Monthly Archives: March 2023

Mar 8 2023

LEGO City: Lunar Roving Vehicle (#60348) by LEGO

I’m heading back into LEGO City today, or should I say out into LEGO City Space, with a look at another one of these NASA themed sets. LEGO’s goal here is to take some real concept vehicles from NASA and make them a little more toyetic and fun. Last time I checked out the Mars Research Shuttle, and now it’s time to go to the Moon with the Lunar Roving Vehicle… Let’s Go!

As the box claims, the Rover is based on the Artemis concept vehicle, but takes a lot of liberties with that design. This set is about the same size as the Shuttle, give or take a few pieces, but unlike the Shuttle set this one really just focuses on one vehicle. You get 275 bricks, which builds the Rover, a Mineral Deposit, and three Minifigs. As always, let’s start with the Minifigs!

You get two Astronauts and one Rover Pilot, and straightaway I like these better than what we got in the previous set. The Rover Pilot is great, with a blue jumpsuit and printed leather jacket. He has a ballcap and a cocky smirk on his face. There’s no hair piece, so the hat stays on, and none of these Minifigs have second face printings. The printing on the Astronaut suits is quite nice and both have shoulder harness pieces to attach their backpacks The backpacks are actual builds, which I like more than the one-piece on the EVA Suit from the last set. These are male and female figures, with the mail having a backpack with articulated spotlights and the female has a tool pack with a circular saw and as shovel, although you can switch them if you like.

The gold solar screen visors lift off to reveal their faces and, unlike the Pilot, these figures have hairpieces so you can take their helmets off completely. I dig all three of these Minifigs a lot!

The Rover is a fun build, but I’m a little iffy on the final model. It’s super clunky and looks absolutely nothing like the concept design that it’s based on. In fact, this thing is just plain ugly. The Rover rolls along on six sets of dual wheels, each of which can rotate 360-degrees, which makes for a spectacle of chaos when this thing is in motion, but it is interesting to see it roll. The cab has an upper and lower windshield, which looks good, there’s a blue lightbar on top, as well as an articulated radar dish. The back has a platform that drops down like a tailgate, which I guess can be used to haul cargo or samples, and it also has clips for tool storage. There are five stickers visible on the outside of the Rover, four are gold solar-panel type stickers on the side hatches, and the fifth is the space agency logo on the top.

The front of the vehicle has two articulated arms, one with a build in drill and the other with a clip that holds a metal detector-type device. The detector can be swapped out to be used by one of the Astronauts, and you can put the circular saw in this arm so the Rover can dig. I’m not a big fan of the way these arms are built, as they just look kind of awkward.

The vehicle opens on both sides, with the large circular ports leading into the cabin and the blue solar-panel-type hatches leading to an airlock compartment. It’s pretty tight quarters in the vehicle, but if you put on Astronaut in the airlock and one in the back of the cabin, you can load everyone onto the Rover. There’s no access from the airlock to the cabin, so that whole thing has to work with the power of your imagination! It also seems kind of odd that the side pieces with the solar panel stickers drop down rather than rise up to collect those rays!

The cabin has room for the Pilot to sit, with consoles on either side of him and joysticks to either steer the Rover or control the arms.

You get a Mineral Deposit, which is basically a big rock on a pedestal, along with a space agency flag to show those filthy Commies that it belongs to us! I really dig how they did this, with the rock opening to reveal translucent blue crystals inside, as well as a single crystal that can be removed as a sample. It’s a lot more interesting than the paltry little samples that came with the Shuttle set.

The Lunar Rover set is a fun and satisfying build with some excellent Minifigs and some promising play value, but it falls short of the Research Shuttle set, at least in my opinion. The Rover is pretty ugly, and that’s all you get, whereas the Research Shuttle looked awesome and came with a Rover and two Drones. I certainly don’t regret picking up this set, but I wouldn’t go out of my way to find it. It’s solid just not exceptional. It does, however, interact with the Lunar Base set, and I’ll be taking a look at that set in the not too distant fugure!

