Hauls: Switching Up in Florida

We're exactly one week away from my 34th Birthday, so let's get the stuff that I picked up in June and July sorted away with before then, shall we?

Nintendo Switch 2 (Walmart)

Mario Kart World (Walmart)

amCase Nintendo Switch 2 Carrying Case (Amazon)

amFilm Nintendo Switch 2 Screen Protector 3-Pack (Amazon)

Whenever there's a new Nintendo console, I usually wait until around the holidays to pick it up. (Y'know, wait until there's a good number of games on hand and potentially some good discounts/bundles.) However, with the whole tariff situation creating an uncertain future price-wise and a certain game that I've been waiting YEARS for REALLY close to launch (here's a hint: 🦍🍌🪨👧🎤), I figured that I might as well jump on in! (It's not like I don't already have an enormous backlog of Switch games that I can play between big releases or anything.)

As far as impressions go, I really love it! The bigger size is great, it feels high-quality and sturdy, the new Joycons are a really nice improvement, and overall, it's just a faster, better, more powerful Switch, which is exactly what I wanted. I'm really excited to see what Ninty can squeeze out of this thing as its life goes on! (Especially interested in regards to Mario RPGs and Smash Bros.)

TMNT 2012 Leonardo Figure

TMNT 2012 Battle Shell Michelangelo Figure

TMNT 2012 Power Sound FX Raphael Figure

TMNT 2012 Flingers Leonardo Figure

My Dad found these guys for me while my parents were out thrifting! While I already had the first two and the latter two have features that are either missing accessories or don't really work anymore, I still really appreciate the thought. Always nice when your parents see something as absurd as a giant turtle wearing a color-coded eye mask and immediately think of you. That means that you got dealt a good hand family-wise.

Sonic the Hedgehog 3 (4K Combo) (Walmart)

Pokémon the Series: XYZ The Complete Season (Walmart)

Embarked on a family vacation to Florida in late June, so I, of course, bought a few things while I was there. Starting things off, I scored a couple new titles for my home media shelf at a Walmart while we were out grocery shopping. Now I can watch Keanu Reeves Shadow anywhere and anytime I want and I'll be able to marathon the entire Kalos arc of the Pokémon anime before Legends Z-A hits!

The Day the Earth Blew Up: A Looney Tunes Movie (Blu-ray) (Walmart)

At a different Walmart, I grabbed another title: the first fully-animated (as far as entirely original animation goes, that is) theatrical Looney Tunes movie! I look forward to giving it a rewatch when I feel like a good laugh. (If you haven't checked it out yet and love the Looney Tunes, I can't recommend it enough. It's hilarious, has lovely 2D animation, and features Peter MacNicol playing a space alien. You really can't go wrong with that.)

Goomba amiibo (Target)

Koopa amiibo (Target)

Grabbed these guys at a Target. Wasn't originally planning on buying anything on that particular Target trip, as everything of interest that I COULD find was too steeply-priced to jump on, but they were like the only amiibo there (aside from a lone Incineroar) and I didn't own them, so I decided to end their shelf-warming existence. (On store shelves, that is. Now they occupy a DIFFERENT shelf.)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Last Ronin (Books-A-Million)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles vs. Street Fighter (Books-A-Million)

Power Rangers: Drakkon New Dawn (Books-A-Million)

Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V Volume 5 (Books-A-Million)

Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V Volume 7 (With Go! - D/D/D Divine Zero King Rage Promo Card) (Books-A-Million)

Most of the rest of my Florida pick-ups were additions to my already-monstrous reading pile! With a video game and live-action film reportedly on the way, I figured that it was a good time to finally check out The Last Ronin. Accompanying that is a crossover comic clash between the heroes in a half-shell and world warriors, a Power Rangers mini-series focused on the world of the Coinless (that isn't collected in any of the hardcovers for some reason), and two more chunks of the Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V manga. (One even still had the promo card!)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Ultimate Collection Volume 1 (Barnes & Noble)

Spider-Man: Octo-Girl Volume 1 (Barnes & Noble)

Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V Volume 3 (With D/D/D Destiny King Zero Laplace Promo Card) (Barnes & Noble)

Lugia Model Kit (Barnes & Noble)

Wrapping up the goods from my Florida trip, we have the first collection of Eastman & Laird's original TMNT comics (despite being a huge Turtles nut, I've never actually owned or read most of them), the first volume of a new Spider-Man manga where Doc Ock's mind accidentally gets trapped in the body of a Japanese girl (it definitely sounds creepy, but the begrudging friendship that the two form while trying to return Otto to his original body is oddly adorable and there's A LOT of references to Ock's stint as a hero for Superior Spider-Man fans), yet another ARC-V volume (complete with card), and for a bit of flavor, a Lugia model kit. Because I like Lugia.

Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V Volume 4 (With White Aura Bihamut Promo Card) (Books-A-Million)

Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V Volume 6 (With Timelord Progenitor Vorpgate Promo Card) (Books-A-Million)

Got a free $10 gift card for signing up for Books-A-Million's Millionaire's Club while in Florida, so I decided to use it to score one of the last two ARC-V volumes that I needed to finish the series. Plus, since you get free shipping on all orders in said Millionaire's Club, I decided to go ahead and order the other one, completing the set. (Both had their promo cards, too!) Now the only Yu-Gi-Oh! spin-off manga that I don't own in its entirety is ZEXAL. (And that's not because I'm avoiding it or anything. I actually enjoy that manga more than ARC-V's. It's just really hard to work eight whole volumes of a manga into your future purchases, especially when you can't find them in the wild to slowly accumulate through impulse buys.)

Transformers: Age of the Primes Voyager Class Sky-Byte (Amazon)

Jakks Pacific Sonic the Hedgehog 3 Shadow Figure (Amazon)

Who's the baddest shark around? Who's the smartest shark in town? Sky-Byte! THAT'S HIM! Yep, I don't usually buy many Transformers, but when an animation-accurate version of my dude Sky-Byte was revealed for the Age of the Primes line, he was a MUST BUY. He turned out beautifully, too. Both modes look like they popped right out of RID 2001, you can arm him with fin blades or "SHARK MISSILES!!", and he has a great amount of articulation and movement. (Even in shark mode!) Definitely a vast improvement on the Thrilling 30 version, which I enjoyed at the time, but is just kind of bulky and awkward now. He's a fine addition to my little shelf of Beast Era Transformers goodness.

As for Shadow, he was the only figure that I wanted from the Sonic 3 line, but prices for him online very quickly soared into absurdity before I could actually order him. Luckily, though, he came back in stock on Amazon during Prime Day for a discounted price of like thirteen bucks, so I couldn't pass up this chance. He's a rad figure with great articulation and detail, and I'm very happy to finally be able to represent this version of the Edgy Hedgie on my shelf.

Final Fantasy X/X-2 HD Remaster (Switch) (Best Buy)

I've never actually played Final Fantasy X or X-2, but I've heard pretty good things about them over the years. So, when Best Buy had the HD Collection on Switch down to ELEVEN BUCKS, I couldn't pass it up. I'm looking forward to finally experiencing a traditional turn-based Final Fantasy!

Jakks Pacific Sonic the Hedgehog Comic Collection Metal Virus Sonic (with Zombot Froggy) Figure (Walmart)

Lastly, I wasn't planning on buying this figure (as I'm not huge on Sonic variants), but Walmart had it in stock for retail, and in the Jakks Sonic collecting community, you have to jump on all those rare chances when they pop up. (Here's hoping that I'll get just as lucky with the upcoming Tangle figure.) It's a neat little three-dimensional representation of Sonic at his lowest point in the IDW Comics' Metal Virus arc, with some really nice silver paint apps and a rare fatigued expression on his face. Also Zombot Froggy as a bonus! (Funny that they made him before regular Froggy.) Here's hoping that this and Tangle are just the tip of the iceberg for Jakks' Comic Collection!

That's all she wrote for June and July 2025! I'll see you guys later for my 34th Birthday haul!

Hauls: Shell Games

Time for another tried-and-true pre-holiday clean-up post! Gotta get this stuff out there so you guys can have a chance to see it before the Christmas Fallout beckons!

Min Min amiibo (Best Buy)

Been a little bit since the last amiibo haul! (Over a year if you're keeping track.) Fighters Pass Volume 2 finally hits the shelf starting with the Ramen-based Rumbler herself, Min Min!

Super Mushroom Bag

Imaginext Goldar and Dragon Shield Black Ranger 

McDonald's Knuckles Toy

TMNT 2012 Ooze Scoopin' Donnie

Bootleg Movie Star Raph

My parents did their usual thrifting thing and brought me back this assortment of goodies. That Bootleg Movie Star Raph is definitely the most interesting piece. (Thought he was the real deal at first until I noticed his distinct lack of elbow cuts and off-looking face detailing.) Also of note is the odd Super Mushroom bag. Not entirely sure what it actually is (it feels like a kid's lunch box, but there's definitely not enough storage for that to be the case,) but I still found a use for it.

