For every yin there is a yang. You cannot have the light without the dark. And sometimes I buy toys that suck. It doesn’t happen all that often, because I try not to throw my money at things I don’t think I’ll like, and I don’t do review samples. The challenging thing about my Favorites list is to take 250-some Features from the year and chop them down to ten stand out toys. In this case, the challenge is to come up with ten things that really let me down. In that regard, I guess I’m rather lucky. So, let’s grab our poking sticks and have a go at that turd bobbing in the punch bowl. And since Transforming robots took three spots on my Favorites list, we’re going to kick this list off with…

Transformers Combiner Wars Menasor by Hasbro: Combiner Wars Menasor is almost as bad as Superion is good. Now keep in mind, I’m talking about the combined mode, because I liked the individual Stunticons quite a lot. But once you cobble those babies together you get a terribly proportioned monstrosity that just wants to crumble into a big mess. He looks like an old man robot wearing his pants too high. I honestly think The Go-Bots Puzzler might be a better combiner than this thing. It didn’t help that I absolutely hated shooting this figure for the Feature because it would not stand up in anything resembling a decent pose and it scratched up my backdrop from falling over so many times. If you still want more reasons to hate him, Blackjack will not even peg into his chest the way he’s supposed to. BLAH!

Magic The Gathering (Legacy Collection): Jace Beleron by Funko: I almost didn’t bother putting Jace here on this list, seeing as how I didn’t have any expectations for this line, I’m not someone who plays or follows MTG, and I just bought these figures because they were cheap and looked interesting. But I was actually impressed with enough of the other figures in this assortment that I decided he warranted being called out. Afterall, a shit figure is a shit figure, and this guy is just terrible. It’s hard to believe any toy company was trying to get $20 for this steaming pile of plastic.

Marvel Legends: Ultimate Spider-Woman by Hasbro: Yeah, you knew this was coming. When you consider how many Hasbro figures I bought in 2015, it’s probably not that terrible a track record to have a couple of them break. But that doesn’t mean I’m any less pissed about it. Not much else to say other than, “Oi, young lady, you look ‘armless!” 

GI JOE 50th Anniversary Arctic Ambush by Hasbro: Hasbro’s other QC snafu for me in 2015 was this little “Arctic Ambush” set. The BAT figure’s head literally twisted right off when I tried to swap it out for the battle damaged head. This one was particularly disappointing, as I was getting a real craving to do some new GI JOE Features and I was planning to cover the whole 50th Anniversary line over the Summer. Then this happened and I still haven’t opened up the other 2-pack I got. I quickly moved the JOE focus over to Sigma Six and had a much better time. All in all, this Feature was kind of a sad allegory for the state of the JOE license.

Star Wars Black IG-88 by Hasbro: Out of the first five entries on my Shit List, Hasbro has taken four spots (and I’m not done with them yet!). That doesn’t sound so good, but keep in mind, I buy a lot of Hasbro figures, so try to keep that in perspective. Honestly, this one is better classified as a true disappointment, rather than an actually bad figure. The 6-inch Black Assassin Droid isn’t terrible, but with his soft bendy body and his inability to stand straight, he’s not all that he could have been. In fact, he feels a lot like an up-scaled version of the Vintage Collection figure. IG-88 was a great opportunity to use the larger scale to make a better figure and quite frankly Hasbro, you blew it.

That’s enough of my pain for one day. Come on back tomorrow and we’ll wrap this whole thing up with my Final Five Disappointments of 2015.