A new pre-order has been added to our Sideshow Star Wars collection, which has already included the likes of Darth Vader, Padme Amidala, Lando Calrissian, Ki-Adi-Mundi and many, many more! Welcome the evil Emperor Palpatine.

Based on Ian McDiarmid’s chilling portrayal in the Star Wars franchise, this rendering of the Emperor stands 12 inches tall, features every bit of attention to detail that has made Sideshow the go-to company for high-quality figures and statues. He comes with interchangeable hands, a cane and a Star Wars logo display base and will be shipping in the second quarter of this year.

He’s not the only new addition, though! You can also check out the Coruscant Clone Trooper of the 41st Elite Corps, pre-orderable now and shipping around the same time as the Emperor. If you’re a big fan of that galaxy far, far away, you won’t want to miss out.

The latest addition to the collection hasn’t yet arrived, but is listed on the site and is available as a pre-order. Actually shipping next month, it’s the distinctive curved lightsaber of the great and terrible Asajj Ventress. Some info from her wikipedia page reads:

Ventress is a Dark Jedi, and one of Count Dooku’s Force-attuned apprentices and assassins. She is a powerful warrior with exceptional combat abilities, and desires most of all to join the Sith order. She has many distinctive Sith tattoos and wields dual curved red lightsabers. Her lightsabers can attach together at the hilt, forming a double bladed weapon with a curve in the middle.

You might need to pick up two if you’re truly going to recreate the Ventress experience, but we think you’ll do fine with one–just make sure not to run into any enemies on your way.

Hey there!

Here’s a look at the TOP 10 ITEMS on CMDSTORE.COM this Christmas! Is the Holiday Season creeping up a little too quickly, leaving you without ideas for what to get the fanboy or fangirl in your life? Take a look at the hottest toys we’ve got this Christmas, plus all the deadline dates to follow if you want your purchase to arrive right on time!

1) BAKUGAN : MAXUS HELIOS 7-IN-1
The most impressive Bakugan out there isn’t a single battle brawler, it’s the sum of seven! With this exclusive pack, you get six Bakugan that combine into a single Maxus Helios beast!

2) ZHU ZHU PETS
The latest craze to sweep this nation and others, we’ve got the four Zhu Zhu Pet hamsters, plus four accessories including the fun house and the Hamster City garage.

3) MARVEL SELECT: RED HULK
The Exclusive Marvel Select Red Hulk has been very popular this year. It features great sculpting, impressive articulation and a variant head, plus a rubble-strewn base sure to look awesome on any toy shelf.

4) TWILIGHT & NEW MOON FIGURES
The juggernaut that is the Twilight series has left some very nice NECA toys in its path, featuring Bella, Alive, Jacob and, of course, the man himself: vampire Edward Cullen. Swoon!

5) STAR WARS CLONE TANK
Featuring Electronic lights and sounds, plus launchable weaponry and some truly cool design, Star Wars fans should be pleased to see this brand new Turbo Tank roll out!

6) TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN
Deluxe Class, Voyager Class, Robot Heroes and more! We’ve got everything from 2009’s biggest movie.

7) MCFARLANE’S HALO: SERIES 6
One of the biggest games of all time, the folks have outdone themselves in coming up with their toy line. Series 6 brings Brute Boyguards, Pure-form Floods and more!

SONIC ACTION FIGURES: SERIES 2
Sonic fans young and old will enjoy these figures, which bring together everyone from the Genesis years to Sonic’s rebirth with Nintendo. The new series features Yellow Super Sonic!

9) GI JOE: THE RISE OF COBRA
This one’s a line of toys for fans of the film, but it should also be very appealing to any GI Joe fans looking for a new take on their favourite characters.

10) GEARS OF WAR: SERIES 5 Check out Col. Hoffman, Boomer, a COG soldier and a Grenadier Beast Rider in this awesome new series based on the hit XBox game.

DEADLINE DATES

STANDARD SHIPPING

ALL of the USA: December 20th before 4pm EST

Ontario & Quebec: December 21st before 5pm EST

Central, West Coast & Maritimes: December 15th before 5pm EST

Europe: December 11th before 5pm EST

UPS EXPRESS SHIPPING

ALL of the USA: December 23rd before 4pm EST

ALL of Canada EXCEPT NWT and Nunavut: December 23rd before 4pm EST

Europe, South America, Australia and Asia: December 21st before 3pm EST

The success of September’s Montreal Comic Con means that the organizers aren’t going to waste any time prepping for the next one! And so, on December 6th, expect a one-day Comic Con featuring guests like Kane Hodder, Lloyd Kaufman and Monica Rial, plus a number of other guests soon to be announced! You can check out the official website for more info!

And coming up even sooner is the Montreal Toy Con–it’s a little out of the way for downtown-dwellers, taking place in St. Laurent’s Courtyard by Marriott Hotel, but if you’re looking for the best new and vintage comic, toys and collectibles, this is worth the trip! There’ll be a ton of dealers, plus cosplayers, LEGO and building enthusiasts and more! It goes down October 18th, costs only $4 (Kids 5 and under free) and is sure to be a blast! Click the pic to visit the site and find out more!

