Nov 14 2012

World of Warcraft: Goblin Trike by Mega Bloks

A few months ago, I dedicated myself to spending more time at home and less time getting loaded at the local Pub. Sure, I’m usually still getting loaded, but now I do it at home with FigureFeline, and it costs a lot less. Of course, I needed something else to do. With my Xbox still on the repair heap and my PS3 little more than a glorified Blu-Ray player, I decided to venture back online to World of Warcraft. It seemed like a good idea and it gave me time to get my characters ready for the new expansion. I dove in with both feet and started playing like a crack addict all over again. Well, after Mists of Pandera launched, it held my interest for only a very short while. In fact, it’s been weeks since I’ve been back. I don’t know if that’s a statement about the quality of the expansion or just my shifting interests. Either way, it’s a good story that gives me a nice segue into today’s feature… another WoW building set from Mega Bloks.

 


This one is the Goblin Trike. I think it’s cool that Mega Bloks is doing a lot of the steam punk shit from the game because these designs seem to work better as building sets than the beasts. It comes in a standard box, about which I have two issues. First, there isn’t an actual photo of the toy anywhere on the box. The best we get is a CG model on the back. Second, the size of the box is seriously misleading based on what you get. The box is absolutely huge, and what’s in there only takes up about one-sixth of the space. Sure, having built my share of these sorts of sets I can gauge the size based on the number of pieces printed on the box, but it’s still damn prejudiced against the ill-informed. Anyway, dump out the contents and you three baggies with a total of 65 pieces, plus the color instruction booklet.


Let’s start off with the figure, Pitz the Goblin Warrior. I’ve been really impressed with Mega Bloks’ WoW minifigs and Pitz here is no exception. The head sculpt perfectly captures the cartoony and distinctive design of the race in the game. He has the same system of interchangeable chest and shoulder armor as the other minifigs, and might I say, they look gorgeous. The amount of sculpted detail and paintwork on the tiny little armor pieces is downright impressive, right down to the textures on the shoulders and the teeny little gilded spikes on his wrist cuffs. This is some seriously nice work! Pitz comes with a red warhammer, which can clip to his back for storage. Everything about this little guy is a win.

 

Moving on to the trike, it’s a pretty cool build, made up primarily of two large pieces, one is the sculpted wood-grain body and the other is the grey frame. That’s not to say there aren’t a lot of other tiny pieces that make up the rest of the build. In the end, you get a nice little three wheeled steam punk cruiser, complete with crazy exhaust pipes sticking out of the back and a cool little clip to hold Pitz’s Warhammer. There’s an extra post that can be used to secure Pitz to the seat via the socket in his back. He fits on it well and looks good riding it.

With all that having been said, there are some serious QC issues with these bricks. Several of them have weird and ugly swirly patterns in the plastic. It’s like when you go to Dunkin Donuts and get a muffin, but the muffin you get has a vein of some other muffin running through it because the batters got mixed up at the Muffin Factory. And you get a sudden mouthful of some nasty other muffin flavor that you didn’t want. It’s just like that. No? Just me? Fair enough. Thankfully the color flubs are mostly part of the brown wood-grain bricks, so I guess you can pass them off as just weathering. But still, how hard is it to stamp out a bunch of bricks in a specific color? I’ll also note here that the rear axil likes to fall off a lot. I’m all too aware of the fact that Mega Bloks is not Lego, but even so I expect better production values than this crap.


Speaking of color, there’s something about the color schemes on this set that I’m not crazy about. The greys and browns and blacks are all standard enough, but the bare red plastic looks a little cheap and that yellowish-orange color is strangely off-putting to me. Not to mention there’s a fair amount of paint slop around the spokes and the tires. There’s certainly a disconnect between the excellent coloring and paintwork on the minifig and the trike model itself.

In the end, this set is ok. It’s nothing great, and QC issues aside, it’s not awful. I absolutely love the figure, but then $25 is a lot to pay for a little minifig, so the trike has to factor in there somewhere. Everything about the trike model screams the differences between how dodgy Mega Bloks can be versus the peerless quality of Lego. And how about value? $25 for a 65 piece set with questionable QC versus, oh let’s say Lego’s Marvel Super Hero’s Loki’s Cosmic Cube Escape, which contained 181 pieces, including three minifigs, and only cost $20. Yeah, no contest there!

Between my apathy toward the new expansion of the game and my general “meh” feeling about this set, I think I’m going to give Mega Bloks’ WoW series a bit of a rest for now. I’ve got a couple more sets sitting around here waiting to be built, so I’ll get to those eventually. I’m not completely giving up on it, but part of me just wishes that Mega Bloks would focus on producing the minifigs, because they truly are the shining point of this line. Besides, strictly from a dollar perspective, the money is way better spent on actual Lego.