SpongeBob SquarePants: Revenge of the Flying Dutchman (Gamecube) (Amazon)

THIS was a fun, albeit sporadic, purchase! It all started when I checked out a fun little deep dive into this particular game and its development on YouTube. (Mostly brought on by my hype for the upcoming Cosmic Shake.) After enjoying said video, I got the itch to play this again after completing it during my childhood. (This was actually the very first PS2 game I got heavily invested in back in the day.) I still had my PS2 copy...but I lacked a PS2 to play it on. That made me shift gears to the Gamecube version I had somehow never previously owned despite having every other standalone SpongeBob game on the system. Were aftermarket prices reasonable enough to finally complete my Gamecube SpongeBob library? Well, I'm bringing it up here, so that's an emphatic "YES." Got a copy in good condition with everything but the manual on Amazon for like 30 bucks. (I still have the PS2 version's manual, so I wasn't terribly bothered by the lack of the GC version's.)

Replayed and completed it all over again over the course of the latter half of August. While it's certainly the most primitive of the SpongeBob console 3D platformers, I still had a lot of fun revisiting it. Game kinda has its own structure and flow that's very fun once you get it down and it even reminded me of Banjo-Kazooie in places, surprisingly. Clancy Brown even reprises his role as Krabs, which is an odd rarity among SpongeBob games, even the most popular ones. All in all, I'm glad that I decided to give it another go and it makes me even more pumped to experience the first completely new SpongeBob 3D platforming adventure in years when it releases in 2023.

128 GB microSDXC Card (Amazon)

Saw that SD Cards were on sale on Amazon, so decided to grab a bigger one to double my Switch's storage space. Simple as that.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Cowabunga Collection Limited Edition (Switch) (Amazon)

Ooooooooooooh, this is a big one! As you might recall from my 31st Birthday post, one of my gifts was actually pre-ordered, but didn't arrive on time for the actual day. THIS is that gift. A veritable DREAM collection of ALL of the classic 8 and 16-bit Konami TMNT games complete with both a suite of fun enhancements and display options for each title AND a HUGE museum of bonus content featuring everything from boxart to manuals to developmental sketches that had never before breached the innards of Konami's archives. How do you make such a collection even better? Well, how about also releasing a Limited Edition package that also includes a bunch of fun bonus swag such as an artbook and trading cards all wrapped up in a special box adorned with brand new Kevin Eastman artwork? Yeah, everything about this is amazing. I would've settled for just the ability to play Turtles in Time on my Switch, but the sheer extra mile that Digital Eclipse and Konami have gone to in producing this collection just warms my mutagen-pumping heart something fierce. 

NECA TMNT Adventures Slash (AliExpress)

Frozen II (4K Combo) (Disney Movie Insiders)

ANOTHER biggie! I thought I was done with NECA's TMNT figures, but they pulled me back in by not only announcing a new line based off of the Archie TMNT Adventures comic, but ALSO that Slash would be the first character released. If you know me, you know that Slash is my favorite TMNT character and the Adventures version happens to be my favorite classic version of him ("The Vultures named me...SLASH!") so this was an obvious must-have. They absolutely knocked him out of the park, too. While I would've included a mini palm tree with him instead of that weird alternate weapon that he never actually used in the comic, the detailing and look of him are superb. Definitely the best take on Slash that NECA has done so far and one of my favorite toys of him period.

As for the DMI redemption, it took a little bit of saving up, but I finally completed my Frozen animation library with the sequel.

Steve & Alex amiibo Two-Pack (Best Buy)

More amiibo! Not a Minecraft guy in the least, but the sheer startling oddity of Steve and his pals joining Smash Ultimate (and breaking Twitter in the process) entertained me quite a bit and they appropriately stand out just as much on the amiibo shelf.

Sonic the Hedgehog Archives Volume 17 (Amazon)

IT IS DONE. With Volume 17 of Archives, I finally have nearly every mainline Archie Sonic the Hedgehog issue for my physical perusal. (Minus an issue or two somewhere around the 120s.) I should give the whole run a read some time. (I started a readthrough before a while ago, but I didn't get far.)

