Monthly Archives: August 2012

Aug 6 2012

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Classics: Leonardo by Playmates

[Welcome to Turtles Week! Today through Thursday, I’ll be checking out Playmates new Classic series of TMNT figures and then Friday we’ll return to Vintage Vault as normal. I considered doing a TMNT edition of VV to round out the week, but after looking at these beauties it was hard to go back to the old stuff. And yeah, I’ll be getting to some of the figures based off the new Nick Toon. Look for that later on in the month, so there’s almost certainly another Turtles Week coming up. – FF]

Oh yeah… I’ve been waiting for these figures since, well since before Playmates even showed them off. Actually, it was probably around the time I got my first Masters of the Universe Classics figure and started wishing that we would get the same sort of collector-grade upgrade for a lot of 80’s toy lines. It seemed like the Turtles would be particularly well suited to such an upgrade, but I never wanted Playmates to be the one to do them. Sure NECA produced an amazing comic inspired set, but I held out for something a little closer to the 80’s design. Well, here we are, Playmates did them, and honest to god, they blew me away with the results. I give Playmates a lot of shit (and some loving) here, so it’s nice to be able to really tip my hat to them on something. Let’s start today with the leader of the pack, and my personal favorite hero in a halfshell… Leonardo.

I’m going to say my piece about the packaging today and then not much else for the rest of the week. The packages for these figures are fantastic, but apart from the bubble insert with each turtle’s name, they are essentially the same across the board. That having been said, when I first picked up one of these packaged figures I was in love. It’s a hefty semi-cylindrical bubble on a fairly heavy cardback. The front card art is deliciously cartoony and vintage and exactly what I wanted in a classic TMNT figure package. There are two stickers on the bubble, one pointing out that the figures are based on the 1988 cartoon classic and the other points out that the figure has 34 points of articulation. Leonardo is (almost) holding his swords in each hand and looks ready for battle, with his stand mounted behind his legs.

The back panel has some blurbs about the turtles, pictures of all four figures and again, some great vintage inspired artwork. There are only two gripes I can level against this package… one, it isn’t collector friendly and that saddens me because I almost shed a tear when I ripped this figure open. Secondly, a personalized file-card style section on the back of the card for each character would have been cool. Nonetheless, Playmates, you really hit a grand-slam on this package. It looks great, and displays the figure wonderfully.

Folks, this is how you update a classic action figure! Playmates was able to make use of the same body for each figure, and it doesn’t at all feel like a copout. They even went so far as to vary the green used for their skin tones. The sculpted detail on Leonardo is fairly minimal, but that works for a retro figure based on an animated character. The most detail is vested in the shell, front and back, the knee and elbow pads, and the wrist bands. The arms and legs are mostly just smooth like they looked in the cartoon. Leonardo’s head sculpt has him ready for action. This is definitely not “kick back and eat some pizza” Leonardo, this is “I’m gonna go fuck up some Foot Clan Ninjas” Leonardo. He’s sneering with the left side of his mouth to expose his teeth. His eye mask is sculpted as a separate piece, but permanently attached, and trails off the back of his head.

Leonardo features a belt and baldric, all sculpted separately from the figure, but permanently attached. The belt has a disc with the letter “L” in the center. The whole ensemble wraps around the back of his shell and holds his criss-crossed scabbards, both of which are functional and can be removed, as they just peg in through the belt and into the shell.

The coloring on this figure is just about perfect. A lot of the figure’s details are color coded to Leonardo’s eye mask, including the grips on his sword hilts. I’m also pretty fond of the somewhat matte finish given to the figure. It’s not super glossy, it’s not painted over and completely dull. You get a nice subtle shine on the arms and legs and on the shell.

Playmates boasts this figure has 34 points of articulation, so let’s just count them down. Ball jointed neck… check! The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, have swivels at the biceps and wrists, double hinged elbows, and each of the three fingers are hinged. His legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, double hinges in the knees, hinged ankles, the ankles also swivel, and each of the four toes are hinged. He also has a ball joint in the torso. Yep, that’s 34 points and that’s mighty damn impressive, giving this figure  an amazing amount of poseability. The only thing I would have changed would be to add rockers to the ankles, but not at the expense of any of the joints in the figure now, so I’m perfectly happy if that just didn’t cost out.

