Jan 17 2013

Star Trek The Next Generation: The Nausicaan by Playmates

As I mentioned yesterday, it’s going to be Star Trek for the rest of the week. I’m sorry to do this to the crazy people fine folks who don’t like Star Trek, but I’ve got a lot of work to do this week (the kind that actually pays me the monies that keeps me supplied with Jameson and toys) so I’m dipping my bucket into the Playmates Star Trek well for a trio of quick and dirty features. It also gives me a nice build up to feature one of Diamond Select’s new Star Trek ships on Saturday. So into the huge tote of carded Trek figures I go and today I came up with… The Nausicaan. Let’s dive right in and rip open a 20 year old figure, eh?

There’s that wonderful Next Gen figure packaging. The design is the same aesthetic quality as when you hit an adult website and a thousand unwanted pop ups flood your screen. Ok, the card isn’t advertising Viagra or fleshlights, and it won’t warrant a frantic call for help to The Geek Squad, but it’s still screaming a lot of stuff at you. “NEW!” “ATTENTION COLLECTORS!” “Individually numbered!” “Playmates Skybox Collector Card!” “7th Season!” “Collector Series!” “As seen in the Tapestry!” Holy crap, my brain is exploding!!!! And that’s just the front of the card. The back has headshots of some other figures available. I have boxes full of these things and there are still figures I don’t have. How is that possible? You also get an advertisement for Deep Space Nine on the Super Nintendo and Genesis, an explanation of what all those oddly colored accessories are and a blurb about the Nausicaans and the enjoyable episode, “Tapestry.”

How would I describe a Nausicaan to someone who knows nothing about them? Well, it’s basically a Predator wearing a Weird Al Yankovic wig that hangs out in space bars and hustles people at space pool. Yeah, from a design standpoint, the Nausicaans were as derivative as all hell, but they sure looked impressive on screen, especially for a show where being an alien usually meant you had pointed ears, a wrinkled forehead, or just happened to be bald and painted blue. The Nausicaans were scary dudes, with tempers to match. I mean, anyone willing to murder someone over a game of billiards is just bad ass, and they seemed to take great pleasure in picking on Starfleet cadet pussies. For more information, let’s consult Mr. Nausicaan’s collector card. Hmm… no help there. It just gives a summary of Picard’s bar encounter (Sorry, Picard, you only got stabbed in the heart, we had to sit through an episode of you talking to Wesley about it in a Shuttlecraft. Clearly we suffered more from that incident). It also lists the Nausicaan homeworld as “unknown.” Wait, what? You have a bunch of aliens hanging around a Starbase and you don’t even know where they come from? If I were to venture a guess, I’d say Nausicaa and a quick look at the entry onMemory Alpha and I see that I’m right.

It couldn’t have been easy to capture all that ugliness in a 4.5” figure, but I’ll be damned if Playmates didn’t manage to pull it off. While the face sculpt is admittedly rather soft, the likeness is certainly there and he is one hideous bastard. There’s a cool little paint wash to help bring out the sculpted bits and his hair even has the little hairbands sculpted and painted into the front. I’m usually not a fan of Playmates’ willingness to play fast and loose with proportions, but in this case the Nausicaan’s big head kind of works and his giant burly monkey arms and ham-hock fists do as well. My only big gripe here is that one of his hands is held out at a weird angle, presumably to better hold his Dom-Jot stick, but in reality it looks like he’s trying to do something obscene with it.

It’s been a while since I’ve watched “Tapestry” but the Nausicaan outfit looks like the designer just couldn’t be bothered as it’s just a brown tunic and pants with some random black lines on it, a sash running down the middle and a belt. Still, I don’t think these guys were supposed to be in the Space Service or anything, so it’s probably not a uniform. Nope, this is probably your typical Nausicaan “I’m going to go slum it at the bar tonight so I’ll just throw something on” outfit. I’m sure Playmates did their best with what they had.

The figure features the basic Next Gen articulation. The arms rotate at the shoulders; have hinged elbows, and swivels in the biceps. The legs rotate at the hips and have hinged knees. The Nausicaan can swivel at the waist and his head can turn a little, but his hair tends to get in the way.

The Nausicaan comes with a cadre of accessories, all molded in blue plastic. You get the serrated knife that he used to turn Picard’s heart into shish-kabab, you get a Dom-Jot stick, you get a tankard of booze and some kind of weird thing that looks like a tea pot. He also comes with a purple figure stand. [Unfortunately, I took the photos a couple days after opening him and my alcohol addled mind couldn’t remember where I put the accessories. All I could find was his sword and stand. Take this as a lesson, kids, don’t drink and blog.]

All in all, the Nausicaan is a pretty cool figure. The wonky proportions tend to work better for aliens like him and the sculpt is certainly solid enough. Surprisingly, The Nausicaans were given the action figure treatment again in Art Asylum’s 7-inch Enterprise line, which is sitting buried in a tote somewhere. I’ll really have to dig that sonovabitch out some day.

Jan 16 2013

Star Trek: Tosk and Hunter of Tosk by Playmates

It took me a good couple of seasons to really accept The Next Generation as the great show that it is, but Deep Space Nine? Well, that was love at first sight. While TNG was still cooking in it’s first season, I’d argue that Deep Space Nine was served ready to eat. Except for maybe “Move Along Home.” That episode was pure shit. If anything my adoration for DS9 may have tarnished a bit as later seasons of the show moved from the familiar one-off episodes formula to the focus on story arcs. Nonetheless, it produced a ton of great characters and aliens, many of which never got their proper due from Playmates’ 4.5” line. WHERE’S MY MICHAEL EDDINGTON, YOU BASTARDS??? WHY DID YOU USE THAT PLASTIC TO MAKE THE TRAVELER INSTEAD???

