Monthly Archives: May 2024

May 8 2024

Mythic Legions (Poxxus): Thraice Wraithhailer by The Four Horsemen

I was tempted to go all in on GI JOE this week, but then I remembered that I had to throw some love to Mythic Legions, so let’s do that today. If you need to catch up, I’ve already covered two of the figures from the most recent Poxxus Wave, Samir Scrollwarder and Aracagorr, and today we’ll be checking out the first baddie in the assortment… Thraice Wraithhailer.

We’ve seen the packaging many times before, so let’s just jump into a bit about the character. Thraice is an Umangeist, which TFH identify as “A corrupt supernatural mingling of flesh and phantasm,” and damn, that’s some top notch wordsmithing right there. Ms. Wraithhailer ia a summoner with an unquenchable thirst for power and has sided with the evil forces of Poxxus in Mythos’ latest struggle between good and evil.

Thraice comes out of the box with her shoulder armor off, so all you need to do is peg those into her back to get her ready for battle. Pegging these in has been a painful experience on the recent figures, so I was happily surprised to see these go in nice and easy. I’ve been through so many Mythic Legions figures and have so many yet to be opened, that I no longer go crazy trying to identify all the parts reuse, although I do certainly recognize the shoulder pieces, as we’ve seen those many times before. The body consists of the leather-style armor we saw introduced with the Elves, and here it’s done in black and brown with some fine silver paint work around the fixtures and rivets. I’m also blown away by the attention to detail on the laces running up the front of her cuirass. The individually sculpted laces are painted brown and each and every eyelet is painted silver. The boots give way to a dark chocolate brown, matching the belt. The belt has a bronze disk buckle front and center, some sculpted pouches on the side and more of those immaculate tiny silver paint hits to the fixtures. The belt looks great, but it does have a habit of riding up and shifting about when posing the figure.

This wave is big on the softgoods flourishes, and here we see a black skirt utilized along with the sculpted armor, which hangs down from the hips and wraps around the back. We also get wired flap of cloth hanging down the front. I really am impressed at how well the cloth is integrated with the plastic. It looks great! Thraice also comes with three sets of hands: Two sets for accessory holding and one set for spell-slinging!

And there are two portraits included, although the differences are rather subtle. The first is rather neutral and it doesn’t make Thraice look like such a bad gal. The eyes are very nicely painted with white centers to her pupils giving her something of an ethereal look. The facial features are well-rounded and beautiful with an ashen complexion and her pure white hair hangs down over the fronts of her shoulders with some stray strands falling over the extreme left side of her face.

The alternate portrait makes her look a bit more wicked, or at least like she’s concentrating on a spell or incantation. Her brow is a little furled and her eyebrows are downturned, while the hair is identical. There’s definitely a difference of expression between the two heads, but it’s not exactly a huge difference. Either way, they are both gorgeous! And if you aren’t all that wrapped up in the official canon, I think Thraice could certainly pass as one of the heroes if that’s what you want her to be. Or perhaps just a shadowy figure who’s path is uncertain.

You also get a purple softgoods cloak, similar to the one we saw last time with Samir. Once again, it’s beautifully tailored with wire running around the edges for posing and the material falls about the figure quite naturally, which is impressive for this scale. The deep purple both fits the character well and offers a bit more color to make her pop. Naturally, you do have to remove the shoulder armor to fit it on her. On the downside, I did not want to wind up pulling out the stitching on the hood clasp trying to get her hair to fit inside the hood, so I kept the hood down in the pictures. The solicitation shots do have her wearing it up, so I’m sure it’s possible, but I just didn’t want to risk it.

Thraice doesn’t come with a whole heck of a lot in terms of extras. Mythic Legions can be like that. Sometimes you get a ton and sometimes just a small assortment. Indeed, in this case you just get two magic effect parts and a staff. The staff is pretty simple and understated, but I do really dig the translucent blue crystal ball at the top. The black shaft is smooth and you get some bronze fixtures sculpted at the top and bottom. I kind of like the idea that the staff is just a focusing tool for Thraice’s power and it doesn’t need to be all kinds of elaborate and crazy to do that.

As for the effect parts, these are both to demonstrate Thraice’s abilities as a Summoner. The first is a translucent blue skull and it is really damn nice. The projected skull has it’s jaws open and the spiraling tendril of energy wraps around the figure’s arm to make it look like it’s being cast forth. The translucent effect looks great and when combined with the bright blue it practically looks like it’s illuminated.

