It Was Supposed To Be A Christmas Gift - Eaglemoss, And Their Poor Quality Products

 

We interrupt today's regular schedule to provide the following public service announcement. Not really though, today's Retro Spin is below this one.

A buddy of mine surprised me with a Christmas present the other day. He stated it was something he had ordered quite some time ago, but that it took this long to get it.

I'd never heard of Hero Collectables, nor their company, Eaglemoss, until that day, but I was excited at the prospect of having an all-new Spider-Man item in my collection.

The metal tin was decked out in a shiny image of Spider-Man, with the sides and top equally decorated with images of the statue within, specs on the product, and bio of the character himself. Unfortunately, this is where the niceties stopped.

Lifting off the lid revealed a considerably shrunken down metal statue, approximately four and a half inches. Now under normal circumstances, I wouldn't nitpick. Especially being a gift. However, I do want to note that this mini statue typically retails for $59.99. That's quite a hefty price, and important to the story because if you couldn't tell from the photo, it's broken!

Despite all that padding surrounding the statue, both legs are completely busted at the ankles.

My buddy was immediately ticked, and I don't blame him. The price point, the delay in getting it, and all of that just to be broken really stunk.

He reached out to the vendor he ordered it from, and a replacement was promptly sent, ironically arriving far faster than his first order. However, upon receipt, guess what greeted us?

If you guessed another broken statue, you'd be 100% correct! Broken in the exact same place!

While I wouldn't normally post such an article on my blog, I felt inclined to share this experience with all my fellow collectors. If you were eyeing any products from Eaglemoss, I would highly encourage you to consider this experience before dropping your hard-earned money.

Even though I wasn't the customer, I was so tainted by this experience that I felt compelled to reach out to their customer service to express my concern, and opinion of their company's quality control, and ability to deliver a solid product to paying customers. After filling them in on the details, I was frankly blunt, telling them, "Your products are overpriced garbage, and I would never recommend nor buy anything from you!"

Harsh? Perhaps. Honest? Absolutely.

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Christmas Gifts From G.I. Jigsaw And A Trip To Kerbobble

George of G.I. Jigsaw texted over to me, asking if today would be a good day to get together. He not only wanted to make a run to Kerbobble Toys, but said he had a Christmas gift to drop off.

Side note: I dropped his gifts off with instructions for what order to open them, and he posted about those, "HERE".

Clearly as the years go by I'm not getting any wiser. If I were, I would have thought to take photos at Lorena's Deli, where we stopped for lunch on the way to Kerbobble. This is "the" spot to get legit breakfast burritos, which I've had many times. As such, I wanted to try their torta today. Needless to say, I'll be sticking with the burritos. It was good, but man, that burrito is where it's at.

Google came to my rescue for a photo.

From there, we headed to the toy store. While I didn't personally plan on buying anything, I did ultimately decide to pick something up.

I don't want many more toys, but Swift Wind from the vintage She-Ra line was one which stayed on my list. I never expected to find one out in the wild, and when this one was not only available, but pretty reasonably priced, I went ahead and pulled the trigger.

From there, George dropped me back home, and I waited for my girl to get home to open the gift he gave me.

Neatly packed inside was a wonderful surprise.

George made me the four "super heroes" which started it all at Marvel, or rather, at the time, Timely Comics. Left to right, these are Namor, (the original) Human Torch, The Angel, and The Masked Rider. These promptly got added to the shelf.

For those of you who haven't seen them all, or if you want to see them again, starting a few years back, George undertook a massive project. He created the most thorough set of Spider-Man figure's you'll find on the planet.

When he gave me my first set several Christmas's back, I jokingly created a checklist, borrowing heavily from the original Kenner cardbacks, and sent it to him. Little did I know, he would take this as a challenge, and start hammering out multiple Peg People. Though at first he would typically create a batch of five, this soon grew to ten, and then last year, he made a final push around Christmas time, hammering out close to a hundred, if not more to finish off the entire checklist.

These will forever remain the greatest set of Spider-Man figures, ever!

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Christmas Gifts From My Girl

As the week ticked by, and we finished our visits with friends and family, my girl and I finally got around to opening our Christmas gifts under the tree to each other. 

