Captain America, The First Avenger

Captain America, The First Avenger hits movie theaters today, and this comic book nerd has been counting down the days until I could to go see the star spangled hero jump into action. So when I was offered the opportunity to see the 10:30am showing before work today I jumped at the idea.

The story takes us back to the dark days of World War 2, when Nazi Germany was overrunning the continent of Europe, and America was looking for a hero to stand behind. Steve Rogers was not that hero. After being rejected by the army multiple times Rogers, played by Chris Evans, is taken into a secret government test project which results in his transformation into Captain America.

Chris Evans, who previously had played the part of the human torch in the Fantastic Four movies, plays a strong and quiet type hero in this movie, but still manages to pull the human side out of the character. The villain, Red Skull, is played by Hugo Weaving who brings his considerable acting abilities to the roll and balances the movie well between the hero and villain. Stanley Tucci and Tommy Lee Jones give strong supporting performances, and the sepia tone setting really adds to the story.

The movie follows a mostly traditional story line for Captain America, with a good but not too long back story and lots of action later in the film. The movie does a good job of tying into the other Marvel movies that are building towards next summers Avengers movie, which after watching this movie I am becoming more excited about.

This was a movie almost tailor made for me, so I'll hold myself back in the over all score, but I don't see much of a downside to this over all solid movie. Did it have to be in 3D? Mostly not, but a few quick scenes do make you jump in a way that 2D can't. If you enjoy A good super hero movie, a great villain, good action scenes and a few good jokes about silly super hero costumes, then this summer block buster is for you.

8 out of 10

-Allen

Introducing the all-new BullMarketToys.com! 127.6% more awesome!!!

Yes, that's right, in celebration of our 10th anniversary in the collectible toy business, we have totally revamped BullMarketToys.com for your perusing and purchasing enjoyment! We are not sure it is actually 127.6% more awesome, but my 3 year-old daughter thinks it's way cool - that's good enough for us - we hope you agree!

What the big deal, you ask? Well, we have improved...

• Navigation - top main category bars
• Searches - search by Brand, Price, Key Words, etc.
  
• Account Settings - set-up your own account, or use your Amazon.com account to pay if you prefer
• Store Layout - including a new SALE category, just in time for our 10th Anniversary Sale Event from now until August 5th!
  

Over the next couple of weeks, we will highlight more about the new store, but in the meantime, please explore the store and let us know what you think - you can either email me Mike at mikeo@bullmarkettoys.com or use the Contact Us link in the store.

For now - Happy Collecting (and Playing)!

-Mike, Brian and Allen

The Joy of Finding a Great Local Toy Store!

In our never-ending quest to find cool stuff in the world of toys, we stumbled across a cool local toy store in Pittsburgh this weekend called SW Randall, on Smithfield Street downtown... It truly reminds me of my favorite toy store from when I was growing up in the Boston area (called Mr Big's Toys), loaded from floor-to-ceiling with all kinds of cool toys! Thanks to Jack for chatting with me about his 40 years in the business!

You may ask yourself, "Why are we talking about another toy store besides Bull Market Toys?" - well, the answer is simple: The love of toys and the magic they create is paramount to "the bottom-line"... I truly admire anyone who throws themselves into their passion, especially a local entrepreneur, such as the folks who own SW Randall.

Being a diehard capitalist, I don't begrudge the Toys-R-Us's and Targets of the world anything, but I am a firm believer there is still a crucial place for local retailers, particularly toy stores, where the customer gets special treatment from ownership who has a love affair with the joy toys bring to kids and the youth they instill in adults.

Well, let me step off my soapbox and enjoy the last bit of this awesome weekend with my family... LEGO-Fest, SW Randall, Day Out with Thomas - toy overload!

Until next time, Happy Collecting!
-Mike

Our New Store!

As I eluded to a couple of posts ago, we have opened up a brick and mortar store front in the Eagleview Town Square.

Why open a physical store? There were several reasons which all contributed to the decision to add a storefront to our business. First was the ability to offer our local customers a lower price on many of our items. I know it seems strange that a physical store would actually offer a lower price than an amazon.com business, but because of various fees and the market nature of amazon.com prices often shift up and down a lot. Not only does this cost the customer more, but our margins also become squeezed.

Secondly, having a physical store allows us to offer a much more diverse range of products. Playmobil for example requires that you have a brick and mortar location in order to be a vendor. Now that we have our store, our product lines have been expanding greatly. We have, in just the last month, added Chuggington, Hogwild Toys, and KidKraft to our inventory to sell both in store and online.

Thirdly it was a bit of serendipity. The lease on the warehouse space that we had been using to store our inventory for the online business had come up, and we found our new space with a store front already in place for not much more than we paid before. since we would have plenty of room for both the storage and a store front we decided why not set up a store and see how we do?

