Funko Garbage Pail Kids Vinyl Figures: Bony Tony, Hot Scott, and Nasty Nick

Alright, I'm back for round 2 of my look at Funko's Garbage Pail Kids Really Big Mystery Minis Vinyl Figures.  Last time I examined Tee-Vee Stevie, Adam Bomb, and New Wave Dave.  This time I'm featuring some of the scarier figures from this line:  Bony Tony (the kid whose face unzips to expose his skull), Nasty Nick (a Bela Lugosi style Vampire) and Hot Scott (he's the Devil!).

Bony Tony, Hot Scott, and Nasty Nick on their original trading cards

The first three figures I reviewed all had accessories, but in this trio only Hot Scott has one, in the form of his pitchfork.  Aside, from that, everything I wrote about the other figures also applies to these guys, so you might want to go back and read that post for more details.  In a nutshell, each figure has an identical body sculpt, a unique and highly detailed head sculpt, a really nice paint job, and three points of articulation on the arms and head.  I don't really have a lot more to say about these guys that I didn't say last time, so I'll just let the photographs do the talking.  Check them out...

The Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew Mysteries - The House on Possessed Hill (1978)

In "The House on Possessed Hill," Joe and Frank cross paths with Stacey, a girl who supposedly has psychic powers, played by a young Melanie Griffith.  After Stacey predicted the injury of a young child, the child was really injured, causing the local townspeople to think Stacey is a witch, and that her prediction caused the injury to happen.  The townspeople are pursuing Stacey like the villagers in an old Frankenstein movie, and she and Joe take refuge in a spooky old house that appears to be haunted.

The Hardy Van Pulls Up to the House on Possessed Hill

What follows is a fun episode with a creepy hypnotist, a bank robbery mystery, psychic powers, a haunted house, and ghosts.  The episode tries to have it both ways in the supernatural department, by coming up with a seemingly logical explanation for all of the supernatural goings on by the end of the episode, only to end with a last minute stinger where Joe sees the actual ghost who haunts the house, similar to the end of "The Hardy Boys and Nancy Drew meet Dracula."

Joe and Stacey

Melanie Griffith is especially fun to watch here, giving a pre-fame performance that is both sweet-natured and unhinged at the same time, so it is as equally believable that she is actually psychic as it is the she is mentally ill, but still making her a sympathetic character either way.

"Yes boys, hypnosis is a serious business.  A man's business.  Not to be trifled with."

Another fun thing to look for in this one is the house itself, which is the same set used as the home of Norman Bates in Psycho.  The interior of this set (with a different, Non-Psycho exterior) was also used in the season 1 episode "The Disappearing Floor."  Also, the interior of the hotel Frank checks in to is the same set used in two previous episodes, "The Mystery of the Hollywood Phantom" and "Acapulco Skies."

"You are feeling sleepy, very sleepy.  When I count to 10, you will open your eyes and think that you are a chicken."

BONUS!  MUSIC VIDEO:
The White Stripes - Hypnotize


More screencaps after the break...

Funko Garbage Pail Kids Vinyl Figures: Tee-Vee Stevie, Adam Bomb, and New Wave Dave

Funko Garabage Pail Kids Figures

Growing up I was a huge fan of parody artwork like that found in Mad Magazine, and on the Topps Company's Wacky Packs trading cards.  In the fifth grade, all the kids in my class had cardboard dividers on our desks, which I guess were actually there to keep us from talking to each other, but we got to decorate them however we wanted.  I covered mine in hand drawn parodies of name brands like Pepsi and Coke, as well as satirical takes on the "positive thinking" educational posters that were in our classroom.  I also used to draw parodies of Cabbage Patch Kids based on the dolls my little sister owned.  When the Garbage Pail Kids came out, I was actually in the 7th or 8th grade, and feeling like I was too old to be interested in kids stuff any longer, but I couldn't help but collect the stickers, because they were right up my alley.  Some of the characters were so close to the drawings I had made, it was like the Topps Company was sneaking in to my room at night and rifling through my sketchbooks.  In particular, I had a dirty hippy Cabbage Patch Kid I used to draw, with flies buzzing around him, that was a dead ringer for "Blake Flake" aka "Hippie Skippy."

The Entire Set of GPK Figures, Including the Retail Display Box

Batman Animated Two-Face Action Figures - Vintage Figure from Kenner, Modern Figure from DC Collectibles

It's a Two-Face Two-fer!

When DC Collectibles first introduced their new 6 inch scale Animated Batman action figures last year, there were a lot of complaints from the toy collecting community about their quality.  Apparently, DCC used a brittle form of plastic in their joints, causing the articulated pieces to break. So even though the figures LOOKED really cool, I stayed away from them, because I like to take my action figures out of the package and pose them and play with them, and that didn't seem like a viable option with these figures.  But after the first batch of figures was released, DCC took stock of the toy collector's complaints, so all the subsequent releases now have decent plastic in them and won't break.  As I saw all the awesome looking figures that were coming out, as well as the super cool animated series Batmobile they are releasing, I decided I had to start collecting these, even if the first four figures were more fragile than the rest.  So I went ahead and picked the first four figures up, and I plan on buying the rest of them in the next few months until I'm all caught up.

Packaged DC Collectibles The New Batman Adventures Two-Face Action Figure

I also have a random assortment of vintage Animated Batman Kenner figures in my collection already, and I keep meaning to buy more to fill in the gaps.  So I thought it would be fun to take a look at the vintage figures side by side with the new ones.  For the first four Kenner figures, I picked up unopened packages, and for the subsequent figures it will probably be a combination of loose ones for the figures I already have in my collection, and packaged or loose ones for the ones I don't.

Packaged Kenner Arkham Asylum Escape Batman Vs. Two-Face