Mar 6 2023

ALF (Alien Life Form) by NECA

I was quite the TV junkie as a teenager and ALF was a weekly sitcom that I never missed. It’s a show that absolutely oozed 80’s charm, and it’s crazy to think it spanned nearly the entire second half of the decade, clocked in at just over 100 episodes, and managed to welcome in the 90’s before going softly into the night. It premiered just as I was starting High School and went out just as I was headed off to College. Sure, there were shows that lasted longer, but this was a show about a goofy alien puppet given asylum by a suburban family. It was one of those lightning in a bottle scenarios, with ALF getting cross marketed into video games, comic books, a cartoon series, and his face graced countless t-shirts right alongside pop culture icons like the immortal Spuds Mackenzie. Kids watching ALF were learning how to give attitude and spouting off “NO PROBLEM!” before giving it up for “EAT MY SHORTS” and “DON’T HAVE A COW, MAN!” And by God, you know what? The show still holds up remarkably well today! I recently streamed some episodes, while partially hiding behind a pillow in anticipation of the awkward disappointment I was about to receive, but before I knew it, I was laughing my ass off. Back in the day, ALF got a pretty cool doll from Coleco and some simple toys based on the cartoon series, but did he ever get an ULTIMATE action figure? Not until now!

For the uninitiated, ALF’s real name was Gordon Shumway and he hailed from the planet Melmac. Crashing his spaceship into the Tanner family’s garage, he’s given shelter from nosey neighbors and FBI goons who wanted to cut him up for research. In return for saving his life, ALF made the Tanner’s lives a living hell by causing them non-stop grief and raising Willie Tanner’s blood pressure with his constant wisecracking. In reality, ALF was mostly a puppet, but every now and then he would be swapped out for an actor in a suit when the script called for him to be mobile. NECA put out an ALF puppet a year or so back, and I picked it up but never got around to checking it out here, but that’s a review for a different day. This ALF comes in the usual Ultimate-style box, which features a front flap that opens to reveal the figure through a window. There’s also some great fourth-wall breaking quotes scattered about the box. In addition to the figure, you get a lot of goodies, so let’s get Gordon out of the box and check him out!

It’s still kind of weird to me to see ALF’s complete body, because it was only occasionally shown on the TV show, and I never did get into the cartoon. He’s basically just a little brown, furry guy with huge feet. NECA did a nice job detailing all that fur in the sculpt, and while there are some inevitable breaks in the sculpt to allow for articulation, it doesn’t spoil the effect for me. I was a little taken aback when I turned him around. To my great shame, I did not remember that ALF has a tail, but there it is! It’s worth noting that like NECA’s Gremlins, ALF is a 6-inch figure, but not really 6-inch scale, since in reality he’s roughly the size of a small child. A small, fat, furry child. So don’t expect an in scale Willie Tanner figure to go with him. I guess they could do Brian Tanner, but I wouldn’t count on that either.

The head sculpt here is fantastic. The black eyes, the bulbous snout, the weirdly shaped ears, and the comb-over are all realized perfectly. I dig the wash that brings out the ribbing in his snout, and he’s even got his warts! Sure, NECA often gives us multiple heads with their Ultimate figures, but since ALF was a puppet he couldn’t emote all that much, so I think the single noggin is fine. You do get some articulation in the jaw, which is pretty cool!

The rest of the figure’s articulation is the usual assortment of rotating hinges that we’re used to seeing from NECA. They’re situated in his shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles, in the neck and in the torso. The hips are ball jointed, there are swivels in the biceps, and you get hinged pegs for the wrists, allowing you to swap out the assortment of hands. These include a pair of relaxed hands, a pair of pointing hands, and three additional accessory holding hands. ALF is loads of fun to play with, and I didn’t have any troubles with stuck joints, so ALF did not have to get a dip in the hot tub. Naturally, because this is a NECA figure, you get a bunch of fun accessories, so let’s check them out and learn a little more about ALF on the way!

The subject of snacks are a running theme with these accessories, because ALF was a little glutton. So first off you get a heaping bowl of popcorn and a Fusco, which is off-brand Pepsi. These are appropriate, as ALF was often seen watching TV on the sofa and eating and drinking before the doorbell rang and he got rushed out of the room to hide. And yeah… popcorn and soda is about as normal as ALF’s diet gets here.

Next up, we have a sack of Slimeballs, which was a popular snack on Melmac. It kind of looks like a sack of broccoli, but to be fair, I don’t remember these getting all that much screen time. In fact, I had forgotten they were a thing entirely.

