Very Unpopular Opinions on Toys...

Very Unpopular Opinions on Toys...
toyattics
Pixel Dan & Matt Discuss TMNT Technodrome Reissue and Vintage G.I. Joe Ninja Force at JoeFest 2024!
Join us for an exclusive conversation between Pixel Dan and Matt from Toy Attics as they dive into the exciting world of toys at JoeFest 2024! Filmed in the cozy setting of a hotel room, this chat is a must-watch for any toy enthusiast.
In this episode, Pixel Dan and Matt share their thoughts on the highly anticipated reissue of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Technodrome. They discuss the nostalgia, the details of the reissue, and what it means for collectors old and new. If you're a TMNT fan, you won't want to miss their insights on this iconic playset!
But that's not all - the conversation takes a trip down memory lane as they explore vintage toys, with a special focus on G.I. Joe Ninja Force. Matt and Pixel Dan reminisce about their childhood experiences with these figures and how they've stood the test of time in the collectors' market.
And here's a twist: Pixel Dan reveals how his reviews and features may have inadvertently disrupted the market for these vintage toys. Did his spotlight on these figures cause a surge in demand? Tune in to find out!
Highlights:
In-depth discussion on the TMNT Technodrome reissue.
Nostalgic trip through the world of vintage G.I. Joe Ninja Force.
Pixel Dan's impact on the collectors' market.
Personal stories and memories from two passionate toy collectors.
Don't forget to like, comment, and subscribe for more toy talk and reviews from Toy Attics! Hit the notification bell so you never miss an update.

[@ToyAttics]

Do you agree with us?

[@jbstoytrunk]

GREAT video!!! 🤙🏽

[@heruka369]

Great break down of TMNT craze era. I met Eastman and Laird at a comic convention before they hit it big. They needed money for food as they had sold nothing so I bought a hand drawn while I waited piece of Leonardo for $20.

[@machineman6498]

“Every toy is somebodies favorite toy” That is what respect in the toy hobby looks like.

[@ToyAttics]

@@machineman6498 awesome!

[@Convoy00X]

Replace "toy" with "movie", "song", "band", "artist" and the statement rings just as true.

[@ToyAttics]

Yep!

[@wildsmiley]

My favorite toy is Castle Grayskull (1982). I had it as a kid. I have it today, a good 40 years later (sadly not the same one I had back then, this is a different one). It brings out so much nostalgia in me. What's your favorite toy?

[@ToyAttics]

Tmnt pizza shooter

[@Jarjarbinksreallife]

More long form casual toy discuss content like this is what I want, I could listen to Dan and the rest for a long time

[@ToyAttics]

That’s awesome to hear!

[@Pixel-dan]

This was super fun, and I really love seeing how this turned out on video.

[@MirageTMNT80sOG]

How could you even stand that guy for 10 minutes? Did he call you a chauvinist for liking the original April oniel? He attacks all his subscribers he’s a shitty person

[@mmincey85]

I love this conversation so much. I was a late admirer of GI Joe due to my age. So I was all in on Battle Corps and Ninja Force. 91-94 was my prime toy age, much like you guys. In time, my younger brothers and I discovered older stuff and loved it as well. Before internet and toy guides we just had comic shops, flea markets, and yard sales to find early GI Joe. That was part of our fun too. We got to discover all this years after initial release which meant despite our age gap we learned about all this together. We may not have been there at the beginning but we loved the ARAH run as much as anyone. And it still bonds us to this day.

[@ToyAttics]

@@mmincey85 that’s awesome! Love the story! Battle Corps is great!

[@mmincey85]

@@ToyAttics Sure is. Glad people like you and the Dans are spreading the good word!

[@zarnistastudios]

This was a fun conversation. I agree. Collect what you love and not shame others. Love Pixel Dan and his positive energy.

[@ToyAttics]

So glad you said that! Some people don't!