TMNT Sewer Army Tube (In A Sewer Party Tube Box)

Knuckles and Tails McDonald's Toys 

More thrifting goodies my parents picked up! While I'm not huge on collecting toy vehicles, that intact vintage box (for a different toy than the one that was tossed in it) made it a must-have for my TMNT collection. (Especially love the $5.49 Children's Palace price sticker still on it. This box is a piece of history!)

Also, I wish the people who gave these Sonic 2 McDonald's toys to these thrift stores also included their little stand launcher things. They're kind of difficult to display otherwise.

Super7 TMNT Ultimates Slash (Big Bad Toy Store)

ANOTHER amazing Slash! Super7's been seeing mad success with their TMNT Ultimates line, producing wave upon wave of modern action figures directly based on the Playmates classics of old. While I'd never picked up any of them before (I'm usually one to prefer comic and artwork takes on TMNT character designs versus the original Playmates sculpts,) as usual, I couldn't pass up Slash. He's a great, hefty evolution of that original figure and just wonderfully detailed and accessorized. He looks especially nice alongside my other Slash figures. (INSANE to think that just a few short years ago, Slash's only toys were ones geared towards children, but NOW I can build a display with collector-quality figures of pretty much EVERY classic version of him! We really are living in the best timeline sometimes.)

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 Best Buy Exclusive Steelbook (4K Combo)

This was actually meant to be a Christmas present, but my Dad had me open it early because he feared it might be damaged. (It wasn't. It was just a paper insert flopping about inside.) Not typically a steelbook guy, but the instant I saw that Best Buy's exclusive used the wonderful poster art that directly homages the GAME Sonic 2, I knew that I had to have this version. (Also helped that it was the only version to include both the 4K AND standard Blu-ray.) Excited to give this 3D Blast of a film a rewatch!

Transformers: Beast Wars Volume 3 (Amazon)

Volume 3 completes IDW's Beast Wars series cut tragically short by license migration. While I still wish that it had gotten a few more years in to tell more stories about my favorite beastie bots, I loved all of what we did get and am very glad that they were at least able to collect the full series (including the Annual) in trade form before everything went out of print. Hopefully Rise of the Beasts will spark (heh) a new era for the Maximals and Predacons in media.

Pokémon TCG Trick or Trade BOOster Bundle

My parents found these for me while they were out grocery shopping. While I'm a very casual Pokémon TCG guy, I adore the sheer novelty of a whole Halloween-themed set meant to be given out to trick-or-treaters and had a lot of fun opening them on my Twitter throughout October. 

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Shredder's Revenge (Switch) (Amazon)

Cowabunga Collection wasn't the ONLY huge win the Turtles had in gaming this year! Shredder's Revenge serves as a perfect spiritual successor and evolution of the classic Konami games and is ridiculously fun. Great music, beautiful sprite art, tons of deep-cut bosses, and even the original voices of the four Turtles on board to give it that extra little bit of legitimacy. It's just a complete love letter in every way and I adored my time with it. (Heck, I even got all of the Achievements for it TWICE. Once on Xbox through Game Pass and once on this physical Switch copy. THAT'S how much I dug this.)

Pre-ordered this with my Birthday cash (Knew the INSTANT it was announced that I'd need this game physically) and it arrived like two weeks after the listed date. (Limited Run. Nuff said.) So glad to be able to have this on my shelf. (As well as to have the code for a free Pizza Hut Personal Pan Pizza that came with it. Seriously.) 

Power Rangers X Street Fighter Lightning Collection - Morphed Ryu Crimson Hawk Ranger (Big Bad Toy Store)

Power Rangers X Street Fighter Lightning Collection - Morphed Chun-Li Blazing Phoenix Ranger (Big Bad Toy Store)

Wrapping up, HERE COMES A NEW CHALLENGER! Yep, the Turtles aren't the only crossover characters invading the Lightning Collection, as a pair of World Warriors have ALSO joined the fray, fresh off of their inclusion in the Legacy Wars and Battle for the Grid games. Not a huge Street Fighter fan by any means (mostly because I can't play the games to save my life,) but the sheer fact that I can have a Power Rangers display featuring morphed versions of Street Fighter characters AND the Ninja Turtles just gives me ALL KINDS of jollies as a huge fan of crossovers in general. They even both come with stands! (MORE OF THOSE, PLEASE, HASBRO.) 

That'll do it for this batch! See you guys for the Fallout post and hope you all have a great holiday season!