Nov 13 2012

Marvel Universe: Future Foundation Spider-Man by Hasbro

It seems like forever since I last featured a Marvel Universe figure. Why? Well, as usual, the new waves haven’t been showing up on the pegs here and I just haven’t been motivated enough to buy an entire case like I’ve done in the past. Nonetheless, there were a couple of figures where I was willing to splurge and get singles online and FF Spidey was one of them. Ironic, since I’ve managed to avoid all the Spidey toy merchandising madness involving the release of the Amazing Spider-Man film (including the film itself!) but maybe that will change this week when I finally sit down and check out the flick on Blu-Ray.

Marvel Universe packaging hasn’t changed much, but gone are the days of enclosed figure stands, and even those cool little envelopes with file cards have been replaced with shitty little mock comic book covers. But wait! Flip the card over and it’s got MODOK on it schilling the rest of the figures and that right there made my day. A little MODOK threatening me so that I will buy toys is worth all the figure stands in Christendom. I’ll point out now that I really think this FF Spidey should have been included in the Future Foundation multi-pack, but seeing as how that was a repaint of the regular Fantastic Four multi-pack, and I know how these things work, I can’t say as I’m surprised. And hey, it meant that Hasbro sucked an extra ten bucks out of me. Well done, Hasbro. Well done.

I can’t place the body being used here. It’s likely just the standard new buck, but it’s certainly not that same old 3 ¾” Spidey body that I’ve purchased a bunch of times over. For starters, the head sculpt looks new and it’s much better proportioned to the body than some of the other, smaller Spidey heads. And then there’s the body. The body itself is much bulkier than past Spider-Man figures. Yes, this is one seriously ‘roided out Spider-Man with some major guns. Either Spidey’s been doing a whole lot of curls at the Baxter Building or Hasbro is just trying to scrape buy with an inappropriate body here. It certainly looks like someone other than Parker is wearing the suit.

Having bought the figure online, I was a little concerned about how well the deco would match my other FF members. After all, the only reason I’m buying it is to display with the rest of the FF team. As it turns out, the deco matches just fine. The paintwork is very nice and he’s got the same level of wash as the others and he looks just fine when posed with the rest of the FF crew. I’d go so far as to say that the paint is more impressive on this figure than the Marvel Legends version.

Articulation? I need my Spidey figures to be super articulated, and the articulation on this guy is impressive. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders, and hips, plus the neck has the additional hinge to help him look up. You get single hinged elbows and double hinges in the knees. There are swivels in the biceps, wrists, upper thighs, and lower legs! The ankles feature regular hinges and additional rockers. His torso swivels at the waist and has a ball joint up near the chest. About the only thing I could improve on here would be double hinged elbows, but even still his poseability is great. On a side note, Spidey uses those pegging ball joints for his hips, which are certainly better than the rotating hinge joints that Hasbro has been using in many of their 3 ¾” movie figures. On the other hand, these have an annoying habit of pulling out. I guess you can’t have everything.

Spidey comes with one accessory, and it’s that terrible web effect piece that has come with countless other MU Spidey figures in the past. I hate this thing almost as much as that terrible funnel of energy that comes with all the Iron Man figures.

I’m often fond of bitching about the lack of value in many of these MU figures. No figure stand, no decent accessories, and lots of re-use of parts. Nonetheless, I’m a whore to the Fantastic Four comics, so this figure was always going to be a “must buy” for me. The inappropriate build of the figure takes a little getting used to, but the deco is nice and the articulation is quite excellent.

Nov 12 2012

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Foot Soldier (Nickelodeon) by Playmates

Ok, one more Turtles feature and then I’m moving on to randomness for the rest of the week. I had originally planned to do a double feature on April and the Foot Soldier, because I didn’t think I had a whole hell of a lot to say about either of these figures. But then I kind of got all ranty on April, so that’s why we’re getting to look at Foot Soldier all by his lonesome. It’s not that this is a bad figure. Not at all. But he’s a faceless minion for the Turtles to beat up, so he obviously doesn’t have a lot of the same personality and excitement as some of the others. Either way, it’s Monday and I’m in the doldrums, so let’s press on and see what he’s all about.


The packaging! Blah, blah, I love the packaging! Blah, blah. I want to meet it at a bar and buy it a couple of drinks and take it home and tell it how great it is. If you want to see some more in depth thoughts about these packages check out my past Turtles features. To sum it up quick and dirty: Playmates, you done good here.

Does anyone remember the early proto shots of this figure? Remember those goddamn crazy swirly eyes? If you don’t, you can look really closely on any of the Wave 1 packages where they show the other figures, including this one, and you’ll see what I mean. Well thankfully, those didn’t make it into the final figure. In the end Playmates went with a simple red paint job over a sculpt that makes the eyes look rather insectoid. It’s an odd choice, either way, but it looks appropriately creepy.

Apart from the averted eye disaster, the Foot Soldier is a pretty solid looking figure. I like the cheesy foot emblem on his headband, and the overly stylized forearms and lower legs don’t bother me as much as I thought they would. There’s a hint of sculpted detail to his outfit, but it’s kind of soft. As a minion, this guy certainly gets by.

