Maggie's Memos: Thorin Oakenshield Action Figure Review

What's up, everyone?  Apparently no other members of this blog are into posting, so I'm taking over again with my promised Thorin Oakenshield review.  Their loss. ;)

So Mama suggested that I should start with pictures of the original packaging, since that's what she normally does.  I'm not the type to do something just because Mama thinks I should, but I had to admit it was a pretty good suggestion.  I had to borrow these pictures from her because she took him out of the package before she gave him to me.  Here's the front...

...and here's the back.  If you want to see more detail, you can click on the pictures to make them bigger. 

Here he is out of the package...just the perfect size. :)

A closer look at his awesome detail.  I mean, it's not perfect or anything, but pretty good for a $5 action figure.

He comes with his "oaken shield" that earned him his name.  (Is that proper English?  Somehow that sounds weird, but I can't figure out a better way to say it.)  At least, that's the movie's explanation for his name.  I don't remember that from the book.

Unfortunately, his shield isn't very impressive.  It's held in place by a little plastic peg, but it falls off if you look at it sideways.

Here he is standing up.  It's always nice when you have an action figure that stands properly.  

He is articulated at the knees, elbows, head and wrists.  This is as far as his knees will bend...I think he's warming up for the limbo. ;)

Some of his articulation is pretty limited.  Most of this is caused by his outfit or his hard plastic hair getting in the way.  

He comes with a small sword that is worn in a hilt on his belt.  I'm assuming this is his original sword that he starts out with.  I'm annoyed that he can't actually get it out of his hilt.  This picture shows the closest he gets to drawing his sword.

Thorin with sword drawn.   

His bigger sword, Orcrist, is perched on his back and can be angled to look like it's hanging over his shoulder in the hilt.

Like his shield, it's held in place by a little plastic peg.  You can see the hole in the middle of his back where the peg is inserted...

...and in this picture you can see the peg on his sheath.

Orcrist comes out of the sheath very easily.

I was pretty impressed with the detail on the sword.  Of course, it's flimsy and wouldn't hurt a fly, but I suppose it wouldn't do to sell toys with authentically sharp swords.  Too many kids would stick themselves. ;)

A look at the sheath.

And here's Thorin with his sword, which brings me to another disappointment.  Because of the limited articulation of his arms, he can't hold the sword with both hands, which is totally how he used this sword in the movie.   

I thought I'd take the opportunity to share some of my other action figures with you since it kind of fits the theme.

Strider/Aragorn from the Lord of the Rings was my first action figure and is also my biggest.  You'll notice he's still missing his sword.  We never found it after Little Gal lost it on the coast trip. :(  Never let human kids play with your stuff.

Mama just recently found this Jack Sparrow at Goodwill, along with...

...Will Turner.  I'm not so much a Will fan myself, but Rachel really likes him.  She insisted that I include him in this post.  Whatever.  Jack's way cooler.  But Rachel's a softy and she likes the boring, romantic heroes.  She and Tess are alike in that.  I have to admit that I'd still take Will Turner over Mr. Darcy, though!

Mama also found me a bigger Hiccup from "How to Train Your Dragon" and a Peter Pevensie from the Narnia stories at Goodwill.  I'm not a real fan of the Narnia movies, but the action figure is still pretty cool, even if he's missing a lot of his pieces.

Of course, the ultimate action figure is my awesome Iron Man!  He's a way cooler hero than any of the others combined!  Not that I'm biased or anything.  But hey, snarky yet lovable hero with his own flying metal suit...what's not to like? 

So, back to Thorin.  I'm glad I have him, and for the most part he's pretty cool.  I'd give him a 4 out of 5 because of his limited articulation and his shield that has a hard time staying in place.  I think I'd still  recommend him overall as long as the doll or person I recommended him to was aware of his flaws.

I hope you enjoyed my first official review.  If you liked it enough, I might try to do a few more in the future. :)  Let me know what you think.

Laters...Mags

Breaking News with Maggie: We've Been Awarded!

This is Maggie Wilson of Breaking News with Maggie, here to report that we've been awarded by our friend Reese from Reese's Pieces of Life.

Okay, so it's not exactly "breaking news" since I already mentioned it last week, but just go with it.  I needed another "Breaking News with Maggie" post. ;)

Before I get to that, though, I wanted to mention that I rather stupidly forgot to mention my birthday last week.  It was the 3rd, and Rachel and I celebrated by watching "The Hobbit".  FINALLY.  I cannot TELL you how long I've been waiting to see it.  We watched it in regular 2-D.  Mama gets kind of seasick watching 3-D.  We also hadn't heard great things about the spiffy-however-many-frames-per-second filming that they did, so we stuck with the "normal" version.