Today’s figures are both from the excellent episode “Captive Pursuit” (Season 1, Episode 6), a story that serves as a prime directive example of why I loved DS9 right out of the gate. Besides being thoroughly entertaining, “Captive Pursuit” serves to establish a lot of Chief O’Brien’s character; it introduces us to a brand new and bizarre alien culture from beyond the wormhole, and illustrates just how blurred the line between right and wrong can be when operating on the frontier in a non-Federation system. We get to see both Sisko and O’Brien struggle with moral ambiguities and the idea of doing what’s right even if it means diplomatically wrecking a First Contact scenario. Great stuff!

As an example of just how out of control Playmate’s juggernaut of 4.5” Star Trek figures eventually became, here we’ve got two figures from the same episode, released under different series. Tosk was released as part of the Deep Space Nine line, while Hunter of Tosk came out under the generic Star Trek moniker. I pity anyone who collects these figures MOSC and has to worry about cataloguing them according to priorities and series. The packaging for my Tosk figure is long since gone, but I’m tearing open The Hunter for this feature, so at least I can give you an in-package shot of him. The Hunter comes with his own Pog… oops, I mean “Space Cap.” [Comic Book Guy] Oddly, enough the “Space Cap” reads:  “Hunter of the Tosk” and is at odds with the card itself, which more properly reads: “Hunter of Tosk.” [/Comic Book Guy] Either way, I preferred the Skybox Collector Cards to the Pogs. Let’s start off with Tosk himself.

Despite the overly stylized designs of many of Playmates’ figures, Tosk features a spot on likeness to the actor in makeup from the episode. The rest of the body is just a textured jumpsuit with black piping, and his exposed skin around his neck and his forearms is sculpted with scales. For what is essentially a very simple figure, I really love the way he turned out. In fact, I’d go so far as to say Playmates nailed Tosk far better than they did some of the major characters.


Tosk features all the necessary accessories. You get his neck collar and leash, his crossbow-style blaster, and HOLY CRAP I FINALLY HAVE A RAKTAJINO MUG!!! I’ve got a lot of DS9 figures, and I’m pretty sure this is the first time I got a Raktajino mug when the truth is almost every figure should have come with one of these! Sorry, Tosk, that’s going to Chief O’Brien or Dax… or maybe Kira or Sisko. Sure, all of Tosk’s accessories are molded in blue plastic, but somehow it doesn’t bother me all that much here. Tosk also comes with a figure stand, which is a basic disc with an illustrated wormhole sticker on it, and a Space Cap.


The Hunter, on the other hand, is a solid figure, but I’m not as impressed with his head sculpt. It’s not bad, it’s certainly on par with most of Playmates’ efforts, but when compared to the likeness on Tosk, The Hunter’s portrait just comes up a little wanting.  The uniform, on the other hand, hits all the right points. The two-tone red is great and the detail sculpted into the belt and bandolier strap is solid work.

The Hunter’s gear is appropriately sculpted in grey plastic. Amazing but true! He comes with the same crossbow-style blaster as Tosk, a clip-on wrist computer, and his removable helmet. Yeeeeah, about the helmet. The sculpt would be accurate to the prop used on the show, but it’s all oversized to fit the figure’s oversized head. I guess it looks ok, so long as you don’t actually compare the figure with a screen capture from the episode. I do like the choice of a sticker for the visor. The Hunter also comes with the same figure stand as Tosk.

Both figures feature the same points of articulation. The arms rotate at the shoulders, have swivels in the biceps, and hinges in the elbows. The legs rotate at the hips and have hinges in the knees, they can each swivel at the waist and turn their heads. All in all, not bad for 90’s Playmates.


While I would like to go back in time and enslave the Playmates factory workers into satisfying my list of wanted DS9 figures, the truth is there are just some things that I need to learn to let go. Thankfully, Tosk and The Hunter aren’t among them. I love this episode and I’m particularly thankful to get this pair of figures from it. For a while, I secretly hoped The Hunters might turn out to be Dominon Shock Troopers , but sadly we never did see them again. At least I have my figures and they turned out pretty well. In fact, I’ll likely pick up two more Hunters when I can find them loose and cheap.

Jan 15 2013

Uranos: F-15 Eagle by TFC, Part 2

TFC’s Eagle impressed with his jet mode, but there’s still a lot more to love about this guy. Let’s start with his transformation…


Ok, so Eagle’s transformation does feature a few minor hiccups and converting him is a lot more nerve wracking for me than converting Phantom. It’s not that he’s particularly difficult to convert, but rather Eagle has a lot more moving and folding parts and some of them feel a tad fragile. Not cheap, just delicate by the nature of their design. A good example is the way his nose cone splits open on his back. This is a very cool element to improve the figure’s aesthetics, but the hinged arms are very thin, far more so than the arms holding Phantom’s back section together. I eventually got very comfortable changing Phantom back and forth, but I’m not sure that will ever be the case with Eagle. I should be fine so long as I’m careful, but there are certainly parts of this figure that command caution. Another little issue I have with the conversion is the arms. I’ve already mentioned the way his hands remain visible in the jet mode, but getting his arms flush on the sides of the aircraft is hit and miss. Sometimes they snap in and lock, sometimes they keep wanting to pop out. It seems like a little better engineering could have gone into this aspect of the conversion.

Fortunately, whatever little hiccups arise in the conversion are all well worth it, because just like Eagle’s jet mode, the robot mode kicks all kinds of ass. Air Raid was one of my favorite Aerialbots and it’s so damn cool to see this character get this kind of complex homage. Starting with the head, this time TFC went a little closer to the Sunbow design over the G1 toy by omitting the mouth plate, but truth be told Eagle’s head isn’t all that close to either toy or animated design. He has a little smiling mouth and a yellow visor with excellent light piping. I like the head sculpt a lot, but collectors hoping for a direct match to the G1 character’s portrait will be disappointed.

