26 replies to this topic

[Dr. Crusher]

Very occasionally DST sends out the Radical Confidential, a little newsletter type thingy.

As for the AA club, I wasn't a member, but I do recognize pretty much everyone who's posted in this thread from the old AA forums.

[VulcanFanatic]

Diamond Select toys sends out an email called the E-Spectrum once in awhile but the Radical Confidential was discontinued back in November 2007, which was the last update of it. Radical Confidential was a free area of the DST website that posted new information before it made it to the main webpage, not including any forum area. The AACC was a membership that you had to pay $35.00 for access to a exclusive section of the old AA website, including a exclusive forum area and a membership kit that was eventually sent to your home that included a Figure and some other stuff.

[Captain Kidd]

*Raises hand slowly with look of shame* I was a member, even helped out with the AACC Newsletter to some degree. Hell I think I even wrote an article for the dame thing. lol

[reverie]

I don't think I was around for this, but it *sounds* like a neat idea. Too bad it sounds like it didn't pan out in the end. It also seems I signed up for the DST thing right at the tail end of it as well. I miss all the fun.

[JulesLuvsShinzon]

Jules, you gave me a good laugh, had'nt had one of those in a while. I guess i was'nt looking to dredge up any of the old animosities or the bad things about the AACC, just taking a trip down memory lane.

**Takes a bow!**

Yeah, they were good times, and while many of us are still around, a lot of good guys fell by the wayside. I like remembering the old days, and nothing in life is ever completely free from controversy ~ even remembering the old days apparently!

I remember how Berns and I split the board with our "Berns & Jules Bicker Thread". Some people loved it (if that's not too strong a word) and others did not. There was even a poll about whether or not it should continue and opinion was split equally. It's fun to be directly involved in something like that (as long as you can take the flack along with the praise), but I've more recently witnessed some personalities getting out of hand over at the imdb discussion boards, and often it's not pretty.

I remember how exciting it was to be getting TOS Star Trek figures back in 2003 and thinking about how different Art Asylums style was from Playmates stuff. It was a big change, a welcome change, but at the same time, i liked both of the styles, it was like toy figures vs Collectors figures.

I too was attracted to the AA style of figure. They seemed to raise the game of figure making, and the Nem (apart from dodgy hand sculpt on the Shinzon figure), the ENT and TOS lines were solid gold. I always treated the AA figures as collectors items because I felt that said relatively inexpensive "high end", and it looked like a lot of real artistry went into them. Unfortunately, even though AA seemed to need DST's muscle for marketing and distribution, the influence of DST did negatively impact upon the quality of the figures produced with too many variants and awkward reused body parts.

I lurked at the old AA board for some time before registering, then took some more time before i made the leap into the AACC. I miss KBtoys.com too, because thats where i bought most of AA's stuff from back then, because you couldnt find it at TRU. KBtoys would have sales where you could get figures for 5 bucks a piece. I ordered tons from them.

At one time we were at a real disadvantage in the UK because our standard toy stores wouldn't stock Trek stuff at all and so we had to travel to specialist comic stores. Our biggest store, Forbidden Planet, only ever used to buy in so many of each thing and once it was sold out you had had your chips, although I managed to pick up the Convention special YSK in black and white retro packaging as a sale item in the Bristol store! (Sorry to the guy who hasn't got a YSK).

For a while I hit pay dirt with a store called Twisted Toys in Bristol run by toy enthusiasts who could get me items that FP had sold out of, sometimes at reduced prices. Unfortunately, the shop was pulled down and is now part of Cabot Circus. Nowadays, I buy from the internet from Play.com even if it's not quite the same as going to a shop and hand-picking your figures.

Eventually, unsold AA ENT figures ended up being routed through TK MAXX (where I picked up a NX01 for half price!!) and old NEM figures through The Entertainer where I picked up a Shinzon for the princely sum of 50p! This only a couple of years after splurging out

[pickard]

I've seen MisterPL over at the DC Direct board and Hunky on the SideshowCollectors forum.

[Sybeck1]

I was on the old AA board, but never joined the club. I just have problems with commitment it seems.