortnite, but I kind of like a lot of their designs. They have dozens of skins for their different characters that often go with particular holidays, and this is one of them.

One of the first figures that McFarlane Toys released of Fortnite was the Cuddle Team Leader. It was this same figure with a more Care Bear feel to it...or anti-Care Bear feel. Then, a little while later, they released a repaint of the figure in this red-white-and-blue getup. I thought it would go perfect side-by-side with a few other figures that I might be able to get my hands on. One of which will make this list in a much better position on the chart.

Number 7 - Wonder Woman

Specifically, I'm talking the DC Multiverse Linda Carter Wonder Woman figure. Wonder Woman is a weird case. She wears a super patriotic American costume with the blue field filled with white stars from the corner of the American flag as her underwear, yet she hasn't been overwhelmingly put forward as a patriotic character for the last while at least. She is always emphasized as an Amazonian, an Amazon Warrior.

Is she patriotic? I don't know. Maybe I don't know the character well enough. Rish Outfield, who knows comics way better than I do, is probably pulling his hair out right now and screaming that I'm a clueless idiot, but I don't feel like she's particularly patriotic. However, this particular figure comes with the cape that Linda Carter wore a time or two in the seventies.

It's so over-the-top that it doesn't matter how patriotic American or hardcore Amazonian she might be, she makes the list with that.

Number 6 - Iron Patriot

Marvel Legends came out with this version of the character last year. It's the Avengers: Endgame version of Iron Patriot. Rhodey went out to fight Thanos with Rocket Raccoon on his shoulder in this particular suit, and the figure is the coolest one of the Iron Patriot that they've ever done. I absolutely love it, mostly because of the heavy weaponry sticking off of it from all sides.

I do find the Iron Patriot to be particularly patriotic and the perfect thing to put on the shelves for the Fourth of July. I have this guy on another shelf:

He's not amazing, but I plan on trying to spruce up his paint job like I did with these figures on my old toy videos:

In fact, I have two other Titan Heroes figures of the Iron Patriot that are in this stage of the repaint process:

I wish I hadn't been a slacker, and I already had these done, because they would really make my shelves look better if they were done.

Number 5 - BioShock Infinite Heavy Hitter George Washington Motorized Patriot

This is another video game character from a game that I also have never played. However, this figure is so friggin' cool. I believe in the video game there is an alternate universe version of the USA, and then there is some sort of apocalypse. This figure is a George Washington robot from a Disneyland Hall of Presidents-style place that is now running amok with a big ass gun. I love it. So fun. There is also a Ben Franklin version of this figure, and I swear I will be getting a hold of it by next Fourth of July.

Number 4 - Stargirl and S.T.R.I.P.E.

This is a set of characters from the DC universe, and I was almost completely unaware of them until this year. Rish Outfield told me about them, and I looked them up and learned all about their history. Then I set about acquiring the figures.

Now the characters are hitting the bigtime. I haven't seen it yet, but I guess they now have a TV show on the CW that is set in the Arrow-verse along with Arrow, The Flash, and all the others.

Number 3 - Uncle Sam

Another DC universe character. It's fuggin' Uncle Sam. I find this crazy, and kind of lazy. DC just took Uncle Sam, and turned him into a superhero. I guess the guy becomes more powerful the more patriotic the citizens of America become and stuff. It's not an idea that I think is particularly good, I'll admit, and I think most people agree with me, because the character isn't particularly popular, but I don't really care, because it made it possible for me to buy an absolutely awesome Uncle Sam figure. This guy is great.

I posed him next to the Fireworks Team Leader, gave him a grenade launcher to hold, and I'm putting together my own team of American heroes. I took a different Fortnite figure and started painting it in USA colors. It's not done, but here's a shot of it so far.

Number 2 - Captain America

There is, of course, no way that Captain America wouldn't be on this list. I had to put him on here because of the sheer number of Captain America figures on my Fourth of July shelves. The one I chose as my representative was the Hasbro Marvel Legends Icons version. This is a twelve inch figure, and it is very nicely detailed and painted. I really like it.

I don't suppose I need to bother to explain why Captain America got such a high position on this countdown, but I will show you the other Captains on my shelves as part of my decorations:

Yes, Captain America is my favorite of The Avengers. I also like Superman better than Batman. Sue me.