And then you get the ultimate in Melmacian cuisine… the Cat Sandwich! Now, as a well known cat enthusiast, I do not endorse or approve of the act of eating cats, but I guess we have to respect alien cultures. This accessory is nothing less than inspired, as the poor kitty sits rather perturbed between two halves of a hoagie roll and presented on a red plate. It feels like sacrilege to nitpick this majestic piece, but if I were to make one little gripe, I don’t know why they didn’t paint the cat to look like the Tanner’s cat, Lucky. OK, that’s it for the food related items… let’s move on.

Willie’s HAM radio set was a major recurring plot point in the series, as ALF tried to use it to send messages back home. This is a beautifully detailed piece of kit with a wire connecting the main unit with the microphone, which rests on a stand. It’s a shame NECA didn’t provide a desk to put it on, but I’ll come back to that at the end.

Also included is a framed portrait of ALF’s girlfriend Rhonda. The back of the picture has an easel so it can stand up on its own. Rhonda had a much bigger role in the cartoon, but she looked a lot different.

And that brings us to some accessories of the clothing variety in the form of an obnoxious yellow shirt and sunglasses. The shirt is actually a nod to the shirt he wore in the cartoon. Yeah, I guess they believed in shirts but not pants on Melmac. The shirt fastens down the front with velcro it it looks great on him. Indeed, it looks better than the one shown off on the package photograph. Meanwhile, the sunglasses simply rest behind his ears and stay put pretty well down toward the edge of his snout.

I’ll always be grateful to NECA for digging up licenses like ALF. The series is available to stream, but you really don’t hear much about it these days. It hasn’t had any kind of revival apart from NECA’s merchandising, but I have imagine if it did get a remake it ALF would be some kind of CGI abomination, so I think it’s best to let it go. Either way, this is a super fun figure, and he displays well with some of NECA’s other Ultimate figures like ET or the Gremlins. Indeed, if you have some Gremlins, their accessories are interchangeable and really enhance the fun you can have with Gordon. It’ll be interesting to see if we get any other versions of ALF down the road, but as I hinted earlier, I’d love to see an accessory pack similar to the one NECA released for the Gremlins, notably with a desk and/or a sofa. I’d buy that in a heartbeat!

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Mar 3 2023

DC Multiverse (Rebirth): Batman and Superman by McFarlane

A little while back, I popped my cherry on McFarlane’s DC Multiverse line with a look at the Blue Beetle and Booster Gold two-pack, and now I’m going to start unloading on reviews for this line, because I bought a whole hell of a lot of them on various sales. Of course, this line is very Batman-heavy and otherwise pretty scattershot when it comes to the comic period and costumes, which can be infuriating when trying to build a team, but otherwise fun if you’re just looking at individual figures. And, coming into a line late in the game also has it’s ups and downs as well. Some figures have gone on deep discount, while others have gone up in value on the secondary market. Right now I’m still in the looking for good deals phase, but eventually I’ll probably hunt down some specific releases. With all that having been said, let’s have a look at Batman and Superman in their Rebirth costumes!

The packaging here is consistent with what we’ve been seeing in the line. I really dig how the bright blue interiors contrast with the black boxes. I’ve never really enjoyed how grimdark modern DC has become in the mainstream, so I think these packages stride the line nicely. Each figure comes with a collector card and a stand. Batman comes with the regular disk stand, while Superman actually comes with a clear flight stand. I bring these up now, because for the time being, I will not be removing the cards or stands from the boxes, as it damages the trays. Eventually, I will get short on space and have to pitch all these boxes, but for now I’m keeping the figures in them. Let’s start with Batman!

Cards on the table, I really loved the New 52 Batman costume, so I was a little apprehensive when Rebirth came along. Turned out that I really liked this one too. Maybe not loved, but it’s not bad at all. The dark gray suit looks great against the black of the boots, gauntlets, cape and cowl. The big change here is the brighter yellow belt and yellow outline around the chest symbol, both add a nice little pop. The suit has a few panel lines, but it doesn’t overdo it, and that sort of detail is mostly reserved for the boots and gauntlets. The serrated blades on the gauntlets are awesome, and I absolutely love how the bat symbol is sculpted and not just printed on. I’m not a huge fan of the bat-head knee guards, but they’re not too distracting. The cape is sculpted so that it stays fairly tight with the body and not fanning out too much. I do tend to prefer this to the dynamic, windblown effect, which I think is best saved for statues and not action figures. All in all, this is a great looking suit and McFarlane executed it beautifully for the figure.

