Monthly Archives: December 2012

Dec 19 2012

The Sandman: Death Statue by Mattel

Today we’re going to take a break from all the MOTUC stuff and check out one of the non-He-Man related things I picked up at Matty’s Sale: The sassy Death statue from Neil Gaiman’s Sandman series. I was first exposed to The Sandman comics back when I owned a used & out of print bookstore. I never knew what was going to come through the front door and one day it happened to be a guy with a panel van filled with 4,500 comics to unload. They were all bagged and boarded and ran the gamut from the 70’s to current stuff. I didn’t sell comics, but I couldn’t resist and we came to an arrangement. Eventually, I culled through the collection, keeping what I wanted and setting up the rest in the back corner of the store on card tables. Some of the ones I pulled were Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman.

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I make no bones about being a Neil Gaiman fan. Besides really enjoying his original comic work, many of his efforts have spilled over into so many other mediums and franchises that I hold dear. When Mattel revealed their Death statue for the 2012 San Diego Comic Con, I was certainly interested, but with so many other things vying for my collecting dollars, I ultimately had to pass. Most of the time, when you pass on SDCC exclusives, the ship sails and second chances are expensive (Screw you, Sky Striker Starscream!!!). But every once and a while, the items are readily available afterwards at the same price. In this case, I was able to do even better, as Matty Collector had a ton of these still available for their Cyber Monday Sale.

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While nowhere on the box does this statue claim to be an SDCC Exclusive, the gorgeous and elaborate packaging certainly betrays it as being some kind of special item. As with most Matty Collector items, Death comes in a mailer box, but rather than being a boring white carton, this one is all black with Death’s ankh printed on one side and a really nice minimalist portrait of her on the other.

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Inside the tasteful mailer box, things only get better. The statue comes in a three-quarter window box with an elaborately illustrated frame and insert, placing Death in an animated graveyard environment. The back of the box has a portrait and a little blurb about the character.  She’s secured on a transparent tray and hovering slightly above her skull base, and the various windows let you enjoy the statue from every angle except the back. If ever there was an argument against opening a collectible, this presentation would be a pretty convincing one. I mean, I open everything, and even I was really tempted to leave Death mint in sealed box. However, after some really careful clipping, I was able to get Death out of her box without destroying the packaging.

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So, the first thing to realize about this statue is that it’s molded out of regular old plastic. If you’re a collector of statues, you’re probably used to PVC, polystone, cold-cast porcelain, or pretty much anything other than this mass market grade plastic. Besides making the statue remarkably light (seriously, there’s no heft to this thing at all!), this kind of plastic shows seam lines and just can’t hold a sculpt as well as the more premium grade materials. Now, all that having been said, the sculpt is a solid enough effort, and this is by no means a bad looking piece.

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Death is posed standing, with her right hand bent at the elbow and resting on her hip, and her other hand resting suspiciously close to her “hoo-hoo.” Actually, I think the designers were going for having her left thumb hooked into her belt and you can kind of see that. There are swivel cuts in her shoulders and torso, but Death is obviously sculpted to be in a very specific pose and I haven’t had any luck using the articulation to her benefit. Otherwise, there’s some good detail work in the sculpt. The laces on her boots and the buckles on her belt are all pronounced, and you get the little wrinkles on her tank top. She also has her ankh pendant hanging around from her neck on a string… OMG, that’s mixed media folks!!! Still, there’s nothing here you wouldn’t see done in a similar fashion on a well executed 6-inch action figure.

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Death’s head is looking slightly downward and this is really the only thing that irks me about the pose because it kind of hides her face. The neck is ball jointed, but there’s no room for her to look up, only side to side. The ability to swivel the head is certainly more useful than the rest of the articulation, but I really would have preferred an option to have her looking forward and not perpetually downward. My guess is the designers wanted to make her look coy, and if you turn her head all the way to one side, it kind of works ok. The sculpting on the head is easily the best part of the statue, as it captures the character quite well and I particularly like that the hair is sculpted as a separate piece.

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The paintwork has its ups and downs. The paint on the face is excellent. Her eyes and lips are perfect, and the grey wash on her hair is used sparingly and to good effect. The quality of the paint breaks down a bit between her tank top and her armpits. There’s definitely some slop going on there. There are also a few stray marks along the back of her pants. The lace holes on her boots are all painted silver, as are the studs and buckles on her belts.

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Death comes separate from her base, with peg holes in her feet to secure her to it. Her feet aren’t sculpted to make her boots flush with the base, so I don’t really get the feeling that she’s naturally standing on it. Nevertheless, the skull base is a really great looking piece. There’s not a lot of paintwork, but the sculpt speaks for itself, and it does have a cool aged patina. Unfortunately, it’s hollow, so it adds to the lightweight feel of the statue.

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If you collect statues, I’d caution you that Death probably isn’t going to meet your expectations. The lack of heft alone is likely to disappoint. On the other hand, if you just happen to be a Sandman fan and you’re looking for a good representation of Death to display on your shelf, this statue certainly gets the job done. It’s a competent piece, although it still feels like it started life as an action figure. As far as value goes, this statue originally retailed for $30 (closer to $40 if you ordered it off Matty and had it shipped). Now, normally that’s pretty cheap for a collectible statue, but for a plastic statue made by a mass market retailer like Mattel?  Eh, maybe not so much. In hand, however, the elaborate presentation of the packaging helps bolster the value quite a bit, and I can honestly tell you that I’ve seen far more expensive statues turn out a lot worse than this one. Ultimately, I’m glad I picked her up. She’ll look nice on my Bishoujo shelf, although more than likely she’ll wind up going back in her box for now, as I definitely want to keep the whole presentation intact.

Tomorrow I’ll turn my gaze back to the last MOTUC figure that I picked up from Matty’s sale… It’s Vikor!

