Monthly Archives: September 2015

Sep 6 2015

The Force Awakens Week!

The Phantom Menace toy launch, some 15 years ago, just missed my return to toy collecting by about six months, so I didn’t even notice it was a thing. When Attack of the Clones came out all my focus was still on Transformers, that gateway drug that got me into toy collecting again. Revenge of the Sith, however, was the first time I embraced a Star Wars toy launch as a collector, but still not enough to go hit a Midnight Madness sale. But I was still one of those idiots working a check list to make sure I got all those figures.

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And that brings me to The Force Awakens, which is hitting at a time while I’m in full on “all my spare monies go to toys” collecting mode. No, I still didn’t venture out to a midnight sale and I didn’t wait in line at 7am that morning. Thanks to the wonders of the InterWebs I was able to get exactly what I wanted without leaving my desk. I did hit a Big Box later on Friday evening and found that they still had a ton of stuff and after chatting up one of the salespeople there, I found that most of what was missing was because they didn’t get it in the first place. There was no line, and the biggest interest anyone showed was a lady buying about $200 worth of merch, allegedly for her grandson. Granted, I live in an area where the demographics are skewed toward a higher age group, so I’m sure that had a lot to do with it.

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Anywho, my goal was to pick up the complete set of 6-inch Black figures (I didn’t include Chewie, as the one I already have is good enough for me!) and I was able to get them all from Amazon at regular retail price and they arrived on my door today because Amazon Prime is a wonderful service that includes Sunday Delivery! I’m trying to hold the madness in check, but I’ll likely be picking up some of the 3 3/4″ figures along the way too, so don’t be surprised if I start averaging a Star Wars feature a week.

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I’ve got to say my interest in this movie has been slowly coming to a boil, especially over the last few months. I remember well that time before Empire Strikes Back was released and I had a Time magazine that previewed some of the new characters and vehicles and I can recall getting some figures before seeing the movie. It was a great time where my imagination ran wild. Who were these characters? Before Return of the Jedi came out, I conjured up an elaborate backstory for Squid Head when I got his figure only to find out that he was barely in more than a frame of the movie. And I was fine with that, because the character had become special to me. So, yeah, this is an awesome time where I’ve got a handful of figures and can only guess as to what the characters will be like and what role they would play. It’s really bringing me back to my childhood.

So, tomorrow is going to start an impromptu Force Awakens week.  I’m going to go through these figures starting tomorrow, and wrap it up on Thursday, which means Transformers Thursday will be bumped to Friday, and then next week I’ll return to business as usual.

Sep 5 2015

DC Mages, Mystics & Magicians: Zatanna by DC Direct

Who’s up for a bonus Saturday feature, eh? Yesterday, I checked out DC Direct’s recent New 52 release of Zatanna and I realized that I had another Zatanna figure still hanging on my Toy Closet wall that was just begging to be opened, so I thought I’d make it a Zatanna double feature. I picked up this figure many months ago in a comic shop. They had a tote on the floor full of carded figures, and while I was super excited when I started digging, this was literally the only thing that I found that was even remotely interesting. I had hoped the whole MM&M series was in there, but no such luck. It would have been nice to have scored a Dr. Fate.

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I can’t say I’m all that fond of the packaging. It’s a HUGE bland gray card and about the only things that stand out for me is the rather nice logo they used for Zatanna’s name and the fact that the window shows off the figure so well. Still, there’s no reason for the card to be so bloody big and have so much empty space in that bubble, especially when you aren’t going to invest in some nice artwork. Despite being from 2000, the back of this package is soooo dated. Yeah, I realize it was fifteen years ago, I just don’t want to admit it. You do get a nice little blurb about Zatanna and some shots of other DC Direct figures from that time. Holy shit, check out that Starfire! She looks crazy! I may have to hunt that one down. Anyway, this is one instance where I don’t mind shredding a 15 year old sealed package to get at a figure. Ah, who am I kidding, I hardly ever feel bad about opening toys.