Eagle’s body has that great boxy G1 look that does the character proud and I really dig the way so much of his jet mode just packs away so neatly. His tail fins fold up onto his legs, similar to the Classic Seekers, and his primary wings fold up behind his arms and remain out of the way. Sure, he’s still got the canopy and nose on his back, but it’s a lot less bulky than Phantom, and as mentioned, even the nose cone splits to improve his profile from the front. The landing gear on the front of his lower legs can be positioned in two ways, either up to form knees, or down to be more flush with his legs. I haven’t decided which I like better yet, but each configuration has its merits. Eagle even has a cool surprise. The intakes on each side of his chest fold down to reveal banks of missiles. I was totally not expecting that!


Eagle’s coloring is more varied than Phantom’s. He appropriately retains the same red and off-white base colors to his body as is the common deco for all the G1 Aerialbots, but adds black to the mix. The black all lands on his back and his legs, making him fit in very nicely with Phantom. There are a few particularly nice paint apps here, like the red on his arms and legs and the yellow on his chest. My favorite, however, are the silver panels on the insides of his legs. They aren’t even a majorly visible area of the toy and yet TFC still painted them. Cool! Eagle can hold his missiles in his hands as guns, but I prefer mounting them to his arms.

So, TFC is two for two in Project Uranos. I may have had a few more nits to pick with Eagle, but he’s still an amazing and high quality figure that does not disappoint. As with Phantom, I’m holding off looking at his combiner mode until I have the entire set to work with. Next month TFC should be launching the big daddy of the bunch: “Not-Silverbolt” and frankly, I can’t wait!

Right now my hopper is mostly full of Star Trek stuff, so in an effort to get some of it cleaned out, I’m going to be doing Star Trek features for the rest of the week, which will culminate in a look at one of Diamond Select’s brand new Starship on Saturday!

Jan 14 2013

Uranos: F-15 Eagle by TFC, Part 1

Well, there’s no more for fooling around. I’m into this whole Project Uranos thing for $200 now, so the stakes are rising. I’d be lying if I said this endeavor isn’t making me a little nervous, but after how satisfied I was with the F-4 Phantom, I’m a lot less apprehensive than I was when I started. The second installment in this third-party combiner is the F-15 Eagle, who will be known to many as “Not-Air Raid” but for the purposes of this feature, we’re just going to call him Eagle.  Can TFC keep Project Uranos moving in the right direction? We’ll find out today!


I’m not going to get as involved about the packaging and presentation this time around. It’s the same style and deco as Phantom’s, so we should know what to expect. The window box still feels like a retail-grade package, the artwork is excellent, and with a little intentional mis-transformation, the figure (packaged in robot mode) can be returned to the tray for storage. I will point out again how much I love having the artwork of each character printed on the side of the box so I can store the set in a bookcase when I have them all. In addition to the figure, you get the combiner part, which is one of Uranos’ feet, a connection piece, a folded color instruction sheet, a folded color poster, and a color tech spec card. No complaints here. Let’s start with Eagle’s jet mode. Once again, keep in mind that I provided the Autobot insignia, there are no stickers in the box.


The F-15 Eagle is certainly an iconic alt mode for Transformers, and it’s always fun to see it tackled in different fashions. In terms of size, Eagle compares well to Phantom and the two jets display quite nicely together. As for the jet itself, well in a word, it’s gorgeous. Eagle is spot on to the real world aircraft, and features a slick and sexy glossy black paintjob with some red and grey accents on the wings, and a yellow tinted canopy, which opens. The hull of the aircraft is replete with sculpted panel lines. There is a little bit of mold flashing on mine toward the engines, but it’s so minor, I doubt I’ll even be bothered to file it off. The test shots of the toy had “Air Force” stamped on the rear wings, which I wasn’t at all happy about. Luckily, TFC changed that out for the final product and replaced it with call letters that vaguely spell out “Air Raid.” I wholeheartedly approve!


Eagle has a pair of squat missiles, which can attach under the wings in three different positions. The missiles have hinged pegs, although I can’t quite figure out why the pegs would be hinged. They also have very thin and delicate fins, which I can see snapping off with careless handling. I prefer to attach the missiles to the pegs in Eagle’s exposed fists to help conceal the hands. Yes, Eagle’s fists are not fully concealed under the wings. In fact, you do have a lot more obvious robot kibble on the undercarriage, making Eagle feel more akin to some Hasbro jet Transformers. If you flip the jet over and go hunting for robo-evidence, you won’t have any trouble finding it. Eagle has three retractable landing gear, and unlike Phantom, he has enough clearance allowing him to rest comfortably on his wheels, even with his missiles attached.

On the downside, Eagle’s alt mode isn’t quite as solid as Phantom’s. The nose section has a habit of flopping downward when I’m handling the toy. It doesn’t happen all the time, so it doesn’t ruin the jet mode for me, but it can be annoying, especially when Phantom locked together so perfectly.


One of the coolest things about Eagle is that he can use his combiner parts as a stand! Yes, plug the connecter piece into the bottom of Eagle’s jet mode and plug the other end into Uranos’ foot and you have a very cool articulated stand to display Eagle in his alt mode. It’s a clever use of the extra parts and works perfectly. It’s a shame that TFC couldn’t have made this work with Uranos’ hand for Phantom, because I would have loved to get flight stands like this for all the jets.


No doubt, Eagle is a sexy looking jet. The paint and plastic are both high quality and the sculpt and profile capture the real world aircraft quite well. He doesn’t lock together quite as solidly as his brother Phantom, but as we’ll see tomorrow in part two, Eagle’s transformation is a tad more complex, giving us a robot mode that makes it possible for me to be pretty forgiving. So far, I’m quite satisfied and things only go up from here.