The old TMNT figures used to come with a bevy of gear, but Leonardo just comes with his swords and a stand. From a cost standpoint, I’m ok with that, since Playmates obviously poured so much attention into the figure itself. The swords are pretty cool. They’re sculpted in plastic that is bendy enough for safety regulations, but not enough to easily warp. They’re appropriately molded in silver/grey plastic and as previously mentioned the wraps on the hilts are blue. The swords fit snugly into the scabbards on Leo’s back, and he can hold them pretty well. I’m wondering if it would have been a good idea to put pegs on the handles and have them peg into Leo’s palms to help him hold them, but I don’t know if it would have been worth the unsightly pegs and holes. Probably not.

As for the stand, I’ve read a number of less than favorable opinions about the stands online and I really can’t understand why. You get a big disc stand sculpted to look like a manhole cover with the TMNT logo sculpted in and Leonardo’s name printed on it. There are two meaty pegs to really hold the figure nicely. I think it’s a fantastic bonus and probably one of the best stands I’ve got with an action figure in a long time!

I haven’t seen Leonardo, or any of the Classic TMNT figures at retail yet, so I have no idea what the going price at brick-and-mortar stores is going to be. The Targets here already set their TMNT section, but it’s all just the new Nick stuff. I got my set for $17 each from Amazon along with my free Prime shipping, so I’m guessing they might be around $15 MSRP? Either way, the fact that these figures are significantly under $20 each is a great deal. Leonardo is beautifully made, has a nice quality and hefty feel to him, and is hard to put down. Sure, he’s a little light in the accessories, but he’s got his trademark weapons and a great stand, and for the price, I’m not complaining. So long as the other figures turn out this good, I’m beside myself with joy.

Tomorrow, we’ll move on to Donatello. The rest of the features will be a lot less long winded to avoid getting redundant, as the figures do share the same body.

Aug 4 2012

Star Trek Innerspace: Klingon Bird of Prey by Playmates

I promise, this will be the last time we look at Innerspace on Star Trek Saturday for a little while. By now I’ve probably devoted more attention to these little ships then they deserve, but when I went fishing into one of my Star Trek Totes, I pulled out three of these and I wanted to open all of them, so we might as well finish up the three. This time we’re looking at the Klingon Bird of Prey. If you’re keeping score, the Shuttlecraft Goddard was a pretty cool little toy all around, the Romulan Warbird looked pretty good as a ship and was kind of iffy as a playset, so let’s see how the Bird of Prey turns out…

It’s the same packaging we’ve seen for the last two weeks. The toy comes on a simple card and bubble with one flap open so you can peek inside and see what’s going on, and the two minifigures are beside it. The back panel shows photos of all the toys little features and has some trivia about the ship’s fictional specifications as well as its appearances in the various Star Trek media.

The minifigures are Worf and Gowron and both are pretty impressive for such ridiculously tiny little guys. The paint and sculpts are good enough so you know exactly who they’re supposed to be. Gowron has a little disruptor sculpted into his hand and both figures are articulated at the hips so they can sit down or stand up.

Unfortunately, as a little toy ship, the Bird of Prey doesn’t fare so well. Its proportions are seriously askew, so the body is too big for the wings and the bridge. Obviously, Playmates had to do this to create enough space for the playset compartment, but knowing that doesn’t make the ship look any less like it could be Playskool’s “My First Bird of Prey.” It’s a real shame too, because a lot of care went into the sculpt, particularly all the panel lines on the wings and the details in the engines. If this thing was properly proportioned it would have looked really bad ass. The coloring is pretty good too, with the hull being properly screen accurate green, the wings painted in, and the engines silver. There’s a lot better paintwork on this ship than the Warbird. The Bird of Prey also has a flip down stand to keep it from toppling over. It serves its purpose, but it only adds to the toy’s aesthetic problems.

