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The Fourth of July was just the other day, and now that it's passed, the next major holiday is...Harrison Ford's Birthday. But after that, it's Halloween. Somebody posted this on Facebook the other day:

I was going to send this to Rish and say, "This is you," but in reality, I guess this is me, because this is what I got at the store today:

I didn't get it because it's a cool Spider-man villain. I got it because it's a guy with a pumpkin on fire for a head.

I have another Jack O'Lantern that they released years ago. In fact, I even did an episode of Big Anklevich on Toys on it, which you can watch right now:

I talked about Jack O'Lantern's first appearance on that episode, but the figure that I had wasn't the first appearance figure. It was a much later version of Jack O'Lantern that looked like this:

Truthfully, I like that Jack's look better than the new one. It looks more evil and dangerous than this First Appearance version.

This guy is still pretty great, though. His pumpkin bombs are just orange balls, but they're not bad. One of them is removable, and has a little hole in it so that you can peg it onto the belt. Here's a shot of the peg.

 And here it is with the bomb on the peg.

And if you stick his thumb in the hole, it makes holding the bomb in his hand really easy.

The other thing he comes with is his hoverboard...and a few extra hands.

You can stand him up on that hoverboard. They made the bottom peg on it removable, so that you had a flat section. Without that, it wouldn't balance at all.

You can peg that gold piece into the hole if you want the hoverboard to look like it does in the comic, but then you have to find some other way to balance the guy. Without the gold piece pegged in, it's already pretty near impossible to balance him as it is. Can't decide how I'll pose him, but it's not a huge worry...I got a bit of time before it's actually the season to put these guys up, no matter what the meme says.

A Disturbance In The Force

Just a silly video for you to enjoy

Making A Toy-Sized Christmas Tree That Looks Great!

Another Big Anklevich on Toys. Not sure why I decided to resurrect this channel, but I've got several video ideas, so I suspect this one won't be the last. This one is about making Christmas trees:

"I've been working up a process for making Christmas trees that I can put with my action figures over the last few years. I think I've finally arrived at the final boss level, so I figured I'd share the process with y'all. If you'd like to put your action figures celebrating around the Christmas tree this holiday season, watch this video and then have fun making some."

Getting Obsessed With Star Wars Holiday Toys - Collector Stories

I did a new Big Anklevich on Toys video. Haven't done one of these in forever, but I thought all those posts about the Star Wars holiday figures should get the treatment. So I did:

"I love toys. I love Christmas. I love Star Wars. Put all that together and I now have a sudden obsession to find all the Star Wars holiday figures...that are good anyway. Not the ugly ones...well, not many of the ugly ones."

A Toy Hunt To Target Turned Into A Bonanza I Never Thought I'd Experience

I went in to Target to see what they had...the usual answer is nothing, but this time around, I was blown away by what I found. Not only that, but there were clearance sales going on everywhere. It was quite a toy hunt day. One to be remembered.

A Quirky Collection Focus - The Skull Face Squad

Sometimes, as a toy collector, I get a weirdly narrow focus in my collection. I'll buy a toy from a line that I would never have bought before, but because it fits a small category that I decided I want, I'll get it. That's what happened to me a while back when I started up a collection of action figures who have faces of skulls, or faces painted like skulls, or helmets or masks that look like skulls. Basically, it's the skull face squad, or Skull Team Six as I like to call them, or even more affectionately, the skullies.

I Went On A Toyhunt To An Ollie's Grand Opening. What Did I Find?

An Ollie's opened up near me. I've heard almost mythical things about Ollie's stores, the kind of things you can get for amazingly cheap prices. I had to go see for myself. Did it live up to my expectations? Is there any possible way that it could with expectations that high? Is it true that you should never meet your heroes?

BAoT: My Obsession With Rotgut Station, And How I Want To Make My Own Version

A few months ago, I discovered Empire Toy Works' Instagram channel and fell in love with the world and the pictures that he created, specifically all the stuff from his massive playset called Rotgut Station. I was mesmerized, and it wasn't long before I realized that I wanted to try to create something similar myself.