The second is a serpent’s head with a long spiral tendril that wraps around the staff. This one looks really nice as well with the same gorgeous translucent blue coloring and a lot of detail to the serpent head.

I’ll confess that Thraice underwhelmed me in the accessories department, but she more or less makes up for it as the figure itself is absolutely excellent. I think the choice of armor fits the type of character they were going for quite well and while there aren’t a lot of flourishes of color, the black and brown looks solid and the meticulous touches of silver do impress. And once again the use of softgoods is very welcome here and it I like that you can display the cloak open and still see the body sculpt, giving me the best of both worlds. Yes, I would have liked a few more extras included. I get that she’s probably not a sword-user, but at the very least, that exotic curved dagger and sheath we’ve seen many times before would have given us something to hook onto her belt. And I’ll likely borrow one from another figure.

May 6 2024

G. I. JOE Classified: Retro Carded Scarlett by Hasbro

As promised last week, I’m back to check out the second of Hasbro’s Classified Do-Over figures. First came Duke and now it’s Scarlett’s turn. It’s easy to forget that in the early days of Classified, Hasbro was tying the toyline to designs from the video game, Operation Blackout. Probably not a great idea, since the game really was a pile of ass and Classified has since proven that you don’t need a media tie-in to have a successful toy line. Especially when most of the people buying them are probably nostalgia-driven old bastards like me. Well, Duke was an absolute homerun, so let’s see how Scarlett turned out!

Here she is on her super sexy retro-style card with some absolutely bitchin’ character art exploding right in your face. As with Duke, the card stock is nice and thick, perfect for MOC collectors and the extended bubble allows for all of Scarlett’s accessories to be laid out around, with only a couple of the extras nested below. The back of the card has a huge multi-lingual file card and a classic “Collect-Them-All” spread of the three figures in this wave, the other two being Duke and Recondo. Alas, as great as this looks, it is not at all collector friendly, so it’s time to rip it open and get at our new recruit!

And like the new Duke, Scarlett is a complete return to her original RAH ’82 roots with a few modern polishes thrown in for good measure. Her uniform consists of the classic khaki one-piece with matching gloves and boots and a dark green underlying body suit showing through on her legs, arms, and around her neck. She has her shuriken sculpted onto her glove, a canister grenade (I think that was a round grenade on the original) sculpted on her left shoulder, and the red recoil pad on her right. She even has the hidden last-resort pistol sculpted on the inside of her left gauntlet. There are a few reinforced tailoring lines added here and there as well as a gold zipper(?) running up the side of her abs. She has a primary belt that’s sculpted as part of the figure and then a secondary belt worn by the figure with some sculpted and painted cartridges. They even added a peg to this belt to keep it in place! Her quiver is attached to her right leg with a high thigh strap, and this is the most obvious new addition to the design. She also has her knife and sheath on her left leg, something that was sculpted onto the original figure, but is now attached with the knife as a removable accessory. I think Hasbro did such a great job updating this uniform that the only thing I can nitpick are the boots. I would have liked to see the return of her high heels and, yeah, they were ridiculous and totally unpractical, so I’d guess most people will be happy to see her have flats.

I’ve thought long and hard about this portrait. I like it a lot. The original RAH Scarlett was not what I would call a handsome woman, and this one certainly remedies that. It draws a fine line between being pretty and yet still striking me as a serious woman of action. The printing on the eyes and eyebrows are perfect. The lips are painted well, but I think they may be a tad too big. Everything else is great, right down to the light peppering of freckles. The hair is sculpted separately and looks great with no flyaway bangs to get in the way of targeting Cobra. You even get two ponytails, one falling pretty straight and a second to work better with the backpack. The whole shebang is rounded out with a couple of small black earrings. Now, I really liked the first Classified Scarlett’s portrait. It was more youthful and definitely presented a different take on the character, but in the end, I think this one is a big improvement.

The backpack is a wonderfully complex sculpt with a ton of pouches, straps, rumples, and buckles. It would have been great to see some paint apps on here, but instead it’s cast in the same very pale olive plastic as her belts and quiver. The alternate ponytail works perfectly with the backpack as it’s designed to cascade down in a sort of S-pattern. The backpack stays pretty snug in her back and you get a little functionality with the two pegs on the sides to mount her rifles through the trigger guards.

The articulation here is fantastic and offers a well needed update to the arms. Here you get bicep swivels and double-hinged elbows replacing the rotating hinged elbows of the previous figure. Of course, the new Scarlett is also based on a pinless body, but everything else is more or less the same when it comes to posability. You also get one set of fists and a set of accessory holding hands.