Opening up the playset compartment and the Bird of Prey does a little better. Once again, it’s tough to cram a whole bridge into this little space, but I think the Bird of Prey pulls it off better than the Romulan Warbird’s two-seater roadster configuration. The open flaps turn into crew stations and there’s a central captain’s chair and a little viewscreen that you can rotate to show different views. Yeah, it still kind of looks like the captain is driving a car, but these toys really do require a lot of imagination and forgiveness to work. There’s a sticker on the back wall to create the illusion that the bridge is bigger and there are more Klingons on it.

I’d probably rank the Bird of Prey just a little higher than the Warbird, but mainly because of the minifigures. I like to use Worf in the Shuttlecraft and the Gowron figure makes a nice standard Klingon flunky. The ship itself is goofy looking and the playset isn’t going to impress anyone. Still, for the five bucks I paid for this toy, it’s an interesting little curiosity for my Star Trek collection.

Aug 3 2012

Vintage Vault: Bionic Six Helen Bennett (“Mother-1”) by LJN

Yes, we’ve come back to the Bionic Six here on FigureFan and I thought it was long past time we took a look at one of the good guys for a change, or in this case, one of the good girls. It’s the matriarch of this super-human family, Helen Bennett, better known as Mother-1 when her bionics are turned on.

I’ve said my piece about these cards. I still hate the whole black and white geometric pattern, and oh god, how I hate the character art on this particular card. I’ve already mentioned that the art for Glove and Mechanic were passable but a little off, but Helen’s is just terrible. Seriously, couldn’t LJN have just used a screen grab from the cartoon? Sure you can tell who it’s supposed to be, and I like the pose with her activating her bionics, but it still looks like hack fan art to me. The figure comes incased in a coffin-style bubble with a compartment above the figure for the accessory. I should mention here that I really hate the fact that LJN went with using the Bennett’s first names on the front of the card. She was Helen Bennett in her civies… this figure is Mother-1 and should have been named as such. The back of the card shows all the figures you can get in the line and has a little blurb about the Bennett’s backstory.

So, this is kind of the first figure in which the whole die-cast metal and translucent plastic gimmick sort of makes sense. The Bennett’s are part cybernetic so let’s make parts of the figure out of die-cast and have some translucent. I could argue the logic and the pitfalls behind the concept, but I do get what they were going for here. Helen is one of those figures where the die-cast doesn’t hurt it too much. Helen’s head sculpt is ok. I’m fine with the face, but the sculpted hair is all wrong. You just need to look at the figure and look at the character art to see that. For the most part, Helen had long hair and the figure’s got a soccer mom cut. Surprisingly, this inconsistency isn’t a deal breaker for me.

The body sculpt is pretty simple, as this figure mostly makes use of paintwork to distinguish the uniform. Ironically, the biggest problem with this figure isn’t the use of die-cast, but rather the unsightly seams that run down the fronts of her plastic upper legs. They’re an eyesore. I’m also not terribly thrilled with the clear plastic on her legs. It just doesn’t mesh with her animated, on-screen counterpart.

And then there’s the paintwork. I’ve already mentioned how spotty some of the paint on these figures can be. My Mother-1 is straight out of the package and still looks like she’s been kicked around the playground a couple of times. The yellow paint that borders on her translucent plastic legs is really rough and probably has a lot to do with why I don’t like these clear parts. There are a few other spots of slop and chipping around the figure and the bevy of exposed screws on the back of the figure don’t help the aesthetics either.

You get the same level of articulation as the other Bionic Six figures. The head rotates, the arms are ball jointed at the shoulders and hinged at the elbows, the legs are ball jointed at the hips and hinged at the knees. Mother-1 is not the most poseable of figures, but she’s not all that shabby considering the time she was released.

Helen comes with one accessory. It’s a soft plastic backpack that rests on her shoulders and straps around her waist. It’s all cast in blue plastic and it’s a decent enough piece for what it is, but it’s also completely unnecessary. I don’t recall Mother-1 having any such backpack in the show, and I prefer to display the figure without it. Still, I never get too upset about anything I can toss into a bin and forget about. So long as it’s an optional accessory, I can toss it into a bin and forget about it.

