On the Way to Brian’s house to film Built from Bricks I stopped at my local comic book store, Wild Time Comics. I guess I hadn’t been in a while because I had a whole bunch of comics to pick up. I got home late from Brian’s and hadn’t filmed anything so it is a Comic Book Haul Video!
Every Thursday I head over to my friend Brian’s house. For a while we were filming a show called SteamDads. It was a science based show that we enjoyed at first but really ran out of steam once we stopped coming up with experiments and ideas. It was fun to shoot but took a long time and didn’t really find much of an audience.
Brian asked me if I wanted to help him out and film an episode of his show, Built from Bricks. I agreed and it has been fun ever since. We’ve done all sorts of shows. The most popular show has been the City Updates. Brian has such a cool LEGO City being built in his garage. Each week he has something new happening and it is awesome. Tonight we shot a whole behind the scenes video that included a studio tour. The photo from today was what I shot for our Thumbnail for the episode. You can watch it below. If you haven’t already, please subscribe. We are closing in on 100 subscribers and when that happens we are going to do a big giveaway.
Brian even agreed to help me out with an episode of Big Damn Kid. I’m looking forward to going to Philly Brickfest Live with him in April. I think people are going to love the MOCS he made for his LEGO City.
I got another new shirt for Philly Brick Fest Live in April. It is of Optimus Prime assembling a truck in LEGO form. It is called Autoblox. I also found some Transformers socks, one pair does not fit, though. It is weird that one pair fits fine and the other is too small.
I picked up some new cardboard for backdrops, too. I want to make sure that my photos get the best quality possible. I may have to get some more lights so that lights are up around all sides of my mini studio. But first, I really need to take a bunch of cardboard and cut up my Skylanders boxes to make a physical backdrop for the show. That is what I need to get done, or I can look into painting the pink wall green-screen green. I’m not sure how that would work. I have lots of ideas but little time to execute on all of them.
After a while of teasing that I had these Blind Boxes to open I finally opened two of them for this blog. I had been saving them to do a massive unboxing over on the Big Damn Kid channel and I will still do that. I just have two less to open at this time. These ALT-MODE Blind Boxes are pretty cute. It wasn’t until after I had completed my video that I realized that you pull on the Faction Symbol on the top of the character’s head to make them transform. That works way better and it is a cool gimmick. Watch as I stumble, mumble and fumble through this unboxing. I even misname a character. I never do that! Ugh.
It has been a little while since I’ve done a complete Toy Haul type video. I’ve been picking a few things up recently and looking at how I can better show the toys as I review, unbox and talk about them. I picked up a new little table to use after seeing one at Brian’s house. I’ll be using that in tomorrow’s video. The toys I mention int his post are for reviews that I want to do on my other blog, Big Damn Kid. I’m trying to break it up a bit with all the Transformers comic books.
Speaking of those. I have been feverishly trying to get way ahead on them because of next week’s trip to San Diego for Dad 2.0. I’m real excited to get out there but I don’t want to lose the momentum of the new channel. I can’t exactly say why I’m going so hard after it since it isn’t really generating an audience yet. I will have to start watching some Transformers videos and see if I can attract anyone to the new channel and blog. I love Transformers and it has been years of my collecting them. I even went to my parent’s this past week and looked through my collection. I didn’t do too much crawling around to get to everything but there are quite a few boxes in the attic. I’d like to go through my whole collection as individual review videos. Some unboxing videos and more. We’ll see. For now I have the video below of some of my more recent purchases.
The kids were busy today. They were crafty, too. Eva has some modeling clay and she made a couple of dragons. She made one for herself, the one in the egg and one for Andrew. The image doesn’t do justice to how intricate she actually made the little dragon. Then she made one for Andrew and he painted it. I have a couple of crafty kids.
