Tag Archives: hasbro

Jul 1 2020

GI JOE Classified: Destro by Hasbro

GI JOE is back in the toy aisles, sporting some new designs and a six-inch scale! Last week I checked out Scarlett and this week I was originally going to open up Duke or Roadblock, but then Cobra’s Weapons Supplier showed up at my door and I just had to push Destro to the front of the line. Sorry guys, you’ll get your turn.

Once again, the packaging kicks ass. We get some wonderful colors and artwork, which separates these boxes from the boring presentation of Hasbro’s 6-inch Star Wars line by leaps and bounds. Destro’s character art is freaking amazing, and I really dig the way it wraps around the corner of the box. Plus you get the iconography on the side panel showing the characters specialties. Destro’s appears to be all about making weapons and money!

And here he is freed from his box and ready to supply you with all your terrorist needs! While Scarlett was a complete modern redesign, Destro is more of a touch up, as he retains everything about his Real American Hero look that makes him so iconic. The black suit includes sculpted combat boots, knee-pads, and some reinforced patches on his chest, back, and shoulders. Destro has a metallic gray belt with some red accents, metallic gray bracers on his forearms, and red rockets mounted on his right arm. Oh man, I’m glad Hasbro kept those! Finally, he has a red holster on his right hip, which is attached to his belt, wrapping around his right thigh with a molded pouch. I love this look so much and I’m so happy that Hasbro didn’t mess with it.

But what makes this figure truly iconic is his portrait. The silver metal mask is a combination of organic curves and chiseled features with some subtle panel lining on top. It extends down to the base of his neck, where it is secured with a ring of bolts. His chest is exposed, and he flaunts his high collar with a red interior that’s evocative of a cobra’s hood. The look is tied together by his amulet and chain, which is sculpted as a separate piece and hung around his neck. Yup, that’s my Destro!!!

The articulation here is Marvel Legends through and through. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have double-hinged knees, swivels in the thighs, and the ankles have both hinges and lateral rockers. The arms have rotating hinges at the shoulders and wrists, the elbows are double-hinged, and there are swivels at the biceps. He has a swivel at the waist, an ab-crunch hinge in the torso, and the neck is ball jointed and hinged. The joints all feel great and he is loads of fun to play with.

As for accessories, Destro comes with two guns and a briefcase. I was a little surprised he didn’t get a backpack, but what we got is still plenty good. His primary sidearm is very reminiscent of the weapon he carried during the RAH years. It has a long barrel, a scope, and a decidedly sci-fi feel to it. It sports some excellent detail and feature some red paint applications to give it some character and match it to his outfit. Destro has two trigger finger hands, so he can wield the weapon in either one, and it also fits in his holster.

His second weapon is a much smaller gold pistol, no doubt to be kept hidden as a back-up. Again, it has a strong sci-fi element to its design, and Hasbro packed a lot of detail into it’s sculpt.

Finally, Destro comes with a Cobra-branded briefcase. The Cobra emblem is sculpted into both sides, but only painted on one. Open it up and there’s a computer on one side and a bunch of money on the other. The computer side is pretty well detailed, but sadly they didn’t print any details on the money. His gold pistol can also fit inside the case.. The only downside of this case is that the hinge is just bendy plastic, so it will likely stress and probably break after a lot of opening and closing.

While Scarlett represented a complete modern redesign of her character, Destro here is just a touch-up. And a refreshing one at that! I can’t tell you how happy I am to see Destro appear sporting the design I’ve known and loved since I was a small child. It also sends a clear message that Hasbro is not looking to ignore the RAH roots. Indeed, Destro here is everything I could have hoped for in this line. He’s damn near perfection. We’ve also had some new revelations this past week, namely Gung-Ho and Cobra Commander, and I really like what I’m seeing. It feels great to want to shout YO JOE!!!! again!

Jun 29 2020

Marvel Legends (Banner Hulk Wave): Loki by Hasbro

After a brief detour to check out Klaue from Black Panther, I’m back to working my way through the Banner Hulk Wave. And with four figures under my belt, I’m more than halfway done! And here’s where the character selection in this wave really starts to descend into a free-for-all. There’s no theme or anything, just a semi-random assortment of characters here. Today we are having a look at The God of Mischief… Loki… And it’s a very classic comic version!