I came to the movie with mixed feelings, and after watching it, I felt the same way.  I think there were some parts that were really awesome, but some of it was overly huge and big and epic for a little story that was more of a fun, lighthearted children's book.  Granted, it's been a while since I've read it, so there were some things that might have been from the book that I just didn't remember.  And yes, I know that Peter Jackson pulled extra material from "The Necromancer" and all that (trust me, I know my Hobbit movie trivia!).  Some of the film was great and some of it seemed to drag on a little more than necessary.  And for some of it I was just thinking, "Really?"  (For example, Bilbo running after the Goblin and defending Thorin towards the end of the movie.  Where did that come from?  And who on earth was the weird goblin guy anyway?  I don't remember him from the book!  And while we're at it, didn't the Goblins set the trees on fire, not the dwarfs?  Okay, I'd better move on before I get stuck here forever.) ;)

I will say this:  the Riddle scene was AMAZING!  It was just like I'd pictured it.  Andy Serkis did such an incredible job of bringing the split personality to Gollum.  He managed to pull off a character who was completely creepy one minute and someone to be pitied the next.

I did like the casting of the other characters, too.  Martin Freeman made a great Bilbo, and I did like Richard Armitage as Thorin Oakenshield too.  Even if he was in *gag* "North and South".  I won't hold it against him. ;)  At least he was in "Captain America" too.

And speaking of Thorin, guess what I got for my birthday from Mama?  That's right, my very own Thorin Oakenshield action figure!!

Isn't he cool?  

She found him on sale at Kmart, so she was able to get him for me.  I'm planning on doing a review post later.  I figured if Mama can do review posts on her blog, I should be able to do one on mine. ;)

But enough of that.  On to the best blogger award!

For the first part, Tess and I get to answer 5 questions.  Oh, wait a minute.  Tess says that since it's a reward for our whole blog, it's only fair to have everyone who's contributed answer the questions.  Goody.  This won't take all night or anything.

Here are the questions we're supposed to answer:

1. What is your favorite post that you've ever created?

   I'd have to say that my favorite post was my Avengers Discussion post I did with Rachel.  

   Tess said her favorite was her "Tea with Tess" post (the only one she's done so far).  Just a warning:  Emma and Tess spent this entire post discussing their Jane Austen favorites, so if you're not a fan, I'd skip this one.

   Emma's favorite was her series of posts on her trip with Mama that she recently did.

   Hayden's favorite post was her post about her vacation from last summer.

   Jenna liked her post about Thanksgiving with Papa's family.

   And Rachel and Charlie chose their series of posts on their coast trip, also from last summer.

   

2.  What is your favorite photostory that you have ever taken part in?

   We all particularly enjoy our Christmas posts with the photo stories.  We especially liked the Christmas posts from 2011.  You can see a couple of them HERE and HERE.

3.  Why do you blog?

   Tess and I started blogging to get more writing experience, Tess because she wanted to be a writer and I because I wanted to be a journalist.  Since then, we've continued for the same reasons but also for the social aspect.  It's great meeting other doll bloggers out there. :)

4.  How many followers do you have?

   We currently have 95 followers (just 5 more until we can do our giveaway!).

5.  Do you like being nominated for awards?  

   Um, yeah!  What's not to like?  It's always nice to know your writing is being noticed and appreciated.

And now, we get to nominate 5 other bloggers for this award.  After a bit of discussion, we decided to nominate:

1.  The Bolton Girls from The Bolton Girls Travel Journal

2.  Kiki from Kiki's Corner

3.  Jenny from A Doll's Life

And that's as far as we got.  Many of our favorites had already been nominated (in fact, I think even some of the ones we nominated were already nominated!), and a lot of our favorites haven't been actively blogging for a while.  If you've already been selected and you'd rather not participate a second time, we understand.

Tess wants me to insert here that we were primarily trying to stick to other doll bloggers since Mama also received this award and will be nominating human bloggers.  She also wanted me to be sure to mention that just because we didn't nominate you doesn't mean we don't like your blog or anything.  She always gets really worried about "offending the readers". ;)

I guess that's about all for now.  I've got to get to bed.  We'll be back later with more awesomeness. ;)

Oops, I almost forgot this was a "Breaking News with Maggie" post.  So, to keep it all official, this is Maggie Wilson, signing off. ;)

Maggie's Memos: A Quick Hi

Hey everyone, Maggie here.  So, you're probably waiting for an amazing post or something, but you're going to have to wait a little longer.  Mama's 3 girls have been around constantly this whole week since their school is out for Easter break.  Normally, when Little Gal is the only one home, we can sneak out to the computer during her quiet time.  With all three of them here, though, it's just too risky.  If they discovered we were alive, they'd never leave us alone.  Besides, they're not supposed to know.  Really, it's against doll code even having Mama, Grandmama, and Mimi know about us.

But on to the point.  We've been awarded with the "Best Blogger Award" by our friend Reese and are hoping to get a post up about it soon, but it will most likely have to wait until next week when the older girls are back in school.  Thanks, Reese.  It's nice to know someone appreciates our talents.

It'll be nice to have free reign of the house again!  I'm sick of being stuck in my room, especially now that it's up so high.  Rachel and I are getting a huge case of cabin fever!  

By the way, while I'm here, I just had to give a big thanks to all of our followers...91!!  Seriously, it's about time we started catching up to Mama.  Yeah, I know she has 226 followers.  But just you wait.  We'll catch up to her as the word spreads about our awesomeness...and I'd better leave it at that or Tess will start complaining. ;)

We're planning on doing something special once we hit 100 followers, so keep it up!  Just 9 more to go.  Come on.  Click that "follow" button.  You know you want to. :)

Be back soon with more amazing stuff.  Laters.

Maggie