Aug 10 2011

DC Universe Classics Space Heroes 2-Pack: Adam Strange and Starfire by Mattel

It seemed only fitting to sneak in some more DC Universe figures this week, since the fate of the line is currently being decided by a subscription thermometer on Matty Collector’s homepage. Yep, just like the bake sale at your local church, Mattel, the world’s largest toy company, is coloring in a thermometer to see if they can meet their undisclosed number of subscriptions. If they hit their goal the line lives as an online only property, if not… well, I guess 20 waves was a good run.


I don’t mean to sound cavalier about what now seems to be the certain death of this great line of action figures. Nonetheless, the two week subscription window only netted about 35 percent of the goal and while Matty has extended it another week,I don’t see it happening. We can sit here and postulate forever on why the line didn’t perform well at retail, but in the end I think it was a combination of crappy distribution and the limited appeal of niche comic book characters. Afterall, who actually reads comic books anymore? [Sarcasm! -FF] 

But enough about that… let’s get on to today’s figures. It’s Adam Strange and Starfire, a set I’ve been trying to snag for a little while now.

I absolutely love the packaging on these sets. The figures come in a nice big window box with the same kind of deco that we’re used to seeing on the regular carded releases. The back panel of the box shows pictures of each figure and includes biographies and stats for the characters. The box is perfectly collector friendly, and believe me if I had the room, I’d take advantage of that. Alas, I don’t, so the packaging gets deep-sixed. Both figures are posed a bit on the bubble, and that had me a little worried, particularly about Starfire’s skinny little legs, but no worries. Both figures came out of the package without any warping or joint damage.

Let’s start off with Starfire. I may not be making a concerted effort to collect Teen Titans, but my TT shelf has certainly been expanding as of late. But Teen Titan or not, I love the character and it’s hard to argue with having a figure on display that looks as good as Kory does. Starfire doesn’t rely a lot on unique sculpting, but what is here is fabulous. In particular, I’m referring to her head sculpt, which is perfect as far as I’m concerned. Beautiful, stern, maybe a little hint of bratty conceit, it’s all there. The sculpted hair is also excellent, as it sweeps away from the figure just enough to save the neck articulation, and yet still look pretty natural. Apart from the head, there are her bracers, collar and strategically placed crystal, but everything else on the figure is conveyed with paintwork.

So how about that paintwork? Overall it’s pretty good. The figure is cast in a slightly orange fleshtone, which possibly could have used more orange, but that varies on who was doing the colors on the comic. I last saw her when I was re-reading 52, and she was definitely more orange-yellow, but it’s all good. I really like the sparkly purple paint used for her, ah, garments. There’s a wee bit of slop on the straps running down her midriff, but otherwise the paintlines are pretty clean and sharp.

I’m also really impressed with the quality of the plastic used on Starfire. Having just opened Wave 16, y’all know that I found myself with some really buffed out characters with joints a lot weaker than the hinges in Starfire’s tiny arms and legs. The figures keep getting more expensive, and the plastic keeps getting softer and cheaper. That’s all I’m saying.

Moving on… Adam Strange is a really unique looking figure for the DCUC line, mainly because of his sculpted armor, which is a separate piece and includes a working holster for his sidearm and his jetpack. Obviously, Adam’s been kicking around the DC Universe for a long time and he’s got the awesome retro sci-fi design to prove it. The curves of his jetpack tanks and the mohawk fin on his helmet really deliver on the whole Buck Rodgers vibe, which I absolutely love.

Unlike Starfire, Adam’s paintwork has it’s ups and downs. The figure is molded mostly in red and uses yellow and white paint apps to make up his costume. He looks sharp and the yellow is pretty good, but the white is hit and miss. The worst of the paintwork is on the armor, which shows off a lot of unfortunate sloppy brushwork. If this guy hadn’t come out of a sealed box, I would suspect a shady seller had touched him up with whiteout. I can kind of let it go as it looks like scuffing and wear on the armor, but from a QC standpoint it could have been done much better.

Prices on the DCUC 2-packs tend to be all over the place. After re-reading 52 last week, I went hunting for this pair on Ebay and was able to find them at a reasonable $34.99 with free shipping. It seems to fall in just under the highly demanded Hawkgirl/Gentlemen ghost set, but still demands a fair amount more than the Batman/Clayface or even the Aquaman/Black Manta sets. Still, the figures worked out to be only about $17.50 a pop, so not bad at all. Even with the QC issues on Adam Strange’s paint, both figures are pretty cool and welcome additions to my collection.

Aug 8 2011

Transformers Dark of the Moon: Laserbeak (Deluxe) by Hasbro

Who could have guessed that Laserbeak would have turned out to be the best character in Transformers 3? Well, he was my favorite anyway. Not only did he look awesome, he was a sadistic killer, and actually used his transforming ability to be a “robot in disguise!” I also thought I was going to have a nerdgasm when, in one scene, he actually landed on Soundwave’s arm. So, while I have been cherry picking the DotM toys, getting Laserbeak was always a certainty, and after rummaging through about 100 Deluxes at Walmart the other day, I finally found one.