Dec 18 2012

Masters of the Universe Classics: Grizzlor by Mattel

Things got a little-long winded yesterday, so today I’m checking out one of the figures that I’m not likely to gas on about nearly so much. He’s Grizzlor, and I’ll be honest, the only reason I bought him was because I was already placing an order, he was cheap, and I wanted at least one more figure for my Horde shelf that wasn’t Leech. I can’t stand Leech. Seriously, don’t get me started on Leech. My fondness for Grizzlor doesn’t stretch much further back than his appearances on Robot Chicken, but hey, another Horde guy for $15… how could I go wrong?

It’s the MOTUC packaging we’ve seen a bunch of times here on FigureFan. I didn’t comment much on the deco yesterday, so let me just point out how awesome it still looks. I’m glad Matty hasn’t monkeyed with the design over the last couple of years, because they came up with a winner right out of the gate. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, right? Granted, my MOTUC packages wind up shredded and in the garbage, but if ever there was a line of figures that I wouldn’t mind hanging on my wall mint-on-card, this would certainly be one of them.


Of course, Grizzlor’s gimmick is that he’s a hairy bastard and Mattel went all out with giving him real hair, just like the vintage toy. It was a bold move in an Adult Collector line, but if you ask me it was the only way they could go. How’d it turn out? Well… let’s take a look.

My first impression when looking at Grizzlor is… Norfin Troll. Sorry, Mattel, but I can’t get that image out of my mind. It’s like I should be rubbing his head for luck or something. His fur is just all over the place and at first it looks kind of awkward and funny, but then something tells me Grizzlor isn’t the kind of dude who would be combing himself out every day. His hair should be all over the place like a bad case of perpetual bed head. I think the weirdest thing about the figure is the blending of real hair and the sculpted hair on his arms and legs. The two don’t necessarily mesh all that well, but I’m trying not to be too critical here, because in the end, I think Grizzlor’s real hair works pretty well.

The face sculpt is classic. It’s probably not one of this line’s better sculpts, but the combination of fangs, red and yellow eyes, and his little smooshed ape nose all conspire to give Grizzlor a ton of personality. It’s kind of hard to figure out whether Grizzlor’s face is scary or cute, but I can’t deny that it is distinctive.

Grizzlor comes wearing his Horde harness with the huge sculpted Horde crest on the front and a backpack that can hold his impressive arsenal of weaponry, but we’ll get to that in a bit. He also comes with a sculpted primitive looking loin cloth, which I believe is intended to be closer to his 200x version. I don’t think I’ve ever seen 200x Grizzlor, so I’m taking a friend’s word on that. I think these accessories are intended to be worn in an “either-or” configuration, but I don’t think he looks at all bad when wearing both. And there’s no way I’m going to display him without that great backpack to hold all his killing gear. In the end, though, I think I’ll leave the loincloth piece off.


As far as articulation goes, Grizzlor doesn’t sacrifice any poseability in favor of his furry coat. You still get ball joints in the neck and shoulders; the arms are hinged at the elbows and have swivels in the biceps and wrists. His legs are ball jointed and have swivels at the hips, hinges in the knees and ankles, and rockers in the ankles. I can’t be certain, but it feels like he’s still got the ab crunch going on in there too, and he can still swivel at the waist as well.

One wouldn’t think that a giant, hairy beast would need a lot of weapons to go rampaging; nevertheless, Grizzlor packs himself out like he’s going to war. He comes with a long sword and a smaller chopping sword, both with matching hilts. He also comes with a battle axe and a Horde crossbow. And as mentioned above, all of it fits onto his backpack. God, I love that!

As it turns out, I dig Grizzlor a lot, although I think he’s one of those figures that you kind of have to want to like him going in. At the original $28-30 with shipping, I’m not sure I would have been quite so happy, but at the $18-20 I got him for, he’s a lot more appetizing. Heck, even a good chunk of his cost can be defrayed by his awesome collection of weapons. Look, Grizzlor is a total goof and he’s hard to take seriously with all that hair all over the place, but I’m glad Mattel went the way they did with him, because he does pay homage to the original vintage figure quite nicely. To make Grizzlor with no hair would have been akin to making Moss-Man without the flocking. It just wouldn’t have worked at all. I basically bought him to add another Horde member to my ranks, and he’ll certainly look nice displayed beside my Hordak.

Dec 17 2012

Masters of the Universe Classics: Draego-Man by Mattel

2012 was the year I weaned myself off Masters of the Universe Classics. I picked up the Wind Raider and Sorceress, and I kept it in mind that if Ram-Man were obtainable for a reasonable price, I would buy him too. But for all intents and purposes, I have retired my collecting of this line. It was a great line, but I was always only in it for the main characters. Along the way, I picked up a few back-benchers just because they turned out exceptionally well, but I got out of it what I wanted to, it was time to stop, and I did really well in making good on that commitment to myself. Then Matty’s Cyber Monday Sale happened and I got a second chance at some figures that piqued my interest. I still resisted. Then Matty started slashing prices on the figures and shipping and I decided, “Oh what the hell, a couple more for old time sake!”

Draego-Man is one of those “fake” MOTU figures, created specifically for the 30th Anniversary. Yes, Mattel’s way of celebrating the 30thAnniversary of He-Man was to have a bunch of people create figures of characters that never existed before as a misguided nod back to the 1986 contest that let kids design their own character. The winner of the ’86 contest was supposed to get their character made into a figure, but it never happened until now when Matty finally made Fearless Photog as part of this celebration. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think that finally creating that figure as part of the 30th Anniversary was a pretty cool move on Mattel’s part, as this release was tied to a piece of the franchise’s history. However, when Mattel moved beyond that gesture, that’s where I think they missed the entire point.

You see, obviously, Mattel can’t tell the difference between kids entering a contest and having industry insiders sculpt bullshit figures and retcon them into the MOTU legacy. Not only is this one of the worst ideas on how to celebrate a milestone anniversary of the franchise, but it was the ultimate display of vanity and hubris, and a blatant excuse to let the brand manager get his own figure produced. Looking beyond the questionable motives, these “30th Anniversary Figures” ranged from the laughably bad (Mighty Spector and Sir Laserlot) to today’s excellent Draego-Man. But then, Draego-Man was designed by The Four Horseman, so there’s no surprise he turned out great.  Ok, enough editorializing, let’s look at the figure.


