Are you rich or well off?

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Sage Ninja

I intended to post something but after reading through the thread I kind of feel a little down. I know it's immature but hearing about how some people are better off financially even just a little bit than makes me feel kind of...blah, about my situation. Let's just say I am wearing the same glasses I had when I was still in high school...

Well off the top of my head that doesn't mean much because we don't know how long you've been out of High School.

But with that said, I've never lived the "get glasses once a year" thing. At times I've had the same prescription for five years at a time and only gone to buy new glasses when the old ones broke.

As another point, and this might come off as sharp, but if at any time you've bought even two NECA Animated Target packs but have gone years without glasses then your priorities are a little skewed and you should re-evaluate them. No offense meant by that, but it's just a point, just in case.

[Leo656]

I'm absolutely guilty of "wasting" a ton of money on toys, video games, etc. But I don't care. I've been "actual" poor, and "things" make me happier than having a lush bank account. You can't take any of it with you, whether it's money or stuff, and who knows how long I'm gonna live (especially nowadays), so I'd rather spend my time happy, surrounded by frivolous nonsense.

Long as my bills are paid, I'm fine.

[PizzaPower1985]

i feel like Covid is making me poorer. I know im not the only one, but staying home more makes electric bills go up and grocery bill go up... and every other "developed" country is like getting stimulated... the U.S. is not!

[Andrew NDB]

Originally Posted by PizzaPower1985

i feel like Covid is making me poorer. I know im not the only one, but staying home more makes electric bills go up and grocery bill go up... and every other "developed" country is like getting stimulated... the U.S. is not!

Technically not true. We WERE stimulated all the way back in March, and stimulated well (both with stimulus checks for all, even the still employed, and enhanced $600 extra weekly unemployment, then $300 extra that Trump forced through from FEMA funds for an extra 6 weeks after the $600 died in July)... but 9 months later the left is keeping us from going back to work and making all the businesses close while only paying us lip service about "We're working on a deal!" then blaming the republicans when they won't ever sign off on their "pet projects" bills (AKA "The HEROES Act" they keep tweaking) because the left won't stop packing it full of millions of dollars for illegal immigrants and Green New Deal stuff.

"Keep everything shut down, stay home, wait for a vaccine even if it takes years!" should never have been the way. I'm forcibly unemployed but at the moment I get it. I'd sure like to get more relief but if I were in the senate, I wouldn't sign off on that crazy liberal wish list called the "HEROES Act" either.

[PizzaPower1985]

Originally Posted by Andrew NDB

Technically not true. We WERE stimulated all the way back in March, and stimulated well (both with stimulus checks for all, even the still employed, and enhanced $600 extra weekly unemployment, then $300 extra that Trump forced through from FEMA funds for an extra 6 weeks after the $600 died in July)... but 9 months later the left is keeping us from going back to work and making all the businesses close while only paying us lip service about "We're working on a deal!" then blaming the republicans when they won't ever sign off on their "pet projects" bills (AKA "The HEROES Act" they keep tweaking) because the left won't stop packing it full of millions of dollars for illegal immigrants and Green New Deal stuff.

"Keep everything shut down, stay home, wait for a vaccine even if it takes years!" should never have been the way. I'm forcibly unemployed but at the moment I get it. I'd sure like to get more relief but if I were in the senate, I wouldn't sign off on that crazy liberal wish list called the "HEROES Act" either.

I'll agree with most of that. From what I've read and heard, Pelosi is mostly to blame for not agreeing to various standalone bills that would give us more $$$$. I really hate the arrogance of liberals. I'll add... We either need to reopen and get back to work or get some kind of new stimulus. We have to do one or the other. THIS is not sustainable.

[Leo656]

I mean, they did "promise" another $1200 check a couple months ago but they wouldn't let it go through because they didn't want to make Trump look good before the election.

Now that it's all over and done with, we'll see what happens. Especially if more "shutdowns" put everybody out of work all over again. They're gonna have to do SOMEthing if they're not going to "allow" things to go back to "as normal as it gets".

