Visionaries: Cryotek

Ever since I moved my toy, comic, trading card and video game collection into a larger room in the house I've been looking for ways to decorate the few bare spots left on the walls. Using my sealed G.I. Joe 25th Anniversary collection of Cobra figures, I created a wall paper like border that almost completely wraps around all 4 walls in the room. I had a little space left however and I wanted to showcase something else. After looking at some of the card artwork Hasbro used for their Visionaries line of figures I knew I wanted to take a closer luck. It didn't take too long before I grabbed all 4 of the evil Darkling Lords to display on my wall - still in their original carded beauty. Why stop with the bad guys though I asked myself. Why not go for the Spectral Knights as well. This process has proved a bit tougher, but I did finally land my first carded Knight...Cryotek.

I decided to not make these pictures too small so you could appreciate the awesome artwork. I don't know what it is about that bear, but man is this some great looking packaging! The biggest kick I got out of seeing this in person was the old KayBee price tag still left on the card. I sure wish I had a time machine so I could've grabbed all the figures at the clearance price of $2.00 each! Sadly I can't remove the price tag without causing damage to the backing card so I just left it on.

The back of the blister card is just as impressive as the front in my opinion. At the top is a file card that gives a little info on the character as well as his mystical hologram powers. The personality power comes from the hologram on the character's chest armor while the totem power comes from their staff. I know holograms aren't state of the art now like they were back in the day, but I'm still impressed with the way Hasbro pulled these off.

The middle of the blister card has the awesome castle that sadly was never made into a toy. I believe Hasbro had plans, but due to high production costs the subsequent toys were canceled. The bottom of the card shows off the 4 Spectral Knights and the 4 Darkling Lords.

I've got one or two loose Visionaries figures that I plan on sharing at some point in the near future, but for now that's about it.