We’ve talked plenty about mass-retail action figures, but some of us collectors have more refined tastes. A bowl of chirashi over a conversation about post-modernist painting, perhaps some Chopin before a crackling fireplace, and the episodes of Sliders before the show got really, really stupid. And Sideshow Collectibles, of course, which has been producing beautifully crafted, higher-end proprietary collectibles in force for just under a decade.

Sideshow has made a name for themselves by being the premiere creators and distributors of meticulously crafted, researched and realized 12” figures, including famous Universal Studios movie monsters, reproductions of historical figures, characters from The Outer Limits and The Twilight Zone, the James Bond films, Monty Python, and more recently, Hellboy, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars. They’ve even scaled-up a lot of these figures and doubled their sizes, offering ‘Premium Format’ figures to those collectors with room to spare. Personally, I found myself collecting every Hellboy figure that they had to offer, going out of my way to find convention-exclusive items, and eventually, purchasing actual screen-worn movie props. You don’t know ‘collecting’ until you’ve collected Jeffrey Tambor’s pants. That’s when people start to wonder.

Beyond these things, Sideshow also is responsible for a large number of museum-quality busts and statues, movie prop replicas and fine art pieces, as well as importing hard-to-find Medicom products from Japan, which include both anime and Marvel Comics properties. When we stopped at their Toy Fair booth, all of these items were on display, a vast myriad of high-priced low-brow glory. Check out this photogallery of their stuff that I snapped!
The Sideshow booth is always friendly and casual. At my first Toy Fair, I was uninitiated and nervous. unfamiliar with the strange customs and rituals of the toy people, but Sideshow was very welcoming of our awkward investigative reporting. We were left to our own devices as we circled the booth slowly, snapping a ton of photos. One gets the impression of being in an antiques store - you’re afraid to MOVE, lest you knock something beautiful and precious over.

Without discussing every single amazing item on display, the standout pieces this year were the Marvel Comiquettes, which are roughly 15” - 20” tall statues of some exciting Marvel characters, starting with Iron Man and Wolverine, both in the $200 range. These pieces are by far the best interpretations of these characters that I’ve seen in any 3D format, and the metallic, radiant sheen on Iron Man is beautiful enough to convince me to order him. As with many items made by Sideshow, both of these items have a limited-edition, early bird pre-order version, in addition to the regular versions. If you happen to have pre-ordered these items at Sideshow’s website soon after they were put up for order (usually around 1 PM ET on Fridays), you’ll receive a bonus piece. In the cases of Wolverine and Iron Man, you get bonus, unmasked heads in addition to the regular heads, which are easily interchangeable.

Many of Sideshow’s pre-orders run like this, and while many of their pieces sell at secondary retailers for a slightly lower price, ordering the items directly from the site is the only way to attain these bonus pieces. These pre-ordering times are massive collector events, and sometimes the exclusive versions sell out in under 30 minutes. The regular versions of these items, which are produced in much higher numbers, usually remain in quantity for a few days, so it’s a website to constantly watch if you want to keep on top of things.

The other standout items were Sideshow’s Star Wars 12” and Premium Format figures. Having recently acquired the license from Lucasfilms, Sideshow is visiting all 6 Star Wars films at once, in a variety of interesting characters. The line of Premium Format figures are about two feet tall, and feature authentic costume detailing, directly referenced from the films, and occasionally, small electronics for illumination. Included in this line are Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Obi Wan Kenobi, Darth Vader and Princess Leia, as well as General Grievous, the asthmatic robot from the newer films. I had the pleasure of winning a Premium Format Darth Vader, with a retail value of $350, during one of Sideshow’s many online events. Where I’m going to display a 2’ Vader, I don’t know, but I venture that I’ll have to sleep with him. Thankfully, that’ll be the only time I use the phrase ‘sleep with him’ in terms of what I’ll do for collecting.

The Star Wars 12” line will be the first time that we get film-accurate, stunningly detailed figures from the Star Wars films. Hasbro has put out some mass-market 12” versions of some of these characters before, but none with the high-end attention to detail that Sideshow has to offer. They’ve broken the line down into a few categories - Order of the Jedi (to include all characters who are Jedi), Heroes of the Rebellion (to include all other heroic figures), and at least one more undetermined category, likely to include villains, bounty hunters and other various aliens. None of these have been released yet, but 5 different figures have gone up for pre-order, from throughout the Star Wars timeline. I usually don’t touch anything that happened after Return of the Jedi, but I couldn’t resist a 12” figure of Kit Fisto, the Jedi with asparagus hair.

Like the Comiquettes, all of these Star Wars figures had Sideshow-exclusive items if you were among the first to order them. Princess Leia comes with an alternate blaster, Han Solo comes with a giant magnetic space-manta, Kit Fisto comes with a decapitated droid head, and so on.