Articulation is very simple. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders and hips, and his arms can swivel just below the elbows. He can also swivel at the waist. The common idea among mass market action figure design these days seems is to cut articulation. Playmates was able to retain it for the Turtles, but everyone else, including the Foot Soldier here, conforms to the prevailing strategy. I was still able to have some fun futzing about with him, but the lack of hinges in the elbows and knees is sorely missed.

While the package proclaims the inclusion of a “Ninja Arsenal,” the reality is somewhat different. You don’t get a cool sprue tree loaded with weapons, like we did with the Turtles and with April. Instead you get a couple of swords and a couple of throwing stars. Footsy here has a set of functional scabbards that peg into his back and hold his two swords very nicely. The swords are simple molded black pieces that he can hold in either hand. He also comes with a set of throwing stars, which he can also hold surprisingly well. So, not a lot of gear, but what’s here is good. But let’s face it, he could have come with a bazooka and he wouldn’t have stood a chance against the Turtles.

Overall, I like this figure well enough. There’s just something about this line that is so much fun and endearing to me. He’s nothing crazy special, but for the going price of these figures, he’s a decent enough goon for the Turtles to beat on. Then again, with the lack of articulation and paint apps, it seems like he should have been offered up in an army builder two-pack for just a couple of dollars more. I will likely pick up one more of these just so I can have them flanking my Shredder on the shelf, but on my next pass through the toy aisle, I’m going to start grabbing the Wave 2 figures.

 

Nov 11 2012

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: April O’Neil (Nickelodeon) by Playmates

TMNT is still the only figure line hanging on the pegs at my local big box that I’m currently collecting. There’s still no sign of any more Marvel Legends Wave 3 turning up and the Transformers section is literally all Bumblebees and Hot Shots. But that’s fine, because the Nick TMNT figures are still some of the best values out there and I’m happy to pick some more of them up every time I make a grocery run. If nothing else it keeps me out of that expensive Lego aisle. But today was a day I was dreading. The day I actually picked up April O’Neil. I bought her because I felt I needed the figure in my collection, even though considering my thoughts on the character design, buying her went against all reason.


I’ve gushed on and on about the packaging for this line, so I’m not going to do it anymore. It’s gorgeously retro, it’s nostalgic, it’s functional, and it makes me want to buy the figures. Case in point, even April looked good enough in the package that I was willing to toss her into the cart. As always, the back of the card includes a file card, and in this case, it is quite possibly the file card for Sari Sumdac from Transformers Animated line. Apparently they’re both teenage chicks with attitude who fall in with the heroes because her genius father was abducted by the bad guys. Ok… time out.

Seriously, guys, how f’cking lazy is that? Look, I will likely never watch this show. It’s not because I won’t give it a chance or I don’t think it can be good, but I just don’t have the time for more than a handful of TV shows a week and a TMNT cartoon isn’t going to be one of those. But what was wrong with the portrayal of April as an independent professional journalist? Can little kids today not relate to an independent career woman as a role model? Do female toys have to be the slutty goth offspring of monsters for them to be marketable? “But, FigureFan the old April always got kidnapped and the Turtles had to save her, so she wasn’t really a strong female role model and…” SHUT UP! I’m making a point! I don’t care how much attitude this new April has, this just seems like a regression. Ok, that’s enough, let’s look at the figure.

Ugh. This over stylized design in animation today pisses me off so much. I’d even take Filmation’s atrociously gratuitous reuse of stock animation footage over this shit. Whether it’s Sari or Miko or Brave or this April, it all just feels so lazy and everything looks like everything else and I totally hate it almost as much as I hate hyperbole. I know, I’m a dinosaur and I think everything was better back in the day. But I calls it likes I sees it.

In terms of transferring the character design to figure form, I’d say this figure mostly succeeds. Playmates got her outfit down pretty well, although I think the white on yellow tampo for her shirt is too hard to see and they should have went with different coloring to make the figure pop more. It may be show accurate, but the show was designed to sell toys, so they maybe should have planned that out better at the drawing board. Still, the sculpted ruffling in the fabric of her shirt and shorts is nice detail for this kind of figure. On the other hand, April’s face sculpt looks a lot softer than all of the other figures in the line, making it hard to define important details, like her mouth. I should also note that this whole figure looks kind of grungy. It’s something about the plastic used for her yellow top and the skin tone of her face. She doesn’t have that bright and toyish charm that the other figures have.

April’s articulation falls in line with the other figures in this line which are not Turtles. You get ball joints in the neck, shoulders, and hips, swivels in the forearms, and a swivel at the waist. There isn’t a lot of poseability here, but I’m going to give April a pass, since her limbs are so skinny and soft that I doubt they could support hinges in the elbows or knees.

April comes with a bowstaff and a sprue tree of other assorted gear. It’s interesting that she comes with more weapons than either Splinter or Shredder. I kind of dig the fact that it’s supposed to be training gear and her sword actually has a wood grain sculpted into the blade to point out that it’s a training sword. That’s a cool little touch. The downside is only one of her hands is really designed to hold anything.

