Tag Archives: character options

Feb 21 2010

Doctor Who: 12-inch RC Dalek by Character Options

Dalek toys have been around since almost as long as the Doctor Who series itself. Yeah, it took decades for the longest running sci-fi show to get a respectable line of action figures, but all that while, the Daleks had their own good thing going, riding the gravy train of mass merchandising madness. Granted nearly all of this great swag was confined to Great Britain, and it was inconsistant at best with its share of really crappy toys. I know of the Dalek toy history exclusively from research and photos. I’ve never been lucky enough to own one until CO came along, unless you count the little loose Dapol Dalek I’ve had for a while. Either way, the wait was well worth it. Character Options is now turning out quality Daleks as well as all sorts of great Doctor Who toys and figures and this 12″ RC Dalek is just one of my many dreams that CO has made come true.

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Now, I will freely admit, the 12″ RC Dalek is not the ultimate in Dalek toys. No, there’s actually an 18″ motion sensor Dalek out there that probably trumps this toy in its awesomeness, but that’s ok. There’s time enough to track that one down too. Right now I’m here to bask in the glory of this guy.

I love CO’s packaging on these bigger toys, because its so in-your-face huge. Even if I wanted to display this toy in the box, there’s no way I could, it wouldn’t fit on any of my display shelves, but then even out of the box, the Dalek itself barely does. Besides being huge, the box is blindingly bright with its yellow-orange firey motif that I suppose is meant to simulate some kind of temporal vortex energy that could burn your face off. There’s lots of photos of both the toy and clips from the series, and some good blurbs. Its almost a shame to tear this box apart to get to my Dalek… almost.

Unlike the 12″ RC Davros, the Dalek isn’t actually screwed down to the packing so you won’t actually need tools to get it out. There are a shitload of twisty ties, though, but after a lot of twisting, shredding and mauling, I was left with a Dalek in front of me and about three pounds of wrecked cardboard at my feet. Getting the Dalek out for the first time was an awesome event indeed. I carefully inspected it to find that there were no quality control issues, no paint slop, nothing to gripe about. This guy was perfect. Few people outside of Whovians have ever even heard of Character Options, but Hasbro sure could take a lesson from them in terms of overall product quality.

Keep in mind that when we say 12″ Dalek, this is not a 1:6 scale Dalek, its actually bigger then that. Since a Dalek is a bit shorter than your average person, this Dalek will be out of place with any of the 1:6 scale Who figures you may already own. My 1:6 scale Cyberman looks scrawny in comparison. That may disappoint some, but I’m happier to have the bigger Dalek as a stand alone piece, even if it can’t interact with my other 12″ Doctor Who figures.

This version is the generic every day soldier Dalek. I say that beause its surprising how long it took me to find one. E-tailers seemed to all be offering the Supreme Dalek or the Imperial Guard Dalek or Dalek Thay, but all I wanted was a regular one. Its obviously based off the current series modern Dalek design, which I love because its so close to the original designs, only with lots more detail and the modern coppery gold color scheme looks great.

Without its electronics, the Dalek doesn’t do a whole lot. You aren’t supposed to turn his head or eye stalk because its hooked into the RC mechanics and you might fuck it up. Seriously, it says so right in the booklet. His sucker and blaster arms are on ball joints, though, and can be moved about. I was a little disappointed the sucker arm doesn’t extend, on a toy of this size, it really should have had a telescoping arm. You can, however, rotate his midsection independently of his head and skirt so that he can shoot at things behind him. This gimmick was first showcased in the episode “Dalek” but was never seen again.

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In “Try Me” mode, you can press one of the Dalek’s sensor globes and his eye will light up and he will speak one of his phrases while his “ear” lights light up with each syllable. Its fantastically done and very realistic. This is the mode I leave him in most often because i can get a quick threat out of him while walking by the display case, and it doesn’t drain his batteries too badly. My only gripe is that when he says Exterminate and it makes the sound of his blaster firing, his “ears” shouldn’t light up in synch with the blaster noise, only when he’s speaking. Minor gripe? You betcha, but that’s how awesome this toy is. Here’s a complete list of his quotes:

  • Multiple spectrum scanning now engaged!
  • Hault or you will be exterminated!
  • We are the supreme beings!
  • Seek, Locate, Annihilate!
  • Obey The Daleks! No other warning will be given!
  • You are an enemy of the Daleks.
  • Exterminate!!! [Blaster Fire Sound]

The remote control feature is actually pretty great. The control unit is almost identical to the Davros one, only its copper colored and has a different sticker in the middle with the Dalek’s phrases. It has a standard two-lever control system, and it works just like driving a tank. Throw both forward or back to move the Dalek in those directions. Mix it up to turn him around. Even though I hardly ever use the remote control features for my 12″ Davros, the Dalek is just more fun and I’m not sure why. When he’s on full On mode, his eye stays lit all the time and when you roll him forward or backward, his head rotates from side to side and his eye raises and lowers as if he’s searching for fools to exterminate. Oh yeah, don’t stare directly at his eye light, its bright as all fuck and it might burn your retinas. Seriously, it hurts!