I just got an extension on my unemployment, but that apparently only runs through February. If there are more shutdowns coming, "Just get a sh*t job and pray it's only temporary" won't even be an option. So yeah, they better figure something out.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I really liked how our stimulus checks got held hostage for the election's sake. That was great.

Not like any of us know people (or ARE people) who lost revenue or employment over it.

[Leo656]

And people really still think the Democrats are "Good Guys". They literally held our stimulus money hostage so people wouldn't vote for Trump. Gotta love it.

[PizzaPower1985]

Originally Posted by CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy

I really liked how our stimulus checks got held hostage for the election's sake. That was great.

Not like any of us know people (or ARE people) who lost revenue or employment over it.

IT IS LITERALLY THE HOUSE's FAULT. They didnt wanna take the chance that Trump would be elected IF we got more dough. Pelosi is a disgusting piece of trash... it'll be interesting to see how many of us are employed... or still alive by June! The virus is going to explode the colder it gets!

[Leo656]

Not to mention just about ALL the Italians are openly saying "F*ck your virus... stay at home for Thanksgiving and Christmas? 'Ey, fughettabowdit, I got a hunnert people comin' over! We're Italian, you know how we do!"

Like, if the numbers spike again, is everyone gonna start blaming Italians, or would that be "racist"? I mean, I don't see how you could NOT blame them when they're openly bragging about how they're going to defy any and all restriction orders on account of "their culture".

Guess we'll see what happens.

[CylonsKlingonsDaleksOhMy]

I mean, a damn lotta Texans are saying the same fvckin' thing, just with a whole lot more Southern Drawl

[CyberCubed]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I'm absolutely guilty of "wasting" a ton of money on toys, video games, etc. But I don't care. I've been "actual" poor, and "things" make me happier than having a lush bank account. You can't take any of it with you, whether it's money or stuff, and who knows how long I'm gonna live (especially nowadays), so I'd rather spend my time happy, surrounded by frivolous nonsense.
.

When I was in my late teens and 20's I wasted a small fortune on toys. I was basically trying to catch up on all the TMNT figures I missed out on as a kid plus the new ones coming out at the time, and I must have spent over $5,000 on toys alone. Toy collecting is VERY expensive as I'm sure everyone who buys them knows good and well. Just by not buying toys I saved so much money over the last few years.

I still have all my old action figures from the late 90's through 2010 or so, and I don't want to sell them but I guess that's all I have now. But man that was a lot of money spent, and now I don't do it anymore.

[Leo656]

I hardly collected anything for most of the last 10 years, but I didn't end up saving anything. It just went to food and gas instead. Since I'm spending less on gas and food currently, I'd rather take that money and spend it on things that make me happy, rather than hang onto it and just stare at the walls.

And I still have more money in the bank than usual, oddly enough. The biggest thing I've discovered from the past year, is that going to work is f*cking expensive.

[IMJ]

I spent a lot of money on toys as a kid too. But the winning strategy from this was that
A) toys were a lot cheaper back then. They weren't a "boutique" hobby, so even the "lot" of money proportionate to now and then was still way cheaper back then.

B) I kept such a significant majority of my stuff that I never really lost the value. The only stuff I ever tossed was a pretty significant collection of Garbage Pail Kids (big mistake), a decent collection of Archie digests and somewhere along the way I had a box of vintage Transformers and G.I. Joe vehicles disappear on me and for my life I don't know how that happened.

But aside from those three things, any of the value I spent as a kid I still have because I still own it, or I recouped + some when I sold stuff. And that goes to my philosophy of ownership - I was never that guy who got rid of stuff to rebuy it - that always seemed problematic to me.

So basically, once I sell it, it's gone. Forever. I don't go back.

[Leo656]

With toys it really all comes down to mass-production (and the recent lack thereof).