This included the dog's gifts, which he's more than excited about to open himself, and then immediately jumps to assist with opening everyone else's.

Truthfully, him making it through the Christmas season was the best gift we could get. He's not only considered to be an older dog, but his diabetes has his overall health constantly up and down. This isn't helped by the cataracts which have formed in his eyes, and growths which consistently impact his ability to walk, all of which are more side effects from the diabetes. We thank Jesus for each day we get with him.

Just watching his face light up as he opened package after package, his or ours, was a much needed joyful time.

...Even when he didn't stop at just the paper.

My girl got me a lot of great gifts, focusing most of it on items for our Fallout (and red themed) Kitchen.

Jones periodically releases sodas based on the Fallout universe, and this year they released a Nuka Grape, and Sunset Sarsaparilla. As an added bonus, they re-released their Nuka Quantum. For those fortunate enough to find them, Costco had a really cool limited box which contained several bottles of the drinks in a unique case. I tried to track these down, but alas, they were sold out virtually everywhere. Online places that did have them, while reasonably priced for the sodas, but after shipping, it simply wasn't worth it. Still, I really wanted them, and my girl knew this, so she tracked them down.

She also got me the Amazon exclusive 4k steel book of season one of the television series.

The boxed items included a statue of Dogmeat, which includes a second head. In review of the photo, it's rather horrific seeing it on the ground underneath the model. Next up was a rubber ducky decked out in Nuka T-51 power armor. Last up, was a fully functional Nuka Cola radio. However, it's not just a radio, it includes blue tooth capabilities to link up with devices, and a memory card to put your own MP3s on. I'm thinking of grabbing some stuff from the games to put on the card, such as the Silver Shroud radio programs, Nuka World, and Galaxy News Radio.

After getting everything opened, I set it p on my Fallout counter in the kitchen. It's getting pretty full!

Next up for our kitchen was something simple, but something I've wanted for a long time.

Popcorn is one of my favorite snacks, and I've wanted a red air popper for quite some time. My girl went all out, grabbing not only the popper, but popcorn, some flavor shakers, and popcorn buckers.

This all fit nicely in the last Fallout related item I got, which was a wooden Nuka Cola crate.

I immediately set it up, and made us a batch.

It was fantastic!

The last kitchen items were various red kitchen gadgets. These included very needed canisters for things such as flour, sugar, etc., a mandolin for easy slicing, a whisk, and electric hand mixer.

Last up were some great items to add to my various collections. For Spider-Man, I got a silver cover Todd McFarlane signed Spider-Man number one. This is the red stamped version he signed back in the day for The Spider's Web comic shop.

This was accompanied by a signature series Spider-Man statue depicting the corner box from issue number one. It comes with a signed card by Todd McFarlane, thus the "signature series" title.

I also received the awesome Peanuts Ultimate TV Specials collection on DVD. It contains forty classics remastered on five discs, and includes a twenty-eight pack booklet. It contains most of the shorts which aired between 1965, and 2011. Though, there are some from the 80's which are missing that I wish were on here. The booklet offers a glossary of the shorts on the set, while adding limited information about them from page to page. Still, it was a must have for my cartoon DVD collection.

Last up were three CD's which were on my want list on Discogs. These included Judy Torres's Love Story (1989), Paul King's Joy (1987), and the Japanese exclusive, Like A Virgin and Other Big Hits from Madonna (1984).

With all the gifts opened, we settled in to watch the remaining episodes we were behind on for Stranger Things, while the dog played with one of his many new toys.

Overall, we all enjoyed the holiday season.

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Family And Friends Christmas Gifts

A couple packages arrived at the house throughout the month of December, either from friends or family. These promptly got tucked into a corner, and set out of site, out of mind for Christmas. Between late last night, and this morning, I got the opportunity to open them.

First up was from my high school buddy, Rob. He sent me four classic stories on tape, which were his originals from his childhood. While they didn't include the accompanying books, the tapes are definitely rad. They included, E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial, Transformers: Sun Raid, Masters Of The Universe: Skeletor's Revenge, and The Amazing Adventures Of Pac-Man.