[@MirageTMNT80sOG]

@@ToyAtticsyou are very negative. You shame others. Hypocrite.

[@ToyAttics]

I shame people!?

[@frankierivera5451]

I was born July 81 and remember playing with Motu,Thundercats,Transformers and Joe's and inviting TMNT into my life from there launch I was in love then 89 batman also

[@ToyAttics]

Awesome

[@hco.brandon_lee9080]

I picked up a Toxie from a Toxic Crusaders from Walmart. It reminded me of how crazy that property was. The OG movies were essentially soft prn but somewhere, someone said let’s make this a cartoon and do a toy lines ! I know there’s a lot of toy lines that came from non kid appropriate movies too.

[@ToyAttics]

@@hco.brandon_lee9080 Toxie is awesome

[@themollymachine]

The first movie was like a snuff ... not porn

[@JONNYSORENSEN_AU]

Its an exploitation film and a gross put horror film, while also being a parody. Its great. 70s grindhouse and 70s porn are distinct entities, but lots of films,from 70s into 80s used nudity where fhey didnt need it when standards got relaxed 😅

[@tripdefect87]

I agree with Dan on the "neon 90's" stuff. I've always thought the "not quite the 90's yet" look of hard neon was a neat, same with pastels

[@80sKid.]

Collect whatever makes you happy. For me, it's mainly stuff from my childhood (late-70s to mid-80s.) The only unpopular toy opinion I might have is that I reckon Yak Face is The. Worst. Figure. from the OG Kenner run, lol...

[@theartisanrogue]

First, great job on the relaxed atmosphere and documentary styled look, whether you meant for it or not. It's a great switch up from a lot of other interview vids. I've only spoken to Dan once a few times in St. Louis at QuadCon and I was immediately struck by his low key and very honest demeanor, rounded out by a playful attitude about toy collecting and pop culture in general. So much of what you guys covered makes sense. Especially in how widespanning fandom has become. My first toyetic movie was seeing Empire Strikes Back in theatres, and I remember about a year ago, meeting a Star Wars fan that, the animated Clone Wars was the ONLY Star Wars they knew as a child. Zero interest in the original trilogy. It's a very VERY weird thing to see the difference between people's collecting interests because of timelines of reinventions of IPs. Personally I remembered the years from 79 through 89, a solid ten years of when I really was into toys, then having some years where I didn't really collect, and then suddenly getting back into toys through gaming and comics that all reignited around the time Image Comics and Magic the Gathering seemed to lead the charge, and suddenly being a nerd was becoming more and more acceptable. In NO way would I have imagined how popular pop culture has become. On the subject of TMNT, I had one of the reprints of the original TMNT comics, but didn't like the cartoon when it came out, while my younger brother who is around you and Dan's age, was a massive fan of the cartoon because he was right at that point of loving it as a little kid.

[@ToyAttics]

Wow! What a comment!

[@theartisanrogue]

@@ToyAttics thanks! Watched some of the rest of your vids, I subscribed! 🙂

[@ToyAttics]

Thanks so much! Hopefully you enjoyed those as well!

[@theartisanrogue]

@@ToyAttics I have! :) You've got a pretty rad channel going on!

[@ToyAttics]

I really appreciate that! I’m trying!

[@UnkleKlumsy1353]

As an old school Joe fan (Who is also a He-man, TMNT, Transformers and Toxic crusaders fan) I don't despise Ninja force. I still strongly feel it has zero place within GIJoe alongside the older stuff that's more realistic, with some sci-fi flairs here and there. BUT, I dont think Ninja force fails to have a right to exist or deserve the ire of the fanbase and in a vacuum I genuinely think it was a fun sub-line and I would never want to try and diminish it in the eyes of someone who loves it. I like a fair bit of Ninja force myself. But I see it sort of as a separate toyline in a way. (My own hot take on Ninja force is I think it was a better sub-line than most of the GiJoe sub-lines. Battle-force 2000, Mega-marines, Dino-hunters, Star Brigade I'm looking at you) Besides, the ninja craze of the time, along with the flouresce-neonsplosion of the early 90s... I dug the ninja force toys and didn't care. I didn't play with them as a kid with my older gijoes, though. Even then I saw them as their own thing.