Scarlett comes with an automatic pistol and the aforementioned combat knife. The knife is pretty standard fare and fits into the sheath. Despite her having two trigger-finger style hands, she can still hold it quite well. The pistol is an excellent sculpt and cast in the pale olive plastic. It has a hole in the barrel to take a blast effect part, although none are included. The pistol seems a tad big for her, and sadly there’s no holster for her to store it on her person. I found the trigger guard to be a little too small to risk pegging it to the backpack.

There are two rifles included: One Sunbow style XMLR-3A Laser Rifle and an AR-15 style rifle. The Sunbow rifle is always a welcome addition and it’s the same accessory that was included with Duke. I love this sculpt!

The AR-15 is also fantastic with a ton of detail, including a scope mounted on the carry bar and a removable magazine. Granted, this is not a weapon that I associate with Scarlett, but seeing as Super7 also included this type of rifle with their Ultimate Scarlett, I feel like I’m missing a connection here. But hey, I’m not complaining as this is one of the line’s best looking weapons and even if Scarlett won’t be arming herself with it much, it’ll likely get repurposed to another JOE.

Of course, Scarlett is best known for her trademark crossbow and that’s obviously included here, along with some bolts to stock her quiver. The crossbow is cast in black plastic, as are the bolts, and it’s a little more rifle-like than the RAH version, but I dig it a lot. The bolts do notch into the crossbow and you get a few different types to choose from. Sadly, there is no string on the crossbow, but maybe that’s for the best. I’d prefer no string to a chonky plastic one that warps easily and just looks wrong. I would have liked an option to peg the crossbow into her back instead of the backpack, but she’s just going to have to hold it.

Finally, you get a rectangular black figure stand with the GI JOE shooting star logo sculpted onto it. As I mentioned with Duke, I’m always happy to get these and it’s pretty close to the generic ones I use for my Classified figures, so it fits in pretty well.

To me, Scarlett is a near perfect Classified update to the Real American Hero figure and definitely the one I’ve been waiting for. She is absolutely going to be replacing the first issue Scarlett in my display. With that being said, I think Scarlett falls just slightly below the update we got with Duke. I feel bad for saying that because she is still an extraordinary figure but I think Duke just came out slightly ahead. I haven’t picked up Recondo yet because I have the Tiger Force version but I probably will eventually.

May 3 2024

Shantae 20th Anniversary Statue by Limited Run Games

One of the great things about the modern collectibles market is it allows me to talk about video games on my Toy Blog. From Street Fighter to Golden Axe, Mega Man to King of Fighters and even Metal Slug, there’s a lot of crossover from video games to action figures. But, it’s rare that I get to talk about one of my favorite modern video game platformer series here on FFZ, and that’s because the spunky Half-Genie Hero, Shantae, hasn’t had a lot of merch beyond some extras packed into the limited edition releases of the games. Indeed, the closest thing to a toy or collectible of her in my collection is a Pop! Vinyl, and I only buy those things if it’s my only option. There have been some garage kits, which I believe come unpainted and my skills just aren’t up to the task, so I’ve passed on those. It’s kind of a crime that she hasn’t had a Figma or Figuarts or even a Prize Figure, but maybe one day. Anyway, Developer WayForward has produced five games in the series so far, with the first landing on the Gameboy Color about 22 years ago. Since then her adventures have reached a whole host of gaming platforms, all packed with her beaming personality, addictive Metroidvania style gameplay, and a host of colorful characters and dry wit. Suffice it to say, I highly recommend these games, and they can be had digitally on most modern gaming platforms. At some point, maybe I’ll showcase all the physical editions of the games I own, including collectors editions, steelbooks, and the like, but I’ll save all that for another day. Today is all about this 20th Anniversary statue that I’ve been waiting for for what feels like forever!

Now, I’m a physical kind of guy when it comes to my games and Shantae’s games have all been released and/or re-released physically by Limited Run Games, the company which also produced the statue we’re checking out today. The statue went up for pre-order two years ago and finally arrived at my doorstep this past week. And while I am absolutely chuffed to finally have her, I really need to stress that nothing I say today is meant to be an endorsement of LRG as a company. The more I’ve learned about them, the less I’ve wanted to do business with them. Yes, I’ve swallowed my morals in order to get some games physically. I’m happy I did, but at the same time not proud of it. But with this statue in hand, I’m at the point where LRG and I can part ways, as I’m officially done doing business with them. And yes, that includes not getting a physical release of the next Shantae game from them. It’s fine. I’ll support the game digitally. But, it’s not for me to tell anyone what companies they should patronize or shouldn’t, and I’m not going to sully this happy Shantae Statue Day with a lot of negative talk. Do your research and make your own decisions!

