In one way or another I've been doing toy reports for most of my life. I did one with Geoff MacDonald when I was about ten years old where I espoused on the virtues of that year's Transformers, G.I.Joes, and Sectaurs. (Yes, Sectaurs!) In latter years, obviously, I've also been doing a year-end wrap of everything I really enjoyed putting on my shelf in that calendar year.

And then there was 2006, the End of All Things. The year I pretty much decided to stop collecting Star Wars action figures which were, are, and always have been, the backbone of my entire toy collecting hobby.

Now, I didn't stop stop. I bought a clone trooper just the other day (and he's lovely). I will totally buy this guy when he comes out. But given that last year I bought about a hundred of the things, and since "stopping" I've bought three, I'd call that a pretty significant change in the way we do business on the Tederick.com shelfspace.

Anyways. BEST TOY OF THE YEAR:

Well, obviously. I mean in spite of the sheer ballfucking awesomeness of Sideshow (I'll get to that in a minute), Hermione squeaked ahead because I just love her so much. But please don't make me choose between my dollies. There was also:

Who, by the tiniest plastic nose, gets ahead of:

and

Which is my way of saying that Sideshow Collectibles is the best toy company, pretty much, I have ever bought from. What they've done with the Star Wars license in the past 12 months almost defies description for someone who has grown up ("matured" if you will) with Hasbro. I'm a man what likes his on-screen perfection represented in toy form, and I have three perfect miniature Star Wars characters on top of my desk right now. (And Anakin, a rare miss.) I'm very much looking forward to Boushh, and Boromir from Lord of the Rings, and hope they won't be dawdling in Expanded Universe characters for long in '07 before getting back to the good stuff. I really wants me a Cody.

Most of the other stuff released this year - the Lost toys, the Pirates 2 toys, the Superman toys - were pretty much flash in the pan, amusing for a minute or two but eventually just space-wasters. I will mention Medium Sized Fucking Hellboy, however, as an honourable. He's fun to have.