[@BiggestDawgEver]

I was a Mirage Studios Turtles Fan when the toyline and cartoon came out. I was about 14 or 15. I didn't mind the transition as i was fairly new to the franchise, and i could keep it compartmentalized. I continued to collect the b/w books(occasionly dipping my toe in the Archie stuff), I loved buying the early toys, and I watched the cartoon for a couple of years. My real love continued with the first movie and the video games as the rest gave way to my aging out. I had a good friend who loved the b/w books and got me into them, as he had with the X-men as well. He bought the first wave of figures but hated the cartoon and what happened to the franchise. To be fair, he got tired of most things that year as well, but it never seemed to be an age thing. He had moved away and just seemed to want to cut ties with most things. I think it was depression.

[@Futuredynamo]

I'm a couple of years older than Pixel Dan, but not by much. I was aware that TMNT was still going into the mid-late 90s to some extent. I had catched an occasional later episode on Saturday mornings, though was not by any means watching it consistently. Then around 1998/1999, I was going to community college in the mornings and had a part time job in the afternoons. I often had a couple of hours in between, and there was a mall part way between the college and where I worked, so I would go in there and bum around sometimes. This was when Kaybee Toys had some of the later reissue/recarded versions of TMNT in a bin. Many were familiar, but some surprised me. Among them were the Michelangelo Metalhead figure, and the regular figure sized version of Krang's Android Body (I had the big one from a few years prior, being among the last of the figures that I got as I was technically getting "too old" for that sort of thing at the time). I was kind of tempted to pick some up, but I wasn't a kid anymore and hadn't really made the shift to toy collector. In hindsight I wish I did, given what some of those figures go for now.

[@KJ-tz7vc]

I remember when Ninja Force and Battle Corps used to be cheap. No longer! Glad I collected them like 15 years ago.

[@steko9465]

This was fun. Great convo. Just stumbling across the channel. I will dig through the archives for more of this video nostalgia gold.

[@ToyAttics]

Welcome aboard!

[@superquad7]

So, by the time this video came out, Playmates had already announced the Technodrome release just a few weeks back. I'd doubt that announcement was prior to this shoot, though. Re: comic book TMNT: As a kid, I was introduced to TMNT through the cartoon. However, within a year (1988), I'd learned of the comics, and picked up books as back issues. Once I had the comics, THOSE were more my Turtles. I preferred the serious tone and grittiness. Then the 1990 movie came along and was a bit of a hybrid of both, though still more heavily leaning on the comics as source material. The arcade game came out, and just blew me away. I don't look on the cartoon with disdain, but it is very silly to me...but the whole concept is, really. I tend to like things that know how to stay fresh and be a template ready for reinvention. That said, my affections also tend to lean closer to source materials, like G1 Transformers and Mirage TMNT. It can be a fascinating thing how one's perception can be shaped by how much nostalgia was initially imprinted.

[@Dusty_B]

Man I wish this was longer. Great stuff

[@UselessRecords]

Man we need more of this so bad!!!

[@yoyodynetoys]

Ninja force zartan is my favorite Joe figure. Fits into so many other 80s and 90s punk figires.

[@Freefall347]

That discussion with the Ninja Turtles comics is almost certainly true; I remember when I was collecting MOTU Classics, I would frequently come across He-Man fans on message boards who would still, 30 years later, be lamenting how the Filmation cartoon dumbed down and kidified He-Man compared to the mini-comics the figures came with. Always seemed crazy to me, as I don't think it is hard to argue the show was a big reason for how it got so big in the first place. Similarly with Turtles, yes the comics were always cool, but also super niche; the cartoon is what made it a global phenomenon, even if it isn't to someone's personal liking.