Number 1 - Eagalus

I'm sure when you saw that Uncle Sam was number three and Captain America was only number two on the list, you were thinking, "Who could possibly be more patriotic than Uncle Sam and Captain America. Well, behold:

This is the Mythic Legions Eagalus figure. It's a friggin' bald eagle man with red white and blue striped wings. I'm not sure if there is any possibility that anything could be more patriotic than this figure. It's kind of like everything all rolled into one ball, baked at 350 for ten minutes and served warm and gooey. I had to have it when I saw that it was available during their in-stock sale a while back, so I jumped on it. Sadly, no opportunity to make a video for it, but the blog post will have to do.

Hope you all enjoyed it. Be back soon with an overall look at the decorations on the shelves.

Still Chugging Along

Over on his blog, Rish Outfield is still blogging every single day, updating his word count (and sit-up count and hike count and so on). I haven't been doing the daily updates of my word count for months now, but I am still writing, still cruising toward my ultimate goal of 300,000 words on the year. In fact, I just hit another milestone along the journey. Here's my present word count for the year:

That puts me at three quarters of the way there. However, I am a long ways from three quarters of the way through the year. In other words, it's going well, and I'm probably going to make it to my goal. Of course, there's all sorts of catastrophes out there that could befall me before I make it, but I'm going to look at it like Nick Fury does:



So, 300,000 here I come.

Father And Son

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Happy Father’s Day. #toys #lego #marvel #greengoblin #marvelcomics #legodino #legominifigures #toycollector #toycollection #toycollectors #actionfigures #actionfigure #actionfigurecollection #actionfigurephotography #actionfigurecollection

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Another Car Accident

I was on my way to work this morning, when a rainstorm started sprinkling on my car. After a few moments, it had progressed from sprinkles to an all out downpour. This kind of thing happens a lot in Houston, so I'm used to it.

As I progressed down the freeway, I came upon a spot where the rain had accumulated on the road. A big puddle that could have been as much as a foot deep stretched from one side of the road to the other. Everyone in front of me was slowing down. We would be able to make it through the puddle just fine, but not if we were going freeway speeds.

I slowed down, and proceeded into the puddle, when I heard a squealing sound behind me and then--WHAM!--I was rear-ended. My head slammed back into the headrest, and the car rocked from the impact. The guy behind me had failed to slow down in time for change in traffic because of the puddle in the road.

I cursed my luck. This was now the third time I had been hit by someone since moving to Houston. Three times in three years. The first one ended my little Fiat. The second time I got sideswiped by a tour bus that didn't even stop to own up to the accident. And now this. Here's some pictures of the damage. Considering it was an accident on the freeway, I feel like I got off light. Just some damage way at the bottom part of the bumper.

The guy who hit me was cool. He stopped and we swapped insurance info in the rain, then we hurried to get off the side of the freeway before some other idiot killed us...another thing that Houston freeways are notorious for.

When I called his insurance, they took my statement, and then tried to tell me that I was 25% responsible for the accident because I stopped quickly. They wanted me to use their app, and accept a quick payout.

I considered it. The damage was minimal, the car worked just fine despite the missing bit of the bumper and the crumpled piece at the bottom. Once my daughter got her license, this would be her car to drive, and, if she was anything like her father was at her age, would certainly acquire new dings from unwise driving decisions. We could leave the damage and use the money for other things.

I was pretty sure that this 25% thing was another one of those unethical things that insurance companies do. A new one, but a part of the long line of unethical insurance company activities. Before I would take the money, I wanted to find out what my insurance company thought of this. I called and they said that they couldn't imagine how the other company could make such a claim. If I paid my deductible, they would go after the other insurance company on my behalf to get me the full payment.

When I took the car to the autobody shop, I was pleased to discover that the damage wasn't enough to declare the car a total loss. Every time I get hit, no matter how minimal the damage, my car gets totaled. I guess that might say something about the cars I tend to drive. This time, however, the $2,000 damage was less than the total value of the car. Huzzah!

The shop fixed it up for me, and rented me out a BMW 330i while I waited.

Speaking of the cars I tend to drive, I was completely uncomfortable driving this $40,000 vehicle. Not literally, it was actually quite comfortable. The lumbar support on the seat was amazing, but I was so worried that I would get dinged in some way and wind up paying a bunch for it. It had tons of amazing features, and I barely looked at any of them. I did push the pedal all the way down one time as I was getting on the freeway, just to experience what an engine like that feels like when you take the reins off. It was pretty exhilarating. I was thrown back into the seat as if I was on a roller coaster, and I finally got to understand what they're talking about when they say a car can go from zero to sixty in 3.5 seconds.

