I Need Warnado, I'm Holding Our For Warnado 'Till The Morning Light

Welcome to a new feature of the blog called "Monday Mons-Day", where I do a post every Monday about collectibles or games where you have to collect things. The name comes from "Mons" games, i.e. Pokémon or Monster Rancher, where you have to "Catch 'em All". And those games will usually be the focus of these articles in one way or another, although this space will also be reserved for collectible card games, action figures, and my brand new obsession with Skylanders.



It's this last one that's the focus of the inaugural edition of "Monday Mons-Day", since these are very Pokémon-like characters and not only to you have to collect the statuettes (I still refuse to call them "toys" since they just sit there and look cool), but you have to collect the statuettes to collect the player characters in-game. However, as much as I love this game and will stick with it for a while, I recently learned just how evil the people who make this game are.

Ladies and gentlemen, meet Warnado:

Isn't he cute? He's got this sort of dragon/gremlin look to him, which I love, but he's also a turtle, which is my wife's favorite animal. I knew when I had to figure out who to initially round out the elements with, that this guy would be my first choice for Wind.

He also just happens to be one of the few that the makers of Skylanders decided would be a "rare" one.

With little money to throw around and my GameStop points being spent on Drobot (more on him later), my only hope for having him NOW would be my newly rediscovered Best Buy gift card from my birhtday last year. So I did the sensible thing for someone with no car and called the places near me to see who had them.

All I got were big fat "nos"

For a lark, I called other stores to see what their availability was, and started to see the disturbing pattern.

Apparently Warnado is one of three figures (the others being Camo, who I also very much want as a secondary Life, and Wham-Shell, who you'd have to pay me to get) that were newly released and intended to be "rare finds". That is, when a new shipment comes, the new shipment contains ten each of three other characters and maybe one to three of ONE of the "rares".

So after spending all day calling, I got fed up and looked online. All the places were either sold out or gouging the price to twice the retail value. All hope seemed lost.

The next day or two, I looked online again and found Walmart.com finally had a shipment of Warnado for retail price, free shipping for in-store pickup. Without delay I ordered it, knowing that it may well be the last time I see him within retail range (it was 8.99, and they go between 7.99 and 9.99 depending on the store). He should be here next week.

What of the cash? I had intended to have my mother buy out the BB card so I'd still be even (minus 50 cents or so for tax), but my wife, saint that she is, understood what I went through trying to get this thing and insisted I get someone else from Best Buy. So, remembering another name I wanted when calling before, headed up to Warwick and picked up the last Zap.

Something I'm going to do with Skylanders posts form now on is judging their performance on the 3DS (and, when I get it, the console version) with scores based on the O.W.L.s from Harry Potter....because I'm just that much of a dork. I will be judging the 3DS version on Attack Power, Attack Speed, Attack Style (how cool attacks look), Movement Speed, Jump, and Health.

The O.W.L. grades are: O - Outstanding, E - Exceeds Expectations, A - Acceptible, P - Poor, D - Dreadful, and T - Troll

First I'll start with the ones I already wrote up in my initial review of the game:

Dark Spyro (or, as I like to call him, Nega-Spyro)
Attack Power: A
Attack Speed: O
Attack Style: O
Movement Speed: P
Jump: A
Health: P

Stealth Elf
Attack Power: E
Attack Speed: A
Attack Style: E
Movement Speed: O
Jump: O
Health: T

Ignitor
Attack Power: O
Attack Speed: P
Attack Style: A
Movement Speed: D
Jump: P
Health: O

Now the two newbies:

Drobot
Attack Power: A
Attack Speed: O
Attack Style: O
Movement Speed: P
Jump: A
Health: E

Zap:
Attack Power: E
Attack Speed: E
Attack Style: O
Movement Speed: E
Jump: P
Health: E

I'll give you Warnado's when he comes in.