Drivers in Edmonton were stuck in a traffic hot potato over a local farmer’s offer of free spuds Saturday.

The farmer gave away every potato in his field– 45,000 kilograms of the Russet variety.

The stunt was in an effort to promote local crops and inform the public about the dangers of urban sprawl creeping into agricultural land around the city.

And it paid off when an estimated 7,000 people showed up. The lineup of their cars stretched about eight kilometers down a major highway.

“We were on the road for an hour and 20 minutes,” said Gordon Barrett, who was digging through the dirt, filling a 23-kilogram bag to take home.

By the end of it all, farmer Gordon Visser gave away everything. About $20,000 worth of free taters were gone in only a matter of hours.

“It’s got a life of its own,” said Visser, who was visibly surprised about the frenzy. “It’s breathing. It’s unbelievable.”

Visser suggested that having people see “how wonderful this growing area is” during the event, dubbed “The Great Potato Giveaway,” would help get his serious conservation message across.

“We are trying to get to the city before just paving it over and going for suburban development,” says Monique Nutter, of advocacy group Greater Edmonton Alliance. The group promoted the giveaway and is working with Visser to preserve local farmland from development. Nutter says city hall needs to “look at the value of the land.”

The message seems to have been well received by the potato collecting masses.   We also have some spuds but I don’t think they will stop traffic…..

Optimash (Optimus) Prime Transformers Potato Head Spud
Darth Tater (Vader) Star Wars Mr. Potato Head
Spider-Spud Mr Potato Head Spider-Man Edition
Idaho Jones Mr. Potato Head Spud (Taters of the Lost Ark)

The Cakwrecks Blog is a hilarious exploration of the world of baked goods that go horribly awry. From misspellings to complete grammatical failures, terrifying renditions of favourite characters to things that were never meant to be put on a cake, this blog rounds up the very worst, adds some very entertaining commentary and presents it in a gallery of the absurd, cake-style.

But there’s also a treat for some especially geeky readers. Sometimes, when the author is feeling charitable or there is some absence of horrifyingly bad cakes, we are treated to some gems like Doctor Who cakes, a whole set of cakes based on Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog and things as awesome as this:

Sideshow’s definitive Darth Vader 12-inch figure has finally been released, showcasing the lord of the Dark Side as he first appeared to audiences so many years ago. He is fully articulated, features real fabric and chains and comes with interchangeable hands and both lit and unlit lightsabers. Not to mention a display stand that’ll make sure your new figure looks as impressive as possible (not exactly hard for Vader). He joins Sideshows incredible line of 12-inch Star Wars figures.

Of course, not everyone is so enamoured with George Lucas’ magnum opus. Or heck, even those who adore it can find a couple problems with the universe Star Wars has created. Like Hugo Award-winning writer John Scalzi, for example, who brings us this list of “The move Epic FAILs in Star Wars Design” from AMC…

I’ll come right out and say it: Star Wars has a badly-designed universe; so poorly-designed, in fact, that one can say that a significant goal of all those Star Wars novels is to rationalize and mitigate the bad design choices of the movies. Need examples? Here’s ten.

R2-D2
Sure, he’s cute, but the flaws in his design are obvious the first time he approaches anything but the shallowest of stairs. Also: He has jets, a periscope, a taser and oil canisters to make enforcer droids fall about in slapsticky fashion — and no voice synthesizer. Imagine that design conversation: “Yes, we can afford slapstick oil and tasers, but we’ll never get a 30-cent voice chip past accounting. That’s just madness.”

C-3PO
Can’t fully extend his arms; has a bunch of exposed wiring in his abs; walks and runs as if he has the droid equivalent of arthritis. And you say, well, he was put together by an eight-year-old. Yes, but a trip to the nearest Radio Shack would fix that. Also, I’m still waiting to hear the rationale for making a protocol droid a shrieking coward, aside from George Lucas rummaging through a box of offensive stereotypes (which he’d later return to while building Jar-Jar Binks) and picking out the “mincing gay man” module.

Lightsabers
Yes, I know, I want one too. But I tell you what: I want one with a hand guard. Otherwise every lightsaber battle would consist of sabers clashing and then their owners sliding as quickly as possible down the shaft to lop off their opponent’s fingers. You say: Lightsabers can slice through anything but another lightsaber, so what are you going to make a hand guard out of? I say: Dude, if you have the technology to make a lightsaber, you have the technology to make a light hand guard.

Blasters
A tactical nightmare: They’re incredibly loud, especially for firing what are essentially light beams. The fire ordnance is so slow it can be dodged, and it comes out as a streak of light that reveals your position to your enemies. Let’s not even go near the idea of light beams being slow enough to dodge; that’s just something you have let go of, or risk insanity.