[@ToyAttics]

Well said

[@collegerebel]

And for all the flack the Michael Bay Transformers movies get, you can't deny the fact that those movies brought Transformers back into mainstream awareness after two decades. And sure, to those of us who grew up with Beast Wars and the Unicron Trilogy, we know that Transformers was always around and it never left, but it just wasn't on most people's radar.

[@thecarlosmejia]

It's like I'm listening to me talk to my friends. Great stuff.

[@ToyAttics]

Thanks for listening

[@actionfigures]

That was enjoyable. Casual collectors, chilling and talking some toys. Great stuff

[@ToyAttics]

Glad you enjoyed

[@stompingrabbit]

Amazing conversation and points made in this video,could listen to you all talk for hours!

[@ToyAttics]

Thanks! We will be doing more in the future

[@SGD_ToysDownUnder]

87 Turtles was my early childhood. To me it's like MotU was to Dan. I was born the year the toys came out, so don't remember the cartoon at all and moved onto Power Rangers by age 5. Going back to turtles in my teen years, I'm definitely that guy that prefers the Mirage influence. 03 cartoon, original movie. I like Secret of the Ooze and the Bay movies, but 03 and the original film are Turtles on the screen to me. I got a copy of the original mirage book at free comic book day years ago, I really like that too. It's this thing where I like Krang, Rocksteady and Bebop, Mondo Gecko, ect as toys, but I really enjoy the stories from those Mirage books and their adaptations.

[@ToyAttics]

That's an interesting take.

[@coreyguns7351]

It’s all Pixel Dans fault I’ve spent countless thousands on toys!For years I watched his videos without buying any toys just to see the updated looks of MOTU classic figures..Then he started talking/covering MOTU origins..Beast man always been my favorite figure I said I can’t resist I’ll just get him to keep on my desk..Then it spiraled out of control…From Origina to Masterverse to Legends to TMNT to GI Joe,Transformers and Street Fighter…I lost count how much I spent DAMN YOU PIXEL DAN!

[@ToyAttics]

So great!

[@ADAM_COLLECTS]

Countless thousands on tits that if you had to you could sell. It isn’t like it’s smokes and booze. You’re never getting money back for that.

[@adamatsya]

I wasn’t a die-hard fan but I had a couple collected volumes of the Eastman and Laird comics and I remember when the cartoon came out in australia in 89 and thinking it was dumb. I liked the toys though - got the 4 turtles for $3 each in a clearance bin a couple years later. Contradictorily though, I liked the archie comics stuff when it came out.

[@ShutoStriker]

I remember when Ninja Force came in very early 90's IIRC. It was at the end of the original toy line craze (they ran out of ideas). Before they tried their first reboot of it with the new molded fist hands weapons slid into. The line ran its course by then, the show ran its course was on reruns, and other toys came like TMNT, Marvel Toy Biz, Swamp Thing etc. I had the Storm Shadow and 1 other I can't remember but I do remember the neon like Zartan and Road Pig being very off putting as a kid lol comparatively with their originals & everything that came before it color palette wise. I was mostly done with GI Joe by then though. In retrospect it was cool what they did and to collect these sub lines. I remember liking Python Patrol and Tiger Force back then and the vehicle variants were cool!

[@ToyAttics]

Great comment

[@powerturtlebusters]

Time is crazy asf. 2012 doesn't seem that long ago. I hate it lol

G.I. Joe Eco Warriors? 😅

[@powerturtlebusters]

Met dan today. Cool dude. Wish i could of talked longer

[@ToyAttics]

You were at Sarge and Red!

[@pbailed8007]

Snake Eyes v.4 was my favorite Joe. Actually bought a second one just in case if lost the first one.