I was glad, though, to give the car back when they finally finished with mine. And there it was, as good as new!

I called my insurance company to find out about how the claim was proceeding. It was going to have to go to arbitration, but I wasn't worried, because I assumed I would win. There's almost no way to get rear-ended and be responsible. So...I waited for months to find out how it went, and as I suspected, we won the arbitration and got our money back from the insurance company. It was nice for once that it didn't end up as another loss for us, even when it wasn't our fault. It's happened enough that I just expect that now. Every now and then, when the world shows me that not everything is bad, I gotta smile and be happy.

Boock Report

My 8-year-old finds things that he wants at the store sometimes, and he becomes like a dog with a bone. He just won't let it go.

The other day, he went to Half-price Books with my daughter, and saw a book that he just had to have. Not because it was a book, unfortunately, but because it was one of those books that comes with a toy. It was a Lego Star Wars book that came with an R2-D2 figure. That was something that he didn't have, but now he just had to have it.

He pestered us about it for days, and finally, my wife came up with a plan. There are these children's history books that we have. They are books that I grew up with. There are two sets of them. They are called the Power Tales and the Value Tales, and they tell the story of a prominent historical figure while trying to teach a value that helped this person become what they became. The subjects of the books range from Benjamin Franklin to Jackie Robinson to Louis Pasteur and more.

Some of the books are my actual childhood copies that I got from my Dad when he sold the house twenty years ago, but many others are ones we found at a garage sale at about the same time. The ones we acquired from the garage sale are in much better shape than those that put in their time being passed from child to child in my family. There are also a few books that included in that set that I didn't grow up with. The most notable of these is the book about Terry Fox.

If you're not on my wife's side of the family, you might be asking, "who the heck is Terry Fox?" Well, he's a famous Canadian who lost a leg to cancer, but refused to let it keep him down. He got a prosthetic, and then ran all the way across Canada to raise money for cancer research. My wife actually saw the guy on his journey when she was younger, and he holds a special place in her heart. Far higher than Jim Carrey, Mike Meyers, Bryan Adams, or any other famous Canadian...except Corey Hart. That guy was so dreamy!

We were talking about those books the other day, and the kids saw the Terry Fox book. My wife was upset to find that they didn't know who he was, but they didn't seem interested in remedying that fact. There was only one book that my son cared about right now, and it was one that came with an R2-D2. My wife had some inspiration.

"I'll get you that book you want," she said, as she was heading out the door for work, "if you read this book about Terry Fox and report back to me."

My son took her literally, and went right to it. When the she got home that night, this was what waited for her.

School was over, but my son didn't care, he'd done a full report on the book. My wife hadn't meant for him to write up a book report when she said report back to me, but she wasn't sad to see him put in that kind of effort. He summarized the big events of Terry Fox's life, and illustrated them as well.

Notice how intensely patriotic Terry Fox's room is in that picture. Could there be more red and white or maple leaves?

He even did a picture on the back of the imaginary friend that the book gave him. That was one of the conceits that those Power and Value Tales had. Each person had an imaginary friend that helped them along. I suppose it was to make the stories more interesting to children or something. It's a little kooky, but I still love those books.

My wife was blown away by the effort that my son put into his report, and so the next day he went back to Half-price Books where we bought him his desired Lego Star Wars book.

The moral of the story is that hard work always pays off.

Kragle

You may remember from the post about my son's birthday, that he received the Lego Harry Potter castle for his present this year (and by Lego, I mean Chinese knockoff Lego). It took us several days to assemble the whole thing, and he did a great deal of it himself. He is rightly proud of that accomplishment.

The castle has probably become his most prized possession since then. He loves it, shows it off to any friends that come to visit, and on occasion gets it down off his shelf to play with it. He has to be careful, though, because it's just a Lego toy, held together only by the friction created by those interlocking bricks.

The other day, he had brought his castle downstairs to play with it. He left it on the floor for several days, and we were all sick of the mess, tired of stepping around it. My wife insisted that he take it upstairs and put it back where it belongs. He put up a fuss, but eventually agreed to actually take care of it.