Jan 12 2013

Avengers: Stark Tech Assault Armor by Hasbro

Yeah, we’re well into January, but I had other overdue business to get to last week and that left me with one last Christmas present to feature. Although technically, TFC F-4 Phantom and the forthcoming F-15 Eagle were both Christmas presents, as my parents have stopped trying to track what I have in my collection and have resorted to giving me monies to buy my own toys. Anyway, today’s item was given to me as part of one of these nefarious Secret Santa exchanges. I hate these things, mostly because I never know what to get the person and in return I have to act delighted while opening something from someone who had the exact same problem. In this case, I did pretty alright toward the forced focus of my compulsory Christmas spirit and in return I wound up with Iron Man’s giant ass mech suit. I have to give my Secret Santa credit not only for trying but for actually getting me something I didn’t already have. I’ll also grant her (yes, it didn’t remain secret for long) the good taste of not getting me the rather silly Captain America one.


The set comes in an attractive window box with the usual Avengers logo and artwork featuring all the Avengers, or at least the ones that got their own movies. Hawkeye and Black Widow clearly need to get new PR agents. The back panel of the box shows a close up of the armor and points out some of the play features. The idea here is that Stark built a bigger, more powerful mech-style armored suit that he can climb inside while wearing his regular suit. Fair enough, I can get behind that. The other Stark Tech toys are pictured on the bottom edge of the box. Let’s open her up and see what we’ve got…

There are no twisty-ties or anything holding the toys in the tray, which is why I was rather surprised when I took the armor out and it fell to pieces. How this thing stayed together in the package, I have no idea. But virtually all the weapon modules and the left leg fell off instantly. No worries, though, as almost everything on the armor is designed to come off and go right back on again.


Let’s start with the Iron Man Mark VI figure. I was expecting a crappy, limited articulation version like we got bundled with the Quinjet, but I was pleasantly surprised.  What we have here is actually a good figure with solid articulation! Granted, the figure actually requires this level of articulation to work with the armor, but that doesn’t make it any less welcome. The arms feature ball joints in the shoulders and elbows, and swivels in the wrists. The legs have ball jointed hips and hinged knees, the torso is ball jointed under the chest, and the head swivels. The lack of ankle articulation is a shame and the paintwork doesn’t have that glorious new-car glossy finish like the Iron Man 2 releases did, but those are the only gripes I can bring against this guy. For a bundled figure, he’s not bad at all. In fact, he’s better than most of the single-carded Avengers figures.


The Assault Armor itself is pure bad ass, as it looks like Hulkbuster Armor meets War Machine. The sculpt is packed with detail making it a lot for the eye to take in all at once and it retains the gold and red deco that Tony Stark loves so much. To load the figure inside, the hatch on the torso hinges up and the upper legs hinge down. Once inside, Iron Man uses the triangle cutout where the Arc Reactor would be to look outside. Ok, that’s the one glaring dumb thing about the design. The two translucent blue pods on either side are control ports for Iron Man’s arms. While I’m not usually a proponent of electronics in toys, this thing is screaming for some LEDs or sound. The price range is right, but sadly Hasbro seemed dedicated to cheaping out on a lot of the Avengers toys.

The armor is decently articulated. The arms feature ball joints at the shoulders and hinges at the elbows. The legs rotate at the hips and have ball joints in the ankles. The head can rotate from side to side. Moving the legs is a little tricky with the figure inside as the hatches want to pop open when manipulated. Thankfully, the design doesn’t have Iron Man’s arms going into the mech’s arms, so you can get a wide range of uninhibited arm movement.

Weapons? You want weapons??? Well, they don’t call this thing the Assault Armor for nothing. The legs each feature a missile pod holding three sculpted, non-firing missiles. The right shoulder has a larger missile pod with seven more points of explosive persuasion. The left shoulder has a giant firing missile launcher sculpted to look like a huge gatling gun. Lastly, there’s an arm-mounted firing missile launcher. That’s a lot of firepower for something that could probably just grab Loki by each arm and tear him apart.

What’s better than a lot of weapons? Interchangeable weapons ala MechWarrior, and that’s where the Assault Armor design stumbles. All the weapons are designed to detach and they all use the same sized socket. The potential here was for a fully customizable payload. I mean, hell, even the ankles have weapon ports! Unfortunately, each weapon is more or less designed to go where it is and nowhere else. For example, you can’t swap the right and left shoulder weapons, because they don’t fit right when changed. You could put the missile pods from the legs on the arms, or the gatling gun on the arm, but they don’t look that great. The only thing really designed to be moved is the arm-mounted missile launcher, and that is just designed to go on one arm or the other.                                            

Purists may scoff at this thing and I’ll admit I initially wrote it off as another goofy cash grab like Hasbro trying to sell a Spider-Man helicopter.  But, in the end, I have to say it totally won me over. While Hasbro may have gone overboard doing a Captain America version, which is essentially just a repaint and slight remold, this one sort of makes sense. It’s fun to play around with, but more importantly it looks absolutely fantastic displayed on my Avengers shelf.

Value? Well, the Secret Santa exchange had a ten dollar limit. I’m pretty sure this thing sold for a lot more than ten dollars originally (subsequent research suggests the original MSRP was around $20), but as I can barely make out from the scratched out price sticker it probably came from Marshall’s, TJ Maxx, or Ross, so I’m guessing it was discounted to within the rules of the reindeer games. It’s also one of the few Avengers toys that aren’t still haunting the shelves of regular toy stores, so I don’t know where else she would have found it but at one of those Toy Graveyards. I generally define a “good gift” as something I wouldn’t have bought for myself, but still enjoy, and the Assault Armor certainly fits that bill. It’s a very cool surprise.

