More images on our Flickr at http://www.flickr.com/photos/ragingnerdgasm/sets/72157629899207392/with/7271129160/ .

Cloverfield, released back in January of 2008, was a shitty sci-fi monster movie that could have been so much better. Shot al’a Blair Witch style, a group of friends are present to witness first hand (with their handy-cam) the destruction of New York by an beast of unknown origins. Shakey cam movies belong in the trash, they are a nauseating display of what can be done when you barely have enough money to distribute the film let alone produce it. Anyways, the film follows this group of friends as their farewell party for their buddy gets rudely interrupted by a disembodied head of the Statue of Liberty. Lots of mayhem ensues, people die, billions of dollars in property damage is done and the United States government decides to nuke New York four years prior to the Avengers movie. Outside of the shakey cam I was OK with most of the movie up to the point of nuking New York, I’m fairly sure there’s rules against dropping nukes on US soil. The movie had the potential to be great with a great director, SFX company and production company on board with a heck of a monster design. Why they went in the direction they did will forever be a mystery to me.

2008 was a strange year for me personally. I abruptly ended a job that I had been working for over a decade, spent a good portion of the year unemployed, lost some friends, broke up with a long term girlfriend, made new friends and sold off a portion of my collection to get by. I know plenty of people who sell part of their collection when times are tough but when I look at having to part with things I like, I look at it as maybe a good time to simplify my life and just sell off everything outside of a few key pieces. That summer I blew through about half of my collection by setting up at shows. I made good money and paid bills that would have gone unpaid but the feeling of being responsible didn’t help the fact that I lost some cool things in the process. Things can be replaced and this is how that story goes.

(more pictures of this and more toys on our Flickr account)

I had earlier in 2008 ordered the Cloverfield monster from Hasbro’s online shop. This was rare for me because #1) it was expensive #2) I didn’t even like the movie that much #3) it was a pre-order. I rare;y if never do a pre-order for more than $30, there’s something about someone having control of over $100 of my money without any warning whatsoever. Anyways, in between all my personal tragedies, this behemoth shows up at my front door and suddenly my bank account is damn near empty. I had totally forgotten about the $150 pre-order and I spent a good eight hours just furious with myself and wondering how I could quickly put the money back in my account. Luckily, I guess they just barely produced enough to cover pre-orders and demand was high enough I cleared a decent profit a month later. I felt bad letting go of it, especially seeing other people review the toy online but you can’t pay your rent or electric with a toy.

Several years later I got the chance to replace my dearly departed Cloverfield monster. Not only did I get to replace my Cloverfield but I got it at a cheaper price than I had paid three years earlier. This is one strange monster, I mean for a movie I can’t stand it’s a beautiful piece for anyone who enjoys giant city-stomping monster movies. It’s seriously massive, near 15 inches tall and very wide with a huge arm span. It’s very unique in design, while writing this I tried to look for artist renderings of the creature to see what source material they used since the movie is very vague as to the dimensions. The sculpt is very dynamic and they thought enough ahead of time to include an exchangeable head; one calm and another one enraged and caught in the middle of a roar. The articulation is plentiful but it’s the first generation of ratcheting joints so there is sometimes a little bit of slippage after you get the desired pose.

There’s only really two downsides to the figure. One is the decapitated head of the Statue of Liberty. I know it’s more than likely a cost cutting measure but it’s so small that it really throws the scale of the figure way off, and obscures it even more from the movie. The head of the statue in relation to the hand of the monster literally makes this monster big enough to have swallowed 30 of them with room to spare. The other thing is the nondescript lice that comes with the calm head. It was an interesting trick giving the head a trap door to put the few lice they give you in there but it lacks a way to deploy them without decapitating the monster. I know it’s not a kid’s toy but I’m playing with it and I find this to be a serious flaw and I don’t like it. All in all, it’s a great display piece that hasn’t lost any value since I bought it. It’s still a highly desirable piece that doesn’t show up that often in auctions.

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