There’s the MOTUC packaging that we all know and love. The last time I featured it was way back in March when I looked at the Sorceress. It hasn’t changed much, although this one has a little explosion on the bottom insert pointing out that this figure was “Created by The Four Horsemen.” Neat! Draego-Man is a beast of a figure (quite literally!) and they were just barely able to stuff him into a standard sized bubble. Seriously, look inside that package and you’ll see that even with his tail and wings detached and his head turned to the side, there’s barely any room for anything else inside that cramped bubble compartment. The back of the card features some shots of other figures. Holy crap, I actually have all of them except Webstor! You also get a biography retconning Draego-Man into the MOTU continuity and pointing out that he is most decidedly evil, although he seems to waffle on who’s side he’s really on. Let’s bust this guy open and check him out!


Out of the package, the first thing you need to do is attach Draego-Man’s wings and his tail and then he’s all set to go. Damn, that is a beauty of a figure. He’s teaming with brand new sculpting, which meshes perfectly with the recycled MOTUC parts. The traditional MOTU loincloth is pretty obvious, the tail should look familiar, and I think the head sculpt has a hint of Filmation look to it, but otherwise, Draego-Man is definitely all his own figure, and he’s a majestic one at that.

Getting back to the head sculpt, it’s easily one of my favorite things about the figure. He’s got an elegant triangular noggin that starts at the back of his ebony horns and runs down to a point at the tip of his snout. Every little scale is sculpted on, along with little dragon bumps on his nose and chin. His staggered teeth protrude haphazardly from his closed mouth, reminiscent of an alligator. He has a really cool duality to his expression. Point his nose down and the shadows fall over his eyes and he looks like a vicious bastard. Point his nose up and he has more of a noble visage. Either way, T4H did a marvelous job with Draego’s head.

The body of the figure is equally impressive, with heavy segmented rings on his arms and legs and some really cool sculpted armor. The crest on his chestplate is a dragon’s face set atop the crossbones that are reminiscent of Skeletor’s insignia. His leg armor even has little sculpted fasteners for where they would strap around his legs. But the wings are my favorite thing about Draego’s body. They’re quintessential dragon wings, sculpted with a rough, leathery pattern and culminating in two little ebony claws at the tops. The wings are partially unfurled so you can get a pretty good idea of how menacing they are, without him taking up too much space on your display shelf.

 

The coloring on Draego-Man is brilliant. The deep red of his skin is coupled with a bright orange used for his undercarriage and the insides of his wings. On the body itself, you can really only see the orange  under his neck and under his tail, but I presume it’s meant to run down his chest in typical dragon fashion. The red contrasts nicely with the dark blue and purple of his armor and I’m particularly fond of the metallic paint used for the collar of his breastplate and his bracers. Beautiful!

Possibly Draego-Man’s only drawback is that he’s light in the accessories department. Matty had to omit his whip in order to keep the cost down and so all he comes with is his flaming sword. Now the sword is certainly a beautiful piece all on its own. I’m not usually a big fan of plastic sculpted flame motifs, as they don’t often look terribly convincing, but this one pulls it off really well. As for only coming with one accessory, with the additional wings and the amount of unique sculpting here, I can certainly forgive him that.

If you’re familiar with the MOTUC line, than you should know what to expect from Draego’s articulation. He has a ball jointed neck; his arms feature ball joints in the shoulders, swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinges in the elbows. His legs are ball jointed and swivel at the hips, feature hinges in the knees and ankles, and he has rocker joints in the ankles. The only thing really new here are his wings, which rotate and feature hinges.

Draego-Man was the only figure of the bullshit 30th Anniversary releases that tempted me when he was first offered. He’s not only beautifully designed and sculpted, but he’s so good he practically transcends the line and works as his own stand-alone figure. It’s crazy to think that while Matty was piecing out original tooling to see what real MOTU characters they can afford to make, T4H were allowed to go fucking nuts on this guy. Nevertheless, I’m glad they did, because in terms of sculpt, design, and coloring, I honestly think Draego-Man is easily the most impressive figure to come out of the line. That’s saying an awful lot when you consider that a) I have no nostalgic connection to this character, and b) most figures in the line are excellent, so he has some stiff competition. Nonetheless, I adore everything about this guy and I’m so very happy I was able to double back and pick him up. The fact that he was on sale was just icing on the cake.

Dec 16 2012

Matty Collector Cyber Monday Week:

I’ve got to hand it to Matty Collector. After tons of Black Friday Week come-ons from a lot of e-tailers, in the end there wasn’t much out there to really tempt me into reaching for my wallet this year. Sure, I grabbed some Blu-Rays from Amazon, but it wasn’t until Matty’s Cyber Monday Sale that I really found some decent deals. Granted, a lot of that has to do with Matty’s uncanny ability to “find” tons of products that they were supposedly sold out of. They paraded out a multitude of MOTUC figures, all the Voltron lions, and a smattering of other odds and ends. And to add insult to injury they put a lot of stuff up there at full price, allowing plenty of early adopters to buy, before slashing prices, offering deep shipping discounts and engaging in other shenanigans.

Anyway, they got me to bite on a few things, and so that’s what next week will be all about, starting tomorrow with Draego-Man.

By figurefanzero
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Dec 15 2012

Star Wars: Luke’s Landspeeder (#8092) by Lego

 

I started this week with a Star Wars Lego set, so let’s end it with one too. Yesterday, I needed to pick up a pound of coffee and while the Lego aisle is on the exact opposite end of the store from the coffee aisle, I still found myself over there picking up today’s item. This set was the other one I was considering last weekend when I bought the Desert Skiff. I knew I’d be back for it sooner or later, and it turned out to be sooner.


The box calls this a ”special edition” and I’m not sure what that means. A number of different retailers sell it online, but Walmart is the only store I’ve ever actually seen it in.  I’m sure someone more enlightened in the way of Lego can clear this up for me. The box is satisfyingly large for the size assortment and features some very enticing photos of the finished products. Inside you get an instruction booklet, two curious bendy tubes, and three unnumbered baggies. All told, you get 163 pieces, which build the Landspeeder vehicle, four minifigs and a little sentry droid. To the Minifigs!