OK, enough preamble. Shantae comes in a very nice art box with some photos of the statue and some of its features. One side of the box illustrates the ability to take the acrylic standee figures that came with each of the games’ collectors edition and plug them into the statue base and light them up! Alas, my collectors editions are all sealed with the standees inside and I have no plans on opening them any time soon. Thankfully, the option existed to get a set of game box style acrylics to take their place and we’ll check out how that looks at the end. The back of the box has a heartfelt message from Shantae’s creators, The Bozons. Inside the box, the statue comes fully assembled and enclosed in a clear plastic clamshell and measures about 12-inches, but a decent amount of that is base.

And she looks fantastic! I’ll confess that I was a little concerned over what the quality was going to be like, as even some companies that produce statues regularly can be hit and miss when it comes to delivering the goods. Shantae is cast in PVC so she’s more akin to a scaled anime figure than she is most collectible statues. Most of the colors are achieved through the plastic and that means clean lines and colors that really pop, but not much in the way of complex shading. And that’s OK, because it really accentuates the animated style of the character. The red of her top, shoes, and billowy genie pants looks great alongside the bright yellowish gold of her arm bracers, and there’s a bit of black to keep things grounded. The skin tone is nice and even and not at all waxy, which can be a problem in some of the less premium figures on the market.

And I have to give a shout out to the way they did the pants! Shantae’s puffy genie pants are actually cast in semi-translucent plastic and you can actually see her legs inside of them. That is a really cool touch and something that I can’t ever remember seeing on another PVC figure like this. Bravo!

The pose is sheer perfection, with Shantae caught posing in mid dance with her purple hair swirling around her in a long, tapered whip, and her fingers interlocked behind her. The composition captures her two signature moves: Dancing to morph herself into an animal and her ability to use her copious coif as a whip to strike down enemies. When viewed from the front, the figure really does look like a perfect 2D rendering of the character brought to life in 3D, and that’s about the highest compliment I can pay a statue.

And the portrait is just as on point as the rest of the figure. Her giant blue eyes are perfectly printed and vibrant, her mouth is agape with glee, and she has two golden earrings dangling from her pointed ears. It’s actually kind of fun to watch them jostle when you move the statue. If I had one criticism it would be that the seams where the tufts of hair sprout away are pretty obvious. It would have been nice to see those gaps a little tighter.

Included in the box is a clear plastic support rod for her hair. It’s not required to display the statue, but it might be a good idea in order to keep the hair from drooping over time. It stays in place simply by friction and definitely adds a lot of support. It can also be positioned directly behind the figure so it’s not an eyesore. Totally optional, but I’ll likely use it.

The base isn’t the most stylish thing around, as it’s just a circular black pedastal with nestled in a brown ring. The Shantae logo is sculpted onto the front and there’s a USB power cable that connects to the back for the light up feature.

And here are the acrylic pieces that came with my package, and I honestly can’t remember if these were an optional extra or if they were included with every statue. The set came bundled together in a small plastic bag with each piece having protective plastic overlays that need to be peeled off. Each square piece of acrylic has the box art from the five games printed in some rich colors with a tab to plug them into the ring around the base. Yes, I would have preferred if they didn’t print Limited Run Games on every single one of these and would have much rather had just the box art, but it is what it is. I think the statue looks great displayed without these, but they are a neat extra.

The slots are designed so that one acrylic goes directly above the Shantae plaque with two evenly spaced to the left and right sides. The tabs and slots are interchangeable, so you can place them in whatever order you want. Here I chose with the first game front and center, the next two on either side, and finally the two most recent releases toward the back.

Plug in the power source and you get an ethereal green glow to each of the acrylics. It’s bright enough to be seen in a lit room, but it looks really cool in a dim environment. There’s no On/Off button and there’s no battery to charge. Plug it in and it stays lit. Unplug it and the lights go out. I will say that I think these box art squares look better to me than the pictures I’ve seen of the standees. It just looks more uniform, but that’s just my personal taste. I will likely leave the acrylics in place, but I doubt I will have it lit very often.

After two years it’s so cool to finally have this in hand and I will confess that it was worth the wait. My little Shantae shrine has been mostly a display of the various boxed copies and collectors editions with the exception of the Pop! Vinyl and a mini arcade cab that LRG released that plays the video and music from the intro of one of the games. Needless to say this statue will make for an excellent centerpiece to tie it all together. The statue was offered for $160 and I think it was well worth it. And naturally it’s already going on Ebay for nearly twice that much in some cases. Who knows how many were actually produced, as it was an open pre-order item, but either way I’m just glad to have a great representation of the character on my shelf!