Helen is a decent figure. It’s easy to nitpick given the scale, the decision to go with die-cast, and the age of the figure. The mismatched hair style is my biggest stumbling block, but she’s a nice, colorful figure despite some hiccups in the paint. In the end, she’s sort of a frustrating figure. She’s just cool enough to get by, but she really makes me want a better executed figure of the character. But as we’ll see again and again that’s par for the course with a lot of the figures in this line.

Aug 2 2012

Avengers: Skrull Soldier (Comic Series) by Hasbro

[Yep, it’s another bonus feature this week to try to keep me from falling too far behind. It’s nice to be finding stuff to buy once again! Next week is going to be a full week, with Monday through Friday devoted to Playmates’ Classic Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and then moving on to business as usual for Vintage Vault on Friday and Star Trek Saturday. –FF]

Today’s figure brings me back to that agonizing buildup to the Avengers film when everyone was trying to figure out who the hell the bad guys were going to be. I really wanted them to be the Skrull or Kang, but when the first on screen images came out it was pretty clear the film was going Ultimates all over our asses and using the Chitauri as Loki’s army. In the end, Avengers turned out to be one of my all-time favorite movies, so I’m not going to quibble with the results and thanks to the wonderful little sub-line of “comic series” Avengers figures, we get a nice modern Skrull soldier figure, and a peek at what they might have looked like if they appeared in the movie.

We’ve seen plenty of the Avengers packaging here in the last couple of weeks, so I’ll be brief on the subject. Once again, it’s attractive, it’s serviceable, it shows off the figure and his oversized weapon very well. There’s no “Try Me” window in this one as there have been in the last couple of Avengers figures I’ve featured. The back panel shows off a picture of the figure and a little bio blurb. Let’s rip this baby open…

Holy crap, I adore this figure! I usually start with the sculpt, but I’m going to jump ahead this time to the coloring, because the colors on this figure are gorgeous. The combination of pale blue, metallic purple and silver are really inspired. It has all the vibrant beauty of a page right out of a brand new comic. The paintwork on the head is equally impressive. He’s a nice shade of green with a very well executed wash to bring out all of the tiny little details in the sculpt. Round it out with those piercing yellow eyes, and this figure is just a triumph of color.

And hey, that sculpt is not too shabby either. Granted, the sculpt truly impresses in the head where there is way more detail packed into this fellow’s face then you’re average 3 ¾” figure should allow. The armor has a simple, but streamlined design that almost looks retro sci-fi to me. His ab muscles are sculpted into the chestplate and there’s some nice work on the sculpted belt and the boots.

Of course, if you’re an articulation junky, you’ll be sorry to hear that the Skrull figure has the same level of articulation as many of the other Avengers figures. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, and knees, and that’s it. The lack of wrist, ankle and torso articulation certainly hurts the figure, but the plethora of ball joints somewhat dulls the pain.

What’s this? Is this a goofy, gimmicky, oversized weapon that I actually like? Well, sort of. The Skrull Soldier comes with a giant two-headed energy axe. It’s not too bad by itself, but I really like the fact that you can pull the blades off and use them each as individual weapons. Don’t get me wrong, this thing isn’t going to be everybody’s cup of tea and I’m not saying I love it, but considering the nonsensical missile launchers Hasbro usually saddles us with, this weapon is actually kind of inspired and it’s probably the first one in ages that I didn’t either toss into the dreaded Tote of Doom or just outright pitch into the garbage can.

I never did get around to picking up that Marvel Universe Skrull figure and now I doubt that I’ll bother. This Skrull figure really tickles me in all the right spots and I’ll probably pick up a few more if I come across them on the pegs. One of the most frustrating things about loving this figure so much is that I can’t even put my finger on why I love it so much. Surely, a big part is just the coloring and the head sculpt. Whatever the case, this is easily one of my favorite figures to come out of the Avengers line, probably ranking just behind Black Widow. And given the Skrull is not a sexy redhead with boobs, that right there is quite a ringing endorsement.