Starting off, you get Luke Skywalker and Obi-Wan Kenobi. Both are solid minifigs, but nothing extraordinary. The printing on their torsos does a good job reproducing their Tattooine clothing, although I think Obi-Wan could have used a cape. They each only have one printed face, and while Obi-Wan’s hair piece looks fine, Luke’s seems a little off to me. I know he had long hair, but this piece looks more like a chick’s hair. Both minifigs come with the same lightsaber and I’m cool with that. You can never have enough lightsabers.

Next up, you have the Sandtrooper and his sentry droid. The Sandtrooper is a regular Stormtrooper with extra bits to make up his backpack and pauldron. I understand some people have taken issue with him not being more unique, but I like the fact that you can turn him into a regular Stormtrooper if you want, so I’m very happy with him. The helmet sculpt is excellent, the printing on the torso is great, It could have used some printed detail on the legs, but he still looks good without it. There’s no Clone head under the helmet, just a blank, black head to hold it on. The sentry droid isn’t really a minifig, as he’s built with just regular pieces and he comes with some clear pieces to make a “levitating” stand. He’s ok, but nothing special.

Last up are the droids: R2-D2 and C-3PO. 3PO is ok, although the matte gold plastic they used for him looks kind of cheap. R2, on the other hand, well I’m really on the fence over him. The lack of printing on his back pisses me off quite a bit, and I don’t think it would have killed Lego to toss in a third leg. I also wish they had constructed him so that his dome would rotate. The droids are passable, but considering how many times Lego could repaint and reuse an Astromech and Protocol Droid, it seems like they could have put a little more effort into this pair.

The Landspeeder itself was a fun and somewhat surprising build. There’s a lot about it that didn’t go the way I thought it would, and that made it interesting. The color pallet on the vehicle seems a bit off, as I think the chassis should have been darker, but the end result still gives it a cool animated vibe. One of my favorite things about the build was the clever use of the tubes to make up the recessed bumper under the hood. I had no idea what those were going to be used for and when I got to that point in the build, I didn’t think it was going to work all that well, but it did and it looks very cool and unique.


I’m not terribly keen on the engines. While it’s cool that Lego designed one to look like it was ripped apart by the Sandpeople, the other two should have had proper tan or brown casings. As it is, they all look like they’ve been taken apart and exposed. Even the one that’s ripped apart has a couple of pieces on the front that doesn’t match the other two. They don’t totally kill the vehicle for me, but I think these parts could have been much better executed.


The build allows for the middle engine to be removed and it reveals a little storage compartment. If you disassemble the lightsabers you can store them both in there. It’ll also fit some guns, other accessories, or a sack lunch if you want to pack for your Tattooine day trips.

At $24.99, I’m pretty happy with this set. The minifigs are all solid, if not spectacular, efforts and certainly help give a new Star Wars Lego collector like me a number of core characters. The Landspeeder is nice, but I think Lego might have taken a few too many liberties with the design. It’s a good placeholder, but I can’t see this being a definitive Lego treatment of the iconic vehicle. Still, it’s a huge improvement over the last Lego Landspeeder, and I’ll be interested to see how much the design improves when they decide to revisit it again in the years ahead.

And that’s this week in the bag. I’m taking tomorrow off to get caught up on some stuff around the house because work and the holidays are taking turns kicking my ass. So, no feature tomorrow, but I will drop in to quickly set up next week.

Dec 14 2012

Transformers Cybertron: Unicron by Hasbro

We’re dipping our toes back into the Transformers pool today to look at a figure that is not from my new receivings pile, but from out of a tote in my closet. Yesterday, I was chatting with one of my fellow toy collector friends and we were talking about Gaia Unicron, when the subject branched out to Unicron in general. I lamented about how I sold my Armada and Energon Unicrons and that I never got to pick up the Amazon exclusive reissue. Well, eventually today’s figure came up and I commented that I picked him up back in the day, but was never motivated enough to open him because I didn’t see the merit of having a Deluxe Class Unicron. I was immediately assailed by a treatise on how cool a figure he is, which ended in with the simple directive, “Open that shit up!” So I did.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen the Cybertron packaging and overall I think it was pretty cool and the design holds up quite well. Unfortunately, I was a little drunk when challenged to open up Unicron and I dove right in before taking any in-packaged shots. I’d steal someone else’s picture, but y’all are more than capable of doing that yourselves via the googles. I was still quite the completest back in the days of the Unicron Trilogy toys and that meant even though this version of Unicron confused the hell out of me, I still bought it. Despite the fact that I owned all the DVD’s, there wasn’t enough alcohol in the world to get me through watching the Unicron Trilogy cartoons, so I just wrote this figure off as some point of the continuity that I wasn’t hip to. In any event, Unicron comes carded in his Cybertonian mode, which is most decidedly not a giant planet-gobbling moon. And that seems wrong to me on every level.


Out of the package, and we see that Unicron is a small Cybertonian tank. My instincts tell me to drop it on the floor and back away in horror, but truth be told, I’m really intrigued by the creativity of this design. Like all the toys from the Cybertron line, Unicron is loaded with awesome sculpted detail right down to the tiny panel lines and circuitry patterns on his armor. Besides looking rather badass, I can’t deny that if Unicron were a Cybertonian tank, this is exactly what he would look like. He has the same orange coloring and his rounded chassis is certainly reminiscent of the hemispheres of his planetary form. He’s still got the skeletal-like spines coming off of his sides, a pair of pincers on the front, and even a jagged opening hatch that looks similar to his planetary mode’s mouth. Part of me wants to see this mode in a different paint job, so I could be less biased, but then there is genuinely so much of Unicron in the design, I don’t think it would work as a different character. You win, Cybertron Unicron alt mode… well played.

Tank Unicron’s main armament is his firing missile cannon, which can be raised and lowered and moves ever so slightly from side to side. He also sports a nice little ball jointed gun. However, being a Cybertron toy, Unicron also comes with his own Cyber Key, which activates his hidden power up weapon. I rarely had much use for the Cyber Key features, but Unicron’s is especially cool because it opens the mouth hatch and reveals a three-barreled assault cannon. Yep… cool!