When I was catching up over the Summer with a few figures I was missing from back in the 80s/90s, I was amazed at how many of them are still really cheap, outside of a very select few. Most of the Toy Biz and Kenner DC figures from "DC Super-Heroes", "Batman Returns", "Total Justice", "JLA", "The Dark Knight Collection" and "The Man of Steel Collection" were about $5 at retail when they were brand new, and you can STILL find most of them in the package for under $20, sometimes even for around $10. A few characters here and there across those lines (like Toy Biz Superman) are much more expensive, but that one for example pretty much shot up to $50 a year after it came out and stayed there forever. I managed to pick up the entire "Total Justice" line for about $10 each on average. My wife's a huge Xena fan, so for her Birthday I bought her the entire 6-inch Toy Biz Xena line, all in-package, with the most expensive one being about $15 (I got a few for about $5 because the packaging was creased or the bubble was yellow or whatever). So there's still a lot of stuff that barely went up at all from it's original retail price.

Meanwhile, stuff that "allegedly" retails for $15 now, like "Masters of the Universe Origins" and "Masters of the WWE Universe", never even makes it to store shelves and are $30-40 on eBay the day they come out. Collecting nowadays is a LOT harder and much more expensive, and inflation is only a small part of it.

The biggest thing is lack of manufacturing/distribution. The reason why so much 80s/90s stuff is still so cheap, is because they manufactured millions of them and they were shipped to every Toys R Us, Kay-Bee Toys, K-Mart, Big Lots, and so on all over the world. So not only did everyone who wanted one of those figures get one, there was also generally a large surplus. A couple of months ago someone uncovered an entire storage unit full of mint-in-package "M.A.S.K." toys, for example, which someone just forgot about over 30 years ago.

NOW, they generally don't even produce a million of any single figure because kids don't play with toys anymore, AND the only places that sell them are Target, Walmart, or a company's own online store like Super7. Fewer figures to go around, combined with fewer places to buy them, and so they're immediately "Rare" and they skyrocket on the secondary market. It doesn't help that every single line is a "______-Store Exclusive" anymore, which didn't used to be a thing at all, and then when it was, it only happened very rarely. That kind of thing is bullsh*t. "Walmart exclusive" this, "Target exclusive that", and if you don't live near either of those stores OR you're "lucky" like me and live near a crappy one that barely stocks any action figures at all, you're f*cked and it's off to eBay.

Scalpers are obviously a problem, too, but they wouldn't be AS big of a problem if the companies simply manufactured more of these things. It's like when Nintendo purposely withholds products to create artificial scarcity and increase consumer demand, same thing.

Drives me crazy when a figure that retailed for $15 not even a year ago is over $100 now, just because they didn't make enough. It's nuts.

[PizzaPower1985]

i have always had "DREAM TOYS" that never were manufactured. Like, with TMNT, I once saw customs that were completely handmade by one of the Custom Guys on The Drome and I wanted them... This is obviously a matter of tastes, but... Like official licensed stuff is never good enough. The best molds for superhero action figures (not talking statues here), the most accurately colored figures... all basically come from China or Japan and have to be bought on ebay. you wont find them in toy stores, from NECA or whatever. DC never released a John Byrne Superman figure that looked like what was on the page... so it either has to be some bootleg thing from Japan/China or it has to customed.

And buying custom figures... that's like, a car payment, man!

[Hamato Yoshi]

https://www.mcall.com/entertainment/...325-story.html

Hmm , would Balki and Larry be able to afford the victorian house irl as seen in the last seasons , such a house might cost millions in Chicago , wonder what a news reporter would earn in Chicago early 90s , prolly not much

Then again , Balki doesnt seem to spend much and mightve quite a bit of $ stashed away and Jen/Mary Anne are prolly earning good money as air stewardesses.......

[Leo656]

Originally Posted by PizzaPower1985

iDC never released a John Byrne Superman figure that looked like what was on the page... so it either has to be some bootleg thing from Japan/China or it has to customed.

I mean, kinda. The head sculpt on the one in the "Through the Ages" Box Set was pretty good, the figure itself was a repurposed Alex Ross Superman, but eh. It was good enough for me.