Even if you take into account how far behind I am in my reviews of this line, it still took a long time for Hasbro to get a comic-based Loki figure out of Modern Legends. I mean, I’ve got at least two MCU versions of him (only one of which I’ve reviewed) as well as the female Loki from the A-Force set on my shelf at this point. Nonetheless, he’s finally here and about as classic a version of Loki as anyone could ask for. Even the packaging window cannot contain the magnificence of those horns! And just a reminder, that Hulk leg went to my nephew, so I won’t likely be reviewing the BAF in this wave. I guess that makes me a good uncle, and a bad toy blog host.

Yup! For all the fans who discovered Marvel through the movies, and you’re just into Marvel Legends for the MCU stuff, Loki here is going to be like a bucket of cold water. He’s pure comic cheese from the early days but if you’re looking for some Jack Kirby goodness, there’s a lot to love here. On the other side, Hasbro played it pretty of lazy with this figure. There’s absolutely no character-specific sculpting to be found on the body, instead his costume is achieved nearly entirely by paint and colored plastic. His boots and gauntlets are yellow, his body suit is green, and the gold scales that make up his undies and run up through the center of his torso, are all painted on. Now with that having been said, the coloring on this figure is absolutely gorgeous. The green and yellow go so well together and the gold gives it that extra little pop.

You do get two separate pieces of fresh sculpting: His plain band of a belt and his starburst-like gorget, as final accent to the body. So, clearly this is one of the wave’s budget figures, and I’ll be the first to admit that the paintwork looks fine, but this is Loki, dammit! He really deserved more original sculpting. We’ve seen Hasbro’s sculpted scale mail on figures like Green Goblin, and I think that sort of thing would have looked great if applied here. I must be misremembering him wearing a cape with this costume, but to be fair this one is even way before my time, but it was still a design that I can remember seeing now and then in my childhood. Since this is a basic buck, there are no surprises in the articulation, so I won’t run down all the points, but I will point out that this body features the swivels in both the thighs and tops of the boots.

The head sculpt gets major props from me for Loki’s maniacal grimace and overall devilish expression. Hasbro does enjoy injecting their comic villains with tons of character and Loki is another great example of that. He looks absolutely deranged! His form-fitting cowl features his trademark horns, protruding proudly from his forehead and curling upwards. Meanwhile, his golden locks spill out the back in a long ponytail. The only downside here is I worry about those horns getting all warped. With over 300 Marvel Legends figures, I wind up having to rotate a lot of them in and out of display, which means Loki here will spend part of his life in bagged in a storage tote. Needless to say I have to make sure he resides at the top of the heap to keep those horns from going all wonky while in storage.

The God of Mischief comes with one accessory and that’s his sword. Yup, while the modern Loki favors daggers and throwing knives, old school Loki wielded a more conventional blade. It’s a great looking weapon with a yellow hilt, an extended grip, and a cross-guard that kind of resembles a bird stretching out it’s wings. The guard reaches up the blade just a bit and has a green gem or stone painted on it. The broad blade is painted silver. I thought this looked familiar, and a little searching reminded me that it’s a repaint of the sword that was included with Angela as part of the Titus Wave.

After all this waiting for a classic Loki, I find myself a little underwhelmed with this figure. He’s not a bad figure, quite the contrary, I think he looks great. But a figure as important as Loki should have had more attention. It’s doubtful that Hasbro will take a second crack at this version of him any time soon, and I think that they should shy away from using A-Lister characters as the budget figures in a wave. But with that having been said, I still dig him a lot and he looks fantastic displayed alongside the 80th Anniversary Thor.

Jun 26 2020

GI JOE Classified: Scarlett by Hasbro

Folks, I can’t tell you how great it feels to be sitting down to review a brand new GI JOE figure from Hasbro. I have been a strong proponent for Hasbro to apply this once great franchise to their now tried-and-true 6-inch scale figure formula. I’ve been hoping against hope that we’d see familiar classic Real American Hero characters mixed with the accessories and play-ability of SIGMA SIX. Finally Hasbro listened and we have the new GI JOE Classified series. The first wave consists of Duke, Scarlett, Roadblock, and Snake Eyes, and I’m kicking things off with a look at Scarlett. Did this line seem like it’s going to be all that I hoped it would be? Not exactly. Is she a great figure? Well, at the risk of spoiling the review… Heck, yeah!