Transforming Unicron to his robot mode isn’t too bad, but there are a lot of ball joints supporting plates that have a habit of popping off. I also quickly learned to do myself a favor and remove all of the spines before even attempting to convert him. But that’s nothing compared to the task of changing him back into his tank mode. Study the configuration under the vehicle mode carefully, because if you don’t know what you’re doing transforming him is an exercise in tears and recriminations that will likely haunt your dreams for many nights to come.


In robot mode, Unicron looks all kinds of awesome. Just like his tank mode, there are all plenty of nods to the Unicron design that we all know and love. The shoulder designs are lifted directly from Armada Unicron, as are his pointy feet. But the dead giveaway is his head sculpt, which is pretty close to the horned planet gobbler of old, only with a more rictus grin. His missile cannon is placed on his right shoulder, which makes it still perfectly functional as a weapon in robot mode. The hidden Cyber Key-activated hatch makes up his chest, also allowing that weapon to be accessible while in robot mode. You can clip his spines back onto his leg armor to further the classical Unicron look, but they also make really cool weapons when placed into his hands.

The downside of Unicron’s robot mode is the ball joints in his hips and the hinges in his legs have difficulty supporting his upper bulk. He’s prone to fall backwards and those giant wheels on his backpack don’t help things any either. Another issue is while the armor plates on his legs do tab into place, the tabs don’t hold and the armor tends to fall away from his legs when I’m playing around with him, standing him, looking at him, or sneezing while two rooms away.


In the end, I’ve got to confess that this is a very cool figure. The tank and robot modes are both beautiful and very reminiscent of Unicron’s more familiar appearance. The Cybertron toys were always great for their detailed sculpts and wildly imaginative designs, and Unicron here is a perfect example of that. The fiddly nature of the transformation definitely requires patience, and I can’t help but wonder how this figure would have turned out if he were a Voyager or an Ultra Class. I think the transformation would have worked better, but more importantly it would have been easier for me get behind this figure as Unicron if he were bigger. He’s so detailed and complex that I think the mold would have worked fine in the larger scale without much tweaking and I rather think the end result would have been glorious.

Cybertron Unicron can still be had on the secondary market for cheap if you know where to hunt for him. On the other hand, if you want to get fancy, the mold was reissued by Takara in Japan earlier this year as Ark Unicron. The Takara reissues usually feature better paintjobs, but that comes with a price. While the Cybertron version shouldn’t set you back for more than $15 on Ebay, the Takara reissue will be closer to $45 at specialty e-tailers. That’s a lot of energon to fork over for a Deluxe, even if it is Unicron.

Dec 13 2012

Star Trek: “1701 Collector Series” Boxed Set by Playmates

Yes, there are still a ton of Playmates Trek figures sitting on my receivings pile, so I thought I’d knock out the last of the boxed sets before tackling some of the single carded figures. This time, we have a curious conglomeration of three figures in one box, related only because they were previously released in ridiculously low limitations of only 1,701 pieces each. Get it? 1701?? Yes, it’s a clever little production joke, unless you were one of the collectors hoping to buy one of these figures only to discover that they were understandably impossible to find. Well, eventually Playmates submitted to reason and we got all three figures in one convenient and easy to find boxed set.

Playmates’ Star Trek packaging tends to be hit or miss, but I think this box is an overall hit. It’s a tastefully executed window box with the old movie style logo, and that logo happens to be my favorite. The front of the package displays all three figures in a tray with their gear arranged around them. Each set is individually numbered, and look, I got set #1779. How friggin ironic is that? I could never find these figures on the pegs when I wanted them, but when I buy the reissued set, I miss the original production run by only 78 pieces!!!

The back of the package shows each figure displayed with one of their accessories. If you look closely, you can see that Lt. Yar is about to shoot herself with her own phaser. Each figure has their own little file card and pictures indicating what each of their accessories are, because quite frankly, with Playmates it’s sometimes hard to tell.

Let’s start with Captain Picard as featured in the Season Six episode “Tapestries.” The story saw Picard plunged back into his own past by “Q” so that he could relive a slice of his Starfleet Academy days. This is the figure I wanted the most out of the set, not only because “Tapestries” is an excellent episode, but because I adore the movie-style Starfleet Uniform so much. It was a really easy figure for Playmates to churn out as it’s just a kitbash of Picard’s head on the Generations Kirk body. As a result, the figure is technically not screen accurate. Besides being way too chunky to be Picard, he’s depicted with the white collar from the feature films that wasn’t worn under the tunic in “Tapestries.” Personally, I’m happy for the inaccuracy, since I thought the Starfleet tunic looked ridiculous without the collar under it.

Playmates slashed way back on the articulation for the Generations line of figures, so Picard here suffers only the five basic points. You get swivel cuts in the neck, shoulders and hips. That’s it.

Picard comes with an interesting mix of blue recreational Starfleet accessories, which include a drinking glass, a three-dimensional chess board, a dom-jot stick, and a Starfleet duffel bag. I don’t usually get all pissy about Playmates’ accessories because I just assume they’ll be crap, but I was really looking forward to having a halfway decent 3D chess board for my Trek figures. Too bad this thing is all warped (no pun intended!) and useless right out of the box. Picard also comes with a generic Starfleet insignia figure stand.

Next up is Lt. Tasha Yar from the Season Three episode,“Yesterday’s Enterprise” not to be confused with the very common Season Seven single-carded release of Lt. Yar in her Season One uniform. Confused? The Season Seven series finale “All Good Things…” involved flashbacks to events during the very first episode “Encounter at Farpoint” in which Yar was still alive and wearing her Season One uniform. As the good Doctor would say, it’s all timey-wimey kind of stuff. The two figures are practically identical, with the only real differences being this one having a remolded high collar and no tan piping on the pant cuffs. She’s essentially wearing the updated Starfleet uniform design she would have worn if she hadn’t gotten herself killed by the dreaded Tar Monster of Vagra II. It’s a cool figure to have if you want to pretend that Denise Crosby never got too big for her britches and quit the show only to come crawling back later as her own half-Romulan daughter.