Next up was a fun gift from my buddy, Pete. I don't know how he does it, but he always manages to find something comic book related that I never knew I needed until I have it. Such is the case with this sweet Spider-Man pencil hold, which will certainly have a permanent home on my desk.

My mom sent a couple of Amazon packages, and man oh man were they something awesome. The envelope contained the complete series of The Secret Squirrel Show on DVD, a cartoon which until today was not in my collection. However, the coup de grâce was the super deluxe edition of Prince & The New Power Generation's Diamonds and Pearls on CD.

Last up was an Amazon package sent by my sister. Inside were three cartoon DVD sets, which until today I also didn't have. These included The Addams Family, Help!...It's the Hair Bear Bunch, and Yogi's Gang. C'est magnifique!

All these gifts were unexpected, but very much appreciated. Now I'm off to watch some cartoons!

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Christmas Dinner And Stocking

Slow and steady, that's the name of the game.

While cooking dinner, I surprised my girl with a month of ad free Netflix. The reason, so that we could watch the final season of Stranger Things, catch up on season 2 and 3 of squid games, three seasons of The Great British Baking Show, and for myself, the final season of Cobra Kai, and the new Karate Kid movie. All of this, while juggling season 2 of Fallout on Amazon Prime.

For dinner, I made a pork roast and served it with a bit of maple bacon aioli. My girl made her fabulous mac and cheese to accompany it, and the rest of the sides were handled by a jar of beets, a can of cranberry sauce, and some heat and serve rolls. Not bad, if you ask me.

Stuffed to the brim, I heated up my traditional annual Christmas pudding and served it with a finishing sauce.

The Christmas pudding came out of pre-made bowl, which just needed to steam for thirty minutes. The sauce, however, I made with one can of condensed milk, 1/4 cup of water, 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract, and 1/2 a stick of butter. Traditionally, the British would pour a brandy over the top, and light it on fire, but I'm not big on alcohol.

It's a dense and sweet desert, which will make you miserable in the stomach when you're already suffering from a massive pile of mac and cheese, but it's so good.

From there, we opened our stockings up.

My girl was quite heavy handed with the candy; she usually is.

But she also got me a pretty cool Spidey Pez dispenser, which immediately went into the collection.

She also got me a mystery Fallout 4 keychain. Right now it's on my Fallout counter, but I may open it at some point.

She also bought me another Spider-Man ornament, which we'll put on the tree next year.

Last up, and quite the surprise was this rare Thompson Twins double album. This is the only way you can get their first two studio releases on CD, and sadly, it was never released in the USA. It's been on my list for a long time, and I'm really glad to have it.

With Christmas day coming to a close, we still haven't touched the gifts under the tree, and I also have a few more to open from friends and family. But tomorrow's another day, and I'm off the rest of the year, so there's no reason to rush through it all. Christmas comes but once a year, but that doesn't mean it has to end in twenty-four hours.

We finished the evening off watching her son open his stocking gifts and stuff under the tree, while also giving the dog a couple more. Mainly because he wasn't having it watching people open stuff and having nothing for himself. Her son also gave us a gift, which for me was another ebay gift card - Score!!!

All and all, it was a great day!

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Gifts From My Brother

I caught up via telephone with my brother this afternoon to take some time to wish Christmas bests, while also opening up our respective gifts. We got him an ebay gift card to help in get those elsuive (and expensive) Nintendo Game & Watch handhelds that he's been ravenously collecting. He also took an interest in the various Nintendo related Lego sets, so we grabbed him the Mario Cart.

For us, he sent a gift cards, Old Navy for my girl, and ebay for me. However, he also sent us an additional Wal-Mart card, and send me a super sweet signed / red stamped Spider-Man issue 1!

Really cool of him to do all of that, but that wasn't all. He also got the dog a gift to open, which he gladly did.

Fun fact - When we give the dog Christmas gifts, he'll tear through all of them like a little kid, but once the paper's off, he's done with them until he eventually gets back around to actually playing with them. However, when my brother sends him a Christmas gift...

Oh, it's the greatest thing in the world. He's seriously been chewing on it for the past hour. One year, he wouldn't even chew the toy he got from my brother. Instead, he carried it carefully around the house for over a week. To this day he hasn't sunk one tooth into it.

Oh well. At least he's happy.

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