The head sculpt, on the other hand, is nothing to get excited about. The lower half of the face is a pretty soft sculpt. So much so that my shitty camera took half a dozen shots to finally get somewhat focused on it. I do dig the cowl, as it gives me a bit of 89 Batman vibes, and the whited out eyes look fine. There’s nothing really bad here, but I just don’t find it exceptional.

The articulation is exactly what we saw with Beetle and Booster. Eventually, I’ll get to the same point as I did with Marvel Legends and just stop surveying the points of articulation on these. When it doesn’t change from figure to figure, it gets old to recount it all every time. But these bodies are still new to me, so let’s give it a rundown. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders, swivels in the biceps, double-hinged elbows, and ball hinges in the wrists. I really have no complaints about the arms at all, and I love how tight the elbows will go! The legs have rotating hinges in the hips, which offer a pretty nice range of motion going forward, back, and to the sides… but so very little swivel, it’s practically non existent.. The knees are double-hinged, the ankles have both hinges and lateral rockers, and the feet are hinged for the toes. The one gripe I’ll keep coming back to in the legs is the lack of a thigh swivel. The neck is ball jointed with some nice range of motion, especially for Batman’s constricting cowls. Finally, you get ball joints under the chest and at the waist, which do a fairly decent job. This is a fun figure to pose and play with, even though the cape can make him a bit back heavy.

Batman comes with two accessories: His grapple gun and a batarang. His right hand is sculpted to hold either one, while the left is balled up in a fist. The grapple gun is pretty big and satisfying, with the grapple hook sculpted in place. Getting a string to swing the figure on would have been cool, but this looks good in his hand. There’s no obvious trigger, which I assume is part of Warner Brothers weird obsession with not allowing any guns or anything even remotely trigger-y. Quite frankly, I’m surprised McFarlane got away with this accessory at all.

The batarang is simple enough, but a pretty nice sculpt. It can be a little tough for him to hold it, but squeezing it between the fingers seems to work fairly well. If you’ve been around here a while, you may know that I’m not a huge Batman fanatic, and I’m not going to buying the majority of the ones released in DC Multiverse. But, I do indeed love this figure, and considering the insane number of Batman figures in this line, I’m glad I started out with this one. Let’s move on to Superman…

Unlike Batman, I’m always down for a new Superman figure, so I was really excited to get this one opened and check him out. Happily, he does not disappoint. Rebirth Superman’s costume didn’t stray too far from his New 52 look, and while I like it a lot, I still think it was a step down. I mainly miss the red boots here, as you now only get some red striping at the tops of blue boots. The cut lines in the suit have been toned down a bit, which is fine. I still like the red belt with the floating diamond buckle. And like Batman, I absolutely love that the chest shield is sculpted and not just printed on the figure. The coloring here is extremely nice, with the blue and red playing off each other brilliantly, and the glossy sheen on the chest shield is gorgeous. I do wish the striping under the knees were a little more vibrant, and I really would have preferred if the ball joints in the wrists were flesh colored and not blue. The cape is mostly tamed behind him, although there’s a little bit of flutter to his left side.

The head sculpt here is much sharper than Batman’s, but in fairness they had a lot more to work with. Overall, I like the portrait, but looking straight on there’s definitely an extra helping of jawline. I like the furled brow and intense gaze, which makes him look just a bit perturbed at the whatever injustice he is perceiving. I don’t like my Superman to be too angry, so this works for me. The cleft chin and the cowling are also wonderful little touches.

The articulation here is identical to Batman, so I won’t run through it all again. I will say how much I appreciate the upward range of motion in Superman’s head, which is perfect for flying poses. It’s ridiculous how many flight capable super hero action figures get this wrong. There are no accessories with Superman, unless you count the flight stand, which I suppose is a really nice bonus. And since he has nothing to hold, his hands are both sculpted as fists, which once again works great for those flight poses, or just punching villains.

I have to say, I’m having an absolute blast dipping my toe into McFarlane’s DC Multiverse. Rebirth Batman and Superman are both excellent figures, and I’ll wager they will reside on my desk within arm’s reach for a while before getting put up on the shelf. They are tons of fun to play around with and I couldn’t be happier with the way they turned out. I was able to pick this pair up for just $16 each, which is a helluva deal, and I’ve already got a few more Rebirth era figures to check out! Boy, does it feel great to be buying DC figures again!