If you don't already know Empire Toy Works, here is the link to his Instagram, and here is the link to his YouTube channel, and here is the link to his Facebook. I don't know if he has other channels, but I will link to them too, if you tell me about them.

I'm On The Hunt, I'm After You

I made this video especially for Rish Outfield. He's talked to me several times about people on YouTube who do toy hunt videos. I even shot one once, but it took me so long to get around to editing it that the toys I saw were already clearanced out of the stores by the time I would have released it.

So, when I went on my usual toy rounds the other morning, I thought it might be fun to make them into one of those toy hunt videos. Then Rish could watch it, and tell me how worthless it was, just like all the other ones we see on YouTube.

So, it's the thrill of the chase! Get hyped everybody!

The main reason I went out was because I saw someone saying they found the GI Joe Classified Spirit and Storm Shadow at a store in their area. Maybe they had it in mine too. I have them on pre-order, but I just got an email that pushed the expected arrival date to September. So, if I could get them now, then I could just cancel that crap. Well, did I find them? You can only find out by watching to see...

Resurrecting Big Anklevich On Toys

I've been thinking about doing this for a long time, and now I've decided to finally pull the trigger. I'm bringing back my YouTube toy channel that I killed off about two years ago. It's just going to be a little side thing that I do here and there. I want to put more of my toy content that I've been putting on the blog over on the channel instead, since I think it's the place where I will find the audience for it. Over here on the blog it will be more mixed content, and I expect to make it much more writing and podcasting-centric than it has been for a while.

So, if you are so inclined, enjoy the Big Anklevich On Toys Reborn! episode.

Putting My Toy Channel Out Of Its Misery

It's my last toy video...or maybe second to last. I think I have one more Cheap Toy Hunting video to put out before I'm totally done.

Toy Collecting Strategies

Got another toy video for y'all. Probably won't be many more of these, so enjoy them while you can.

Scooby Doo Meets Jason Voorhees

It's Scooby Doo vs Friday the 13th on the new episode of Big Anklevich on Toys. It's my last Halloween episode, so I hope you enjoy it. Check it out and see what happens when Jason takes over for the usual run of the mill monster that the gang takes on.

Jack O'Lantern's First Comic Book Appearance

Got a new video with a cool Halloween-related toy and the comic book first appearances of that character. Check it out, it's fun stuff.

Halloween Decorations 2019

Last year, I had to satisfy myself with doing blog posts about my Halloween decorations. I was already thinking about starting up my toy show, but I hadn't quite gotten to the critical mass to launch it yet. That came a month or two later.

But that meant that I didn't get to do this video last year. I had to patiently bide my time, and pray that I didn't run out of gas before ever getting through the first year, because I really wanted to do this video. And now, the time has finally come.

Check it out. I hope you enjoy it.

Halloween Decorations Part One

Started putting up my Halloween decorations for this year, and did a video about the diorama I created for it. It was pretty fun. Check it out:

Beta Ray Bill

New episode up from my Toy Channel. Check it out. I do a recap of "The Ballad of Beta Ray Bill" comic book run, and then talk about the new figure that Hasbro recently put out for those of us who love Bill.

Cheap Toy Hunting Help From Rish

This time, the cheap toy hunting prize comes by way of Rish Outfield. He grabbed me some stuff from his local Tuesday Morning store, and then handed it over to me when we got together while I was on vacation. Do you like Linda Carter? Do you like Return of the Jedi? If you said yes to...actually if you answered those questions at all, then you ought to watch this video.

Thanks.

He-Man Part 2: He-Man and Skeletor Ultimate Figures From Super7

Okay, I'm back with part two of my He-Man extravaganza. Today, I'm reviewing the toys that I got of He-Man and Skeletor, because, after all, the show is called Big Anklevich on Toys.

He-Man On The Toy Show

I'm doing a two-part episode on the toy show about He-Man and the Masters of the Universe. This week, I review the very first episode of the cartoon ever.

Next time, I'll be talking about the toys I got, and whether they fit the platonic ideal.