A few days ago, September 12th came and with the passing of that day, the dust got a little higher, my memory got a little worse and the bones started cracking a bit more than usual… yup, my birthday passed. This year was year numero 31 for me, otherwise known as the second anniversary of the death of my beloved 20s. But it wasn’t without plenty of surprises, and one of this them was this completely unexpected haul courtesy of my good friend Mr. Al DeGregorio:

Now, you’re probably wondering just what the heck you’re looking at… well, I have been looking for a Machiko style girl for my Predator collection for ages and I have yet to get one until NOW! (If you don’t know who Machiko Noguchi is, you can read about her here.) Al completely customized a sexy Kotobukiya Ninja Gaiden Ayane PVC statue, which is a nice size at 1:6 scale, and converted her in to an Anime style female human hunter hauling human and Predator weaponry. All that with a hot bod too! She comes complete with several automatic weapons, samurai sword, Predator Plasma Cannon and armor detailing and wrist computer. It’s a gorgeous custom and I can’t thank Al enough for hooking me up with this.

Now what good is a haul without pics right? Click on the photo icon below for my photos of this sexy killin’ gal:

Thanks again Al, this was really very generous of you! I’d also like to thank all my friends in the community for the threads, PMs, and emails all wishing me a happy birthday. It’s pretty funny actually… some of my family never called me but I think half the internet got a hold of me lol! You guys rock, thanks everyone <3

Dan

PS. No, this is definitely NOT for sale

This week has been a VERY busy one and it’s only Tuesday! Two of the most unique and positively KICK ASS pieces to be added to my collection arrived this week, and they are quite literally mind blowing… They are both so realistic, it’s like they just walked off the big screen into my house.

The first piece is the Killer Kits Kong that my good friend Chris picked up from Wonderfest 2006 for me and handed it over to Joe Dunaway for some TLC. It took awhile, but it was worth every minute of wait time, because it’s absolute madness! The sculpt by Joe Bailey is just dead on and it’s MASSIVE at about 18″ tall!

I had a ball photographing this piece and the photo above (click for full view) is one of my favorite photos I have ever taken of a figure. It’s just so realistic and a dead on likeness of the new Kong movie. If you are attending Wonderfest this year, check out the Killer Kits table to pick up your own, or you can go to killerkits.net to contact them. And as always, you can check out Joe’s portfolio and contact him from his site at modelzone.com.

As usual, click the icon below and check out all the pics of Kong in all his glory!

After that, we have something that I have been trying to get my hands on for a looooooong time now. I HAD to have a Star Wars kit in my collection to pay homage to my favorite series, and nothing short of Jedi Master Yoda would do. A year or so ago, I saw Howard Senft’s AMAZING full size Yoda statue and I almost lost my mind. It was the perfect sculpt and the built version he was showing off was just jaw-dropping. So that’s when it started… I harassed poor Howard into submission until he finally agreed to build one for me, and man did he pull out ALL the stops!

Howard took his last casting of this piece and turned it into the ultimate Yoda statue for me… He went all out with glass eyes, real hair, leather pouch belt and a real material cloak that he carefully aged and frayed up. When I pulled this out of the box, I was completely stunned at how realistic this was, and even my wife, who normally couldn’t care a less about my kits, thought this was absolutely amazing. My daughter walked in and with an excited voice, announced that she was happy that Yoda was visiting! (Yep, she’s know about Yoda and Star Wars since age 2)

To top it all off, the package also includes a beautiful plaque made by Howard with the name and issue number (this one is 2 of 2) and a COA.

This was also TONS of fun to photograph, despite that it barely fit in my light tent! Check out the pics:

You can check out all of Howard’s work at www.howardsstudios.com and contact him should you be looking for a kit or commission work. Just a heads up though, Howard is a high-end, professional sculptor and his rates reflect his skills and experience. So please do not contact him with commission sculpting work if your budget is a few hundred dollars, and bear in mind that Howard does not normally do his own painting as he focuses primarily on sculpting.

Thanks for looking!
Dan

From time to time, I like to stray from the Predator path and scoop up the occasional piece to add some variety to my collection to represent some of my favorite movies or movie stars. Now, unless you haven’t been keeping track, you know that I LUUUUUV Angelina Jolie and Tomb Raider is one of my big screen guilty pleasures, although I don’t really like the game. Anyhow, last summer I saw a piece that was coming up for sale at Wonderfest 06′ and it blew my mind! Well, 6 months later, here’s what arrived on my doorstep:

Once again, Joe Dunaway blows me away with his painting skills on this MASSIVE kit! This is the Angelina Jolie as Lara Croft kit by Ray Vandamme and it’s 1:3 Scale, or about 28″ high! The kit is super sexy and beautifully cast with a very intelligent assembly breakdown, with all the pieces locking together to hide every seam. For those of you looking for some extra spice, this piece is available both clothed and nude and can be full body or bust only! Contact Ray at exousiastudios.com to find out how to order you’re own kit if he has any castings left. This kit is hot and sold like crazy when it was released, so I have no idea if there’s any left for you to score, but grab one if you can, you won’t regret it!

