BenSpark Family Adventures

Photo-A-Day #02645 They really do an amazing job photographing items on Temu. I thought I was getting a much bigger Optimus Prime in toxic colors. It is super tiny but really well detailed. It does come with some attachments like additional hands for posing and also the energon axe from the first episode of the show. I have not transformerd it yet but it is a bit loose. For now it is just in there for display.

Photo-A-Day #02642 My sister, Tara sent me a gift card for Amazon and I used it to buy myself a fun LEGO set. I picked up the Toothless figure from How To Train Your Dragon. It was a great build. I made it while I watched the crew of the Artemis II return to Earth. It was amazing to watch. Really was something to see. I watched until the very end when the crew made it to the med bay of the naval ship.

Photo-A-Day #02635 I've had this LEGO set with me at work for a few months and tonight I built it. I don't think I've ever been so disappointed in a LEGO set before. You can see in the photo that the roof of the car does not line up well. I tried for a very long time to get everything in place but it just is a wonky build. I've done so many other LEGO car builds and this is by far the worst one. I really thought i was going to be good but in the end the very last bits did not fit together well or even securely. It was very frustrating.

Photo-A-Day #02605 When Allison and Eva returned from London Eva had brought back some itty Pops of Transformers for me. However the mystery figure in this set was a Lite Brite and not Soundwave of The Transformers. There were other Mystery sets and I found a low priced G.I.JOE set. I figured that I would give it a shot and maybe get Soundwave. No, I actually got the real G.I.JOE mystery figure, Dr. Mindbender. So now I have a whole set of G.I.JOE but I am still missing the bitty Soundwave figure. I have a feeling that this is going to rabbit hole very soon. In other news tonight we had our first dress rehearsal in front of people. A handful of The Masons came down and watched the show. This is our last rehearsal before opening night on Friday. I had most of my lines down so I'm feeling pretty good on it.

Photo-A-Day #02599 When Allison and Eva went tot he Transformers Store in London they picked up a Funko Bitty Pop! Retro Toys set of Transformers. The way that Funko did these sets was that they had 4 different Bitty Pop! Retro Toys sets, each with a different Hasbro Retro Toys Theme. There was Transformers, G.I. Joe, Mr. Potato Head and Board Games like Monopoly and Operation. However, in these sets of four figures there was one figure that was a mystery figure. The mystery figure may or may not match the overall theme of the set. Int his case it does not match because I got Lite Brite with my Transformers. I didn't have the heart to tell Eva that I already had this set on my wall of Transformers. She was so happy to have found something fun for me in London that was Transformers themed. And they are very cool. I opened this one because I have an unopened one on my wall. I didn't know about how they worked the "mystery figure". So now I am on the lookout for Soundwav...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02565 I do love a LEGO food truck. they are so fun. I love the look of each of them and have a few. This one will go perfectly with the Hamburger food truck. They also have a Toy truck that is out but I haven't found it yet. I'm sure that there are also some retired food trucks as well. They are very fun to make.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02563 Today I received a new Transformers figure called Road Rage. He is an Autobot that is the same style as Tracks. Tracks is the blue Corvette and that was the original one that I've had since the 80's. Road rage is a great looking figure, too. It arrived in robot mode and I was able to transform it down to a car so that he could slip in with the rest of the Autobot cars.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02557 LEGO has release two Back To The Future Delorean sets. This one above is the latest set and it is at a much better price point. I picked it up and also made sure to grad the light kit from Briksmax so that I could have it lit up for display. I'm trying to figure out a rig to display it on the wall in the over mode and also keep the battery pack attached to the bottom. The battery pack is huge so hiding it will be interesting.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02545 I had forgotten that I had ordered this Masterpiece Tracks figure from Temu before Christmas. It arrived today. I picked it up because Tracks was another of my favorite characters. I loved the look of his corvette form with the flaming firebird on the hood. The masterpiece version came with a little figure and a miniature Blaster in his boombox mode. This was from an episode of the cartoon where Tracks connected with a kid name Raoul. I thought it was really cool that they added this piece to the set. Tracks was also one of the only Autobots who could fly in his vehicle mode.  The transformation was a bit strange but I figured it out. The instructions were all in Japanese because it is a Takara figure. Speaking of Japan, I just finished reading George Takei's book, They Called Us Enemy. It is a book presented in comic form telling about George and his families lives while in a Japanese internment camp in the 40's. It is a very powerful book and has direct...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02530 A while back skybound put together a Kickstarter for a Transformers Compendium. This collects the 80 issues from the 80's - 90's. That is the collection of comics I just completed in their original form. The compendium is 4 giant embossed cover books. Then they reprinted 3 key issues from the comic book series. They were issues 2,5 and 67. They even made some tech specs, lenticular images and portraits of characters. I did buy an extra Decepticon sticker because I bought the Autobot version of the compendium and so the sticker for Decepticons only was part of the Decepticon version. There was also an Autobot pin and a challenge coin. It is a beautiful set.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02526 I continue to find cool things for my Wheeljack collection.The figure is Wheeljack from Transformers One prior to getting back his transformation cog. He's standing on two comic books. They are Transformers #21 of the new Skybound continuity. The covers, however are done by Tiago Da Silva my new favorite Transformers artist. He's done handful of these special covers for Transformers comics. today I received about 7 of them and learned that there are still 2 more that I do not have. What he does is creates one cover of a shiny new robot and the other cover is battle damaged. So the left one is battle damaged and the right is pristine. It is a very cool concept that he's done for many great characters. What turned me on to his covers and artwork was this Wheeljack set. I'm really excited to have it now!