Lastly, and most importantly, we opened the store because we love toys. Our online store is great, and it allows us to run a competitive business in today's market place, but there is nothing like having a real world toy store of your very own. We love coming in everyday to our already overflowing shelves and being able to help customers one on one to pick out exactly what they want.

We hope to see you in person some day!

-Allen

Lego Review, The Captians Cabin (4191)

Lego has recently released it's new line of Pirates of the Caribbean sets based on the Disney movies. Of these eight new sets five are from the now playing movie "On Stranger Tides," while the three remaining sets show scenes from the first three movies in the series. This is an exciting set for fans of the movies, mini figure collectors, and fans of pirates in general.

"The Captian's Cabin" (set 4191) is from the the new movie, showing Jack Sparrow fighting two sailors while trying to find something in the captian's cabin. Highlights of this set include a number of unique and new pieces, including: a globe, two ships in bottles, skeleton bones, four swords and a pistol. The Lego collector will be happy to know that the instruction book is protected by cardboard inside the box so as not to bend or curl. Finally, the three mini figures in this set are detailed and unique, sure to be worth the small price for any mini figure collectors.
This small set (94 pieces) packs quiet a punch for the price, and will give you a good idea of the quality to expect in the rest of the Pirates of the Caribbean series.

This set retails for 11.99 (MSRP).

What do you do with a broken box?

There are times in business when things "fall off the back of the truck," and there are times when things literally fall off a truck. A good example of the latter would be this Lego set that we have had floating around our back office here since before the store opened. Not only did it apparently fall off the back of a truck, but it seems to then have been dragged for 10 to 15 miles before being delivered. Now, we get the occasional item that has been dinged or dented while in transit, that's just the nature of the business.

Normally when we have something that's dented we just put it in a special category and sell it for a few dollars off. But in this case our Venator-Class Republic Attack Cruiser (8039) is a bit beyond dented. So in an effort to make lemonade out of lemons we have decided to raffle off this set!

That's right, this Lego set is being raffled off to one of our wonderful customers. All you have to do to be entered into the drawing is to stop into our store and sign up for our frequent buyer program. It's free and only takes a minute, plus joining will entitle you to 5% off any future purchases in our store. Signing up will also enter you automatically in our future raffles.

The raffle will be held on Friday the 24th of this month, just about two weeks from the time of this posting. The winner will be notified by email on that day. There is still time to sign up so stop in and ask to join our frequent buyer program.

PS: Because the box was in such bad shape we decided to build the set to ensure that all the pieces were accounted for. Everything is here including the 5 mini figures!

PPS: Brian did most of the "work" of putting this set together, life is hard sometimes.

Back and better than ever!

Hello Everyone!

...

Anyone?

...

Well anyways, hello. It's been a long long time since there has been any activity on the blog here, and we need to catch up. Much has happened in the last couple of years, and we here at Bull Market Toys are excited to begin using this blog again to inform and entertain anyone who happens upon us. But for now, lets get to the big news.

Our store! That's right, we are no longer just a website completely full of awesome toys (www.BullMarketToys.com), but also real life store full of awesome toys! Located at 582 Wharton Blvd. in Exton PA, Bull Market Toys is open for business. We have been open for almost a month now and our shelves are full of great items. Come on in and say hi to whom ever is working (it will probably be Allen) and have a look around. We'd love to see you.

In conjunction with opening our store we have also expanded our merchandise selection and now offer Melissa & Doug, Playmobil, and, just arrived this week, Chuggington Wooden Trains! And it's not going to stop there, as we are always on the lookout for new and awesome toys to get our hands on. So look forward to seeing all kinds of items showing up in our store and on our website. Also, if anyone has any suggestions for toys you think we should carry please let us know, we always appreciate feedback. If things go well we will give you credit here on our blog for tens of people to see!

While we are on the subject of our website, we are in the process of upgrading our website as we speak. Our new site will be cleaner and easier to navigate so that you will have no problem finding exactly what you are looking for. The process is going well and we expect it to be up and running by the end of this month.

Not only are we getting in all new lines of toys, but the toys that we have always loved are still going strong. Lego's are still a mainstay of our business and we get new and awesome sets in all the time. We have recently gotten the Pirates of the Caribbean and Disney's Cars Lego sets into our store, and other series like Star wars and Lego City continue to come out with great new sets. Action figures are still some of our favorites and Green Lantern is hot right now. We also have Imaginext figures for little kids and hard to find action figures for collectors.

There is so much to talk about with everything that we have going on, and not enough time in the day to get it all in to one post. We'll have more updates soon, so stay tuned. But before we go, we'll leave you with something awesome:

A 332 foot Hot Wheels car jump!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xwfoLraLkA