Hot on the heels of Comic-Con comes the next unboxing in the Loot Crate Wars series. For July and August, the guys at Loot Crate have created a two part crate. First, July kicked things off with Villains as its theme which started with an awesome super foe themed trailer on Loot Crate’s own YouTube channel. In it is some of the baddest of the bad as you’ll see in the unboxing video below.

Most notable of the Crate (while still trying to keep the article spoiler-free-ish) is a special variant comic for a number one that just came out from Marvel. Loot Crate’s subscriber base has gotten so big that just by putting it in the July crate, they literally doubled the preorders of the book.

LEGOs are a slippery slope. You see a cool Star Wars pack by the checkout at Target. It only costs five bucks. You tell yourself it would look cool on your desk. Then next time you see the Daily Bugle and think it’ll look great on your shelf. Six months later you have a replica of the Death Star and Batman’s Bat Cave taking up a quarter of your living room. And then, the sick bastards decide this isn’t enough and make something you’ve been waiting for since you were 5… the Simpsons in LEGO form.

Luckily I have the self control (lack of funds) to spend $270 on the Simpsons house even though it is pretty epic to say the least. Because of that, it’ll be easier to hold back purchasing Moe’s Tavern or the Quik-E Mart when they are inevitably released. But LEGO still knows how to stick it to you. They make a set of 16 blind bag minifigures of all of the top Simpsons characters and charge a “mere” $4 each. So just to get the entire set with no duplicates, it’s going to take $64 bucks, plus tax.

It’s one of those things you would have figured would be a bigger deal but two weeks later and there hasn’t been a peep heard about it. Maybe I am running in the wrong circles or it really is telling of the popularity of Disney Infinity (or lack there of) but this should have been bigger news to the gaming and geek worlds.

Marvel has unleashed a trailer on their YouTube channel that gives a pretty good indication of a certain star spangled super hero making his way alongside the cast of Disney Infinity. Without getting tacky and talking about the “infinite” possibilities, it is pretty cool to hear this as one of the more public facing interactions between Disney and Marvel since the acquisition.

For those who don’t know, Disney Infinity is a video game that uses smart toy technology similar to that of Skylanders where players place figures on an e-reader stand which causes the character to appear in game as well. This upcoming expansion of characters will be one of the first times where a player can have Marvel characters interacting with those of Disney in Disney worlds as well.

So far, Pirates of the Caribbean, Monsters University and The Incredibles are all a part of Disney Infinity but now we are waiting for the moment where we can have Captain America go head to head with Darth Vader. Come on Disney. You own it all. There is no reason not to make it happen. It is literally the option to print money…

At long last, Avatar: The Last Airbender fans can indulge in collectibles. Dark Horse Comics and Nickelodeon have announced plans for brand new products based on Avatar as well as The Legend of Korra.

Soon you can show off your Water, Earth, Air or Fire Nation pride with an array of merchandise including figurines, drinkware, coasters, magnets, playing cards, lunch boxes (pictured below), pins, plush, and limited-edition statues.

“Avatar: The Last Airbender and The Legend of Korra are some of the finest animated television shows ever created,” David Scroggy, Dark Horse Vice President, Product Development, said. “We feel a strong responsibility to bring forward the creators’ vision as accurately as possible in the style they have established, and we are excited to bring these products to fans.”

With Transformers 4 (aka Age of Extinction), starring Mark Wahlberg and Nicola Peltz, set to hit theaters later this year, it’s time to take a look back at all the Transformers have given us over the years. And what better way to do that than with a video showing every single transformation scene in every Transformers movie. Well, the Michael Bay ones at least.

The video was created by Tunglebrek who gives appropriate accolades to Michael Bay, ILM, Digital Domain and sound designer Erik Aadahl for their great work. And yes, we feel like Tunglebrek probably has quite a bit of free time on his or her hands.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Check out the vid after the break.

I am a fan of Skylanders. It is just plain casual fun for me. To sit down, explore levels that aren’t exceptionally difficult and unlock the hidden items and secret paths is something that helps put me at ease. Not that there are a lot of mainstream games that are hard anymore with a few exceptions, there’s something I just enjoy about kicking back and playing Skylanders or checking out the stack of them on my shelf. But there is one thing I don’t like: The Release Schedule

When I play a game, I binge on it. I start playing it and I am content to go from start to finish and in most cases, that’ll be the majority of the time I spend with the game. Though I will go back to occasionally achievement hunt or if someone wants to hop on multiplayer or even have a party game while over my place, things usually wrap up once I have beat the game and move onto the next.