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Besides my general love for Zatanna, what caught my eye about this figure was her costume. This is definitely 60’s era Zatanna, which was a fun and crazy time for her, at least according to the few encounters I’ve had with her from that era. She’s still all about coat tails and fishnets, but her top hat and coat are blue instead of black, she sports a white blouse and bowtie, a yellow vest and gray skirt. I’ve got to say for an earlier DC Direct figure, the paintwork on this figure is pretty damn good. There’s not much in the way of slop or bleeding. The fishnets are real fishnets and while things get a little f’ugly when viewed from behind, I think they’re executed a hell of a lot better than Mattel’s DCUC Zatanna.

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The portrait here is passable. Again, it’s very 60’s stylized from the hair to the makeup. The paint is solid work and her top hat is sculpted as part of the head so you can’t remove it.

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The package claims this is a “fully poseable action figure” to which Zatanna would say: “TIHSLLUB!” I know, this is DC Direct and I shouldn’t expect much, but then don’t put it on the package. As is often the case most of the useful articulation is above the waist where she has rotating cuts in her shoulders, hinges in her elbows, and swivels in the wrists. The legs have swivels at the thighs but with the way they’re cut, they’re completely useless. Also, because of the way her legs are sculpted, it’s pretty tough to get her to stand.

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Fortunately, she does come with a figure stand, and it’s pretty spiffy. It’s a compact little black oval base with an actual name plate on the front that reads, “Zatanna Mistress of Magic.” I love this thing, it’s like a mini base from a Hot Toys stand. On the downside, I had to dig out the peg hole in her right foot to get it to go in.

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I like this figure a lot. In fact, I’m actually surprised at how much I like it. The articulation is a bummer, but it’s not unexpected considering who made her and when she was made. Still, I’m stoked to have an example of Zatanna in this costume for my shelf and all in all the sculpt and paintwork here are not bad at all. Hell, Mattel could have even learned a thing or two about how they did the fishnets. Speaking of which, while I had the gals out, I also re-shot two of my previous Zatanna Features, so feel free to check out Mattel’s DCUC version as well as another DC Direct release, this time from the Identity Crisis comic book.

Sep 4 2015

Justice League Dark: Zatanna by DC Collectibles

I’m pretty bummed about how little time I make for reading comics these days. Case in point, deep within the sizeable pile of TPBs I need to get through are a couple dozen issues of Justice League Dark. I started reading this book entirely for Constantine and Zatanna and I’ve been pretty pleased with it, at least with as far as I’ve gotten, so it was a no brainer that I would go in for some of the figures when DCC released them.

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We’ve seen this packaging before. Zatanna comes in a window box with an extended J-hook back so that it’s right at home hanging on a peg or sitting on a shelf. You get that same dull, white package that one would not expect from a company that butters its bread through the graphic arts. That’s fine, because despite being collector friendly, I’m going to shred the hell out of it to get to my figure.

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I’ve been up and down on my feelings for Zatanna’s New 52 costume. I hated her look when the comic started, especially when other characters got to more or less keep their iconic appearance. Eventually they settled on the look that we got with this figure and while it will never replace the old style costumes, I’m OK with it because it hits enough familiar points. Yeah, the top hat is gone, but she’s still got the little one-piece with the coat tails, you get a little bit of fishnets and the super high over the knee boots. The whole package is roundedo ut by a nice pliable plastic cape.

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Everything about Zatanna’s outfit is executed splendidly. Maybe there’s a little bleed through under the white paint, but it’s nothing too bad. The fishnets are simply printed onto the plastic, and I’m perfectly fine with that considering some of the f’ugly attempts we’ve seen at DC characters wearing fishnet stockings in this scale before. Her hands are sculpted into pretty typical hocus-pocus kind of poses. My only real complaint here is that while her high heeled boots look great, there are no peg holes in the bottoms of her feet and she is extremely difficult to stand. Hey, DCC. You just sold me a pack of figure stands for this line. Why would you not put holes in the feet of the one figure that refuses to stand up? Sheesh!

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The portrait is excellent. DCC has been doing a bang up job with their head sculpts in this line, especially the ladies, and Zatanna is no different. She’s pretty and she matches the character art from the book quite nicely. What’s more the paint is all crisp and clean and the bare plastic they used for her flesh tone looks great.

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Articulation is one area where DCC has been constantly improving. I’ve been overall impressed with what I’ve seen lately, especially with the Suicide Squad figures. Alas, Zatanna here takes a bunch of steps back. Here’s what you get… The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and hinges in the elbows. That’s it! The lack of swivels in the shoulders is bad enough, but the lack of swivels in the wrists is unacceptable to me, especially given the way they’re sculpted. If you want them palms down, you have to turn the arm at the shoulder socket, which is awkward.