Jan 11 2013

Uranos: F-4 Phantom by TFC, Part 2

Alrighty, folks, I’m back with the second half of the F-4 Phantom (“Not-Fireflight”) feature. Actually, this is more like the last third of the feature as I shouldn’t need to get as long winded as yesterday. Let’s get right to it by starting off with transformation…

I’ll be honest… transforming Phantom was the thing that made me the most apprehensive about investing in the toy. All it takes is a little questionable engineering and a few QC dips for even a Hasbro Transformer to snap apart in your hands. I was particularly afraid of parts getting stress marks and being afraid to play around with him anymore. Well, I’m happy to say that my fears were unfounded. Phantom transforms very well. He’s not overly complex and not overly simple. For a one hundred dollar Voyager-sized toy that I’m paranoid about breaking… he’s just right. Yes, there are a few tabs that lock a little too well for my comfort, but after changing him back and forth a couple of times, I realized that this is not a fragile toy that I need worry about breaking, so long as a modicum of care is applied. The hinged arm that connects the jet parts to his back are quite thin, but mine haven’t shown any signs of stress marks, and I’m very careful to support them when manipulating them. I will admit that locking the tail portion into place when going into jet mode is a little worrisome, as it is a very tight fit, but so far, everything has worked out fine. I’m not about to let my 6-year old Nephew anywhere near it, but I can honestly say that I can transform Phantom without worrying about breaking him.

In robot mode, the homage to the G1 Fireflight figure holds up really well. You’ll notice, I said the figure rather than his animated counterpart. Phantom’s head is based more on the original toy and not the Sunbow design. Some may take issue with that, especially since the original toy’s head was so tiny that most will probably associate the character more with the Sunbow design. Me? I’m happy with what we got. The head is an excellent sculpt, I’m always a big fan of the mouth plate, and the light piping effect in the eyes is one of the best I’ve seen on any toy. Besides, it gives TFC or some other third-party company the option to rake in more profits by selling an alternate animated-style head somewhere down the road. At $100 maybe TFC should have included an extra head, but I’m not going to quibble over it because what’s here is just fine. Ok, I will make one quibble. The hinged plate that the head attaches to doesn’t peg into anything. I wouldn’t say it has a propensity to fly up, but it would have been nice if it pegged in somewhere.

While I’ve seen a few people complain about the fact that Phantom is basically wearing a truncated jet on his back, it was a strong characteristic of the original toy and animated character design, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Besides, the whole assembly locks together very well.


Phantom’s body is wonderfully proportioned and features that great boxy “I’m a friggin giant robot, and I’m not afraid to show it” G1 style that I so woefully miss in today’s designs. It also gives you a few different, albeit mostly minor, display options. His shoulder pieces are designed to point up at stylish angles, but if you’re looking for something more akin to the squared off G1 shoulder design, you can fold them down. His wings fold up onto his legs, however they can be removed entirely for a more streamlined look and even converted into a fairly cool looking shield-weapon. Likewise, the fuel pods can be held in each of his hands as guns, mounted on his arms, or each held in one hand for a kind of dual barrel weapon.

As for the quality of the toy, I have no complaints. A few years ago I might have commented that the plastic feels a little lighter than Hasbro Transformers, but compared to what Hasbro is turning out these days, it’s pretty close to being on par. It’s also worth mentioning that the parts of him that are hollow are hollow to accommodate his transformation and not to cut costs on plastic. When I pick him up, I get the same heft I would expect from an official Hasbro product in this size. I was a little worried about mold flashing, but there’s absolutely zero flashing to be found on mine. The joints are all nice and tight, and while I’ve seen some complaints about the hip joints being too tight and squeaky, my Phantom seems to have dodged that bullet.

I’m happy to say that my first foray into the world of third-party Transformers was an encouraging one. If there’s one thing that has discouraged me from buying third-party figures in the past it’s the little tweaks and fixes that people have said they had to do on them to make them right. It’s that kind of thing that waved me off of Fansproject’s Warbot tribute to Springer. If I’m paying a premium for a toy, I expect it to be done right from the get go. Phantom doesn’t need any fine tuning, as he is an impressive figure right out of the box. Both robot and jet mode are excellent, the transformation is well designed, and the figure feels like a quality product.

So, is he worth the $100? Well, that’s something only you can decide. It’s certainly a tidy sum to be paid for what would sell for around $25 to $30 tops if it were a Hasbro product, maybe a little more as an exclusive. But if you can come into the deal knowing that you’re paying extra for a limited production run of a specialty piece produced by a small company than it’s easy to rationalize the price. I’m certainly happy with what I got and I’m looking forward to TFC’s second installment of Project Uranos, F-15 Eagle, which has already begun shipping and should be arriving at my door any day now!

Jan 10 2013

Uranos: F-4 Phantom by TFC, Part 1

I managed to hold out for a long time against the tempting in-rush of third-party Transformers. I actually first caved back when Fansproject revealed their “Not-Insecticon” Causality figures. The problem was, I waited to buy all three once they were all out. That turned out to be a stupid move because the first two sold out everywhere and now all I can find are the “Not-Deluxe” “Not-Insecticon” repaints. Re-issue those bitches, Fansproject! Re-issue them and I will buy them!! I pledge you my monies! Nonetheless, my favorite Transformers combiners have always been the Aerialbots and the Stunticons. When TFC showed off the first images of their own versions of the Aerialbots, I simply couldn’t hold out any longer. And so, with some Christmas money in hand, I ordered the first figure in Project Uranos: F-4 Phantom aka“Not-Fireflight.” And since the whole “Not” business is getting on my nerves, for the purposes of the feature, we’ll just call him Phantom.

