So a couple of weeks ago I picked up Mattel’s Ghostbusters 2 Ray and Winston from a comic shop of all places. On Halloween I put the spotlight on Winston, saying he deserved his own feature because he doesn’t get enough love. The real reason was so I could drag Ray out some other day when I was going out and I needed a quick feature. That’s today, folks, because I’m going out for drinksies with some friends and my buddy Ray here is going to get me out the door a lot quicker because we’ve basically seen this figure before.

There’s the packaging and I think it’s pretty fabulous. It displays the figures wonderfully and features a very familiar deco with a lot of the things we loved from the first movie and not a lot from the second movie because, well it wasn’t anywhere near as good. You do get the Ghostbusters 2 logo embossed on the top of the bubble with a color insert. It’s a nice touch to differentiate these guys from the first movie and it’s a little example of Matty going the extra mile for the presentation. Of course, if you’re like me and you’re just going to shred the packaging anyway, they really needn’t have bothered. The back of the package features the pseudo file card, with some lame information about Ray that to me really comes off as being rather cringe-worthy.

When I looked at Winston I gave Matty a little pat on the back for investing a lot more new tooling in this figure then they probably had to. Here’s where Matty got to see that pay off because they were able to turn around and release the figure twice with only a quick head swap. Yes, from the neck down this is the exact same figure we saw last week. The sculpt, the paint, the articulation, everything is identical right down to the Slime Blower on his back. Hey, I’m not going to hammer on them for doing it. it’s a nice looking figure, and I’m not sure what they could have done differently, apart from actually building the figures off of individual bucks like they should have done in the first place. But even here the bulky vest does a little to hide the fact that Ray and Winston are suddenly sharing the same body type.

What I will happily give Matty crap over is the fact that they used the original Ray headsculpt as opposed to the one on the “Ready to Believe You” figure. The RTBY version of Ray was drastic improvement over the first portrait and I gave Matty credit for getting us a new Ackroyd noggin. You’d think they’d use it again here, but nope, we’re back to the unfortunate pinch-headed Ray that looks like he’s working on growing a George Lucas goiter. This is more a caricature portrait of Ackroyd and while it still sort of works for me on some level, it still baffles me as to why Mattel wouldn’t have selected what was clearly the better portrait. Was this figure released before the lab coat version? If it was, I guess I’ll just shut up about it.

I’ll echo what I said in the Winston feature that I wasn’t a big fan of the Slime Blower over the Proton Pack, but Mattel did a very nice job recreating it for the 6-inch scale. The sculpted detail and paintwork are all top notch. I would have liked someway to attach the want to the tank, but it can kind of just float there next to it when he isn’t holding it.

One of the best reasons to pick up this figure is to add another ghost to your menagerie. Ray comes with a “Cinema” ghost, which I imagine is another one from the ghostbusting-montages. I don’t remember this guy, but he is a damn cool looking figure. He’s got three pairs of eyes and a big mouth of ragged teeth. He has two arms that split at the elbows to form two pairs of hands. You get ball joints in the shoulders and hinges in the elbows. There’s also a swivel cut in the tail. This ghostie is cast in a translucent purple plastic with some nice pink paint apps. He comes with the same clear plastic stand that we got with Slimer and all the other ghosts.

When I finished work on FFZ’s Index, I was really surprised to see how little Ghostbusters was represented. I have several figures in this line that I haven’t looked at yet and I still have some others that I picked up on the cheap and have yet to open, so it’s now inevitable that you’ll be seeing some more of Mattel’s Ghostbusters here in the weeks ahead. It’s also inspired me to call my brother and have him send me the box of Real Ghostbusters figures that he and I had when we were kids. Unfortunately, I might have to fly up there and kick his ass before he agrees to give them up.