And there you have it. April failed to win me over, but then I didn’t really expect her to. There are a few nagging issues with the figure beyond just the character design. That all having been said, I don’t regret buying her. She was only nine bucks and I really wasn’t about to collect a Turtles line without getting April.

Nov 10 2012

Transformers Prime: Hot Shot by Hasbro

It took me a while, but Hot Shot here is the last Transformer sitting on my new acquisitions pile, so I thought we’d knock him out this weekend before I start getting around to buying some more. He is a repaint of the Deluxe Bumblebee, and so well done that I didn’t even realize it when I bought him. I’ve got some social obligations this weekend, so I’m going to try to get through this guy pretty quickly. Being a repaint, I should be able to be brief and still give him his due.

Yes sir, I still really dig the packaging for Prime. I wouldn’t have thought that a largely white deco would have been a good idea, but these cards look great on the pegs and make me want to buy them. Hot Shot has some particularly nice character art on the oversized card and he is packaged in his vehicle mode, with a bio blurb on the back of the card. Not much new to say here, so let’s move on to the figure.

Out of the package and it’s amazing the differences that a simple repaint can make. Of course, it helps that Hasbro put a lot more effort into Hot Shot’s deco than Bumblebee’s. Hot Shot’s car mode is blue with some stylized flames tampo’d on the sides and the hood, which looks loads better than BB’s bare yellow plastic and sloppy black paint. The windows and headlights here are translucent blue plastic and Hot Shot even has painted tail lights. The differences here aren’t just about color and design preference, Hot Shot just features better workmanship. Seriously, standing next to this guy, Bumblebee just looks like a bad custom job. I love the way this guy looks and with a little tweaking, he could have made a nice  homage to G1 Tracks.

In robot mode, Hot Shot sports a brand new head, which features flip down goggles. They’re a cool nod back to the visor on Armada Hot Shot and they offer a little variety on how he can be displayed, although I still prefer him with them up. His robot deco introduces grey plastic and red paint to the mix, and the resulting combination really makes this figure pop. I’m still far behind on watching the show, so I know nothing about the character, but I do know that this guy looks a lot better than Bumblebee standing on my shelf. Oh, did I mention that already? Well, it’s worth mentioning again.

As a repaint, Hot Shot features the same articulation as Bumblebee. His arms rotate and have lateral movement at the shoulders and swivels and hinges at the elbows, but no wrist articulation. His legs are ball jointed at the hips, with additional swivels just below those ball joints. He’s also hinged at the knees and ankles. There’s no torso articulation, but the head is ball jointed at the neck, and as already mentioned, his visor can flip up and down.

Hot Shot comes with the same blasters as Bumblebee. I love these things. You can mount them on his arms or combine them into one big gun. They can also be plugged into the engine socket when Hot Shot is in his alt mode.

Hasbro really won me over with this sculpt when I bought Bumblebee, but lost me with all the cheap cuts and sloppy work on his deco. Hot Shot really fixes all of those problems and shows how much better this mold can look with some quality paint. It makes me question why Hasbro would put so much effort into Hot Shot, while leaving one of the main characters to scrape by. I will admit that I would love to see this mold repainted the red Rodimus style deco that Hot Shot got in Armada and Energon, but this one is still plenty good. In fact, the only bad thing here is that Hot Shot, along with Bumblebee, is still clogging all the pegs and keeping the other Deluxes from making it out of the stockrooms.

Nov 9 2012

GI JOE 30th Anniversary Collection: Sky Striker by Hasbro

So, remember that one item that I found at Marshall’s last Friday that was worth standing in line for? Yeah, this was it. I’ll have you all know that this purchase represents a personal defeat for me. I often run checks on my collecting habit versus my sanity just to make sure that I haven’t gone overboard. One of those checks is having the rationality to determine whether I have somewhere to go with a particular piece and I’m not turning into one of those hoarding freaks you see on TV. I have very specific boundaries set up over where my toys live and where the rest of my home begins and with the exception of a couple of items I have displayed in my library, those boundaries have held fast. The reason I never bought the Sky Striker when it was originally out on shelves was because I knew I had nowhere to go with it, and I suspected that once it was built, it wasn’t going to go back in the box for easy storage.

Nonetheless, when I saw it sitting there alone on the shelf at Marshalls on clearance, I couldn’t resist taking it home. That may seem odd, since I’m certainly not a very big GI JOE collector these days, and before today, I haven’t picked up any of the 30th Anniversary stuff, except for a lone Destro figure. I attribute my lapse of reason to the fact that when I was a kid, I fell in love with the Sky Striker from the old Sunbow cartoon and I absolutely adored the original toy. So, yeah, I guess I’m blaming nostalgia on this one. It’s hard to believe I don’t do that more often.