Mar 1 2023

G.I. JOE Classified: Zarana by Hasbro

I’m easily half a dozen figures behind on my GI JOE Classified reviews, so today I’m dipping back into that line to finally check out one that I’m pretty damn excited for! I never had Zarana as a kid, having to make do with just Zartan and the three Drednoks. I don’t ever even recall seeing her in the toy aisles then, because I’m sure I would have wound up getting her if I did. Then again, by 1986, I was starting to move away from toys a bit and more into video games, so maybe I was spending a little less time in the toy aisles. Either way, I’m happy to have her in Classified, so let’s see what we got!

Oh, dear… that character art! Not only is it totally out of style with the rest of the Classified packages, but it’s just awful. My guess is they were going for some kind of misguided Harley Quinn vibe, but it sure as shit doesn’t work for me. That’s OK, though, because I’m going to toss the package, and what I’m seeing through the window looks pretty damn nice!

Thankfully, this is another case of Hasbro sticking close to the vintage figure for the Classified design, and I love what they did here. The pink half-jacket and shoulder armor are superb modernizations of the original costume. The jacket has some fine detail for the silver studs and zipper, and it’s sculpted separately from the figure, so it looks like something she’s actually wearing. It extends down just far enough to cover the ball joint under her chest, and to show off the killer abs she’s sporting. The black sleeves are textured, and she has brown fingerless gloves. Her blue trousers have ribbed reinforcements on her inner thighs, and pink areas on the front where her leggings are exposed through tears in the thighs. This is a great little touch, as when I first saw the figure, I assumed those were just pink patches. Her boots have extended knee pads, and I really dig the silver spurs, they look fantastic! Final touches to the outfit include a sculpted brown belt, a brown sheath belted around her right thigh, and a lovely little sculpted silver chain hanging from her belt. This is an absolutely beautiful update, and I love the colors!

Zarana comes with one head and two swappable hairstyles. The one that comes on the figure in the package is the modern look, with a mix of orange, pink, and purple. I actually think it works pretty well for the character, but this is the only time you’ll see it in this review, because…

Yeah, that’s the stuff! The alternate coif is patterned after the original figure, and it’s the one that I’ll be using all the time. As for the face, I really do love it. Zarana offers up a mean snarl, which works well as a battle expression. The printing on this one really breaks down as you get in close, especially the eyebrows which can look a bit crusty, but it all looks fine with the figure in hand. And take note, she’s got her earrings, so this is based on the earlier of the two heads produced for the vintage figure. Not a bad choice, because I seem to remember the second head being a big step down from the first. I think this portrait turned out great, giving Zarana that level of bad girl hawtness she deserves.

Zarana comes with a few weapons, the first of which is a simple dagger. This one is a nod to the sheathed dagger that was sculpted on the vintage figure. The dagger itself has a black hilt and a nice silver painted blade. It kind of reminds me of a Fairbairn–Sykes style fighting knife from WWII. Very nice!

Next up, she has this beefier piece of cutlery that’s stored in her backpack. I think this design is original to the this Classified figure, because I don’t remember seeing reference to it in any past media or previous versions of the figure. It looks like someone looked at an electronic kitchen knife and said, let’s make that for the battlefield! And that’s a little bit genius. The grip looks like it’s off a sawed off shotgun, while the middle part looks like it houses the electronics. The blade is red, which I’m pretty sure isn’t meant to signify blood, but… it’s blood. Yup, blood! I didn’t think I was going to dig this accessory that much, but it’s totally won me over.

And lastly, Zarana has her rifle with a circular saw attachment, clearly evolving from the vintage figure’s pinwheel-ripper-rifle. I think this is a wonderful update, as I always assumed the original wasn’t an actual gun, but just a spinning-spur-cutter, and now she has the best of both worlds! The rifle looks like an original design, but very grounded in reality. There’s a rail running across the top, and the buzzsaw is an under-the-barrel attachment with a foregrip. I would have put some kind of finger guard behind that blade, because… YIKES! But, I’m pretty sure Zarana scoffs at safety regulations.

The magazine can be removed from the rifle, and this makes me happy every time I see it!

I was a little worried that whatever Classified figure I spotlighted after Stalker was going to have to be a let down, but that’s not the case here. Yes, Zarana is a simpler figure for sure, but she hits all the right points right on target! Like Stalker, I did not expect the final release to look as good as the solicitation photos, but I’m happy to be proven wrong. Zarana is another five outta five for me, and she looks great on display beside her brother in arms. If she’s any indication of how the Classified Drednoks are going to turn out, I can’t wait!