During a single week I film and produce up to 17 videos across 4 channels. Two I own, one I am a partner on and the other I am a guest host and the film crew. It is buys but I love doing it. My personal channels are this one and Big Damn Kid (link below). I am a co-host of the weekly show, SteamDads and I often do episodes of Built From Bricks with my buddy Brian. I’ve been doing this even more with him and we’re going to go to Philly BrickFest Live together in April.
I caught up with a good friend tonight over dinner at the Outback Steakhouse. I have not been to Outback in a long time. However, I haven’t hung out with my friend in way longer. It was nice to get a chance to have dinner, just the two of us. When there is no distractions we can talk about whatever we want and actually finish thoughts.
I popped into the Toys R Us and found the Admiral Ackbar Hot Wheels Character Car. I like the design that they decided to use for him. You can see him in the video below.
I hate to admit this but I don’t read comics. Okay, that is slightly untrue. I read comics, all the time, on my iPad. I buy comics all the time at my local comic book store, Wild Time Comics. But I don’t ready my physical comic books. I haven’t in almost 2 years. For some reason I missed a week of reading them and never went back to it. So, I’ve been collecting a bunch of comics, mostly Transformers. However, I haven’t read them. One of my resolutions for 2017, one I can keep, is to read all the comic books that I have amassed over the past couple years. Before that though, I have to organize them and put them in proper reading order and that means some major prep work.
My main issue, no pun intended, is that I am not sure the order in which to read each of the books because there are two series of Transformers books that have been running simultaneously. I’m pretty tempted to go all the way back to my original G1 books and start reading from there. Then through Devil’s Due, when they had Transformers, to the current lines from IDW. This may be a new video series that I will do in the new year. Transformers comics from G1 to current day.
Transformers aren’t the only comics that I collect. I collected a bunch of titles from Image comics way back in college. Two friends of mine from college are now celebrating running comic book shops for the past 10 years. They really did a great job of revitalizing the comic book experience in New Hampshire that even included a New Hampshire based Comic-con, the Granite State Comicon. And to think, I used to go down to Storytellers each week with them to pick up comics.
Another thing I’d like to do this coming year is actually attend Granite State Comicon. They are celebrating their 15th year this year and I haven’t made it to a single one. Scratch that I think I went to one of the very early ones way, way back when they started. But recently, no.
Back to my comics… I have started collecting more from IDW that have to do with Hasbro’s collected universe. I am now collecting M.A.S.K. I have the original run of comics from the 80’s, a 4-issue mini series and now am looking forward to this new ongoing title. We’ll see how my progress goes in the coming days.
I have been a fan of Transformers since I was 10 years old. I’ve got 32 years invested in this franchise. From the toys to the cartoons to the movies and comic books I have been in very deep. During that very first Christmas that Transformers were on the scene my grandparents, parents and great uncle got me a bunch of them. Going into Christmas I already had Optimus Prime and Wheeljack. When Christmas came I had a huge collection. I stayed up all night learning how to transform each one blindfolded, putting on stickers them and setting them all up on display. I love these characters so much.
This Christmas I picked up two Transformers figures that were based on characters from my early days as a fan. I collected the comic books, especially the Headmasters series. This was a four issue mini series about some Transformers crashing on a planet and the inhabitants of the planet became binary bonded to the Transformers as either their heads or their weapons. These new figures look amazing and have great transformations plus they have detachable heads that become robots as well. These are based on the original Headmasters figures from the 80’s I picked up Blurr (not originally a Headmaster) and Hardhead (was a Headmaster) for Christmas.
Watching the trailer for Transformers: Forged to Fight made makes me incredibly excited for Spring 2017. The gameplay images look great and a good fighting/RPG game featuring the Transformers is something that I wish was around when I was a kid. Waking up on Christmas morning and opening all my Transformers and orchestrating giant fight scenes was one of my greatest childhood memories. The fights in my imagination look to be coming to life in this new game. Just look at this image of G1 Optimus Prime fighting Transformers Movie Megatron.
This game is going to be amazing. I can’t wait to play it.
Continue reading Transformers: Forged to Fight is the Mobile Game I’ve Been Waiting For