Aug 1 2012

Marvel Super Heroes: Wolverine’s Chopper Showdown (#6866) by Lego

Until now I’ve been mum regarding Lego’s coup of simultaneously securing both the DC and Marvel licenses for their building sets. I can’t imagine how much money was involved to work out this deal, and while it’s true no DC and Marvel characters actually coexist in a single set, the fact that they’re both on the shelf at the same time is mind blowing, as is the fact that if you happen to buy a Batman and an Avengers set, no lawyers will show up at your house to keep you from playing with them together as part of what is essentially the same cohesive toyline. That all having been said, I question Lego’s understanding of the Marvel Universe when they release a set called “Wolverine’s Chopper Showdown” and QUIETLY SLIP A FREAKING DEADPOOL MINIFIGURE INTO IT!!!

Seriously. Look at that box art. It’s Deadpool attacking Wolverine in a fucking gunship, while Magneto impotently fiddles about in the background. Calling it “Wolverine’s Chopper Showdown” not only fails to recognize that it isn’t Wolverine’s chopper, but also fails to communicate to the potential buyer that Deadpool is anywhere involved with or included in this set. I must have walked past this thing a hundred times in different stores, never bothering to notice that a Lego Deadpool minifigure was within my reach. No, for my money, Lego should have just named this set “Deadpool Minifigure In A Box With A Bunch of Other Stuff“ That I would have purchased straightaway!

Of course, I’m joking… but not really. The box consists of an instruction booklet, a “comic adventure” booklet and three unnumbered baggies of 201 bricks that make up three minifigures, a motorcycle, and an attack helicopter. The “comic” is just a fun little booklet featuring Marvel characters as Lego minifigures, but it ultimately fails in that it is a comic featuring Deadpool, in which Deadpool says absolutely nothing. As always, let’s start with the minifigure… er, minifigures.

 

 

You get Deadpool, Wolverine and Magneto and as much as I adore my new little Deadpool minifig, I have to concede that all of the minifigs in this set are nothing short of excellent. The bright comic-y colors are gorgeous and the combination of printing and unique bits really bring out the personality of each character in adorable minifigure form. Deadpool actually gets by with the least amount of unique parts, although he does have a set of scabbards on his back, which can store his katana swords in a criss-cross fashion. He also comes with a gun. Wolverine features a special hairpiece that meshes perfectly with his printed sideburns. He also has his two sets of adamantium claws, which he actually holds in each hand, but they still look pretty good. Lastly, Magneto features a new helmet sculpt, a cape, and a little disc for him to fly around on. Both Wolverine and Magneto have double printed faces, whereas Deadpool just has his standard Deadpool mask.

 

The helicopter is a lot nicer than I expected. It sits on three sets of landing gear consisting of six wheels, and it’s powered by one main rotor and two smaller rotors on the tail boom. The roof over the cabin lifts off to seat a figure in the cockpit and the sides are open and you can put additional figures in the back. You can also use it as a cargo area for Deadpool’s precious cargo of Hot Pockets and chimichangas. There are two stubby wings coming off the sides, each one holds two flick-fire missiles, can pivot up and down, and they have clips to attach Deadpool’s katana swords to the ends. That’s right, because Deadpool can kill you with swords attached to his helicopter! Wow!

You also get a little motorcycle for Wolverine. It isn’t really a lot like the chopper we usually see Wolverine riding. Truth be told, it’s more like a dirt bike. Still, it’s only made up of seven of the 201 pieces, so I’m not complaining.

This set is $19.99 at Walmart and Target and I think that’s a pretty good value for 201 pieces. It didn’t take me a lot of time to build, but it was fun and there weren’t many redundant steps and that helps keep things interesting. Honestly, I would have almost been happy enough with these three minifigs alone. I really do love them all that much. But the helicopter and bike are nice vehicles and versatile enough to be used in a lot of other Lego series. But most important… I got me a Deadpool minifigure!!!