What annoys me is that they only did one Chris Reeve-style head sculpt through DC Direct - "Commander El" from the World of New Krypton line - and not on any actual in-costume "Superman" figures. Thus requiring anyone who wanted a DC Direct-style Reeve Superman to buy the Kal-El figure, a Superman of their choice, and then swap the heads. Which is at least a $40+ investment.

It's like, you have the head sculpt, and you know everyone wants a Superman with that portrait... but you only release him in his Kryptonian Military gear and not his real suit? WTF, man.

[IMJ]

Originally Posted by Leo656

I mean, kinda. The head sculpt on the one in the "Through the Ages" Box Set was pretty good, the figure itself was a repurposed Alex Ross Superman, but eh. It was good enough for me.

What annoys me is that they only did one Chris Reeve-style head sculpt through DC Direct - "Commander El" from the World of New Krypton line - and not on any actual in-costume "Superman" figures. Thus requiring anyone who wanted a DC Direct-style Reeve Superman to buy the Kal-El figure, a Superman of their choice, and then swap the heads. Which is at least a $40+ investment.

It's like, you have the head sculpt, and you know everyone wants a Superman with that portrait... but you only release him in his Kryptonian Military gear and not his real suit? WTF, man.

I have the 3 3/4" Reeves Superman figure that came out around the time they did the Keaton Batman Returns 3 3/4" stuff too. I loved that line. It was the only DC line I bought in YEARS.

If I wanted the most inconic Superman representing the Byrne re-launch era through maybe the Dan Jurgens era, what would I buy?

[Leo656]

That there's a thinker, friend.

What I love about DC Direct was that they did SO many "iconic" character designs based on a multitude of different artists. Limited articulation aside, they really did a perfect job of recreating the comic book looks of the characters. They did Jim Lee Superman, Ed McGuinness Superman, numerous Alex Ross ones, Curt Swan "Silver Age" Superman, Mike Turner, Ed Benes... but no specific Jurgens-based head sculpt. Well, technically once, but it was their "Un-Masked" Clark Kent figure.

It's strange; when they did their "Superman" two-wave series back around 2004-5, they did numerous characters like Cyborg Superman, Eradicator, and even '90s Superboy who were all very clearly based on Jurgens's art. But their basic Superman figure from that wave, while good-looking, was more of a "catch-all" portrait. It definitely looked like Superman, but... not specifically Dan's. Dan always used sharp lines for the hair and cheekbones, for example, but the cheekbones and pompadour for that Superman figure were much smoother and softer. Compare it to their Eradicator figure - clearly a Jurgens-inspired sculpt - and you'll see what I mean. The Superman figure kind of has a "baby face" by comparison. Definitely not bad, and it definitely looks like Superman, but it doesn't look like it was based on any specific artist's rendering. But it's definitely "iconic", and it was one of the first-EVER super-hero action figures to have over 20 points of articulation, something that was very highly-touted upon its release. Some people prefer the "RE-Activated" rerelease, though, as it has a bit darker blue and the S-Shield on the original figure was sort of "off" with the way it was painted; the border, especially, was very thin, but the reissue kind of fixed it. The "JLA" Superman they put out was 9/10s identical, but they also released one in a box set that had an "angry" head sculpt, which not everyone cares for.

The "basic" DC Direct Superman figure, as used in the "Superman", "RE-Activated", and "JLA" lines (all mostly the same figure, with some deviation in the color blue and the S-Shield; that's the cleanest S I've ever seen on one of these):


Compared with The Eradicator, which is similar but you can barely tell has sharper facial features more in line with the way Jurgens drew the character:


However, the Clark Kent figure from DC Direct is very Jurgens/Ordway-esque. Many people have popped off the Clark Head, tossed aside the glasses and stuck it on any of the countless Superman figures DC Direct released, and it does indeed look VERY good that way.


As for Byrne, they did a more-or-less "Byrne-Inspired" figure in the "Through The Ages" box set, but it's not quite perfect and some people were annoyed that they simply re-used an Alex Ross Superman body for it (due to the very limited articulation). I think it's perfectly fine but it's not quite close enough for some people. It looks like Byrne's Superman to me, I'unno.