I think the average MSRP for this guy on initial offering was $69.99. When he was first released he went for closer to $100 in the US by scalpers and importers, but now his price has cooled off a bit. I was able to get one for $39.99 and I was certainly plenty happy with that. Of course, he required me to reshuffle all my Doctor Who figure shelves to make room, but it was well worth it.

Feb 20 2010

Doctor Who Figures, Classics Wave 2, Part 3

I saved the best for last in this final part of my look at the second wave of Doctor Who Classics figures The pair we’re looking at today are no doubt fan favorites and awesome army builders to add to your collection. These are also the only two figures in the wave that are not tied to Fourth Doctor stories. The Ice Warrior hardly needs any introduction, although since they haven’t been seen in Doctor Who since the early 70s, maybe they do. Only encountered by the Second and Third Doctors, they were at least mentioned in the recent Tenth Doctor episode, “The Waters of Mars.” The Cyberman is the last one we need to complete the major changes in the Mondan race throughout the series. This model first appeared in the Fifth Doctor episode, “Earthshock” and was used with minor changes throughout the rest of the classic series. It is without a doubt my favorite of all the Cyberman designs and one of my Top Five Who figures released thus far. Let’s check these bad boys out…

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The Ice Warrior is a fantastic recreation of the monster from the series, although as such he’s bound to look a little primitive to newcomers to the series. Reptillian, slow moving, and not to bright, the Ice Warriors were the fighters, while the Ice Lords were the thinkers. The sculpt here is really faithful to the old costume. The bulbous, turtoise armor is spot on, with tons of fine detailing to the sculpt, and I love the retro look of his simple claws. The only real flaw in this sculpt is that the head seems like it should sit lower into his shell than it does. Nonetheless, he looks fantastic standing next to my Second Doctor figure.
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Articulation on the Ice Warrior is pretty good, although there are some things about his design that hamper it. The head rotates, there are ball joints in the shoulders, hinged elbows and his claws swivel. From the waist down things get a bit more restricted. He has good joints in his upper legs, but the rubbery lower part of his shell make these all but useless. He maintains a permanent wide stance and can only move each leg a small amount forward and back. He does have swivel cuts in his thighs and ankles and his knees are hinged. I’m not blaiming Character Options for the articulation in the legs, its clearly there, but it’s just at odds with the design
Fair enough. Besides, Ice Warriors aren’t exactly ninjas, they lumber around like robots.
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The Cyberman is in a word, awesome. Granted, I’m a bit biased, since this remains my favorite Cyberman design of them all, but the fact of the matter is that this is one of Character Options best sculpts and it is so accurate its downright freaky. The use of the clear plastic for his chest plate and chin guard is really cool, as is the fact that his entire chest and shoulder assembly is molded as a separate piece. But what really makes this figure shine is the perfect head sculpt and the crazy amount of work that went into the detail of the suit. Every wire and hose and patch of chainmail has been recreated with painstaking care. Simply amazing.
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The Cyberman is missing some of the usual articulation found on the current CO releases, but a lot of this has to do with the character’s design. The head does not move, but then it didn’t in the show either. His shoulders swivel, and while I would have preferred ball joints, CO doesn’t tend to use them very often in the shoulders. Either way, I think the omission of ball joints in the shoulder is really the figure’s only flaw. There are swivel cuts in the biceps and wrists and hinged elbows. He can swivel at the waist, his upper legs move both up and down and laterally, his knees are hingd and he has swivel cuts at his boots. He is missing the swivel cuts in his upper legs. The articulation in this figure is by no means bad, its just a bit lacking when compared to some others in the line.
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The Cyberman comes with his gun accessory, which looks to be a pretty accurate sculpt. The gun features a shoulder strap, which works so long as you tuck it in under his shoulder armor. He can also hold the gun quite well in one hand or both.
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It’s hard to put into words how cool it is to have such great figures of these two iconic Doctor Who baddies. I would love to pick up at least one more Ice Warrior and two more of these Cybies, but I doubt that’s going to be possible. They sold out crazy fast and the only way I was able to get these, was because I ordered the entire assortment. I suspect these are going to be two figures that sell for a lot on the resale circuits because everyone is going to want to army build them, particularly the Cyberman. Maybe we’ll get lucky and CO will do some minor retooling to the Cybermen and release “Attack of the Cyberman” and “Silver Nemesis” versions. As for the Ice Warrior, he won’t be truly complete until we get an Ice Lord to stand by his side!
Feb 19 2010