Landspeeders and other flying vehicles
Here’s the thing: In the Star Wars universe, there are no seatbelts. And maybe if you’re flying your hoity-toity vehicle on Coruscant, you have, like, a force field that keeps you flying out of your seat. But Luke’s X-34 speeder on Tatooine? The Yugo of speeders, man. One hard stop, and out you go.

Stormtrooper Uniforms
They stand out like a sore thumb in every environment but snow, the helmets restrict view (“I can’t see a thing in this helmet!” — Luke Skywalker), and the armor is penetrable by single shots from blasters. Add it all up and you have to wonder why stormtroopers don’t just walk around naked, save for blinders and flip-flops.

Death Star
An unshielded exhaust port leading directly to the central reactor? Really? And when you rebuild it, your solution to this problem is four paths into the central core so large that you can literally fly a spaceship through them? Brilliant. Note to the Emperor: Someone on your Death Star design staff is in the pay of Rebel forces. Oh, right, you can’t get the memo because someone threw you down a huge exposed shaft in your Death Star throne room.

Bad design in Star Wars is not just limited to stuff; evolution here seems wacky, too. Three choice bits:

Sarlaac
A monstrous yet immobile creature who lives in an exposed pit in the middle of a lifeless desert, waiting for large animals to apparently feel suicidal and trek out to throw themselves in? Yeah, not so much. Not every Sarlaac can count on an intergalactic mob boss to feed it tidbits.

That Asteroid Worm Thing in Empire Strikes Back
So, large space worm lives in asteroid, disguises itself as a cave and waits for unwary spaceships to fly by so it can eat them? Makes the Sarlaac look like a marvel of natural selection, it does.

Midi-Chlorians
Oh, man, don’t get me started. Except to say this: If in fact a high concentration of midi-chlorians is the difference between being a common schmoe and being a dude who can Force Choke his enemies, the black market in midi-chlorian injections must be amazing.

Star Trek fans, don’t get smug: I’m going after it next.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of Star Wars toys out there and there’s no sign that LucasArts or Hasbro intends to staunch the flow anytime soon. But every so often, there’s an item that stands out in the crowd and that’s exactly how I feel about this new 3 3/4 inch figure based on the original trilogy.

Luke Skywalker, hero of the films, is usually seen in action shots, looking grim and serious as he takes on the threat of the Dark Side as it seeks to rule the galaxy. But in this San Diego Comic Con exclusive, Luke is all smiles as he celebrates a well-earned victory. This one is a neat addition to any fan’s collection.

And for more, check out the rest of our Comic Con exclusive collection by clicking the banner below!

First up is the Clone Wars Anakin Skywalker, featuring a completely accurate costume including shoulder armor and wrist guards, two sets of interchangeable hands, lit and unlit lightsabers and a display base.

The second figure out next year is the Episode 2 Clone Trooper. It features over 30 points of articulation, two different weapons and a perfectly-detailed bodysuit based on the designs in the film.

These two are in addition to the Sideshow San Diego Comic Con Exclusive 2-pack featuring Han Solo and Luke Skywalker (now on sale!) in their stormtrooper disguises. This one ships this month and, like the others, can be pre-ordered already!

And if NEW Star Wars isn’t your thing, here’s a walk down memory lane…

Direct from the Guardian:

It’s almost like LucasArts suddenly realised the value of the old games they had gathering dust in their proverbial gaming cupboard. Following on from Monkey Island, Indiana Jones and the rest comes yet more retro goodies. Super Star Wars has been released for the Wii, with the other two games in the series out soon. Okay, it’s not the Grim Fandango re-release we all want but let’s not complain.

Back in the early 90s the Super Star Wars games were as close as you could get to reliving the original trilogy. Ok the films didn’t feature any tricky platforming but hey, the graphics were great for their day. When I remember the games – and I haven’t played or seen them since 1994 – I think of extreme difficulty and impressive audio. The landspeeder level sticks out too. I’m guessing the music won’t be as impressive this time round but the difficulty level – after 15 years of softening up as games have gotten checkpoint-friendly and generally easier – will likely be a killer. Will today’s gamers have the patience to persevere with Skywalker and co?

Anyway, Super Star Wars – are you tempted? And what do you want to see released next from the LucasArts archive?

I was fortunate enough to attend this year’s San Diego Comic Con and I excitedly picked up a couple of Con exclusives to add to my toy collection. But even attendees can’t be everywhere at once and the exclusives tend to vanish from the booths pretty quickly. Fortunately, though, I’m not in charge of CmdStore’s acquisitions and thus my inability to snag all the exclusive items hasn’t stopped us from boasting an awesome selection of SDCC 09 goodies that you can check out right here.

Some examples of the items we’ve got in-stock include the above Han and Luke Stormtrooper 2-pack, Crimson Cobra Commander, Metal Sonic the Hedgehog, Pesty and Creo Little Apple Dolls, Green Lantern Blackest Night and Origins figures, Egon Spengler and Slimer, 12-inch Baroness, the Destro 2-pack and more!