'Your friendly Neighbourhood Yoshi'

 I'm a professional when it comes to procrastinating when I need to be writing. For the last few nights I have come up with all manner of things to stop me doing the one thing I need to be getting on with. My favourite though has been playing Poochy & Yoshi's Woolly World, to say I am loving this game would be an understatement. Last night Mrs M wanted an early night and I should have been the perfect chance for some quiet time to get my head down and write, but I decided to join here and take my 3DS. I had planned to play a few more levels but found myself hooked when entering the 'Yoshi Hut' on the game. The game itself is AWESOME, but being able to create your own Woolly Yoshi's  is such a great addition to the game. 

It started with Wolverine Yoshi and then when I looked at my phone I realised I'd got a little carried away. It was 1am and I'd been creating marvel Yoshi's for a couple of hours. Anyway, I thought I'd share them with ya'll.

"Oh, you see this? It's the Time Stone. If you take another step, I'll send you all the way back to the Big Bang."

There are some amazing big LEGO kits out at the moment and honestly, I would happily have every single kit released if I could. Sadly we just don't have the disposable income for that level of Lego obsessiveness so I have to put self-control into action and reign it in.  It seems that everyone I know's children adore those addictive bricks in some way and each one pining after the same huge kits. One thing that always used to frustrate me was the variety of super hero figures that were only available if you purchased the larger kits. I imagine in many households these bigger kits are completely out of reach financially but last year LEGO did something to change that which I thought was really awesome.

I've been saying for a long time that I would love LEGO to make a Marvel minifigure series, filled with all of the obscure characters. At £3 per pack these are accessible to pretty much everyone (and who doesn't love LEGO at pocket money prices). With the release of The Lego Batman movie, there was a step In the right direction with the minifigure series to accompany the movie (and those figures are pretty amazing). Although I can't ever see the same thing happening with Marvel comics characters (unless of course there was a LEGO Spider-man movie), LEGO did something else last year to offer Marvel super hero characters at an affordable price to all of their super-hero brick lovers.

Mighty micros revved their engines and exploded onto the toy store shelves in a blaze of glory and I was instantly hooked. Not only were 6 new figures available, with interestingly fun facial expressions and mini legs but they also had matching vehicles for speeding around the floor. To top it off though, and what really had me excited, was the price. I've spent an obscene amount of money on LEGO over the years but the price of the Mighty micros as I said before has meant that Spider-man, Batman and their friends are available to everyone.

Last year the three Marvel sets were snapped up straight away and it was clear that the vehicles were here to stay (I'm kicking myself now that I didn't pick all of the DC ones up from last year, The Lego Batman movie has turned Opeie into a HUGE DC fan).  You can always tell in our house how much the boys love the kits they have built as sometimes after being built and played with they are taken apart and the parts are used for new custom builds. Other times though the kits stay built and are lovingly displayed in our LEGO room (yes we have entire room devoted to those super bricks), or they get their own box to be stored in until their next outing. The mighty micros got their own box, so when wave 2 was released they were ready for action.

I can't wait to see if there is going to be a third wave of Mighty Micros and there is a list as long as my arm for characters I would love to see included. These awesome little kits are one of my favourite newer releases from LEGO and I'd love to see the range opened up to possible other themes, like Adventure time, teen titans or powerpuff girls from the new LEGO Dimensions kits.

"Collecting is more than just buying objects."

When I first started writing the blog it was going to be a pretty unpersonal affair. No names and no pictures of us just posts about playing and a homage to mine and my boys love of toys. All our posts were about new toys we had found and how we loved playing. The early posts were dominated by one range of toys in particular. A collection I had started for Opeie when I found out he was on his way, that collection is still going strong and locked away for when he is a lot older despite not adding to it for about 6 months, until yesterday.

I was drawn into the Marvel Super hero squad range from the moment i saw them. Aside from the more 'grown up' collectors ranges like 'legends' or 'select', super hero squad boasted the largest variety of heroes and villains aimed at a younger audience. These figures are great, a cute introduction for younger children into the magical world of comics and all the characters I grew up admiring.  Opeie's collection is pretty immense and even though I've got a lot of the characters there are still loads I need to track down. Yesterday's delivery added a few great characters I was missing, Thanos, Gambit, night crawler, Beast etc and has relit the flame for hunting down the missing characters.

It's great to see when I'm looking online that some of the characters I own are fetching much higher than the £5.99 asking price I found them at when I first started collecting. The internet has been a god send for anything we're collecting but while we were in Florida last year we popped into target and i spotted three boxes of figures from the Iron man 3 movie. The problem with collecting a range like this is that most of the characters were never released in this country so finding them has been daunting at times.

 I love collecting, there's something so satisfying about finding the things that you are looking for, my inner geek comes out full force. When I first met Mrs M she saw it as hoarding but I think she understands now especially after I tracked her down most of the Dick Bruna book collection a few Christmas' ago for an advent gift. I love jumping in on other peoples collections too I find it all quite exciting.

Well as I said the new additions were delivered yesterday which spurred me on to get the rest of the collection out while Opeie was having his afternoon nap. Seth hadn't seen them all out of storage and his eyes lit up at the amount of characters that were there. There will probably be many more posts abot these figures, at least until i have completed the collection. I have a few collections on the go for the boys, i think it will be nice to have something to give them that they will love and who knows they might be worth a little something by then.

"The way I see it, if you want the rainbow, you gotta put up with the rain."

Its another grim day of bleak british weather, im quite sure summer is supposed to be starting any day soon. The worst thing about the grotty weather is not being able to go out and do much, its really frustrating. At least i managed to get some house work done. While tidying Seth's room earlier i started to think about what i used to do when i was younger and stuck in doors. On many occasion i would be found practising my Bulldog on my teddies swanning about my room doing my best impersonation of Davey boy smith.

On the rare occasion that i was allowed a friend over on these dreary days i would sometimes partake in a little one on one of the Top Trumps variety. Top Trumps always seemed like a good idea but chances are 10 minutes into a game you were pretty fed up of passing the cards back and forth.

Above are the cards i used to play with, and i wish i still owned them now as they go for a fair bit on eBay. Despite knowing that the games can take forever and they lose their appeal after 10 minutes i still think the cards are great so when we went to Florida earlier in the year i decided to get Seth into them with the hope that they might kill an hour or 2 on the long flight there.

They've come in quite handy for introducing new characters to him and will do with Opeie when he gets a little older and starts to understand why there is so much Super hero merchendise around the house. Seth actually really loves playing these but doesnt really have much of a poker face while playing. If its his turn and he calls out height and starts giggling you know he's got Galactus and if he call's out speed (with the same snigger) you can guarantee he's holding Quicksilver in his hand, its adorable.

 Playing Top Trumps is certainly a good way to keep Seth occupied and also to keep his mind off things especially if he is feeling ill etc. Three of the set's can me mixed too giving you the option of an Ultimate game (this has the disadvantage of making your game go on for hours usually ending in just giving up or having to finish because its bed time). This can be used in a clever way though to make children sleepy at bed time especially if you take your time reading your cards (not that I'm the sort of dad that uses tricks to get the kids to sleep though Hmmm....).