Doctor Who Figures, Classics Wave 2, Part 2

As promised, I’m back to check out the next two figures from Classics Wave 2 and these guys have a couple things in common. They are both villains from the Fourth Doctor’s (Tom Baker) era and they are both evil Time Lords with regeneration problems. Morbius from “The Brain of Morbius” was a Time Lord criminal who, unable to regenerate, kept his brain alive on a planet while harvesting alien body parts to build himself a new body. It was a complete rip off of loving tribute to Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and when I first saw it as a kid it scared the shit out of me. To this day it’s still one of my favorite Doctor Who stories. The Master is from “The Deadly Aassassin,” aother favorite of mine, and it features The Doctor’s greatest enemy as he existed between his Roger Delgado and Anthony Ainley incarnations. Both are interesting choices from landmark episodes and both figures, as we’ll see, are fantastic.

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The Master is a good news, bad news kind of figure. The good news is that the sculpting is superb. The bad news is that because he’s wearing a robe he has some seriously limited articulation. Fortunately, in this case the good outweighs the bad by a long shot. CO put a ridiculous amount of detail in The Master’s tattered black robes. There are patches where it looks charred and threadbare and you can see its all tattered at the edges. It really is an uncanny match for the costume used in the show. The head sculpt is equally impressive, showing off what is essentially a decaying zombie face, complete with The Masters two fried-egg eyes and the sickening glossy sheen. I don’t know why, but I find it unbelievably cool to get action figures based on retro sci-fi costumes and make up.

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I mentioned the limited articulation, and in fairness to CO, this figure is actually articulated quite well, its just that the robes prevent you from using much of it. The arms rotate at the shoulders, have hinged elbows and swivel cuts in the wrists. The neck is immobilized by the hood and you can move his legs around as much as the cloak will allow, but there’s no point. So, basically this figure suffers from teepee syndrome. Technically, CO could have left the legs off completely and unless you picked up the figure and looked at him from the bottom, you’d never know it. In this case the articulation doesn’t bother me. The Master in this incarnation was a withered wreck of a man, so he doesn’t need to be busting out any dynamic action poses.

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The Master comes with two accessories: A staser gun and the Sash of Rassilon. The Sash is a separate piece, although I’m not sure it can be easily removed so its probably more a part of his outfit than a bonafide accessory. It looks just like it did in the episodes “The Deadly Assassin” and “Invasion of Time” and its cool to own such an important artifact of Time Lord history in the 5″ scale. The staser is a pretty simple little black gun, which he can hold in either hand.

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Next up is Morbius. If you never saw “The Brain of Morbius,” this guy is going to be a pretty wacky looking figure. As mentioned above, he’s supposed to be pieced together from a bunch of different alien bodies with his goldfish-bowl brain support system tacked on for a head. Yeah, he’s ridiculous, but he’s amazingly accurate to the monster from the show, and once again he scared the shit out of me the first time I saw the episode as a kid. This figure was also rumored for a while to be a BAF in this wave, but we got him complete and carded instead.

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The head is really well done on this figure. Its a clear sphere displaying Morbius’ brain with all kinds of wires coming out of it and two eye stalks protruding from the front. The body is full of sculpted detail from fur to stapled and sutured scars and disgusting patches of exposed muscle. His left hand is the only thing humanoid about him, an appenge stolen from poor Condo. His right arm is a giant claw that features articulation, so you can use it to grab your Tom Baker figure by the throat. Early pictures of this figure really didn’t do it justice and I’m just beside myself with glee to actually own an action figure of the terrible Morbius!

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So, that’s four down and two more to go. Next time we look at what are probably two of the most popular figures in this wave and both of them are “army builders.” Its an Ice Warrior and 80’s era Cyberman and both are figures that have been on my wish list ever since I was a small child… and no Dapol’s versions don’t count!