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The legs are much better with ball joints at the hips, hinges in the knees and ankles, and swivels at the tops of the boots. There’s no torso articulation, which was probably sacrificed for the sculpt, and the neck is ball jointed, but severly impeded by the hair sculpt. I didn’t have any problems with stock joints, which was a pleasant surprise as I’m still mourning the loss of my Starfire, who’s arm snapped right at the shoulder.

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I picked up Zatanna at a pretty deep discount and only paid $13.99 for her versus the regular twenty bucks or so. As a result, I’m willing to be a bit more forgiving. She’s a fantastic looking figure that manages to sell me even a little more on this costume, but seemingly little things like the lack of wrist swivels and no peg holes in the feet take their toll on my enjoyment of this piece. I’ll probably revisit this series next week to look at Constantine, but until then come on back tomorrow and I’ll throw out some more Zatanna loving from the likes of DC Direct and Mattel.

Sep 3 2015

Transformers Combiner Wars: Streetwise by Hasbro

It’s Transformers Thursday again, last week was Blades, and today I’m opening up my second figure from the Protectobots Team, Streetwise. I shunned this guy as a kid because there was really only room for one police car in my Autobot ranks and that was Prime’s First Lieutenant, Prowl. Prowl was the shit. He could do no wrong, and he was always by Prime’s side. Who the hell did this poser Streetwise think he was? Well, now I’m older and more laid back and I’m willing to make some room for another Autobot to help Serve and Protect. I was going to make a comment about Streetwise being able to boast being a combiner and holding that over Prowl’s head, but I guess IDW has robbed me of that.

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As we’ve seen a bunch of times already, these Combiner Wars Deluxes come packaged in their robot mode and are now being released with free comic books, which is always a good thing, except in this case I’m not too keen on the direction the series has taken, but I’ve yet to sit down and read it all the way through, so I’ll continue to reserve final judgement. The packaging continues to grow on me and in this case the character art for Streetwise is totally bitchin. Let’s kick things off with his alt mode!

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Surprise! Streetwise is a white police sports car and he is remolded from the Brake-Neck and Dead End molds. It was a good choice on Hasbro’s part and I’m happy to say they did a lot of reworking to make this car look distinctive.  You get a completely re-sculpted front end with vents on the hood and a ramming bar, as well as newly designed headlamps. The fastback includes new scoops and there’s a light bar sculpted onto the roof. Between all these changes and the new blue and white deco, Hasbro was able to create what really does feel like a brand new vehicle to me.

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As always, you can weaponize the vehicle mode by pegging his weapon into the roof or the sides. This gimmick is usually hit or miss with me and in this case as much as I love Streetwise’s weapon, it just looks silly when plugged into the car.

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While the car may look sufficiently unique, the transformation should feel readily familiar to anyone who’s had a go playing around with Dead End or Brake-Neck. All the engineering is the same and while the end result is a pretty familiar looking robot, Hasbro has tweaked things here just enough to make him work for me as a distinct and different character. Streetwise still has the chestplate that partially covers his combiner port, but this one is brand new. The other big change is in the lower legs. Everything else is borrowed directly from the Stunticon twins, but the red, white, and black color scheme certainly helps to further set him apart.

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From the back, Streetwise wears his hood as a backpack just like the other guys, but again the new sculpting gives a little variety there and again down on his lower legs. I think the ramming bar at the top looks pretty sweet.

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Obviously, Streetwise gets a brand new head sculpt too, and I really like what we got here.  The silver paint on the face is excellent, although there’s a little spot they missed in the middle of my figure’s blue visor. It’s not a big deal, as you really need to get in close to notice it. Streetwise is sporting some major lips, which seemed to be a thing at this juncture of the Sunbow cartoon. I think the robo-lips all started with the Aerialbots.

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Streetwise’s weapon is a freaking awesome triple-barreled-shotgun-looking thing. Last week I said Blade’s rifle was one of my favorites so far in this series, but I think Streetwise’s boomstick just won the day. It’s ironic to me that Hasbro is giving all the really cool firepower to the Protectobots.