For starters, Hasbro gets major props for this packaging, and since this is the first time seeing it, I’ll spend a little while with it. It’s a simple window box similar to their Star Wars Black Series, only now infused with some amazing colors and artwork. We get an original character portrait on the front and the GI JOE logo and character name at the bottom. My only complaint here is that the three bars after the logo aren’t in red, white and blue.

The left side panel shows that these figures are numbered and also introduces this cool iconography for the characters, which suggest their specialties, with some being more obvious than others. The right side panel has a beautiful montage of Scarlett in action. Saving the best for last, the back panel has a gorgeous piece of art showing off characters and vehicles and giving us a glimpse at what some other characters will look like in this line. I love how iconic the vehicles look, and I can only hope that we’re going to get a Trouble Bubble or RAM Cycle down the road. But that’s me getting way ahead of myself, because here we are at the very first wave. Let’s have a look at Scarlett…

I’m not going to lie, I was hoping for a straight up RAH revival that took the basic look of the originals and just infused them with more detail and tons of accessories. That’s not what we got here. Instead Scarlett’s design takes the broad strokes of the character and than goes off in its own direction. The result is a figure that is both familiar and different. This approach is likely to vary from character to character. With Scarlett, I was only fairly satisfied with what I saw in the original solicitation pictures, but with the figure in hand, I’m absolutely in love with it. Her outfit is a mix of tactical suit and armor. I can get a whiff of her old yellow-cream-colored tactical onesie, boots, and gauntlet in the yellow armor here. Her red shoulder pad has migrated to her left and evolved into a full on armor piece, but hey, she still has her row of shuriken-like weapons on her left gauntlet. Maybe I’m reading too much into it, but I feel like Hasbro might have retained an element or two from their Overwatch figures. Damn, I really need to finish reviewing those some day!

I do like the body sculpt here. Hasbro uses some subtle textures on the underlying suit for some areas, while others are smooth with quilted panel lines. The armor pieces feature various panels and raised areas, and the detail on her gloves is quite nice. She has a belt that hangs on her hips with a gold buckle and a sculpted pouch on her left hip. She also has a separate shoulder strap that supports the quiver on her back and a functional knife sheath on the front. About the only thing on the uniform I don’t care for is the left shoulder piece. The star looks great, but this piece pops up too awkwardly for my taste. I wish it cupped her shoulder more closely. As for the colors… she’s certainly a flashy figure and there are a lot of colors on her, far more than I’m used to seeing on Hasbro’s other 6-inch lines. The gold and yellow are vibrant, while the red and blue add a nice kick. It’s pleasing to look at, but I’d like to see this figure repainted with a more subdued color palate. And if I know Hasbro, I’ll probably get it.

The head sculpt is a total winner. She’s cute, with a confident expression. The hair is especially nice as it partially covers her right eye and spills out the back in a ponytail. I could have stood it to be more red than orange, but I’m not going to split hairs. HA! I really dig the printed facial features and the freckles are a nice touch. She even has little earrings, which I’d like to think are tracking devices or micro-explosives or some other kind of cool spy gear.

For articulation, we do get a few new surprises. Her ball jointed hips appear to be anchored with dog-bone-style joints giving them a little extra range of movement. Otherwise the legs follow the Marvel Legends model with swivels in the thighs, double-hinges in the knees, and both hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. Being a girl, Hasbro doesn’t believe Scarlett should have double-hinges in the elbows, so instead she gets rotating hinges in the elbows and no bicep swivels. Boo! Her wrists are on rotating hinges, and she only comes with the one set of hands. She has two ball joints in the torso, one in the waist and another under her chest. Nice! And finally her neck is ball jointed. It’s not a huge departure from what Hasbro’s been delivering, but there are some improvements.

Scarlett comes with four accessories and three of them are knives. I don’t usually associate Scarlett with packing a lot of blades, but knives are cool! Knives come in handy in a fight. I like knives! The smallest of the three fits into the sheath across her chest. It has a curved sculpted grip and something like a drop-point blade. It’s cast entirely in black plastic and she can hold it well in either hand.

The other two are a matched set and oddly enough these fit into the top of her quiver. These pieces of cutlery have similar handles and bigger, more imposing blades with saw-backs. They’re also sculpted entirely in black and I’m tempted to take a silver sharpie to their blades to give them a little more oomph. Maybe Hasbro blew the budget on the figure’s paint operations and didn’t have anything left for the knives. Or maybe they’re intentionally black so they don’t glint off the moonlight in night missions.

And finally we have Scarlett’s trusty crossbow pistol. It’s a chunky and detailed sculpt that breaks down into two pieces. And like the knives it’s also cast all in black plastic either for tactical reasons or to keep costs down… you decide!!! I like that it’s stout and not all frail and bendy. The two pieces do come apart sometimes, and I’m tempted to use a spot of glue to keep them together as I really don’t see any reason to ever separate them. There are no loose bolts to load into it, but she does have some sculpted bolts coming out the bottom of her quiver.

Scarlett’s new design is likely to make her a divisive figure, but she did manage to win me over and I’m hoping she will have the same success with other collectors. Her outfit is not what I was hoping for, but she is an absolutely fantastic figure showing off some great sculpting, quality paint applications, and fun articulation. I do wish the accessories rose to meet the days of SIGMA SIX, instead we get a decent assortment, but nothing mind-blowing. I’m still waiting on my Snake Eyes, which has been bumped back time and again by Hasbro’s own Pulse Shop. Indeed, I had all these figures pre-ordered on Pulse, but wound up cancelling them when they showed up on Amazon with that Fast & Free Prime Shipping. In the end, I wound up getting them in hand from Amazon probably a solid week before they would have ever even shipped from Hasbro. And that, Hasbro, is why when my Free Premier Membership with Pulse expires, I won’t be renewing it with a paid one. In any event, I’ll be back next week with a look at another one of these new JOES!

Jun 24 2020

Transformers “Earthrise:” Cliffjumper by Hasbro

After taking a few detours back into the Transformers: Siege line, I’m switching back to a figure from the first wave of Earthrise Deluxe Classes. This time we’re checking out Cliffjumper, and man it feels like a while since this guy has had any love in the toy aisles! When I think about Cliffjumper, my mind goes to a smaller figure and, while that’s still the case here, Hasbro has upgraded him to a Deluxe Class. Was it justified? Eh, maybe. Let’s take a look…

We saw the Earthrise packaging last time with Hoist and I’ll just say once again how much I dig it. It’s collector friendly and I wouldn’t blame anyone for wanting to hang onto it for the bitchin’ artwork, but I don’t have the space to save a bunch of boxes, so I’m going to tear into it. He comes in his robot mode, but we’re going to start with his alt mode.

Cliffjumper is sort of faithful to his G1 roots, as he’s still a red sports car, but in this case with a bit of a Trans Am vibe. As such, this alt mode reminds me more of Windcharger than it does Cliffjumper. I was never really sure what Cliffjumper was supposed to be in his original super-deformed Minibot alt mode, but this isn’t it. That’s OK. I don’t mind Hasbro straying a bit with these designs. I do, however, kinda mind when they take a much smaller toy and release it in the Deluxe Class. Yes, Cliffjumper was originally a Mini-bot. And no, this toy isn’t small enough to be what was called a Basic or Scout Class in previous lines, but the size still feels wanting at this price point.

Size notwithstanding, I think this is a fine little alt mode. The red plastic looks great and there are some additional silver and black paint operations for the front and back. The wheels are also painted silver, the rear window is painted black, and the windshield and side windows are cast in translucent blue plastic. I’m not really a fan of different color windows, but whatever. An Autobot insignia stamped on the hood ties the whole thing together. Despite the usual seams, the car holds together pretty well and it feels solid.

As if to make up for the toy’s small size, Cliffjumper comes with a massive bazooka-style weapon similar to one he used when scouting with Hound in the original More Than Meets The Eye Sunbow miniseries. And this is a really clever modular design that can be broken down into several pieces and reconfigured to give him a version of the hydrofoil configuration used by the Autobots in the episode Atlantis, Arise! including turbine pontoons and skis for the front wheels. Cool! If only they used some of that engineering skill for the actual figure. Let’s get him transformed!

Broadly speaking, I think this is a pretty solid look for Cliffjumper, in that you get the car roof landing on his chest and the front of the car splitting to form the feet. One strange choice was to give him those circular, tube like biceps, which were seen on Bumblebee’s Sunbow model, but not Cliffjumper’s. I know, these aren’t really cartoon-based toys, but it makes me wonder if we’re going to see this toy recolored and remolded as Bumblebee in this line. I also find it odd that Cliffjumper has an Autobot insignia on his car mode, but not his robot mode. And to that point, I really wish they had printed it on his roof rather than his hood, because his robot mode looks naked without it. Oh yeah, and after just two or three transformations, the paint on my figure’s right shoulder is starting to chip.

Cliffjumper does sport a rather prominent backpack, which doesn’t bother me because it makes his back look tidy and it’s kind of stylish the way it angles outward behind his head. What does bother me is that this whole piece has to be removed for transformation and then reattached. I don’t mind this sort of thing if it’s on a complex figure or if it’s done for some mind-blowing reason, but when Hasbro does it as a basic step in transforming a small Deluxe Class toy? That rubs me the wrong way. If you don’t care for it, you can just leave it off the robot mode. I suppose you can also give it to him as a shield, but that wouldn’t be my first choice.

And then there’s them feets! The proportions on this guy are pretty good until you get down to his big clodhoppers. I actually really like the engineering for how the hood packs away the wheels to form the feet, but they’re just too big for such a small robot. At least we know he’ll always come in first in those Decepticon ass-kicking contests. None of these gripes are instant deal breakers, but they do start to add up.

At least the portrait is absolute perfection.  I love the rounded “helmet” with the horns and the way it frames his face. The silver paint looks fantastic as does the blue used for his eyes. The heads in Siege and Earthrise have really been on point.

And I do love the Bazooka! It features some brilliant silver paint, two hand grips, and it even has the bipod at the end to stabilize it. Of course, that didn’t help Cliffjumper’s accuracy in the cartoon when he used it to take a shot at Megatron, missed, and got his buddy Hound crippled as a result. Still, I gotta give him props to the writers for having him try to sneak-attack murder his enemy in a Saturday morning cartoon. When he’s not using the bazooka it can be stored on his back.

The weapon can also be broken down into a couple of big and beefy pistols and I dig the way these look a lot! You can also mount one or both on his backpack for a shoulder cannon, although it’s mainly just angled for taking out aerial Decepticons from the ground. Still, not bad!

After a whole lot of bitching, it may surprise you to learn that I don’t hate this figure. Not at all! I think Cliffjumper here would have ranked a lot higher in the context of some of the past lines, but Earthrise and Siege have been so damn good that maybe a figure that’s just decent feels a lot worse. I still think it’s kind of lazy to employ parts-forming in a toy this small and simple, but when all is said and done I really like this spunky little bot quite a bit.

Jun 22 2020

Marvel Legends (M’Baku Wave): Ulysses Klaue by Hasbro

Last time on Marvel Monday, I started out saying that I was going to complete a review of the remaining figures in the Banner Hulk Wave, but by the end of the review I committed to having a look at Ulysses Klaue from the M’Baku Wave. Wow, way to undercut myself! Well, since I don’t want to make myself out to be a liar, at least not over something like this, let’s go ahead and check out Klaue from Black Panther! 

The M’Baku Wave almost passed me by completely. The only figures I found at retail were Killmonger and Klaue, which was a spot of luck because it was those two that I wanted the most. Will I ever double back to complete this Build-A-Figure? Who knows, maybe someday. There are some pretty solid figures in this wave, but I haven’t checked to see what they’re going for these days on the second-hand market. Klaue comes in the movie-branded package and with the huge torso for the M’Baku BAF. And since Killmonger didn’t come with a BAF part, this is actually my first piece  to build the figure.

Introduced in Age of Ultron, I was thrilled to see Klaue come back for Black Panther and not so thrilled to see him killed off. I think this may be the first time I saw Andy Serkis as a straight up actor rather than giving life to a CG character. Either way, I absolutely love his portrayal of Klaue in both movies. He was so bat-shit crazy and looked like he was having a great time being a bastard. But boy do I have mixed feelings about this figure! The body is pretty straight forward. Klaue is wearing glossy black boots, blue trousers, a white shirt with rolled up sleeves, and a blue and gray vest. So he’s basically wearing a suit, but has discarded the jacket. He’s got a sculpted pale blue tie and his collar is unbuttoned and disheveled. The issues I have here are basically in the torso. The vest is layered onto the figure in soft plastic so it looks kind of bulky. Maybe they did this to preserve torso articulation, but I think sculpting it as part of the figure might have worked better. And speaking of sculpt, the collar and tie just look bad. It’s a rough sculpt and the paint is sloppy. It almost looks like when someone without a lot of sills uses sculpey on a figure to do a custom. I do, however, appreciate that they printed all his tatts on his right arm and they even sculpted his watch!