Lt. Yar makes out much better than Picard in the articulation department. She has a swivel cut in her neck, her arms rotate at the shoulders, have swivel cuts in the biceps and hinges in the elbows. Her legs rotate at the hips and are hinged at the knees. She can also swivel at the waist. Unfortunately, both of the bicep swivels on my Yar figure are stuck. Sometimes you need to give them a little force, but too much will twist the arms right off at the joint, and that’s what I’m afraid will happen to Yar’s arms if I use any more force.

Yar comes with a mix of new and old Starfleet gear, all cast in a blue-green plastic. You get old movie style hand phaser and tricorder, a pair of isolinear chips, and a Next Generation era hand phaser. You also get a generic figure stand.

And that brings us to Lt. Reginald Barclay as featured in his series-hopping appearance in Star Trek Voyager. The episode was entitled “Projections” and like a lot of Voyager it was a bullshit misdirection of a story that made you long for a time when Star Trek was about exploration, diplomacy, and outer space brinkmanship, as opposed to facing fabricated dilemmas brought about by computer malfunctions. There was nothing clever or entertaining about it, other than the fact that Voyager sucked so much it needed to bring in a cameo by a third-rate character like Barclay to prop it up after less than twenty episodes. What makes it even sadder is that it wasn’t even Barclay, but rather just a fake out like everything else in the episode. Yes, this is a figure based on fake Barclay.

The Barclay figure is a mixed bag. I love Dwight Schultz as much as the next guy, but this figure’s Jiffy Pop head makes it look like it’s based on Schultz playing Hector Hammond in a Starfleet Uniform. And while on paper that sounds kind of awesome, it doesn’t work so well for the figure. But Playmates Trek figures always were stylized portraits of the characters, so I’m probably being a little too hard on Reg here. My figure does, however, have a pretty unfortunate paint gash on his right shoulder. Barclay is based on Playmates’ Voyager body, which represented the pinnacle of articulation in the Trek line. That means that he has all the same articulation as Lt. Yar, and most other Next Gen figures, only with additional swivel cuts in the thighs.

Set phasers to sarcasm, “Hurray for purple Starfleet gear!” Yes, Barclay comes with an array of accessories all cast in glaringly inappropriate purple plastic. You get a computer terminal, a PADD, a medical tricorder and a phaser. You also get a figure stand based off of the Voyager style comm badge.

There’s no doubt about this set being geared toward the real collectors out there. I wouldn’t consider any of these “must own” figures for anyone other than the real completists or Trek-obsessed nut jobs like myself. But even I would never have shelled out collector prices for any of these figures back when they were actually rare. But now, thanks to the miracle of reissues, what were once individually very expensive figures set me back a mere ten bucks for all three. It’s a fine example of the fact that a lot of times figures are prohibitively expensive just because they’re rare and not because they’re anything special. “Tapestries” Picard is certainly the most interesting figure to me. He’s a cool one-off and I wish head swaps were easier on these figures as I’d like to take Playmates’ Cadet Picard’s head and put him on this body. Yar is an interesting enough curiosity, but I was perfectly content with my Season Seven/Season One version. As for Barclay… well, he’s Barclay. I didn’t already own a figure of the character, but I’d much rather have him in his regular Next Gen Starfleet uniform as opposed to his one-off fake appearance in a shitty Voyager episode. But, at least he’s another Starfleet Officer to add to my Voyager shelf. In the end, I bought this set mostly as an inexpensive curiosity, and I’ll likely keep these figures boxed, rather than integrate them with the rest of my Playmates collection.

Dec 12 2012

Marvel: Bishoujo X-23 Statue by Kotobukiya

Today’s item was one of those rare instances where I heard that Koto was doing the statue before I actually saw the prototype. My first thoughts were that they overreached with this one. There are plenty of Marvel ladies that are well suited to this line, but Laura Kinney’s history features some hardcore shit and her character is built on a foundation of pain, suffering, and tragedy. Could Koto and Shunya Yamashita successfully pull this one off and give X-23 the cutesy bishoujo makeover? Let’s find out…

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If you own any of these Koto statues, then you know what to expect from the packaging. X-23 comes in a white window box adorned only with some examples of the original character art and some shots of the statue on the back. The box is shorter than many of these usual packages to conform to the statue’s crouching posture. You can get a pretty good look at the goods through the window, but as always, parts of the statue are wrapped in protective plastic and nestled between two clear plastic trays, so you can’t really get the full experience until you remove her from the box.

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Before getting to the statue, here’s a word of warning: X-23’s claws are pegged into sockets and they can fall out, probably so that if they are stressed they will detach rather than break. Two of my statue’s claws fell off while taking her out of the package. I didn’t realize it and thought I was dealing with a QC issue of missing claws. Fortunately, a little search of the carpet turned them up before FigureFeline could snatch them and carry them off to his bottomless lair of plunder behind the sofa. Apart from the removable claws, the only other thing you need to do is plug the statue into the base. Doing so required me to stretch out her legs a bit so that each of her feet wound up in the appropriate place on the stand. It was a little more effort than is usually required with these statues, but all worked out fine in the end.

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As mentioned, X-23 is posed down on one knee. She’s the same scale as any of the other recent statues in this line and she has a satisfying heft to her, but her posture makes the statue a lot shorter than most.  I think it’s a great pose for the character as it manages to convey a little poise and action at the same time. She has all four of her knuckle claws extended. Her left claws are touching the ground, while her right hand is cocked at the elbow and ready to strike. Her right foot has its claw extending from her boot. She looks like she might be recovering from a strike and getting ready to pounce back into action again.