Laserbeak comes in the standard DotM style package. The figure is mounted in his vehicle mode, which is some kind of fictional VTOL gunship, and his MechTech weapons are mounted beside him. The toy looks great on the card, but the illustration used for the insert is really odd. I’m not sure if its just me, but it looks nothing like the character did in the movie. The usual bio blurb is printed on the cardback and much to my chagrin it says nothing about Laserbeak having a tea party with a little girl right before murdering the shit out of her parents right in front of her.

Getting Laserbeak out of the package, the first thing that came to mind is that he’s way too big. I mean, it’s obvious he’s too big compared to the other Deluxes, but he’s even huge compared to the Voyagers. As a result, you’ve got to look at him as a stand alone figure to really appreciate him. Hopefully, Hasbro, will consider making a Cyberverse version, although I’m pretty sure I saw that a scaled down Laserbeak will be packed in with Human Alliance Soundwave, and that may be close enough.

Laserbeak’s gunship mode is pretty cool, but as we’ll see in a little bit, it isn’t all that different from his robot bird mode. It doesn’t help that his bird feet are barely obscured on the undercarriage and his tail is pretty obvious too. The detail in the sculpt is excellent, particularly in the two VTOL engines. Still, it’s obvious that the alt mode here was sacrificed to preserve the robot bird mode, and I guess I’m fine with that. He even has some bird-inspired nose art painted on either side of his cockpit.

The bird mode is where this figure really shines, although transforming him is very easy. You basically just pull out the head, wings, tail and feet, and do some minor repositioning. The head sculpt is pretty close to the on screen version and he can even open and close his mouth, albeit without any screen accurate cyber-slobber. My only real complaint here is the red wings, which I think should have been left grey or black. I think Hasbro went this route to make the to more colorful and appealing to kids, but it just doesn’t look very film accurate. I think the color change would be too subtle for a repaint, although a more muted version repackaged as Buzzsaw could get me to part with another ten bucks.

Laserbeak’s MechTech weapons consist of two machine guns, which can connect together to form one large BFG. The two guns can be mounted above or below the VTOL engines in either the gunship or bird modes. They’re a little big and bulky to go on top, but I think they look pretty good when mounted under the engines of the gunship. I really prefer to leave them off of Laserbeak’s bird mode. The combined gun is pretty cool, but it doesn’t really serve a purpose for Laserbeak, as it’s just too long and cumbersome to look good on him. It does, however, make for a nice weapon for some of the other figures in the line.

As a stand alone figure, Laserbeak is pretty cool, although he could have been better with some different coloring. The real downside here is that he’s just too big to be in scale with any of the other figures. I’ll concede that the smaller scales wouldn’t really have done him justice, though, so I’m still glad that Hasbro gave us this version and for the ten bucks that the average Deluxes sell for these days, he’s well worth picking up.

Aug 7 2011

Marvel Universe: Iron Spider-Man by Hasbro

I still have a few more Marvel Universe figures to look at, but I like to do things in threes, so I’m going to just take a quick look today at one more, Iron Spider-Man, before moving on to some different things for the rest of the week. I wasn’t intentionally hunting this figure down, but at the time I was buying a couple that I was looking for, so I threw him in the cart.

Yuppers, standard Marvel Universe card. Wow, its the HAMMER logo. For some reason, I thought Iron Spider came out after Osborne stopped stamping his nefarious emblem on our MU packages, but I guess not. Either way, Spidey’s got some nice character art on the card. It’s not quite in the same style as the issue the armor first appeared in, but then again, I’m pretty sure he only sported the waldoes on the cover and didn’t use them in the actual issue, either. Of course, the figure isn’t intended as a first appearance, so I’m pretty much just talking out of my ass.

Once out of the package, we see that Iron Spider is comprised mostly of a standard MU male buck with a Tony Stark inspired paint scheme of red and gold. There isn’t a lot of unique sculpting at play on this figure, although he does have the socket box on his back to plug in his waldoes, which are not attached to him in the package. The arms plug into the back with simple ball joints, and while the sculpt looks like they are hinged in two places, they really aren’t. I think that’s probably for the best, though, as they’re quite spindley and would have been very fragile. The ball joints provide some decent articulation for the maniuplators, but they also pop out pretty easily. In fact, I’ve found it just easier to unplug them and plug them back in the way I want them. I guess that’s cool, since it gives you the option to display him with the arms retracted by just pulling them off. The gold paintwork on my figure is surprisingly well done, with no noticeable slop or bleeding.

Apart from the ball joints in his waldoes, you get standard MU style male articulation. The neck is ball jointed and the arms have ball joints in the shoulders, swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinged elbows. The legs have universal movement in the hips, double hinges in the knees, and hinges and swivels in the ankles. There’s no waist swivel, but you do get that funky universal torso joint that Hasbro loves so much.

Besides the manipulator arms, Iron Spider-Man comes with his personalized display stand and his Top Secret documents.

Overall, I’m pretty happy with this figure. I seem to recall that this version of Spidey wasn’t all that popular and the number of Iron Spider figures hanging on the pegs seems to support that. Still, I’ve become quite a fan of collecting Stark’s various suits since Hasbro’s Iron Man 2 line came out and if nothing else, this figure has a place in that collection. I like the deco and the paintwork is nice and clean.