[@265308]

There R some mistakes Pixel Dan made. G.I.Joe started in the 60s not 80's and the fans of the original Mirage Black N white comics did not care that TMNT toons were different bc there comics sky rocketed in value and were more than likey older indie comic collectors who understood it was a business. What shocks me is despite how universally huge TMNTfranchise is...the avg fan has no clue how different da original black N white TURTLES were. That first issue is 1 of the best comics ever made n ,hundreds, thousands...hell millions of peo have never read it. SAD>

[@ToyAttics]

I think you heard all of this wrong

[@Blue_splash89793]

If I want pure 80s I’m always riding with motu and transformers no doubt about it

[@TheMelvor]

Great discussion. Yeah, only Dan has the power to make Ninja Force Zartan's price go up. Stay away from Transformers, Dan. At least wait till I get what I need. Better yet, just stay away from Transformers. 😎

[@OneManOnFire]

I still have my Technodrome and TMNT sewer set

[@TheRetroWorld]

I love these types of videos you’ve been doing 🔥

[@NARC.1]

Loved this. Great discussion guys 🤘

[@ToyAttics]

@@NARC.1 thanks!

[@BonusEggs4Sale]

Pixel Dan rules

[@tupalev]

I really enjoyed this casual format - thanks for sharing this.

[@ToyAttics]

So we should do more?

[@JONNYSORENSEN_AU]

I'll never own a vintage Technodrome. Cheapest on on ebay loose (beater) in Oz is 400-500 upward. The reissue is around AUD $150. No brainer there, for a toy I've wanted but not been able to obtain since I was a kid. Plus therejust are not whole lot of them around here to start with, unlike USA and Europe where you can't walk without tripping over the damn things at 100 diff conventions, online etc. I see a few whiners online about this reissue.... most of whom ALREADY HAVE one, so any legit issues do not affect them in any way. And I honestly want to tell them to fuck right off. What, so everyone else in the world who has never got gone, should not get it , because they are fussy? Yes we should have standards. And yes it always stinks when they miss paints apps and whatnot.

[@ToyAttics]

@@JONNYSORENSEN_AU great response!

[@warrennewman5325]

Awseome fun with dan 👍

[@BinaryOrder]

Always enjoy PixelDan but the interviewer was weirdly standoffish and came off uneducated. Opening the video with a "get over it" reeks of insecurities.

[@ToyAttics]

Hahaha

[@BinaryOrder]

@@ToyAttics Case in point

[@ToyAttics]

You’re truly an idiot. I’m impressed

[@BinaryOrder]

​@ToyAttics Good luck with your channel, you'll obviously go far being so defensive over miniscule criticism

[@ToyAttics]

@@BinaryOrder my channel is great. Its not criticism. You obviously don’t have friends to know what friendly banter is

[@jbstoytrunk]

5:44 WELL SAID!!

[@markheadley125]

Awesome play set ❤❤❤❤😊

[@ToyAttics]

Yes it is

[@dukesir1865]

This was an awesome video

[@ToyAttics]

Thanks so much

[@rankrodent2772]

Mutant mayhem is pretty bad

[@ToyAttics]

It’s fantastic

[@Great_Getter]

As a wise man once said, "Like what you like. Just don't be a dick."

[@MirageTMNT80sOG]

This guy is a dick, he attacked turtlecomic for not liking mutant gayhem and having a different opinion.

[@MirageTMNT80sOG]

This guy with the pony tail is a dick.

[@edbraun383]

Hair bun on man. Couldn't make it through the video. Terrible.

[@ToyAttics]

The world is leaving you behind

[@BinaryOrder]

@@ToyAttics Great attitude, hope you find success with it.

[@ToyAttics]

Glad you think I shouldn’t defend myself. Haha. Success has been found my friend.

[@BinaryOrder]

@@ToyAttics Yes, arguing with people in comments is the sign of success. You've made it, no where left to go now!

[@ToyAttics]

Arguing for arguing it’s just arguing without an argument.