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Moving on to the details… let’s start with the head. X-23 is an interesting statue because rather than going for overall cheesecake, most of the cutesy element is confined from her neck up. I think the sculptor did as good a job as possible melding the spirit of the Bishoujo line with X-23’s character, which in itself was no easy task. That having been said, something was definitely lost between the original artwork and the final sculpted effort.  For starters, the artwork featured eyes with more personality and character, whereas the final product’s eyes have more of a generic anime look. The artwork also featured an interesting little smirk on her lips and the final went with more of a cutesy little smile. Ultimately, I see more of X-23’s attitude in Shunya Yamashita’s art than I do in the statue; nonetheless what’s here is still plenty good. X-23’s hair is sculpted in a nice, dynamic wind-blown fashion and features that cool translucent effect at the edges.

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From the neck down, it’s hard to argue with anything this statue offers. X-23 is wearing skin-tight black pants, high, chunky boots, and a black sports bra-looking affair. The black finish on her clothes varies from matte on her boots and kneepads to high gloss for her top, pants, and sleeves, and all of it contrasts beautifully with her light skin tone. She has excellent sculpted detail in her abs, and I love the way her shoulders hunch up suggestively. Other great little touches include the silver skull emblems and individual buckles, along with the intricate treads on her boots, the medallion hanging from her choker, and her gilt chain belt.

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X-23’s base isn’t one of the more intricate designs we’ve seen in the line. It’s a simple grey circle designed to look and feel like concrete. It’s a wonderfully rough and realistic texture that balances out the soft leather and skin of the figure itself.

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While it may sound like I had issues with this statue, I still think X-23 is another solid effort by Koto and I’m very satisfied to have her in my collection. Keep in mind, I’m not a hardcore fan of the character, but rather a casual fan by way of my love of all things X-Men. My guess is that this statue will be better received by Bishoujo collectors rather than diehard fans of the character, finding themselves considering a place for it in their X-23 collection. But then I could be completely off base on that. She’s been available for a little while now, and set me back about $50 shipped. It wouldn’t feel like a Bishoujo feature without me mentioning how I think these are some of the best valued statues on the market… and hey, I just did!

Dec 11 2012

Transformers Fall of Cybertron: Blast Off by Hasbro

Yesterday’s Lego set was a brand new purchase, so it didn’t help me weed out the receivings pile that has been growing ever larger over the last couple of weeks. In an effort to start chipping away at that, we’re going to delve into some Transformers. Later in the week I’m going to check out an older one from the Cybertron line, but today’s feature is one that should be showing up on the pegs by now. It’s another Combaticon from the Fall of Cyberton game. A game, I might add, which I still haven’t finished because my Xbox is still lying in pieces on a desk in my spare room.


Ah, the new Generations packaging. I never tire of admiring its beauty. But we’ve looked at it more than a few times now, so I’ll try not to dwell on it. Blast Off comes carded in his robot form and the package points out in various ways that he is but one component in your quest to… BUILD GIANT ROBOT!!! Delightful! You get a pretty cool little bio on the back along with the welcome return of Tech Specs. As usual, I’m going to start with Blast Off’s alt mode.

Awww, yeah. Now that’s a cool alt mode! Blast Off pays homage to his G1 roots with a purple space shuttle as his vehicle mode. Of course, he’s a Cybertronian shuttle. But, “FigureFan, that makes no sense. Blast Off was created on Earth by Starscream so he shouldn’t even have a Cybertronian mode.” Well, my friend… Firstly, Blast Off was given a new body on Earth, but his Spark (or whatever they called it in G1) was stolen from Cybertron to give him that new body. Obviously he had another body before his Spark was imprisoned on Cybertron, so maybe this is his original body. Secondly, Blast Off’s new body was a derelict WWII fighter that miraculously turned into a space shuttle, so this is all bullshit anyway. May I proceed?

I absolutely love this shuttle design. It has the vague profile of an Earth-type Space Shuttle, but it’s beefier and obviously built for combat. The detailing in the silver engines is really striking for a Deluxe Class figure and makes this thing looks like it’s ridiculously overpowered. I’d like to imagine it leaves a trail of thick, black exhaust fumes wherever it goes. Everything about Blast Off’s hull looks jagged, like he was made to inflict pain and destruction.

The coloring is almost perfect. The traditional Decepticon purple looks great with the black accents and the silver-grey of the exposed engine. I’m not terribly keen on the fluorescent yellow. It’s bright and gaudy and while I think it would have worked ok for just the window area, I don’t like it at all on the weapons. If Hasbro had just toned down the yellow a bit, I would have had zero complaints.

Blast Off has a pair of detachable weapons that are very reminiscent to the weapons of the G1 toy. You can clip them onto his wings in two different configurations. One way gives him extra tail fins on his wings, the other way extends his wing tips just a bit. Either way you clip them on, they provide him with some serious wing-mounted cannons.


Transforming Blast Off is fairly simple and when you’re done you one very cool looking Decepticon warrior. He has good proportions and, like his shuttle mode, he’s brimming with sculpted detail. He doesn’t really have any feet, and while he stands just fine, I think some actual feet would have complemented his aesthetics quite a bit. I do love the way his giant engines form his shoulder armor, they give him a powerful, linebacker kind of look. Or maybe he’s cosplaying World of Warcraft. The head sculpt includes two beady yellow eyes and a mouth plate. I can’t say as I remember his G1 headsculpt all that well, so I won’t comment on the homage. You have a few options on what to do with his wing cannons. He can hold them like guns, or you could clip them onto his arms two different ways.


So where’s the problem? The problem is with articulation and the design of Blast Off’s arms and shoulders. While the shoulders do peg in during transformation, they still float around on a ball joint. When you articulate the arms at the shoulder, the entire shoulder plate has to move with it and I can’t help think how much better Blast Off would have been if the shoulders remained static while the arm moved. It also inhibits the arm’s articulation a lot and will pop out if you try to over articulate it in the slightest. The legs feature ball joints at the hips, swivels in the thighs, and hinges in the ankles, which is all very good in theory, and yet the legs still feel kind of stiff. I think it’s because there are no feet.