Because this is my first experience with a third-party Transformer, and because this thing wasn’t cheap, I’m going to milk it for two features. Today, we’ll check out the packaging and the jet mode, and tomorrow we’ll look at the transformation and the robot mode. I’m not even going to bother with the arm mode until I’ve got enough of these figures to put something together.

But, before we get into the presentation, let’s talk size. In both robot and jet forms, Phantom is on par with Hasbro’s recent Voyager Class figures. Now, my own preference for G1-style Aerialbots would be to have the limbs be Deluxes and Silverbolt be a Voyager. I just can’t get my head around a figure like Fireflight towering over my Classic Autobots like Jazz or Prowl. But when you’re paying $100 a pop, you want something more substantial and so I’m fine with displaying these guys as a stand-alone team. And assuming TFC does make good on their promise to get around to doing a certain team of evil cars, I’ll be happy to have these two teams in scale with each other.

Phantom comes in a window box, which is roughly the same height as the Prime Voyager Class packages and a little bit wider. The figure is packaged in robot mode with his single combiner part (Uranos’ hand) and two fuel pods in the tray to his left. Phantom is secured in his tray with twisty-ties, but once they’re undone the box is very collector friendly. Phantom just requires a little mis-transformation to lay back in his tray for storage.

The matte deco on the box is quite professional looking and very attractive. The front features the Uranos logo in silver foil lettering down the right side and a very Pat Lee-inspired piece of character art. The side panel has a full drawing of the character, which is awesome because when I get a complete set, I can store them boxed in a bookcase and see which is which. I’m not a big fan of Pat Lee’s art in my comic books, but the homage works well enough here as box art. The back panel shows photos of the toy in its three different forms. There are also faint line renderings of the toy in the background of the various panels of the box.

Inside the box, there’s a cardboard insert with a very cool line drawing on the back. You also get a baggie that contains a nice profile card with character art and tech specs. And there’s a fold out poster and a single folded sheet of color instructions, printed on both sides. Alas, the instructions only show transformation from jet to robot and from jet to combiner arm. Considering the figure comes in robot mode, you’d think that would be the conversion they show. Either way, Phantom is a pretty easy Transformer to figure out. All in all, TFC certainly went the extra mile on the presentation. It still feels like a retail-grade package, but the artwork is particularly nice and little extras like the poster and the card are welcome. Even the instruction sheet is far nicer than what you get with a Hasbro Transformer. But enough about the presentation, let’s get to the goods. As is tradition around here, I’m going to start with Phantom’s jet mode. Keep in mind, folks, that I’ve already applied my repro Autobot insignias, which are obviously not included in the package.


I’m something of a military hardware buff, and while tanks and helicopters are my first loves, I dig me some warplanes as well. As a result, I’ve got a plethora of images from books in my library to compare Phantom’s jet mode to the real thing. Despite the outlandish (but very G1 accurate) color scheme, the toy is a pretty solid likeness. The configuration of the nose and cockpit are spot on, as are the intakes on each side of the canopy. The wing tips can correctly be angled at an upward incline, and the engines are positioned properly. About the only thing I can nitpick here is that the dorsal tail fin should be a tad bigger. The toy is replete with sculpted panel lines and you can even see the seats in the cockpit through the yellow tinted canopy. I should also note here that TFC included some tiny plastic plugs to cover up the screws on the dorsal side of the jet mode, which were installed prior to shooting the pictures. They’re completely optional, and chances are if you’re a Transformers collector then you’re used to exposed screws, but they’re a nice bonus nonetheless.


If you flip the jet over, you can certainly see some robot shenanigans going on, but everything is nicely recessed into the undercarriage. I’d have to say that Phantom has a lot less robot kibble hanging off of him than most of Hasbro’s Jet Transformers (I’m looking at you Prime Dreadwing!!!). Additionally, Phantom’s jet mode is tight and dead solid.

So, there is one little flub in the design. Phantom has folding landing gear for when you want to display him in jet mode. Unfortunately, they don’t offer enough clearance for the fuel pods that clip under each wing. You can choose to display him without the pods, but if you want the pods on, he’s going to be sitting on them rather than the landing gear. I’ll grant you, for a toy as expensive as Phantom, this seems like a silly design oversight, but I’m not crying over it.


Phantom’s color scheme is a nice homage to Hasbro’s original G1 toy. This toy shows off a little more of the off-white than red. Also, the blue and yellow striping on the wings is a bit more tastefully subdued here, but it all works fine for me. I’m particularly pleased with the shade of red plastic used and the tampo markings look great. Some diehards may bitch that the tail fins aren’t red, but a little divergence in the deco like that doesn’t bother me at all.

And with a sigh of relief, I can say that I’m very pleased with Phantom’s presentation and his jet mode. The quality is excellent and everything looks great. Tomorrow, I’ll check back in and we’ll look at his transformation as well as his robot mode.

Jan 9 2013

World of Warcraft: Barrens Chase by Mega Bloks

And it’s time for more World of Warcraft from our good friends at Mega Bloks. I manage to finally kick my habit of playing the game (for the third time) and now I keep getting dragged back to WoW via the building sets. Like the last set, this one was a Christmas present and also like the last set, I was very happy to get it because while I had decided to stop investing money in them, I apparently have no problem with getting them for free.

There’s the box, and I have to say I still really dig seeing the WoW logo and motif in the toy aisle. I wish someone would give the franchise a proper line of action figures like Halo gets, but at least it’s cool to see WoW represented in the toy aisle in any fashion. Once again, I take issue with the fact that Mega Bloks uses CG models rather than actual photos of the toys, but as we’ll see in the case of this set there aren’t any real discrepancies to complain about.