Feb 18 2010

Doctor Who Figures, Classics Wave 2, Part 1

The second official wave of Doctor Who Classics figures has been a long time coming. Granted, since the first Classics wave, we’ve had a number of special releases based on the original series, including the first three Doctors, a couple of Dalek sets, and an entire wave of Cybermen, all but one of which was from the original series. But that hasn’t stopped the endless speculation and anticipation over what would constitute the next official wave. Well, finally they’re here… six figures and this time CO abandoned the Build-A-Figure gimmick. The figures include The un-regenerated Master from “The Deadly Assassin,” An Ice Warrior, an “Earthshock” Cyberman, Morbius from “The Brain of Morbius” and the two figures we’re looking at today: The Servo Robot Mummy from “The Pyramids of Mars” and the Green Voc Robot from “The Robots of Death.” Both of these figures are based on characters from Tom Baker’s tenure as the Doctor, and they are the only two figures in this wave to have been previously released. Both the Mummy and the Voc Robot were available in the Fourth Doctor Adventure Set, which also included a repack Tom Baker Doctor and a Suicide Dalek. I passed on that set because it was more than I wanted to spend when I already had a Fourth Doctor figure, and it was being strongly hinted at that at least two of these figures would get carded releases somewhere down the line.

Sorry, no in-package shots. I greedily ripped these open before I had access to my camera. The packages featured the fourth series NuWho logo on printed paper sandwiched in a clamshell. There’s an insert in the bubble to personalize it, while the back panel is generic, showing all the figures in this wave. Make sure you have a good pair of scissors or a blade to open these bastards, and get ready to contend with some twist ties once you get it open.

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The Servo Robot Mummy is a very simple sculpt, but that’s not really a fault of the figure, but rather the character design that its based on. Its basically just sculpted bandages with a gray paint wash and very little else, save for the small control pyramid sticking out the back. The contours of the mummy’s face and chest are distinctively recreated from the show, but overall this figure holds very few surprises.

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The articulation on this figure is not bad, especially for what it is. From the waist down you get everything you could ask for. The upper legs rotate and have lateral movement for wider stances. The knees are hinged and there are cut swivel joints in the thighs and ankles. The arms rotate at the shoulders are hinged at the elbows and have swivel cuts in the wrists. He also swivels at the waist. We’re used to getting ball joints in a lot of the Character Options figures’ shoulders these days, but not here and the head has no articulation. I think it says enough to point out that this figue is capable of a much greater range of movement than the robots in the story.

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The Mummy Robot comes a coptic jar that opens to reveal a removable silver cylinder. If I remember the episode correctly, the cylinder was a power cell for a force shield. The detailing on the coptic jar is really nice, and I’m told this is a variant from the one included in the Fourth Doctor Adventure Set. Its weathered to look antique and the sculpting on the top piece as well as the cylinder is great. A lot of toy companies would have considered this a throwaway accessory, but it’s clear that CO put some love into it.

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While it may sound like I’m unimpressed with the Mummy’s sculpt, the truth is I like it a lot and it’s certainly a great representation of the character. I have to give CO props for making this figure at all as I had just about given up hope for many more classic-themed but somewhat minor aliens. I will just add that I was a little disappointed with the Mummy’s size. He doesn’t stand much taller than the 4th Doctor himself, so the figure really needed to be a bit taller and a lot more bulkier to be accurate. At one point it was suggested this guy might be a BAF, and perhaps that would have seen him in a better scale. Right now, these are running around $15 each, but if they drop in price, I may grab one more so I can recreate the classic two-mummy-chest-crushing-action from the episode.

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And that brings us to the Voc Robot. I’m not going to go on for too long about this guy, because its a repaint of a figure I’ve already reviewed twice a long time ago when it was released in both a silver and a black version in the first Classics wave. This is the same great sculpt, and one of my favorites in a long line of great Who figures from CO. The “Robots of Death” are an awesome design, with an cool art deco look about them. Between these and the clockwork men from “The Girl in the Fireplace” its tough to decide which robot design is cooler. Anyway, the figure really captures the head and the outfit perfectly and CO has even included a sheet of V-designation stickers to apply to his chest. I’m not a huge fan of repaints, but considering how great a sculpt this figure is and the fact that it represents the three different types of robots in the episode, I was glad to pick it up.

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There is actually one new thing about this figure and that’s located in the head sculpt. This Voc’s head has light piping in the eyes to make them glow red just like the robots’ eyes glowed in the episode when they got taken over and turned into murderers. Its a really cool effect, even if the red plug in the top of the head is a little unsightly. Its also something that wasn’t included in the Voc Robot released in the Fourth Doctor Adventure Set.

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I mainly reviewed these two figures together because they were both already released, but it’s also worth mentioning that they were the two figures that I was the least excited about in this wave. Don’t get me wrong, they are both really cool figures, but they are kind of overshadowed by the sheer awesomeness of the remainder of the wave. Nonetheless, getting them both in hand I was really happy with the way they turned out.

Next time, we’ll take a look at Morbius and The Master.