The Sky Striker comes in a sizeable box with some wonderful artwork and a little window cut out to show off the Ace figure. I love this kind of packaging over window boxes, mainly because it’s durable and so long as the toy inside doesn’t require a lot of assembly, you can use these boxes to store the toy when you aren’t displaying it.


Hmm… so much for not requiring a lot of assembly. As sizeable as the box is, it’s pretty easy to tell when holding it that it isn’t as big as the Sky Striker. Open it up and you can quickly see that the wings, rear fins, engines, and the entire cockpit and nose portion of the aircraft aren’t attached. That was the first thing I noticed. The second thing? Holy shit, that’s a lot of stickers! I love stickers. Part of me was content to leave this thing boxed until sometime in the future where I might be in a bigger place and have more room to display stuff. But how could I resist all those stickers? There are over 30 “No Step” stickers alone! Mmm… stickers. Either way, I haven’t even seen one of these babies since I last had my original some 20 years ago. I was super anxious to get it together and check it out. As suspected, this jet is not designed to come apart once it’s together, so sadly I’ll wind up trashing the box.

All slapped together, I spent the better part of my Sunday morning with a pot of coffee and stickers while FigureFeline made a nest out of the box. We were both in heaven! There are a bunch of optional swap-out stickers so if you want to buy more than one of these, you can customize them quite a bit, including different color striping and different art for the tail fins. Ok, that’s the last time I talk about stickers… promise!

So, how different is it from the vintage toy? The body is molded in grey plastic rather than white, which is a big plus in my book. Besides looking more realistic to me, I don’t have to worry about it yellowing. The rear fins are black, and the canopy is no longer tinted, but it does have a nice painted frame. The inside of the cockpit has been retooled to fit the newer size figures. The rear seat has been taken out completely, the cockpit is more detailed, and let’s face it, Short Round said it best, “Doctor Jones, Doctor Jones! No. More. Parachutes!” I can’t say I’d quarrel with any of these changes. They’re either improvements or understandable sacrifices.

The one change that I wish Hasbro had taken out remains true to the original toy. Yep, I’m talking about the fact that the wings are tied to the same mechanism as the landing gear. New Sky Striker has the same slider lever on top that converts the wings to the swept back position and also retracts the landing gear. It never really bugged me as a kid, but it kind of bugs me now.

Naturally, the Sky Striker comes with Ace and unfortunately I’m not real crazy about him. I appreciate the insane amount of work Hasbro put into the layers and complexities of his flight suit, but in the end he just looks like a kit-bashed mess to me. The flight helmet is particularly awful and I hate the yellow plastic they used for the visor. The 25th Anniversary Ace was no prize either, but I’ll likely wind up swapping him out into the pilot’s seat when I finally find some way to display this thing, just because that’s more akin to the Ace I knew and loved.

While the new Sky Striker has its share of tweaks and bobs, it is at heart still the same old toy and It’s remarkable how well it holds up today. This toy is an iconic thing of beauty and it looks quite majestic standing on the edge of my desk waiting to take off into battle. It really brings back the memories of my buddies and I flying our Sky Strikers around the backyard doing airstrikes on Cobra fools. Even at the original MSRP of around $35, I thought this thing was reasonably priced, but Marshall’s had it for ten bucks less so all the better. I’m sure as hell not sorry I bought it, even if it did take over an hour of reorganizing to make room for it on the shelf next to my BMF Falcon, AT-AT and Slave-1.

Nov 8 2012

With Apologies to Big Chief…

So, I know what some people are thinking. “Hey, FigureFan, where’s the review for Big Chief’s 11th Doctor figure? What, you got monies for the Milla Jovoviches but no scratch for the good Doctor? WTF?”

Yes, it’s true; I’ve had two hundred bucks squirreled away for almost three months waiting for the launch of Big Chief’s first figure: Matt Smith as the 11th Doc. The early proto shots of the figure looked great, but I still had quite a bit of trepidation over dropping two hundred dollars on the purchase. Big Chief is an untried company and no one actually had any hands-on time with a finished version of the figure. So, a pre-order was out, but I planned on buying it once pictures of the final product surfaced. It eventually became available from a few sources and I was all ready to do it, when a poster threw up a slew of pictures on one of the Who collecting forums that I frequent. Alas, those pictures were just enough to knock me off the fence in favor of not buying him.

Keep in mind, the poster was very happy with the figure, and I still think the likeness and the quality of the figure itself were solid enough. But in the end, it was the tailoring on the outfit that swayed me. The shirt collar looked all puffy and would not stay down, the bowtie was a mess, and that’s not cool! Messy bowties are not cool. The jacket didn’t seem to fit the figure very well and there were loose threads everywhere. I’ve since seen photos of the outfit looking much better, but the owner of those photos confessed to spending a lot of time fussing in order to get the outfit looking acceptable.