Dump out the contents of the box and you get a large instruction booklet, a bunch of unnumbered baggies of pieces, the mystery loot baggie, and a trial card for the game that lets you play up to level 20 for free. Oh yes, friends, like any good dealer knows, the first taste is always free. Altogether, you get 128 pieces, which is only 22 pieces less than the more expensive set we looked at last time. The difference is this set is made up of mostly tiny pieces and that’s not a bad thing, because building this one felt more like a Lego build and less like I was just assembling some toys. The 128 pieces comprise two minifigures, a couple of battle standards, a Horde X-53 rocket and an Alliance mount. As usual, let’s start with the minifigs.


The minifigures come completely assembled. All you need to do is plug the weapon clip into their backs. This set comes with Tanavar, a Night Elf Warrior (Alliance) and Dragath, an Orc Warlock (Horde). I’ve made no bones about the fact that the minifgures are my favorite thing about this line and that continues to be the case here. The Tanavar and Dragath figures perfectly capture their races and character classes from the game and I’m always happy to add a couple more players to my display shelf instance. Tanavar comes with a translucent purple sword and Dragath comes with a large and very cool staff. As always each figure’s armor is interchangeable with any other figures in the collection. I still haven’t gotten around to playing around with this feature, but it sure is cool.


The Nightsaber mount is a very simple build. All you do is attach the legs, the head, the tail, the reins and the saddle. The finished beast is very cool looking and features some very impressive sculpting, particularly on the head. The angular nature of the sculpt replicates the polygon stylings of the game really well and the coloring on the figure is spectacular. The saddle fits the figures very well and they can actually grip the reins too. Each of the legs is ball jointed at the body, which gives a decent amount of articulation for such a little guy. He’s certainly won me over for Mega Bloks’ mounts and I’m rather anxious to get some of the flying mounts now. Well, played Mr. Bloks… Well played.


The X-53 rocket represents the bulk of this set’s build, and as mentioned already it feels more like an actual Lego build than any of the previous Mega Bloks sets I’ve put together. The bricks are without any of the annoying color issues that I’ve seen in previous sets, and the build is very well designed and the finished rocket holds together solid. The nose art is cool, there are some adjustable exhaust pipes, and the back engine of the rocket can spin with the flick of a finger. Admittedly, the figures look a little awkward sitting on this thing, the windshield is undersized, and there are no controls to speak of, but I still dig it a lot. Maybe the thought of an Orc flying something that looks like it was cobbled together by Wile E. Coyote just tickles me.

In the end, I love everything about this set. The figures are awesome, the mount and rocket are both very cool, and while the Nightsaber mount was a very simple assembly, the overall set was still a genuinely fun and satisfying build. I’m always a sucker for sets that give you everything you need for a self-contained battle and that’s exactly what you get here: A couple of foes and their rides to chase each other around The Barrens or Thousand Needles or wherever. It seems like the set goes for around $24.99 at most retailers and that seems like a fine deal to me. In fact, this set is so good, it’s restored my confidence in the line. I’m going to grab a few more of the smaller sets and if I like what I get, I just may convince myself to pick up that Horde Zeppelin that I want so badly.

I actually have one more Christmas present to look at, but I’m going to come back to it on Saturday so that tomorrow I can get to TFC’s first Project Uranos figure, F-4 Phantom, before the second Project Uranos figure arrives at my door next week.

Jan 8 2013

DC Universe Signature Collection: Lead by Mattel

Alrighty, let’s deal with the giant lead elephant in the room. Mattel has done it again and bestowed giant status on a figure that doesn’t warrant it. First we got the inexplicably huge Rocket Red and now Lead gets the giant treatment. Lead is built off of the C&C Darkseid buck, meaning he towers over the other Metal Men. While definitely the bruiser of the team, Lead was usually drawn the same size as the other Responsometer robots. I should be furious that Mattel took us all the way up to the last member of the team and then did something crazy like this. But I’m not. In fact, I’m willing to give this one a pass, because the Metal Men could change their size and shape at will, and quite frankly, I think he looks pretty good this big.


As a quarterly figure, Lead comes in a bigger version of the same style window box we saw yesterday. In this case, the character art is solid, but not as exceptional as it usually is. You get a little bio blurb about the character and, as expected, the package is completely collector friendly.

Starting off with Lead’s head sculpt, I definitely dig the portrait, which features Lead smiling broadly. He’s got a lot of personality and his nature of the big loveable lug really comes across in the sculpt. Mattel didn’t have to do a lot of new tooling for this figure, but what they did, they did well.


Moving on to the rest of the body… well, besides his obvious growth spurt, Lead’s use of the Darkseid buck also means that he retains the stony sculpted lines on the arms and legs. Mattel, these are the METAL Men not Rock Lords. Lead and stone are two different things and seeing the stone patterns on this figure is both wrong and distracting. Luckily the dark coloring of the figure makes them a little less obvious, but the fact that these are there bother me a lot more than Lead being an oversized figure. One I can explain away, the other I cannot.

Once I get past Lead’s stony limbs, the rest of the figure falls into place pretty well. The rubbery smock that makes up his skirt and chest plate looks good. He’s got heavy rivets sculpted into his triangular front plate, and again around his gauntlets and boots. Otherwise, there’s not a lot of original sculpting on the body, but I’ve come to expect that from this team, and in truth it isn’t necessary.

Lead is painted over in a satisfyingly dark grey wash with some faint swirly patterns that crop up here and there. It’s a good finish for him that’s pretty characteristic of the artwork. The only other paint apps on the figure are the black for his eyes and eyebrows, the “L” symbols on his chest and forehead, and the white for his teeth. I’m a little iffy on the white teeth. I’m thinking black would have worked better, but it’s not really a sticking point for me.