Click the photo icon below for more pics to drool over:

Enjoy Pred fans!

Dan

Don’t ask what I’ve been smoking lately, but I COMPLETELY forgot to show you guys a brand new piece from the studio of my favorite artist, mister Joe Dunaway, who just blew my mind with this kit build-up. He took a kit that I have wanted for ages, the Narin Long Spear Predator, and then modified the bio and made a custom belt and other goodies to style it after the Big Red in Sandy Collora’s Batman Dead End movie. So he basically took my favorite kit and modded it after my favorite fan film… can we all say DROOL?!

Aside from the AMAZING armor weathering and overall detailing of this kit, Joe has absolutely perfected his technique of creating semi-translucent skin patterns. It’s literally the coolest thing I have ever seen on any kit I have owned… the skin is covered in tiny veins and details that make it 100% life-like and it just blows my mind every time I look at it. His last 3 pieces use this technique and it’s absolutely the best skin paint job you could ask for. Well done Joe, this is a real center piece in the collection and it’s easily one of your best preds to date.

If you want to see some photos of this insanely kick ass custom, click the photo icon below:

Remember you can see more of Joe’s portfolio and contact information on his site at www.modelzone.com.

Thanks,
Dan

Well folks, it’s been almost a year since it was ordered, but it’s FINALLY going to get it’s butt to my door! Just got this in from Sideshow:

Dear Valued Collector,

Thank you for your pre-order of our Predator Maquette - Sideshow Exclusive (item #71431) from our Predator Collection. We appreciate your patience in awaiting the arrival of this Limited Edition, Sold Out collectible.

At this time, we would like to inform you that this item is estimated to arrive into our warehouse within the next 5-7 days. We will BEGIN “pre-authorizing” credit cards for this purchase within the next 24 hours, in the sequence in which all of the pre-orders for this item were placed. A “pre-auth” is not a direct charge, but is a “hold” of funds pending the shipment of your order. Your credit card will be charged once the item is shipped from our warehouse.

*does a little happy dance*

Dan

Just when you thought you’d seen it all, I’m happy to bring you a female predator kit fully decked out in big breasts, a tight butt and even high-heeled boots! And to top it all off, this official kit issued years ago by Mr. Bones Modelworks is called “Pussyface” no less! It’s cheesy, kind of cliche, but it looks damn cool, and it features a great casting and good size at 1/6 scale. I’ll have to keep an eye out for this kit and hopefully not get beat out on it AGAIN on eBay. I want to thank my good buddy Ian “Spike” who actually won this kit recently and was kind enough to send me TONS of pics via his crawling 56k connection.

Here’s the kit:

I’ve uploaded all the pics Ian sent me and created a new gallery entry for you to check out. Just click the icon below for the entire “spread” *sigh*

Ian also took the time to send me pics of a whack of kits he just received from Monsterz.net, so I’ll be popping those into their respective galleries soon for you to reference. The pics include raw castings of the Narin Female, Spear, and Sword Predator kits.

Enjoy!
Dan

The new search engine on MTC has been officially launched and appears to be bug free and working beautifully! You can now easily search the database for specific items, companies, sculptors and other details, plus filter your results for specific areas, or search everything! The search results are displayed in a listing format like the rest of the reference areas and are sorted in order of relevancy by section. Check out www.predatorstuff.com and give it a try!

Enjoy!
Dan

First off, I hope everyone had/is having a fun, happy and safe holiday season, and I wish you and your family the very best in 2006!

With that said, you may have noticed that I haven’t updated the main MTC website with new entries for awhile, but it’s not because I was on holidays! My buddy Chaos King from P2L has been letting me abuse his coding magic powers and we’ve been building a massive catalog system that lets me add and control items on the site WAY easier! It was just getting too massive for me to update manually, and the code was getting out of hand. Now there’s an entire CMS system that control the whole thing. We’re also working on finishing up the new search engine that is about a billion times better than the old search, allowing you to find specific items much quicker. You can actually use it right now, but it still needs a few touchups before we call it a done deal.

We’re also working on automating the Blog integration on the site, so bear with me until I get that all straightened out. Anyhow, you can check it all out at www.mytoycollection.com!

Tonight is my first real run at adding new content, and we’ve got loads of new content, including a new kit section for ModModel’s awesome stuff, some new Environment Helmets, a new Miscellaneous area and loads of new added items with TONS on the way! With the new system in place, it only takes a few seconds to add new items instead of 20 minutes each with the old method. *shudder* I also took some quick pics of my unbuilt Dark Hunter for those of you that want to compare and make sure you have the real deal. You can check out The Gallery for those new shots.

That’s about it for now! Stay tuned for a great old unbuilt kit my good friend Ian scored off eBay recently called “Pussyface”… it’s a bit cliche, but a cool kit nonetheless if you’re open minded lol!

Until next time!
Dan