I wanted to buy this thing. I really did. If it were $150 I probably would have. But if I’m blowing two hundred bones on a figure, I have to be totally happy with it right out of the box. I want to applaud what Big Chief is doing with the license and I really wanted to support them in their endeavors, but the final version of this figure just wasn’t where it needed to be for me to justify the purchase. So, there you have it. A number of retailers that I frequent still have plenty on hand, so there is a possibility he’ll become available at a sale price and possibly that will make me bite. I’m not saying I wouldn’t be happy with him, but I just can’t take the gamble at that price. I’m still probably willing to go for him in the $150 neighborhood, but until then don’t expect to see him featured here anytime soon.

Nov 8 2012

Resident Evil Afterlife: Alice Movie Masterpiece 1:6 Scale Figure by Hot Toys, Part 2

And, I’m back and it’s time to check out all the cool shit that comes with Hot Toys’ Alice figure. You get a baton, a katana sword, two kukri knives, two revolvers, two double-barreled sawed-off shotguns, and two HK machine guns. Damn, woman! In the words of Captain Mal, “How many weapons you planning on bringing? You’ve only got the two arms!” Alice’s weapons rig can accommodate her katana sword, both shotguns and both revolvers, although you can get creative and put her kukris in the shotgun slots. Still, between her hands and her rig, Alice can carry almost everything she comes with. Let’s start with the melee weapons and work our way up to the big guns, eh?


First off and least impressive is her telescoping baton. I’m not one to argue with extra accessories. An extra pack in never hurt no one. But, I really have no use for this thing. It doesn’t telescope, and there’s really nowhere for her to store it when she isn’t holding it. And when you consider all the other choices, I doubt she’l ever be holding it. Having not seen the movie, I have no idea what context it was used in, but if it was me, I wouldn’t whip this thing out until I spent every last bullet, threw both my kukris and broke my katana in half.

Next up are the kukris. Made infamous by the Gurkha warriors of Nepal, these babies are vicious, hooked chopping weapons. I’ve owned a number of the real ones in my blade trading days, and I’m sure I still have one sitting around here somewhere. I’ve always had an affinity for their distinctive form. The sculpts and paintwork on this pair make them look like real weathered metal and wood, when in fact they’re just plastic. Very nice!


The last of Alice’s “up close and personal” weapons is her katana sword. The sword’s blade is die cast metal and the hilt is beautifully detailed. As far as katanas go, this one is a bit more functional than decorative. It comes with a plain black plastic scabbard that is a little bit of a tight fit. I prefer to leave the blade peeking out a bit so it isn’t so tough to draw. The scabbard fits through the three straps on the back of Alice’s rig so that it is worn straight up and down. It’s kind of an awkward position as it bumps the back of her head and it bumps the figure stand, but it can be made to work. It probably should have been angled over the shoulder, but with all the other hardware she’s carrying, I can understand why it wasn’t.


Alice’s Smith & Wesson chrome finish revolvers are absolutely gorgeous. The detail is superb right down to the flip out chambers and I’ll be damned if you can’t pull back the hammers. Inside the chambers you can see each individual sculpted cartridge.

The sawed-off shotguns are possibly my favorite of this bunch. They are hinged to break at the breech for loading and, yes the tiny little cartridges are removable. Insane! The cartridges are tough to get out unless, you don’t want to, and then they slide out when you’re not looking.


And finally she has a pair of Heckler & Koch machine guns. They have a matte black finish, removable magazines with a painted cartridge showing inside the magazine. The detail on these weapons is pretty insane, right down to the tiny safety switch. These are the weapons my Alice will most likely be holding while on display, since there’s no room on her rig to store them.

With an original MSRP of around $169, Alice is not cheap, but she’s also not one of the pricier figures in the Hot Toys catalog. Nonetheless, she’s a really solid figure that comes with a bewildering number of weapons and accessories. The excellent likeness, along with the quality of the figure and outfit certainly justifies the price, but when you toss in so much extra stuff, I really feel like the cost is justified, particularly since I only paid a little more than two-thirds the original price. I was a little concerned about buyer’s remorse with this figure, since it is only my second Hot Toys purchase and I can’t say I’m a huge fan of the film property, but in the end I’ve got no regrets. And she looks great standing on my shelf beside Captain America.

Nov 7 2012

Resident Evil Afterlife: Alice Movie Masterpiece 1:6 Scale Figure by Hot Toys, Part 1

I’ve only featured one Hot Toys figure here on FigureFan, that was Captain America and it was quite a while ago. It’s not that I don’t want to look at more of their exquisite pieces, but I juggle a lot of toy collections, and to tie up $150 or more in a single piece takes a lot of willpower that I rarely possess. I honestly thought that the next Hot Toys figure I’d be looking at would be the new Black Widow, which I have on pre-order and is due to come out in December, but an acquaintance of mine has decided to unload a good portion of his Hot Toys collection to free up room and funds for the upcoming Avengers. He was willing to let Alice go at a price I couldn’t refuse. We’re still negotiating over his Baby Doll figure.