Even Lord of the Rings lives on in both 12” and Premium Format figures, with Aragorn recently being put up for pre-order and Legolas displayed for the first time at Toy Fair. Lord of the Rings people are a very strange and dedicated group, sometimes bordering on ‘savant’, but I love ‘em. They can recite every township that the Fellowship passed by on their journey to Mount Doom, in Elvish, while making fictionally-accurate lembas bread, but they can’t comb their hair. I went to a meeting of The Tolkien Society once, and then I spent the next three days cowering under the blankets. Sure, I collected every LOTR action figure from Gimli to Theoden, but I’ll be damned if I know how many arrows Legolas fired at Ugluk on the 5th day of Lammastide. These people… they know.

Only these two figures have been announced so far, as the line has only just begun and they’re released at a rate of one per month, at a price of around 60 bucks each, giving us time to breathe and recoup and sell that ever-replenishing font of money that I like to call ‘plasma’.

Click around on SideshowToys.com for everything else that they have to offer. It’s something that collectors who spend all of their time in real, actual stores might not have noticed before, and it’s ridiculously good stuff.

I think my love affair with vintage jewelry started with this great necklace I discovered in my grandmother’s jewelry box when I was a teenager. It was a double of strand of beads in shades of green, probably from the sixties. She spotted me admiring it and said, “Do you like that? Take it, I haven’t worn it in years.” I wore that necklace constantly in high school and still pull it out today from time to time.

A little later I spotted a necklace of wooden beads from the seventies in my mother’s jewelry box and asked if I could have it (yeah, I was a jewelry mooch). She giggled and said, “Well, actually that was your FATHER’S but sure, you can have it.” That’s another one I still wear today.

I’m not terribly concerned with the value of my vintage jewelry collection – when I purchase a piece I intend to wear it, not store it away. I wear a lot of black – I like the way it hides the grubby little fingerprints from my two young children - and I find the vintage jewelry adds a little color and makes a unique focal point for my outfit.

There are so many places to find great vintage jewelry. Antique shops often carry a good selection of vintage jewelry, and I’ve gotten lucky at estate sales and garage sales before. Online auction websites offer beautiful choices as well.

It’s not a bad idea to ask older relatives if they have anything they want to get rid of. Many times they’ve long abandoned the beautiful vintage pieces in their jewelry boxes in favor of modern styles and are more than happy to give them away to someone who will appreciate them. I love to wear a sparkly necklace and imagine it being worn by my grandmother, young and lively, fifty years ago. These are my favorite pieces because they hold a special meaning for me.

When someone says “1950’s slips” do images of vintage crinolines spring to mind?

While those stiff netted petticoats were popular in the 50s’s (and often desired due to the fragile state of netting), for many vintage lingerie collectors, the 50’s slip is far more a tactile, sensual treat…

In the 50’s to 60’s era, Dupont nylon was introduced and became widely used in most lingerie and undergarments. Designers started blending nylon with fine rayon and satin and this is an era when so many incredible silky slips were produced. You also see a lot of fancy lacework, flouncey hemlines, chiffon, imported laceworks, etc.

In the 1950-60s era, there is a ‘wedding lace’ slip which consisted of the incredibly beautiful micro-pleated chiffon and imported lacework.

Slips give an nod to an era of beauty & glamour icons (Who can forget Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe in their slips?), yet they continue to beckon today. Physically, slips are intimate items; seen by few, yet they are demur by today’s lingerie standards. Like the glamorous and romantic details of the garments themselves, slips speak of elements which often seem missing from our in-your-face culture.

You might say slips are some of the most flirtatious collectibles around.

All images © Glamour Gurlz

As opposed to Wednesday’s Toy Fair 2006 update, the visit to Mattel’s showrooms reflects the flipside of the superhero universe. Whereas ToyBiz deals exclusively in Marvel characters like Spider-Man, the Hulk and Captain America, Mattel deals in DC Comics action figures, which includes characters like Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman. It also includes ‘Infectious Lass’, but I won’t hold that against them.

It’s not unusual for the average person to never distinguish between the two universes, but for comic geeks such as myself, they’re very distinct places, never to touch, just as your peas should never, ever touch your mashed potatoes on your delicious dinner plate. Sure, they’re both delicious, and the two comic universes cross over into each other from time to time, leaving everyone bewildered and playing into the ‘multiple universe’ theories that seem to be the catch-all for anytime something doesn’t make sense within a comic, but usually, like boys and girls at a school dance, like opposing magnetic polls, like Danielle Steel and intelligent fiction, the two have a tenuous interaction at best, often sensibly repelled from each other.

Within my own collecting, I’ve subconsciously ushered all of my Marvel figures into one half of the room, while the DC Comics figures have found their way into a completely different section. Occasionally they’re allowed to integrate around the neutral ground that is my Mac Mini, but that place is anything goes. Seriously. They’ll often meet DEVO pins from 1980 and long-forgotten snacks which have become entirely different kinds of snacks over time.

