It's almost Oct. 15

First, a couple gripes, brought to you fresh by the toy collecting world and its insanity.

I was "hanging out" at the Fwoosh earlier, checking out the DCUC wave 10 sightings thread from Philadelphia (where my family lives), and read the harrowing tale of a fellow Philadelphian as he went to Walmart every single day for a week and a half, having heard they would receive 2 cases of DCUC wave 10. He arrived at 6:40am on the day the case was to arrive, and ran to the toy aisle because there was another person there running to the toy aisle. They got there, cleaned out all of the DCUC wave 10 figures (apparently, a Walmart employee kept one of the cases for himself), and that was it.

Maybe I'm not as dedicated as other people, but holy crap. That's insanity. I can't ever see myself doing something like that, even though I want that Batman and Man-Bat a whole bunch.

Okay, enough griping. Now it's time to rejoice. Behold, taken directly from Mattycollector.com, are the in-package photos of the 12" Ray Stantz figure. And oh, how my heart leaps in my chest! That packaging is awesome, and even though the 6" packaging eventually grew on me, this makes me happy from the start. It even has a drawer, in which to keep the head-busting (in a spiritual sense, of course) gear. I can't wait to hold this in my hands.

The detail on the proton pack looks incredible, too. Ray comes with Ecto-goggles and Egon comes with a PKE meter. They all come with working traps too, which is incredibly exciting. I mean, the head sculpts are obviously nowhere near the caliber of Hot Toys, but the $60 price tag is also nowhere near them. Honestly, if you think about it, none of the Real Ghostbusters figures look like the characters from the show (when did they wear odd space suits and use green fishing rods as ghost-catching equipment?), so it's not likeness that drives my love for these toys, it's something else.

Also, official photos of the 6" Ray (and his description) confirm that the logo ghost glows in the dark. I'm so stoked, words can't even begin to describe it. The glow from this logo ghost will be a perfect addition to my movie-GB shelf, and will continue to add to the awesomeness that is my whole Ghostbuster collection. Eventually I'll have Winston (by December, unless Mattel plays with my heart again), and then no Venkman until July 2010... which is annoying. I'll be living in an entirely different state, I'll have my M.D. degree, and most importantly, I'll have the containment unit that comes with Walter Peck.