May 1 2024

ThunderCats Ultimates: Ratar-O by Super7

I’ve got a pile of Super7’s GI JOE and Silverhawks Ultimates to get to, but I decided I’d at least wrap up the latest wave of ThunderCats Ultimates before moving on. And I’ll probably be doubling up on a few of those JOEs in order to get caught up. If you’re just joining me for Wave 7, this assortment has included Snarf, Willa, and Mongor, and now lastly the Evil Mutant Ratar-O. Let’s check him out!

Our latest Mutant figure arrives in the same style packaging as we’ve been seeing all along, so I won’t dwell on it, but in the cartoon he arrived in his signature ship, The Ratstar! Ratar-O was a latecomer to the series, not arriving to join the fight until almost thirty episodes in, and his appearance really smacked of a need for LJN to help market and expand the action figure line. Not that he wasn’t a cool new character, but it was weird to see this fat rat show up to supplant Ssslithe and start dominating the more familiar Mutants. But, with monkeys, vultures, jackals and lizards already spoken for, I think a rat was a good choice.

And this rat is a force to be reckoned with! While the previous Evil Mutants all have a primitive and savage appearance about them, Ratar-O is clearly a rodent with some class and sophistication. He dons a full set of clothes that strike me as being somewhere between an emperor’s robes and a spaceship captain’s uniform. The blue tunic has gold edging, a large decoration on the front, and wide shoulders giving way to long red sleeves. He has blue and gold bracers on his wrists and grieves on his lower legs. Both his clawed hands and ratty feet are left bare and his tail snakes out from the bottom of the back of the tunic. It’s a colorful costume that makes him stand out and I really dig what Super7 did with it. The paint is sharp, the colors pop, and there are slits in the skirt part of the tunic to allow for better movement in the hips.

You get two head sculpts to choose from, which are pretty much the same but with one having a closed mouth and the other open. Both of these look great and convey all the personality of the animated design. He has two rodent teeth jutting down from under his nose, as well as a pair of reverse fangs reaching up out of the sides of his mouth. I also love the long tendril-like mustache that snakes down each side of his snout. The pointed ears jut upward from his almost samurai-like helmet and there’s a gold crest with a red gem in the center of his forehead. My one complaint with both heads is that there are a few molding seams running along the sides of the snout. These are not terribly apparent with the figure in hand, but kind of ugly when you punch in close with the camera.

The open mouth head displays Ratar-O’s full set of teeth and you get some nice variance in his eyes, where the left one is narrowed and the right is popping a bit. It mimics a recurring style in the Mutant’s animation models and gives the character a lot more personality. This may be the head that I display on the figure the most.

Despite having a rather rotund body, Ratar-O’s articulation works mostly the same as other figures in the line. He is missing the ab crunch that the skinnier Mutants have, but maintains a waist swivel. The range of motion in the arms are great thanks to rotating hinges in the shoulders and elbows. The legs have a decent range in the hips thanks to the slits in the sides of the tunic, plus you get rotating hinges in the knees and hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. The neck is ball jointed and you get pegged hinges in the wrists to allow for hand swapping. There are two sets of hands, which include a right relaxed hand, a left pointing finger, and one pair for his daggers.

The daggers, were known as The Rat’s Eye, which always kind of intrigued me that the pair of daggers had a single name, and yet each dagger kind of had their own rat’s eye. These beautiful twin accessories have a sort of Egyptian theme to their ornate gold hilts, with the eyes painted white with green pupils. The blades have a serpentine kris-style to them and lovely satin silver finishes to the paint.

You get two sets of effect parts to work with the daggers, all of which are cast in translucent, pale blue plastic. One set are to energize the blades and the other are projectile blasts that plug into the sockets in the eyes. Both designs work really well and they look great!

Finally, the Evil Mutants are complete and Ratar-O is a great figure to end them on. He was the last of them to join the show and there was just something different about him that made him stand out. And the Ultimates line definitely did him justice with this figure. Sure, you could argue that he comes with a lot less stuff than say Vultureman, but his added bulk kind of makes up for it. Also, there’s really not much else I could think of tossing in there, except maybe an episode-specific accessory or two. And while Ratar-O gets us the last of the Evil Mutants in the line, I’d still like to circle back and check out Monkian and Vultureman at some point, because both of those figures are yet to have their time in the spotlight here.