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02517 I've had this Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles model in my closet for several years. I built the three other brothers a few years back and for some reason hung onto this one. I was going to do a video of building it but never ended up doing so. I should get back into making videos. I have an idea for a video series that I'm planning on starting once a few more things are in place. Once they are then we'll get started. I may finally use a new website for it. We'll see how that goes.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02512 Walmart had several Transformers on sale this Black Friday. I was able to order one set online and when I went into the store I found another set. The thing is these sets were only $15 each and each set was for 2 figures. These figures had all been for sale at $24.99 each before this sale. So essentially I got four for the price of little more than 2. I picked them up because of the Wheeljack figure. The black one. There was one series where Wheeljack was an Autobot that rejected being one and so he slashed out his symbol. Hence the big slash across his chest.  When I went into the store I saw a two pack of Optimus Prime and Bumblebee and since I do have a small collection of oth of those particular figures I got them, too.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02505 For the past few weeks I have been working on a bunch of comic books and organizing them. I'm so close to completing my collection. Specifically my Transformers collection from my childhood. I am now 4 books away from having a complete collection of all the Transformers comics. A few more searches on eBay and I may even get it completed. When that is done it is time to start reading the entire collection. During one of my recent purchases of Transformers comics I got into a conversation witht he seller and we ended up trading pics of our respective collections of things like Transformers toys so I shot this to show him.

The folks from Lumibricks sent me their latest building set, the Izakaya for free to build and review. Opinions are 100% my own. I've built a few sets from Lumibricks (formerly FunWhole) in the past and they are really fun and interesting. The photo above is of the Izakaya and also The Apartment. they are both part of a Cyberpunk theme called Neoncity. At this time there are also two additional buildings that you can build and add to this whole theme, the Game Stack and the Floating Train Station. The great things about these sets is that they light up. As you build you are also adding lights and wires and ways to illuminate the amazing build. Once you're done building you fire up some power and the lights blaze up. With Neoncity sets you get some incredible Nenon effects light signs and even neon tube lights. That is one of the coolest things about these sets is how the lights are incorporated into the build. Some very innovative bricks were made in order to thread the wiring...

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02497 I received a Blokees Optimus Prime figure from the kids at Christmas. It is the one on the left . then I bought myself the G1 version after Christmas and built it tonight. Blokees are fun to assemble non transformable figures of Transformers characters and the ones that I made here are the deluxe versions. they have bigger and smaller versions that you can get including some blind bag options. I bought the first series of blind bag ones but stopped after that. Now I will pretty much only get a character if I am collecting them, like Optimus or Wheeljack. I won't just chance it and get something I'm not interested in getting.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02496 Apparently Funko may be going out of business. I have collected many Funko figures over the years and I recently saw that there was an Optimus Prime Magic the Gathering figure that was going to be released. So I ordered it. I do try and pick up the Transformers Funko figures and I put them on my wall in the office. This one is neat because it has a background of the Optimus Prime Magic card. I never found that or even a pack of Transformers/Magic cards but this looked like fun.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02495 I finished building my latest set from Lumibricks. They sent me this set for a review that I need to post up next week. I've been doing a little bit each day but today I powered through and completed the whole thing. This will go perfectly with my Neon City Apartment that I have in the office and the neat thing about the two buildings is that they can eb lined up and both be powered by one powerbank. I'll make sure to put them together when I post the review.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02482 A while back I bought the Fortnite Battle Bus LEGO set, I have yet to build that one, but it came with a free LEGO set of a couple of Fortnite characters as BrickHeadz. Not a fan of Peely the anthropomorphic Banana but Cuddle Team Leader is cool. This set has been on a stack of LEGO sets I have yet to build. I'll probably resell these ones because I have no more display room. I'm trying to limit anything I purchase to what I can still display. Otherwise, I end up with years of collectibles that are just sitting in boxes until I get the motivation to sell them.

Photo-A-Day 2.0 #02476 The other day I learned about an Omega supreme extra large Funko Pop. I've been collecting the Transformers Funko POP! figures and displaying them on my wall. So, when I saw this I picked it up. I figured that I'd get a couple of things with the money that I made selling off other Transformers figures. I've decided that if I am buying anything more it has to be displayed.  In addition to the new Funko POP! figures I got I also got some Bitty sized Funko Pop! figures of Transformers. These I can display on my desk. I found a great Transformers shirt as well. There is also a metal model that I need to build. I've never built a metal figure before but that will be a fun challenge.