He grabbed the castle by the roof, and a sense of dread came over me.

"Um," I said, "I don't think..."

I was trying to warn him that the way he was holding it was bound to be trouble, but he lifted it high off the ground, and it held together just fine.

"Oh, never mind," I said. Everything seemed fine. I turned away to go back to what I was doing when--CRASH!!

The friction holding the blocks together was overcome by the gravity pulling down, and the piece of the castle my son was holding came off in his hand. The rest of the castle tumbled to the ground and exploded as if there had been a bomb inside of it. My son stared at the wreckage, aghast, and then burst into tears. His prized possession had just been reduced to rubble before his eyes. He ran to his mom, who hugged him close, trying to soothe his tears.

"It's okay," she said, "We'll build it again."

"But it took forever to build it," he protested. "It took us days."

"Well," she said, "maybe this time, you and Daddy can get super glue and stick it together so that it can't break anymore."

Well, I knew what I was going to be doing this weekend. We gathered up all of the pieces of the castle, and put them on the table for the project.

My wife took him out to the store to get us one of those bottles of super glue that comes with a brush that you can use to apply the glue with minimal mess.

My son and I sat down, and spread out the original instructions in front of us.

I was hoping that it would be easier to assemble this time, since a lot of it was still partially assembled. We started gluing, and the castle began to rise from the ashes.

We worked on it for hours, and my fingers were glazed over with dried super glue. We did all the various pieces of the castle, even the ones that hadn't been destroyed in the accident.

After a very long struggle, we at last finished the process. The castle was now basically one big piece. I took these pictures where I held it up by the spire on top, and now it held together.

It was funny, though, as I tried to take the pictures, my son hovered around me, wringing his hands nervously. He wasn't as confident of the glue as I was. That previous explosion was replaying in his memory, and he was certain it was going to happen again.

As soon as the camera clicked, he jumped forward and grabbed the castle from my hand. He needn't have worried, however. The glue was very secure. There is one piece of the castle that is in the wrong place, because I had it backwards when I glued it on. I realized that it was wrong, tried to pull it off and fix it, and it wouldn't budge. The piece itself started to crack rather than the glue breaking loose. We had to leave it as it was. Luckily the backward piece wasn't significant, and didn't cause an issue. Because of that, though, I knew this thing was going to hold together. My son didn't have to worry for the future of his Harry Potter castle anymore.

He liked the results enough, however, that now he wants to do it for more and more of the sets he's gotten over the years. Looks like I may be doing this for many more weekends in the future.

Waugh Bridge Bats Commentary

I got a text from Rish the other day asking me if I wanted to do an audio commentary of my bat video. An audio commentary? You mean like when the director and the star talk over the movie and tell you the fun stories behind the production? That kind of audio commentary?

Yes, that's exactly what he meant. I was happy to do that, after all the video was only a few minutes long. It couldn't take that much effort.

Yesterday, we got together and recorded it. Predictably, we had to loop the video several times to say all the things we wanted to, but if you liked the original bat video as much as Rish did, you should check out the audio commentary. It's like a mini-podcast with video overlay. Enjoy.

Master Builder

Both of my sons, the eight-year-old and the twenty-year-old, absolutely love Lego. Despite being twenty, we still get the older one a Lego set each Christmas and birthday. Like me, he sees no reason to stop enjoying toys just because he's older. He just enjoys them in a more sophisticated way.

The twenty-year-old came back to visit us for a few weeks recently, and while he was here, he became embroiled in a Lego project at the behest of the eight-year-old. We were watching YouTube videos, when this video came up:

The eight-year-old became obsessed with the idea of making a similar Lego construction. He had a Lego T-Rex, which at the time was missing its arm, so it needed something else. The two embarked on the project, watching the video, and trying to copy it as much as they could, but then adapting it to something else if they didn't have the right pieces. We even made a trip all the way down, 45 minutes away, to a new store in Pearland called Bricks & Minifigs, where we could buy used Legos by the piece. That's where we picked up a few pieces that they were having trouble finding in their masses of Legos.

They worked on it off and on for the whole two weeks that he was visiting, and barely finished the day before he had to leave. He insisted that I take a bunch of pictures, because this was one of the best creations he'd ever made. It was his thesis for his masters in master building. So, here's the pictures of our finished product: