I’m interrupting my regular planned feature today for this little special. Sure, it was spur of the moment and I wound up having to stay up pretty late to write it and do the photo shoot, but considering the occasion I think it was worth it. If you follow me on Facebook, I posted a short piece yesterday about Harold Ramis passing. Being a child of the 70’s and growing up in the 80’s Ramis was involved in so many of the movies that I loved during that curious transition from adolescent to teenager. Whether behind the camera or in front of it, Ramis was a genius at writing, directing, and even delivering comedic dialogue. He knew what was funny and yet the often crass comedy of his films almost always hid a message of inspiration for the underdog. I loved this man’s work and it had a huge influence on my formative years, helping me to grow into the smart-ass that I am today. But this blog isn’t about movies, so I thought it fitting to give him a tribute FFZ style by looking at one of his action figures. While the bulk of Harold Ramis’ work did not dabble in science fiction, the nerd and geek community nonetheless adopted him for his role as Egon Spengler in Ghostbusters, and so let’s check out that character today, immortalized in plastic.

It seems oddly appropriate to point out today that Egon was actually the very first of the Ghostbusters to get the 5-inch treatment from Mattel. He appeared as a Slimed Variant Exclusive released at the 2009 San Diego Comic Con. Later he would get a wider release without the slime and yet again he was released as the figure we’re looking at today. While this line has had its share of critics, it’s hard to knock the presentation here. Egon comes packaged, along with the Library Ghost, under a huge bubble against a carded backdrop of the Stay Puft Marshmallowman. The Ghostbusters emblem is on the top and the bubble is flanked by the Keymaster and Gatekeeper. The whole package is big enough to sit right on your shelf and it looks good enough to leave in the package and display it as is. But y’all know me… let’s rip this baby open.

The “Ready to Believe You” variants come from the commercial shown during the original Ghostbusters movie. All three of the original Ghostbusters got the “RtBY” treatment, but none seem more at home in their lab coat than Egon here. I own all three of these figures, but if I were only going to pick up one it would certainly have been Dr. Spengler. The underlying buck is the same used for the Ray Stantz figure that I featured here last year. It’s a solid enough figure, complete with black slacks, belt, and white dress shirt. The tie is even a separate piece, sculpted in soft rubber. It’s a pretty lean body, which works much better for Egon than it did for Ray. The lab coat is the usual vest-style overlay with sculpted arms to look like sleeves and the illusion of this being a full coat works fairly well. Egon’s coat features a newly sculpted pocket computer, attached to his pocket, and white painted buttons, besides that and the blue tie, this figure is identical to Ray from the neck down.

The portrait is the same sculpt used for the previous Egon figures. Whether that’s good or bad is a matter of personal taste. I think it’s a decent likeness of Ramis although it definitely errs more toward being a caricature than a straight up likeness. A lot of that comes from the ridiculously high bangs that were so gloriously emphasized in his Real Ghostbusters animated counterpart. The glasses are rather thick, but they are sculpted as a separate piece, include plastic lenses, and are permanently attached to the figure. I give Mattel props for the glasses. No, they don’t look perfect, but they can’t be easy to get right in this scale, so I’m willing to be rather forgiving.

The articulation here is pretty standard for the line. The arms feature ball joints in the shoulders, swivels in the biceps and wrists, and hinged elbows. The legs have the DCUC-style hips, swivels in the thighs, and hinges in the knees and ankles. Egon can swivel at the waist and he has a generous ball joint in the neck. Egon is by no means super articulated, but it’s not exactly crucial to the character and I think what’s here is fine. He’s at least limber enough to hold a Twinkie while using it as a metaphor for the frighteningly elevated levels of supernatural activity within the Greater New York area.

Egon comes with three PKE meters, each one in a different stage of detection. You get one with the arms all the way down, one with them partly up. “Listen! Do you smell something?” And one with them at full on ball-to-the-wall “Oh shit, there’s a ghost here!” mode. The inclusion of even one PKE meter was a very nice accessory, considering it was conspicuously absent from the first Egon release, so getting three really made buying this figure worthwhile.

What else made this figure a very worthwhile purchase was the inclusion of the Library Ghost, or Eleanor Twitty if you prefer, from the beginning of the original film.  This free-roaming vaporous full-torso apparition is beautifully recreated in partially translucent plastic. The face sculpt is awesome right down to the swept back grey hair and messed up ghoul teeth. I really dig the paintjob on this figure too. The mix of matte purple with the translucent parts makes for a pretty eerie effect. She features three points of articulation, which includes a rotating head and rotating shoulders. Twitty also comes with the same clear plastic stand that all of the ghosts featured. So far, this is easily my favorite of all the bundled ghosts in the line.

All in all, this set is a well-rounded package. The causal collectors can probably do without Peter or Ray in their lab coats, but as I said earlier, it seems a must to have Egon in his “doing science” outfit. The inclusion of the PKE Meters and one of the most iconic minor ghosts in the franchise makes this deal all the sweeter and I definitely recommend anyone collecting this line pick it up. It may seem trivial to some to honor Harold Ramis’ passing with a look at one of his action figures, but the fact that this figure exists celebrates part of the legacy he left behind and a character that lots and lots of people loved. I know I’ll be celebrating his life for the rest of this week with some of his movies and trying to remember him with smiles and laughter because I think that’s what the way he would have wanted it.

Godspeed, Harold Ramis… and thanks for all the laughs!

So a couple of weeks ago I picked up Mattel’s Ghostbusters 2 Ray and Winston from a comic shop of all places. On Halloween I put the spotlight on Winston, saying he deserved his own feature because he doesn’t get enough love. The real reason was so I could drag Ray out some other day when I was going out and I needed a quick feature. That’s today, folks, because I’m going out for drinksies with some friends and my buddy Ray here is going to get me out the door a lot quicker because we’ve basically seen this figure before.

There’s the packaging and I think it’s pretty fabulous. It displays the figures wonderfully and features a very familiar deco with a lot of the things we loved from the first movie and not a lot from the second movie because, well it wasn’t anywhere near as good. You do get the Ghostbusters 2 logo embossed on the top of the bubble with a color insert. It’s a nice touch to differentiate these guys from the first movie and it’s a little example of Matty going the extra mile for the presentation. Of course, if you’re like me and you’re just going to shred the packaging anyway, they really needn’t have bothered. The back of the package features the pseudo file card, with some lame information about Ray that to me really comes off as being rather cringe-worthy.

When I looked at Winston I gave Matty a little pat on the back for investing a lot more new tooling in this figure then they probably had to. Here’s where Matty got to see that pay off because they were able to turn around and release the figure twice with only a quick head swap. Yes, from the neck down this is the exact same figure we saw last week. The sculpt, the paint, the articulation, everything is identical right down to the Slime Blower on his back. Hey, I’m not going to hammer on them for doing it. it’s a nice looking figure, and I’m not sure what they could have done differently, apart from actually building the figures off of individual bucks like they should have done in the first place. But even here the bulky vest does a little to hide the fact that Ray and Winston are suddenly sharing the same body type.

What I will happily give Matty crap over is the fact that they used the original Ray headsculpt as opposed to the one on the “Ready to Believe You” figure. The RTBY version of Ray was drastic improvement over the first portrait and I gave Matty credit for getting us a new Ackroyd noggin. You’d think they’d use it again here, but nope, we’re back to the unfortunate pinch-headed Ray that looks like he’s working on growing a George Lucas goiter. This is more a caricature portrait of Ackroyd and while it still sort of works for me on some level, it still baffles me as to why Mattel wouldn’t have selected what was clearly the better portrait. Was this figure released before the lab coat version? If it was, I guess I’ll just shut up about it.

I’ll echo what I said in the Winston feature that I wasn’t a big fan of the Slime Blower over the Proton Pack, but Mattel did a very nice job recreating it for the 6-inch scale. The sculpted detail and paintwork are all top notch. I would have liked someway to attach the want to the tank, but it can kind of just float there next to it when he isn’t holding it.

One of the best reasons to pick up this figure is to add another ghost to your menagerie. Ray comes with a “Cinema” ghost, which I imagine is another one from the ghostbusting-montages. I don’t remember this guy, but he is a damn cool looking figure. He’s got three pairs of eyes and a big mouth of ragged teeth. He has two arms that split at the elbows to form two pairs of hands. You get ball joints in the shoulders and hinges in the elbows. There’s also a swivel cut in the tail. This ghostie is cast in a translucent purple plastic with some nice pink paint apps. He comes with the same clear plastic stand that we got with Slimer and all the other ghosts.

When I finished work on FFZ’s Index, I was really surprised to see how little Ghostbusters was represented. I have several figures in this line that I haven’t looked at yet and I still have some others that I picked up on the cheap and have yet to open, so it’s now inevitable that you’ll be seeing some more of Mattel’s Ghostbusters here in the weeks ahead. It’s also inspired me to call my brother and have him send me the box of Real Ghostbusters figures that he and I had when we were kids. Unfortunately, I might have to fly up there and kick his ass before he agrees to give them up.

Happy Halloween, folks! I know today should be Transformers Thursday, but I wanted to bump it for something at least vaguely Halloween-y, so we’ll do Transformers Thursday tomorrow instead. The best I could find for Halloween was a pair of Ghostbusters 2 figures that I came across a few weeks back at my not-so-local Comic Shop of all places. They just happened to have both Ray and Winston with their Slime Blowers and nobody there seemed to know where exactly they came from. It didn’t matter, because the price was right and they came home with me along with some Dan Slott Spider-Man hardcovers. I was going to look at the pair of them today, and then I thought that poor Winston doesn’t get enough love, so we’ll shine the spotlight on him alone and check out Ray sometime next week. Besides running with the whole ghost and Halloween theme, Winston here is slightly topical as Mattel has announced that in the wake of their failed Ecto-1 pre-order, they will still be releasing a new set of the Ghostbusters with removable Proton Packs.

Dang, it’s been a long time since I’ve seen this packaging. It’s kind of cool to see it again, but it also reminds me of how badly Matty screwed up their handling of this license. I think we collectors would have been a lot more willing to pony up for the tsunami of variant Ghostbusters if we had gotten a Gozer or a couple of devil dogs tossed into the mix. At least I would have. Anyway, the figure comes in a big bubble with the Ghostbusters 2 logo embossed on top and fleshed out with a color insert. The dogs are on the front insert and you can see the Stay Puft Marshmallow man on the card, backing the bubble. This is great packaging if you’re a mint-on-card collector. It’s attractive, it stands up on its own, and it really shows the figure off beautifully. I, however, am an opener and there’s nothing collector friendly here, so it’s about to get shredded.

The back of the card shows Winston’s personnel file. All the cards had this, and while in theory it’s a good idea, in practice it comes across as rather hokey and corny. “Quotes the Bible?” I’m pretty sure Ray did more of that in the movies than Winston did. And “Master of Pantomime?” I don’t even know what that’s referencing. Anyway, let’s rip this baby open and see what we’ve got.

Straight away, I’m going to say that I’m impressed with how much extra tooling Matty did on this figure. They got a lot of shit for recycling parts in this line, and I’m not saying it wasn’t deserved. Hell, even this figure reuses a lot of parts. But there’s also a fair amount of new work here that makes this figure stand out well enough, even when he’s displayed next to his regular Proton Pack wearing initial release. For starters, we get a brand new head sculpt. I was pretty happy with the portrait on the first Winston figure. I’d go as far to say I think it was the best likeness of the team. This one shows him with a new haircut, sans mustache, and with a toothier grin. I like it a lot, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, I’m just not sure I like it as much as the original.

Moving on to the uniform, Winston is built on the same jumpsuit body as the rest of the team. The legs appear to be identical, complete with the hose coming out of the leg, which I always assumed was there to catch urine if they pissed themselves with fear. The arms feature a newly painted Ghostbusters 2 logo and newly sculpted gloved hands. The gloves that were sculpted onto the belt on the original figure are replaced with a yellow gizmo and the belt itself is sculpted and painted differently. The recycling of the torso is covered up (literally!) by the newly sculpted vest onto which the Slime Blower is permanently attached.

And then there’s the Slime Blower. I was not a big fan of this in the movie. The Proton Pack was so much cooler, but Mattel has done a very nice job recreating the device for the figure. There are lots of hoses coming off of it, a hazard stripe on the main tank and the grey paint shows some pretty realistic looking abrasions. There doesn’t appear to be any specific way to hang the wand on the tank like you can with the Proton Packs, but the hoses are stiff enough that it will stay in place beside the tank when not held.

Winston’s articulation is identical to all of the jump-suited Ghostbusters, but as I’ve only featured one of these figures on FFZ before, let’s recount the points. The head is ball jointed, but it is ball jointed in the torso, not at the end of the neck. You still get a get a good amount of movement out of it, it’s just a weird way to do it. The arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, elbows, and wrists and the lack of a bicep swivel is still disappointing to me. The legs have hip joints quite similar to Mattel’s own DCUC style, with hinges in the knees and ankles, and swivels in the thighs and boots. He can also swivel at the waist, but has no other torso articulation. What’s here isn’t bad, and he can hold his Slime Blower wand very nicely.

Traditionally, the Ghostbusters have come paired with ghosts. In this case, you get a piece of equipment. It’s the tripod trap seen very briefly in the montage where they are working in what I think was a jewelry or crystal shop. I’m all for getting more equipment and this is a fairly nice piece, complete with three independently balljointed doodads at the top.

I picked this guy up for ten bucks, which I seem to recall is about half the original retail, plus I escaped Matty’s extortionist shipping rates to boot. It was a nice little score, since I wasn’t willing to pay full price for the variants, and yet I’m often on the lookout to complete this collection at good prices. I have to confess that Winston a far better executed figure then I thought he would be. There’s plenty of new work invested in him and he looks really great on the shelf. I expect Ray to be the same figure with a different head, but I’m still rather eager to open him up next week and have a look.

[Howdy, folks. I hope everyone is having as good a time following all the Toy Fair coverage as I am. I was actually going to take today off just to recoup and digest, but then I figured why break a perfect daily streak of updates for February. I will be getting around to posting a little roundup of my impressions of what we’re seeing at TF2012, but that will likely come around Wednesday or so. No major surprises so far, unless you count how badly Hasbro seems to be half-assing their GI JOE movie year toy push. Jesus. Anyway, until then, let’s see what figure is on tap for today, eh? – FF]

We all should know by now that Matty has pulled the plug on the Ghostbusters subscription. We will supposedly get some more figures here and there, but apart from that they’ve abandoned the pretense of trying to hold this mess together as a cohesive line of action figures. That also means that some etailers are starting to unload their stocks on the cheap, which is the only reason we’re talking about Ghostbusters today. At $30 a figure (Yes, I include Matty’s shitty, extortionary shipping in the price) I was only prepared to buy the four Ghostbusters, but anytime I can pick these figures up for around half price, I’m willing to give it a go.

Ghostbusters packaging. Haven’t seen this in a long while. I still think it looks great. You get the main figure and the ghost beautifully displayed in a huge bubble with the colorful GB emblem right up on the top. The back of the package is an illustrated image of a cluttered desk with all kinds of trivia about our hero, Ray Stantz. Actually, the back of the cards aren’t my favorite aspect of these packages. There’s some goofy stuff on there, but oh well.

Ray comes dressed in his lab coat as he appeared for about 30 seconds in that “We’re Ready To Believe You” commercial. He probably donned this outfit at some other point in the movie too, and I can’t deny that having a Ray figure in a labcoat is a cool idea since he was one of the chief tinkerers and actual scientists of the group. This figure was an obvious choice for Mattel since it once again allowed them to use the same body to release all the Ghostbusters. Ray’s wearing black trousers, a white button down shirt, a tie, and the rubbery labcoat complete with sculpted pocket protector. For what it is, the body is pretty good, but its still hard to get excited about a dude in a labcoat. What is cool is that this Ray figure features what is either an entirely new head sculpt or at least a drastic resculpt of the head used on the original release Ray Stantz. Gone is the pinched-head syndrome and what you get is something that looks a lot less silly and closer to Dan Ackroyd’s likeness. Too bad Mattel couldn’t have delivered this sculpt on the original figure.

You also one accessory and its the “ghost sniffer” that Peter used in Dana’s apartment in the first movie. Ray can wear it slung over his shoulder and he can hold the plunger in one hand and the wand in the other. Not bad.

And then there’s the ghost figure. I can’t place this one in the movie from memory, but I’m guessing its one of the ones from the montage where the containment system blew and ghosts were running wild all over the city. I really like this guy. He’s similar to Slimer in that he’s a blob with two arms. Ok, maybe not so much a blob, but more like one of those blind fish they haul up out of the deep trenches in the ocean. He’s cast in a really cool looking translucent blue plastic and his arms feature ball jointed shoulders and hinged elbows. He also comes with the same stand that all the ghosts in the line seem to come with. He’s definitely a cool addition to my little Ghostbusters collection.

In the end, this is not a bad figure, it just isn’t one that I absolutely needed in my collection until the price dropped. And even then. I am impressed that the head sculpt is so much better than the original, but than I get a little peeved that Matty couldn’t have delivered that head sculpt on the original release. The accessory is pretty good and I’m really happy with the ghost. At $13 shipped, basically an impulse buy, this figure was a nice little pick up.