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In the past, I haven’t been big on giving the combiner pieces to the robots as weapons, but in this case I kind of dig Streetwise wielding this stubby twin-mini-gun, allowing this guy to Serve and Protect with Extreme Prejudice.

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I was mighty iffy on whether or not Hasbro was going to be able to win me over with all of these remolds and repaints, but so far the Protectobots are two for two. Yeah, Blades was actually my first hands on experience with that mold, having skipped Alpha Bravo, but in this case Streetwise holds his own, even with two other versions of this toy on my shelf. I’ll admit that the Aerialbots are going to be hard to beat as a whole, but the Protectobots are making a damn strong early showing and I’m looking forward to see how they hold up as I continue to assemble this team.

Sep 2 2015

Masters of the Universe Classics: Mara of Primus by Mattel

As you may remember, last month was a pretty big one for Matty Subbers. My net haul was no less than three figures and a packet of heads. I’ve already checked out Evil Seed from the 200X Subscription and today I’m taking a look at Mara of Primus who hails from the regular Club Eternia Sub, although the character comes from New Adventures. Or at least that’s what I’m told. Truth be told, I have no idea who this chick is.

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Nothing new to talk about with the packaging, other then it has the “Galactic Protectors” sticker on the bubble, so I’m going to jump right to the bio in order to edumacate myself about the character. This is the part where I remind you that I don’t need to know who these people are to enjoy their action figures. Unfortunately, there’s nothing here to suggest that she’s a Transformers-Masters crossover so the whole Primus thing is just a coincidence. Also, it turns out her bio is just a bunch of boring stuff about her made up titles and accomplishments and is surprisingly silent about the fact that she uses her hair as a goddamn flail to pummel people with. At least they didn’t name her Hair-Flailia or something like that. Oh, and that reminds me… COPYRIGHT HAIR-FLALIA, SUCKERS!!!

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With Mara out of the package, I have to say I’m digging this gal a lot. I get a kind of space-gladiator vibe off of her. Actually, the top of her outfit looks like a proper uniform a crew member might wear on a space ship in a 70’s sci-fi series, complete with high shoulders, some insignia and decorative piping. Below that things just get wild. She’s serving up an ample helping of bare midriff, a spiked bracelet on her right wrist and a purple and gold arm bracer on her left. I like the attention paid to her boots. The gold paint on the armor looks great against the purple, I really love this gold paint, and the buckles are sculpted  on the sides, which is always a great little detail.

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And then you’ve got her weaponized ponytail. Mara features a super long braid with a gold band holding it together in the middle and it ends with a spiked ball. I think I like this concept a lot more than it deserves, but I just think it’s ridiculously bad ass, especially for someone who’s an ambassador. You know, just in case diplomatic talks break down, she can club the other diplomats to death with her hair-flail. All kidding aside, the hair looks great. The braid is intricately sculpted and the plastic is soft enough so that she can hold it in her hand to wield it. Personally, I prefer to think she just whips it around with her head.

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Speaking of heads, Mara’s got a pretty good looking portrait, although there’s something about her eyes that creep me out. It’s clear they were going for something to match the animation art and let’s face it, the Space He-Man aesthetic doesn’t exactly jibe with the Filmation. I think T4H did the best they could to meld the two and what we got is fine, just a little different.

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As for articulation, Mara includes most of what I’ve come to expect from the MOTUC ladies. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders, swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinges in the elbows. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, hinged at the knees and ankles, and also have rockers in the ankles. Mara can swivel at the waist and the neck is ball jointed. The only thing that I’m really missing here is the swivels up in the hips, otherwise she’s pretty fun to play with.

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While a hair flail might be enough for some, Mara comes with two additional accessories. You get her pole arm and a shield. The shield is larger than most of what we see with this line. It’s got a gold and purple motif to match her armor and there’s some texturing in the background of the five pointed star. The pole arm features a blade on one end and a spiked ball on the other. The girl is really into those spiked balls. Oooh, I’ll bet that sentence will lead some interesting people to this page off the Googles.

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I dig pretty much everything about Mara. The colors are nice, the outfit is an interesting mix, and I can rest easy knowing that far in the future hair-flails will be a thing. Obviously, she’s not a character I was looking forward to, but that’s what I love so much about this line. The figures are great enough to hold their own and I can either consult the bios or fill in the blanks with my own crazy imagination. Plus, my Space Mutant population was really starting to overpower my Galactic Protectors, so I’m sure NA She-Ra, Hydron and Icarus will be happy to have another warrior for their ranks. Damn, I really need to track down that New Adventures He-Man.