Blast Off and Onslaught really have a lot in common. Both are amazing looking figures, but have some serious design flaws in their arms. And like Onslaught, I’m going to give Blast Off a pass despite his design shortcomings. His shuttle mode is one of my favorite Transformers alt modes in a long while and his robot mode is no slouch either. The toy is packed with great coloring and superbly sculpted detail, making him feel like Hasbro actually put about fifteen bucks worth of love into this figure. Alas, the design of the shoulders and the overall articulation make him not all that much fun to play with in robot mode. I’m sure a lot of this has to do with having that third alt mode (i.e. Bruticus’ right arm), but it definitely detracts from him as a stand-alone figure. Still, I have no regrets having picked him up.

Dec 10 2012

Star Wars: Desert Skiff (#9496) by Lego

I’ve been hankering to build a new Lego set for a while now and while I tell myself I went down to the Wally World to get some provisions for the week, it was really to scope out the Lego aisle and see if I could get into any trouble. Normally, getting Lego sets this time of year can be slim pickings, but they had all the new Hobbit sets and some other odds and ends. The Lord of the Rings “Mines of Moiria” set was really tempting, but I really didn’t want to drop a lot of money, as besides the usual Holiday spending, I have a number of pre-orders scheduled to hit my bank account any week now. In the end, I did something I swore I’d never do… I got a Star Wars Lego set. Star Wars was the only line with some good looking low-to-medium sized sets on the shelf, and since I’ve already expressed my love for the Tattooine Desert Skiff a little while back, it should be no surprise that was the set I ended up with.


There’s the box. It’s got a landscape orientation to it with a shot of the completed set on the front and back and various panels to show the goodies that are included. It’s also got Darth Maul’s ugly mug on the right corner. Are we back to putting his face on everything again just because he came back for Clone Wars? That’s apparently the case, because they’ve even got his face on every other page of the instruction book. Blah! Inside the box you get the usual instruction booklet, three loose long bricks, and three numbered baggies containing a total of 213 pieces. The pieces build the Skiff vehicle, the Sarlaac and four minifigs. As always, we’ll start with the minifigs.

I don’t envy Lego trying to decide which four minifigs to go with in this set. There were lots and lots of options and whoever they went with, the roster was inevitably going to feel incomplete. In the end, they decided on Jedi Luke, Lando in Skiff Guard Disguise, Boba Fett, and Kithaba… Wait, Kithaba? Really, Lego? We couldn’t get a Weequay? I wanted a Weequay. Boo! But, hey… Boba Fett! I’m sure he’s been done a billion times, but since this is my very first Star Wars Lego set, I’m glad to have him. Let’s check out the good guys first…

Luke is nothing special, but then he didn’t really need to be. He’s got a black body with the robes printed on the torso. The head and hair are unremarkable, and he only has one printed face. I do dig his lightsaber, though, and he’s a competent enough minifig. Lando is a little more exciting. Lego did an awesome job with his helmet and pike. Unfortunately, he lacks a hair piece, so you can’t really display him sans helmet, but that omission is the only flaw in an otherwise excellent minifig.


Moving on to the pair of scum and villainy, we’ve got Kithaba and Boba Fett. I don’t have a lot to say about Kithaba. He’s ok. He’s got nice, bright red pants and a dewrag for his head. His printed face is good and he comes with a little holdout blaster. Boba, on the other hand, well he’s the man, and he’s downright awesome. Besides the printing on the body recreating his armor, he has his trademark jetpack and half-cape, sash, thingie. His helmet is amazing and it fits over a head with a printed unshaven face. The targeting arm clips into the helmet and can rotate. It looks a little big, but if it were any smaller it would get lost too easy. Lego generously provided four of the arms as replacements, because chances are you’ll lose this one too.


Let’s get the Sarlaac out of the way first because I’m not all that crazy about it. It was a nice bonus to round out the set from a play-ability standpoint, but I really hate the Special Edition version of the Sarlaac and this Lego interpretation kind of looks like Audrey II in a kiddie pool. I’m probably being way too hard on it. It does have a pair of poseable tentacles and the mouth does open up and you can fit a minifig inside it. I think a lot of my criticism of the Sarlaac doubles back to my feeling that this set should have been bigger, but I’ll come back to that thought later.


The Skiff is excellent. At first, I thought it would be undersized, but it seems to be scaled pretty well to the minifigs, particularly when I compare the way the Kenner/Hasbro toy was scaled to the 3 ¾” figures. The Skiff was a fun build, and hits all the major design points of the original vehicle model. It holds together really well (despite the fact that you can see a loose brick in my pictures) and comes with three short, clear pylons for it to stand on and give it a levitating look. You can also string them all together for one really tall, albeit precarious, stand. I really like the overall two-tone brown and tan color scheme as it’s suggestive of an animated version of the likes you might have seen in the old Droids cartoon.

The Skiff includes a couple of cool play features too. The box on the deck opens up to store weapons (two bonus holdout blasters are included), the rear rudders are completely articulated, and the gangplank swings out from one side. And no, I’m not going to bitch that it just doesn’t slide straight out, because obviously sacrifices had to be made. You have a pilot station on the back for Kithaba to stand and work the controls. I also really dig the little flick-firing missile launcher mounted under the vehicle. It’s a nice little added design bonus.

At $24.99, I think this is one of the better priced Lego sets I’ve picked up in a while and with all the Holiday sales going on, you can probably even do a little better on the price if you hunt around. The four minifigs and the great vehicle make me happy enough with the purchase, so the Sarlaac is just gravy. The set is a good enough value that I may wind up grabbing a second so that I can have two skiffs and an extra Kithaba and then trade away the figures and Sarlaac.

Truth be told, I’ve been admiring a lot of the recent Star Wars Lego sets, so I think today’s purchase was inevitable and I’m pretty sure  it will end up being some kind of gateway floodgate. As Obi-Wan said, “Let’s go! You’ve taken your first step into a larger world… a world where you sign away even more of your monies to some company in Denmark.” Or something like that. As for today’s set, I honestly wish Lego had gone a little bigger on this one. It’s not that the Skiff feels undersized, but they could have gone for two skiffs, more minifigs, and a larger Sarlaac base. As it stands, though, it is a fine set. You get everything you need to have a battle and while I still can’t approve of the “Audrey II” style Sarlaac, Lego did the Desert Skiff proud with this model.