About 10 years ago they did a "History of the DC Universe" line based on the artwork of George Perez, and THAT Superman is very highly regarded by many collectors, as it kind of straddles the line between his Silver Age and post-Crisis looks. It's not Byrne or Jurgens, but beyond them Perez is about as "iconic" as it gets.

Unfortunately, due to its popularity it's become one of the more sought-after figures from DC Direct, often reaching about $70. I paid less for mine, but I had to look around.

As mentioned, the "Commander El" figure has a Gary Frank-inspired head sculpt, and Frank more or less draws Superman as close to Chris Reeve as possible, and it looks very good. Here's that figure, along with a custom someone made using that head on the George Perez Superman body. It sits a little high on the neck with that figure base, but you get the idea; it fits better on some of the other figures (Spoiler'ed for huge pic):

Spoiler:

Those are some of the best "basic" Superman figures from DC Direct, insofar as ones that go for a more "basic" likeness resembling the late-80s/early-90s designs.

If you want something with more articulation and general sturdiness (DC Direct figures can be a bit brittle sometimes and their articulation is often limited), there are a few really good "DC Universe Classics" figures from Mattel. Their original figure had a pretty good sculpt, but again, it was a bit "angry" for some folks tastes, and also, the red they used was more of a burgundy (think "Superman Returns") so some people aren't huge fans of it. Some time later, they did a 1993-inspired long haired version that had better costume colors and an improved face sculpt (which was rather Jurgens-esque). Mattel never did specific artists' styles for their faces like DC Direct did, but very often they got very close in a general sense. The tradeoff for better colors was apparently a much smaller cape. It's still a great figure, though. Here's the original Mattel DCUC Superman alongside the later, long-haired revision:

The red on the short-haired figure is actually much darker than this photo suggests. There was a lot of disappointment with that figure based on that shade of red (and again, not everyone loved the face). But, the cape and S-shield are in my opinion better-designed (or at least, more comics-accurate) on the original figure than the long-haired version.

Some time later, Mattel released a short-haired variant with the same exact body and paint scheme as their long-haired version. For many people, this was the best "basic" Superman Mattel ever did. The blue is a little bit dark for some tastes, and again, it's a smaller cape, but the head sculpt is very nice and the articulation and poseability simply can't be beat. I have this one on my shelf looking down at me right now:


And, of course, for a more "modern" but still very "iconic" take, there's the recent McFarlane Toys Superman figure. It's larger than the rest with more articulation than most, but it has a good-looking sculpt and the overall design is quite good. It has more of the modern flourishes, like the metallic S-shield and cuffs on the wrists (which aren't even really all that noticeable), but it's still a very good-looking "basic" Superman.

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So, hopefully that gives you some ideas, at the very least. Prices on each these fluctuate wildly, but I've seen and purchased some of them out-of-package in very good shape from time to time. It really depends on what you're looking for, as they each have their strengths and weaknesses. Some people prefer more articulation, while others find ones like the McFarlane figure ugly on account of how much articulation there is. The Mattel figures are far more sturdy and poseable than the DC Direct ones, but while you have to handle the DC Direct ones more carefully they do look much more like the comic books, as far as specific artists' likenesses and so forth.

I have all of these except for Commander El and Mattel's long-haired variant, and I like them all a lot for different reasons. BUT, individually none of them are perfect. However, many, many people have done some very great custom work off of these base figures, merely by swapping heads and/or capes. But if you don't feel like doing any of that (I haven't bothered, yet; I only have one of most of these and as I said, they can get expensive so I haven't messed with any), each of them are pretty good as they are without any tinkering.

Hope that helps! Again, I have most of them (as well as most of the OTHER DC Direct variants based on Ross, McGuinness, Jim Lee, etc. etc.) and frankly, they ALL look superb on the shelf, nitpicks here and there aside.

To think, we had absolutely dick for non-animated Superman figures between 1990 and 2004, and now we have an entire army of great ones to choose from. Pretty amazing!