Sep 1 2015

Star Trek III: “The Search for Spock” Hand Phaser by Diamond Select

I’ve been an aficionado of Starfleet sidearms for as long as I can remember now. I’ve had them all from horribly cheesy Next Gen Playmates versions all the way up to a beautifully professionally-machined Classic Series prop that I bought at a Trek Convention back in the early 90’s in NY and later had to sell so that I could afford to eat while paying for Grad School. Today I’m checking out Diamond’s brand new Star Trek III phaser. Hopefully with this baby I’ll have Mr. Adventure eating out of my hand.

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If you own any of Diamond’s Starships, you should recognize the deco used for the box. I’m not a big fan as it mixes Classic Trek imagery with what is a Feature Film collectible. Why couldn’t we get a picture of Admiral Kirk in his tunic on the box, or at least movie enterprise. Blah! It’s nothing special and that’s probably a good thing because mine came to me smashed to hell. Luckily it was the only thing in the box that was as it was part of my Pile of Loot and there were some pricier pieces in there.

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Straightaway, let me say that this is my second favorite phaser design in all of Star Trek and second only to the “Battle Phaser” which was introduced in Star Trek V and used during the raid on Paradise City. This version takes the general design of the Classic Series sidearm, which I’m also incredibly fond of, and makes it all sleek and sexy. There aren’t a lot of details on it, apart from the blue striping down the sides, just a lot of smooths surfaces and curves. To me, this design is totally convincing as a futuristic weapon and Diamond’s version does a pretty good job of reproducing the look of the prop and even uses plugs to cover the screws on one side. There are some stray scratches on mine, which could be counted against it on a QC level, but they kind of work as weathering and don’t bother me so much.

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Virtually all the detail on this piece is found on the control panel on top of the weapon and even that is very minimalist in appearance. You get an On-Off switch, which sadly looks like exactly what it is: A switch for a toy, rather than something integrated into the fictional design of the weapon. I don’t mind them using a standard switch, but I wish it was concealed a little better. The blue triangle lights the weapon’s ready status and there are four red lights and a power settings button to cycle through the four force settings.

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Of course, just like with the Classic Series phaser, the top unit here is a detachable self-contained palm phaser that nests with the larger hand-grip housing. When removed and used on its own, the triangular button on top becomes the trigger. This piece looks really nice and feels great in the hand. My only gripe here is that the white on my power cycle button has some messed up paint. Again, I’ll likely just write it off as weathering, but clearly it’s a pretty big QC issue of the type that DST seems to continually have problems with.

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The electronics in this piece are passable, but because the speaker is located on the bottom of the palm unit, the sounds are pretty muffled when it’s docked with the grip housing and that’s pretty disappointing. The SFX include a power up beep when it’s turned on and off, and four very slightly different sounds for each of the four force settings. Honestly, I can barely tell the difference between the first three.

As for lights, the blue power light on the top trigger button remains lit when the phaser is on. The force setting lights cycle until you choose a setting, which is done by repeatedly pressing the setting button. There’s a red light in the beam emitter of the hand grip housing and an elongated series of red lights in the smaller palm phaser’s beam emitter. Lastly, if you hold down the setting button and the trigger on the housing the phaser will prep for Overload. Pressing the top trigger button will initiate the Overload Sequence. It’s all pretty basic stuff. Nothing amazing, but adequate.

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Overall, I think this thing is OK, but I wanted to like it more than I do, especially since I love the design so much. The QC issues are perhaps minor but still troublesome and I think the electronics could have been designed a little better. I can appreciate wanting to hide the speaker under the palm phaser, but why not show the same courtesy for the power button? And the emitters could have used some brighter LEDs. The LED they used for the Excelsior’s deflector dish can burn out someone’s retina and I would have loved to see something similar on this piece. All in all, it feels like a step down from DST’s Classic Series phaser that I own from quite a few years back. At $35, I’m not sorry I bought it, it’ll look great on my wall and it’s perfect for anyone looking to cosplay, but in the end I had hoped for something a little better.