But because of the level design of the games and release schedule of the Skylanders figures, there are times that it is actually impossible for me to get as much out of the game as I want until months after release. This time with Skylanders: SWAP Force it ended up being three months and one week before I had the proper combination of figures to experience the majority of the title.

At its inception, one of the first things I thought Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure needed was an app to help keep track of which characters anyone had. At first, a fan made app popped up but before Skylanders Giants was out, the app stopped getting updates. A few others popped up but often didn’t have special edition figures or get updates as new waves were released. But, after long wait, Activision has released the Skylanders Collection Vault app for iOS and somehow turned it into yet another game.

One of the things Activision has done right through its iOS releases for Skylanders like Skylanders Cloud Patrol, Skylanders Lost Islands and Skylanders Battlegrounds was linking the characters in the game to their real life counterparts that the player needed to have. Whether it was the code received when purchasing the figure or one obtained from the characters in game profile, people needed to unlock characters in the game which of course has lead to the “gotta buy ’em all” mentality that has skyrocketed the franchise. That same collector itch is scratched when players can compare their full collection to that of their friends by showing the characters they have unlocked because they actually own them, not just playing for hours on end or using in app purchases.

As mentioned before, the geek lifestyle isn’t a cheap one. Even when we find things we like that aren’t individually expensive, we end up buying enough of them at once so it ends up costing us more than we would have wanted in the first place on one single larger purchase. That’s the danger of the impulse buy.

It is easier to mentally justify to ourselves a spend if we get more items out of it, even if it costs more than what we wanted to spend because we as geeks value both quality AND quantity. As long as something isn’t terrible or poorly made, it is good enough for us. And if we can get a bunch of them on the cheap, we want them all.

This week on Whiskey & Waffles, WallE and I address our recent disaster of impulse buying with Mash’Ems. After WallE had already begun purchasing the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles series, I got pulled into the mix too which resulted in the blind box purchase of some TMNT, Power Rangers Samurai, WWE and Marvel Mash’Ems.

If you aren’t familiar with Mash’Ems, they are little oversized heads and shrunken bodies (except in the Marvel series which is just heads). They are soft and squishy and perfect to have on your desk as a miniature stress ball just in case.

So as previously mentioned, yesterday was the new release for Skylanders SWAP Force. As expected, it was not a cheap endeavor. One special edition Starter Pack, one Adventure Pack, one Battle Pack, four SWAP Force, three Lightcore and one standard Skylander later and my tally between Gamespot, Toys R Us and Target had hit the $250 mark. Now, I am not complaining. I bring it upon myself and I enjoy it. That’s what the appeal of Skylanders is. Combine a video game with the ongoing geek desire to collect things and you have an addicting formula. And that’s why we have a fantastic unboxing video for you to check out to check out and help decide which Skylander SWAP Force starter set to get yourself.

There is one piece of the Skylanders formula that does get a little frustrating though. To access all of the game’s content, it does require you to purchase real world products. To play through all the areas that are travel power based, you need eight different SWAP Force characters. Granted, two come with any Starter Set you buy but that leaves six more to go at $13 each, and at launch there are still two modes of transportation not yet available as only six of the sixteen are available so far.

Now I understand the arguments that they are releasing them in waves to keep up demand and all that, but my problem lies with content being locked. The other argument that this is to keep players coming back later and maintain replayability. Let’s be clear, (gravelly old man voice, “Get off my lawn”) back in my day we went back to games often even when there was no such thing as expanding shy of a sequel.

The collection mentality is a dangerous thing, especially amongst the geek world. Nowhere else do you see the level of completionist mentality as you do amongst gamers. Trophy Whores and Achievement Hunters are both signs of this obsession to get them all. On Saturday the 12th and Sunday the 13th, both the Pokemon and Skylanders franchises intend to bankrupt me in both time and financially.

I bought my first copy of Pokemon Blue back when it first released fifteen years ago in 1998. With that, I set out on my mission to get all 151 of the original Pokemon. Though I never finished the list, I still spent way more time than I should have on that mission. Two years ago, I got my hands on Skylanders: Spyro’s Adventure and a few hundred dollars later, an entire shelf in my room is filled with the damn things.

Next weekend, I get to deal with a double whammy as both Pokemon X/Y and Skylanders SWAP Force are released.