Allow me to preface this feature by saying, I haven’t seen Resident Evil: Afterlife, but I’m guessing that’s probably a good thing. I only saw the first two Resident Evil movies. I remember thinking the first one was enjoyable enough, but I can’t remember anything about the second. Most of my Resident Evil love comes from the games, and I’ll freely admit that I’d much rather be looking at one of the game related ladies of the RE world like Jill Valentine or even Sheva. But Alice is the hand I’ve been dealt, and that’s ok, because I’m rather fond of Milla Jovovich, so having her in my collection isn’t a bad thing. Not a bad thing at all. I should note that last week Hot Toys revealed their Ada Wong figure and I promptly dropped in a pre-order so I’ll finally have one from the actual games.

Hot Toys likes to go all out on their packaging and I love that about them. Alice comes in a cardboard shipper. Inside is a very distinctive landscape oriented box with a great image of Milla in action, brandishing her revolvers. The front of the box has an embossed feel to the artwork, which makes it all the more satisfying. The box has a wrap-around flap, which is ever so gently secured with a magnet. Open it up and you get to see the figure alongside her jacket and gear. And holy shit does she come with a lot of gear. The box is cut around the window to resemble shattered glass, which makes for a pretty cool effect. The flap that holds her jacket also has the list of people who worked on the figure. It’s a typical Hot Toys thing to do and you always know you’ve got a classy figure when it has its own credits! Today we’re just focusing on the packaging, the figure and her outfits, and we’ll look at her well stocked arsenal tomorrow.

One thing I’ve learned about Hot Toys is that the unboxing can be a bit stressful. Besides having to unwrap tightly wound plastic from various parts of the figure, I take the time to learn just how fragile some of the outfit can be. Captain America had some very thin straps and between Alice’s weapon rig and arm wraps, it’s especially true here. I’m also really paranoid about damaging the package, because it’s part of the presentation and thus part of the whole ensemble. Generally speaking I’m not a package keeper, but obviously with Hot Toys, it’s different.

The head sculpt! Oh, the head sculpt. These guys are usually right on the money with their likenesses and I still think Alice is one of their better ones. Not only is it a great likeness to Milla, but the paintwork is absolutely incredible. The skin tone is perfect, the eyes are very lifelike, and there’s just the right amount of gloss on her lips. Even the way her lips are slightly parted to show a little of her teeth gives the head sculpt a convincing depth. She has a fairly neutral, maybe slightly determined, expression that succeeds without being vacant.


Hot Toys went with sculpted hair on this figure, and it was probably a good call because her hair is very short. She does, however, have two hair pieces that can easily be swapped out and are held securely on her head with a magnet. There’s not a lot of difference between the two styles. The one that comes packaged on the figure has her hair framing her face; the other has it swept back a bit. Like I said, it’s a subtle difference, but enough to make me prefer the swept back look just a little bit more.

The body is nicely proportioned to fit the actress. She’s shapely, and I’m glad that Hot Toys resisted the temptation to give her a boob job. Milla’s a great looking woman without being terribly well-endowed up top and the figure respects that. It’s classified as a True Type body and has a little better than 30-points of articulation. I’ve said before that I’m not a big 1:6 scale collector so I’m not what you would consider a connoisseur of articulation and body types in this scale. I will say that Alice has a satisfying level of poseability and unlike my Hot Toys Captain America, her outfit doesn’t inhibit her movement.

Ironically, the outfit is the only reason I hesitated buying this figure when it first came out. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a spot-on reproduction of the outfit she wore in the film, but I didn’t find it all that great a design, iconic or sexy. It also looked very bulky on the figure in the pictures that I saw. In hand, it’s actually not bulky at all. You get black skin tight leggings and a short sleeve t-shirt, a web-gear style military vest, which actually looks more like some kind of hardcore corset. She has a pair of very delicate arm wraps, heavy knee-high socks, and tall boots. The figure is capped off with a brown leather weapon rig that can store just about every piece in her ample arsenal.


Alice also comes with a Russian military-style jacket. It’s a gorgeous piece of work with excellent stitching, a working belt and snaps, and a furry collar. It’s a bit of work to get it on her. I had to pop off her hands, carefully remove her arm wraps and then slip it on and do some fidgeting. I was glad to see that it fits quite well over her empty weapons rig, as I wasn’t prepared to risk taking that off the figure to put on the jacket. I doubt I’ll display her with it on, but it sure is a very nice extra.

In addition to the outfit and extra hair piece, Alice comes with three sets of hands. The ones packaged on the figure are relaxed, and I’ll probably never use them. The other two sets are designed for holding her guns or her bladed weapons. She also comes with a set of extra hand posts, and you get the usual figure stand with the “Resident Evil: Afterlife” logo.

So far, pretty awesome. I’m going to break here, but tomorrow I’ll be back to see the copious kind of killing tools that Alice brings to the party.