Even as a former C&C buck, Lead retains most of the articulation we come to expect from the DCUC line. His arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, hinged at the elbows, and have swivels in the biceps and wrists. His legs have the usual universal hip movement and feature hinges in the knees and ankles. There are, however, no swivels in the thighs. Lead’s neck is ball jointed, he can swivel at the waist, and he retains his ab crunch hinge, which is still fairly serviceable under his soft rubbery chest plate. The only other thing worth mentioning is that my Lead figure has really loose legs. He can stand ok, but they really flop around.

Mattel can be geniuses when it comes to reusing parts in this line. A quick look back to Uncle Sam certainly proves that to be true. Unfortunately, Lead is not one of those times. They had two good reasons not to reuse the C&C Darkseid buck for this figure: Size being one and the stony pattern in the sculpt being the other. I can get around the size on this one, in fact I even kind of like it, but the problem with the sculpt is tougher for me to get past. I like the figure well enough. I’m very glad to have a complete Metal Men team, but a lot about this figure stinks of laziness, and when you consider that it’s a more expensive quarterly figure, I find that hard to accept. With the first year of Club Infinite Earths in the bag, I’ve been overall extremely satisfied with this line. If Lead here is the biggest disappointment, than that’s not too bad. Still, it’s a shame the line had to end the year on a low.

Jan 7 2013

DC Universe Signature Collection: Platinum and Tin by Mattel

When Iron came out, way back in DC Universe Classics Wave 12, I had little exposure to The Metal Men, other than their cameos in other comics, like 52. But the thing I always loved most about DCUC was the way it could send me scrambling to buy books I never would have otherwise read if it weren’t for a certain figure I liked. Shortly after buying Mercury, I happened upon a stack of the original 1960’s Metal Men comics at a used bookshop downtown. They were in terrible shape, but I got them for cheap, took them home and devoured all of them that night. A bit later, we got word that Mattel would be completing the team through Club Infinite Earths and so I tracked down the Walmart Exclusive Gold. Soon I was hotly anticipating completing a team that I barely knew a couple of years ago. And that brings us to December’s CIE monthly figure(s): Platinum and Tin.

It’s interesting that Mattel waited so long to do Platinum (aka Tina), because at the start of the original comic she was the most prominent of all of Dr. Magnus’ Responsometer creations. Issue #1 (“Rain of the Missile Men”) managed to endear her to me straight away. The issue starts out with Magnus donated her as a museum display for being too emotionally attached to him. Of course, she was promptly kicked out of the museum because she wouldn’t stop crying and the patrons concluded she was a fake because robots don’t cry. In addition to some fun bickering between her and the chauvinistic, dickhead (“I hate women – especially robot ones”) Mercury, Tina eventually becomes the object of lecherous desire from an alien robot who proceeds to attack Earth to get her as his queen. Fun! As for Tin… well, I found him to be a pretty annoying character even at the best of times, but I’m still happy to get him as a pack-in just to round out the team.

On to the packaging… As usual, the character art is fantastic and the window box is completely collector friendly. Sadly, I’ve amassed quite a few of these over the year, and most of the figures have been incorporated into my DCUC display shelves. I’m starting to feel the pinch for space and I’m resisting the sensible urge to ditch the packages. In the end, I may be forced to keep only the quarterly figure boxes. Anyway, I don’t have much new to say about the package, so let’s move on!


Tina’s design hasn’t changed all that much since she was introduced and the figure reflects that fact. The portrait is pretty good, although Tina looks a lot more confident and mature than the doe-eyed naïve and innocent metal woman from the early funnybooks. Either way, she’s quite pretty and certainly invokes the spirit of the modern appearances of the character. Tina has her little cap with her symbol and the sculptors did a fine job recreating her 60’s hairstyle. The rest of the figure is appropriately lacking in sculpted detail. Really, all you have are the rivets around the edges of her triangular front plate and some more around the tops of her boots. Both of her hands are sculpted into tiny fists, which are fine, but I really would have liked a set of attachable coil hands. All the other Metal Men up to this point got extra pieces that allowed their hands to morph. Tina’s trademark move was turning her arms to springs. I guess that extra plastic went into Tin.

Also keeping with the theme of the characters, Tina is washed over with a pleasing coat of shimmery silver paint. The only other paint apps on the figure are the black making up her eyes and eyebrows and the symbol on her cap. My only quibble about the paint would be the unpainted joints, but the base plastic is close enough that it isn’t jarring to the eye.

Platinum’s articulation includes everything you’d expect from a DCUC style figure. The arms feature ball jointed shoulders, hinged elbows, and swivels in the biceps and wrists. Her legs have universal hinges at the hips, hinges at the knees and ankles, and swivels in the thighs. She has a ball jointed neck, can swivel at the waist, and has the usual ab crunch hinge in her torso. The articulation looks good on paper, but her sculpted skirt really puts a damper on her upper leg movement. At least the torso design allows for her ab crunch to work.


And then there’s Tin. Remember that 3-pack of critters Mattel put out in Green Lantern Classics? Well, he’s not as bad as them, but the idea is about the same. He’s a cool little sculpt, which captures the goofy and awkward nature of the character. He’s mostly pre-posed, in an odd hunched over posture with knees bent. I’m not sure what they were going for with the pose, or what he’s supposed to be doing with his pointed fingers, but as a pack-in to finish off the team, I’m fairly happy with him. With rotating shoulders and head, he does have three points of articulation and he stands surprisingly well on his own.


Platinum was one of my most anticipated figures of this year’s CIE offerings, partly because I’ve grown to really love the characters and their books, and partly because my OCD really flares up when I have incomplete teams. In the end she didn’t disappoint. Granted, she wasn’t the hardest figure in the world to do, but at least Mattel didn’t do something crazy like make her into an inappropriately oversized figure like Rocket Red or… oh… well, we’ll talk about Lead tomorrow.