Thunder...Thunder...Thunder....

Thundercats! Hoooooooooo!

Back in November I was out shopping for Christmas gifts and found several of the rebooted Thundercats toys from Bandai on clearance at Giant Tiger, a discount chain which has now gone out of business. My oldest nephew is just about the right age for them I thought, so I picked up four figures and a Thundertank for a modest $20. A few weeks later he was happily helping the Thundercats put the run on Mumm-Ra amidst the detritus of Christmas wrapping paper, boxes and relatives recovering from turkey dinner. I was simply amazed at how much he loved these toys. I guess I shouldn't have been surprised, because I really loved Thundercats as a kid too.

The younger of the two was also enamoured with them, most notably Snarf and the sidecar launching feature of the Thundertank. Grandpa couldn't reconnect the sidecars quickly enough!

A few weeks later I had largely forgotten about the toys, until walking through a London Drugs in search of an eye dropper for my painting table. I happened upon a little box of chibi-style T-Cats figs that I thought would make a nice little gift for my younger nephew, so that he could have his own set to play with. I grabbed those and continued on my search for the eye-dropper, until I rounded a corner and happened upon the Christmas clearance toys.

They had a nearly-full assortment of the 4" basic figures, as well as the Tower of Omens play set on sale for $1 and $5 each, respectively. There were two towers there, so I bought one for the boys and I simply couldn't resist and had to pick up some for myself. I've saved the Tower play set for the next time the kids visit. Six figures and a massive play set for myself though, all for $11, score!

Now that I had the start of a collection I had to finish it off. I picked up a 6" Lion-O and Mumm-Ra a few days later, because $3 each was too damn cheap not to. Sadly, I couldn't track down much of the rest of the 4" line locally and had to resort to higher online prices (and shipping) in order to complete my set. Apparently $1 toys sell rather quickly, who would have thought!?

Mumm-Ra in mummy form, Panthro and the Thundertank cost me another $50 from Big Bad Toy Store, with about 40% of that being shipping costs. I found Mumm-Ra's Storm Charger locally at Winners for $5. Don't worry, the kids got one to share too, along with the chibi-cats I mentioned earlier (I still have the Tower, but plan on giving it to them soon). Wilykat was obtained via eBay for $9, and Grune the Warrior and the Lizard Cannon w/ Lizard figure cost another $55, including the shipping from ToyWiz (great store, but ridiculous shipping costs). I had briefly considered buying the Armor of Omens as well, but with no nostalgic-appeal, I passed on that.

In retrospect I wish I had bought all of these back at Giant Tiger back in November because they were almost all available and the whole batch would have been much cheaper. Of course I was thinking gifts for the kids not toys for myself, as I have largely given up collecting toys and been concentrating more on 28~32mm miniatures. I guess those are just small toys for big people though! However, now that I've acquired all of these, I do feel it's rather a shame that the line and new show was cancelled after only a single season. The cartoon was quite fun, and I'd have liked to see a second season.

I have been unable to find a deluxe Slithe figure so far, as apparently that one was extremely difficult to come by in retail at the end of the toy line.