Nov 6 2012

Star Trek: Starfleet Officer’s Collector Set by Playmates

As the 90’s pressed on and Playmates realized what a goldmine they had with their Star Trek license, they started cranking out some boxed sets. One of the more ambitious of those releases was this Starfleet Officer’s Collector Set. It spans three generations of Star Trek, with Classic, Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine all in one package. The set is dated ’94, so I’m thinking that we just missed out on getting some Voyager love in there too. The idea here is you get the Commanding Officer and First Officer from each of the Trek series all in one big happy box. The set includes six figures, four of which are exclusive to this set, a gaggle of accessories, and a big display base that was unique to this release.

The packaging here is quite nice. You get a big window box, with the figures all trapped under bubbles inside and hovering over the display base. The box proclaims, “Three Legendary Commanders and Their First Officers Available for the First Time Ever!” It’s not exactly true since Sisko and Kira are the exact same figures that were already released in single carded form, albeit with some different accessories. Maybe they meant to say, “For the First Time Together!” The box is totally collector friendly as you can remove all the figures, plug them into the stand and then slide the stand right back into the box. I know I’m kidding myself by trying to keep the figures displayed in the box. As much as I love it, I don’t have the room, and the figures will eventually wind up baggied and in with the rest of my Trek figures and the stand will be slid somewhere for safe keeping. Let’s check out the figures in chronological order, starting with good old Kirk and Spock.

This is the first time we’ve seen Playmates figures of Kirk and Spock in their dress uniforms. Granted, they aren’t all that different from their regular duty tunics. There’s a gold fringe running around the neck and straight down the middle and instead of their regular insignia, they have medals displayed on the left of their chests. The head sculpts seem to be the same as the regular versions of the figures that came in the Bridge Crew set. They’re pretty good, particularly Kirks as he has the little cowlick hanging down over his forehead. I also like getting a figure of Spock without one hand trapped in a Vulcan salute, although in retrospect, I think it would have been better to have the salute hand on this figure and the regular one one the regular figure. If I were any good at customizing, I’m sure I could make that happen. All in all, Playmates did a nice job with this pair.

Both Kirk and Spock come with the same two accessories: A phaser and a communicator. They’re the same accessories that came with the figures in the original Bridge Crew set.

Moving on to Picard and Riker, I’ll say that these two are my least favorites in the set, mainly because I could never stand the Next Generation dress uniforms, which looked way too much like dresses. I think they were going for something similar to the amazing uniform designs that premiered in Star Trek II but it doesn’t work. If they were shorter and had a belt, I think they’d be a lot better. It’s also worth noting that these figures share the exact same torso and legs, with just an extra rank pip added for Picard and the head sculpts are recycled from the original releases. Oh yeah, Picard has some serious monkey arms going on here. Overall, they’re ok, but they look a little dated and awkward compared to the others.

The Next Gen boys come with a computer terminal, a tricorder, a palm phaser and a regular phaser. They’re not bad as far as Playmates accessories go, but they are all straight repacks of stuff we’ve seen before. Once I get around to snipping the beams off the phasers, they’ll be good to go.

Last up are Sisko and Kira and they are the only straight repack figures in the set, which is kind of disappointing. Don’t get me wrong, I love these figures. I think they’re actually among two of Playmates’ best. On the other hand, the theme of this set has been dress uniforms, so it would have been nice to get some variants from Deep Space Nine. I’m sure Sisko has appeared in dress uniform before and for Kira they could have just given us the version of her with the longer hair from the premier episode. Hell, I would have even welcomed a Sisko figure with his regular Command tunic from the Saratoga.

 

Kira comes with a Bajoran phaser and tricorder. I’m pretty sure these are two of the same accessories that came with the original figure. Color notwithstanding I really like the phaser. Sisko comes with a computer terminal and a phaser rifle. Again, the phaser rifle is excellent, I just wish it were accurately painted.

All the figures in this set have nearly the same articulation. Kirk, Spock, Sisko and Kira are identical. The arms rotate at the shoulders, have hinged elbows, and swivel cuts at the biceps. The legs rotate at the hips and have hinged knees. The head rotates and the figures can swivel at the waist. Picard and Riker have the same minus the waist swivel, and it should also be noted that their elongated tunics hamper their hip articulation as well.

The three tiered display base is a really nice piece. Each platform is textured with a sort of metal grate pattern and each one has pegs to hold the two figures. The plates are actually big enough to comfortably fit three figures if you want to pad out your display a little more. The front has each of the series titles in raised gilded lettering. It’s a sturdy and durable piece, but it is hollow so you can even store the accessories underneath it. It’s a cool enough item that I will try to find room to display it, although most likely I will swap out the Next Gen Picard and Riker for the Generations versions and the regular Bridge versions of Kirk and Spock.

My set still has the $29.99 price tag on it from Toys R Us. At $5 a figure that seems a little steep for a set with two repacks in it. I never even saw this set back when it was first out, although by ’94 I was probably weaning myself off collecting for a while. I got mine for ten bucks from a dealer at the Toy Show and I’m pretty satisfied. The four exclusive figures are probably not essential, but definitely nice extras to have in any serious Playmates Trek collection.