The Mattel showrooms didn’t have anything very unexpected to show by way of action figures. The current ‘big deal’ in DC action figure collecting is the DC Superheroes line, which marks the first time that we’re getting mass-retail, articulated, 7” versions of a few interesting and traditional DC characters. The first wave of these had hit retail a few weeks back, and consisted of Batman, Killer Croc, Bane and Scarecrow. Interestingly, Bane and Scarecrow were initially part of a different Batman line entirely, and due to a sudden cancellation of the line, they were only distributed in Australia. They’ve been slightly retooled for this US release.

As far as variants of the figures go, none are intentional, but there are two running production changes. The first variation are the pegs in Batman’s knees. Initially blue, they’ve recently become grey to match his costume. The second change is with the Bane figure. Early figures were packed without his teddy bear, while later figures include it. Nothing major, but it’s something to look for.

On display were pieces from the next three waves of figures, which alternate between Superman and Batman mythologies. One of the best parts about Toy Fair is that companies will often display ‘two-ups’, or double-sized figures from which the smaller figures are perfected and altered. These are often finely painted, one-of-a-kind, sculptural pieces. Check out this mini gallery to see these huge figures, as well as the next wave of figures in actual size.

Wave two of these will include Superman, Supergirl, Doomsday and Bizarro. Wave three will include another Batman, Robin, Azrael, and a repackaged and slightly altered Mr. Freeze, who was also included in the aforementioned original Batman line. This will be followed by another Batman wave, including yet another Batman, the Joker, Two-Face, and a new, black-and-stitches clad Batgirl. While the first wave of these figures shows promise, they’re still not perfect, having a plastic shine and lacking some detail, but they show a lot of promise.

The other major DC wave focuses on the Justice League Unlimited cartoon, based around the artwork of Bruce Timm. These are smaller, 4” scale figures with minimal articulation and exceptionally simple designs, but therein lies their charm. These have appeal on character recognition alone. The cartoon itself makes an effort to include every superhero and villain that the DC Universe can offer, and as such, there’s a large array of possible figures, from popular to obscure. Mattel tends to repackage the heavy hitters, like Superman and Batman, many, many times over, often throwing a single new figure into a three pack, or adding a huge, ridiculous action feature, but the JLU line is shying away from this, recently offering new characters without the necessity of repurchasing figures that you might already have.

New JLU figures will include Zatanna (recently made into a major DC character after the Identity Crisis storyline), Etrigan the Demon, Huntress, Zoom, and three new Green Lanterns, which will make a great addition to your Green Lantern Corps display.

See, here’s the thing about Green Lantern - there’s about a thousand heroes who go by the name ‘Green Lantern’ throughout the DC Universe. There’s these little blue guys called the Guardians, and they give out rings. To everyone. So, as it stands in the action figure world, you can paint a Green Lantern logo on just about anything and there’s PROBABLY a Green Lantern somewhere out there, somewhere in the universe, that looks exactly like whatever you’ve just made. You can take a green marker and draw the GL sign on your donut and it would be comic-accurate. He’d be Tastee from the planet Krispeekreemulon. They gave a ring to a squirrel. They gave a ring to a developmentally challenged dog. They gave a ring to a planet. They’ll give a ring to a donut. And this is why I love comics.

The third line that Mattel showed off was the Superman Returns movie line of figures, which is not geared towards collectors, but instead [GASP!] kids. Rife with action features, with many variations on Superman and an occasional goon to battle, I don’t believe this to be a line that will be highly collected. Movie lines usually don’t fare too hot, the exceptions being Lord of the Rings and Star Wars, but even lines as strong as those leave many leftover figures warming the pegs.

Stay tuned for more Toy Fair goodness as we visit the Sideshow Collectibles booth.

I fell in love with this piece when I saw it at an auction a couple of years back. It had the look of a well-made, good quality pottery, I loved the color and I liked the idea of a flower vase in the shape of a flower. I bid and wound up winning it for just a few dollars. I tried putting flowers in it once, but the flowers and the vase seemed to be fighting for attention. Since then, I prefer to display this pretty vase on its own.

When I got the vase home from the auction, I noticed the word “Gonder” faintly inscribed on the bottom and decided to investigate. It turns out that many pottery lovers collect Gonder, though it’s not as well known as pottery brands such as Roseville or McCoy. Gonder Ceramic Arts Inc. was founded in 1941 by Lawton Gonder in Zanesville, Ohio, which was home to several other pottery manufacturers including Roseville.

Lawton Gonder had spent his career working with tiles and pottery, and he brought many innovative ideas to his company. He took pride in creating high quality, artistic pottery, and Gonder Ceramic Arts Inc. hired top artists to design the pottery. Over the years Gonder introduced a number of innovations in glazing, such as a gold crackle glaze and a glaze that resembles flames. He also created a popular line of reproductions of pottery he had acquired from a Chinese museum. As cheap foreign imports flooded the American pottery market in the fifties it became more difficult to compete, and the company was sold in 1957.

Because the company was only in business for 16 years, Gonder pottery can be more difficult to find than other types of collectible pottery. When purchasing Gonder pottery, look for the name “Gonder” on the bottom of the piece, as well as the mold number. You can visit the online Gonder Museum to see photos of the different styles of pottery made by Gonder.