Thankfully things look up when we get to the head sculpt. Serkis obviously had fun playing this role and he really hammed it up. I think Hasbro captured a lot of that in this crazy portrait. The likeness is definitely there and he’s all banged up with a bloody cut on his forehead and dirt and bruises on his face. The paint and sculpt on his teeth are especially well done. The printed detail on his beard looks terrible and splotchy when viewed up close with the camera, but it really does look fine when the figure is in hand and viewed with the naked eye.

The articulation takes some detours from what I’m used to seeing in my male Legends, although It’s business as usual from the waist down. I can’t speak to what’s going on under that vest, but it feels like it’s probably a ball joint. The double hinges that we usually see in the elbows have been replaced with rotating hinges, although he still has the usual bicep swivels. Part of the reason for the change in elbows is probably because of the rolled up sleeves, but the other is to accommodate the gimmick on his left arm.

His left forearm can be replaced with one that shows his prosthetic arm split open and revealing his sonic weapon. Anyone who happened to see Black Panther without seeing Age of Ultron, and wasn’t familiar with the comic character, probably had no idea what the hell was up when Klaue opened his arm and started shooting this thing. It was such a cool scene in the film and Hasbro did a nice job recreating it here. The detail on the mechanism inside the arm is great and they even painted each individual emitter.

And as if a hidden sonic arm weapon wasn’t enough, Hasbro also gave Klaue an automatic pistol, which he can hold in his right hand. Sadly he does not have anywhere to put it when he’s not brandishing it.

Klaue is a figure of highs and lows. He loses a lot of points for the sloppy work on his collar and the bulky vest, but everything else is done exceptionally well, However, in the end, I think the good outweighs the bad here. Besides, I’m just really glad Hasbro made him, because after the first Black Panther inspired wave had come and gone, I would have bet against it ever getting him later on down the road. Now if only the MCU had kept him around for one more film. Oh well! Next week, I’ll get back on track to finishing up the Banner Hulk Wave and then maybe I can take a look at a boxed set.

Jun 17 2020

Star Wars Black (ESB 40th Anniversary): Rebel Hoth Soldier by Hasbro

Hasbro has rolled out some vintage style carded packaging for the 6-inch Black Series to celebrate Empire Strikes Back‘s 40th Anniverary. Most of these seem to be repacks, and I’m not double-dipping on any of these just because of the packages, but I sure as hell wanted some Hoth Troopers. Since I never find these on the shelves, and since I really don’t care about the package, I went ahead and pre-ordered this one on Amazon a while back, accepting the fact that it would arrive a crumpled mess, and I’ll just have to try my luck at the pegs to pick up a couple more.

All I see are horror story pictures on Twitter of collectors receiving these all mangled. Imagine my surprise when mine showed up in a simple padded mailer and yet still managed to arrive unscathed. Now don’t get me wrong, I do really dig the presentation here. The card looks great! It tickles me in the nostalgia zone and I like the foil 40th Anniversary box at the top. And as wonderful as it all looks, the figure looks every bit as good! But I got no room for keeping 6-inch carded figures, and this ain’t collector friendly, so let’s rip this baby open and have a look.

These fellas sure have gotten a lot more screen accurate since the Kenner days! Indeed, I’m beside myself with how much detail Hasbro packed into this guy. The arms and legs feature that familiar quilting that turns up on pretty much all of the Hoth Rebels, and I dig the crisscrossing straps on his boots. He has a sculpted pouch on his right bicep, just under what I’m going to guess is a unit designation. He also has his comm panel sculpted into his left gauntlet so he can all back to Echo Base and report Wampa sightings! The vest and lower part of his tunic are cast in soft plastic and attached to the figure to give the costume some nice depth. Dress in layers, it’s cold outside! There’s a sculpted military-style belt with a pouch and six grenades sculpted into the front right side of the tunic, as well as his rank insignia on the left side of his chest. He also has a functional holster for his pistol, and the kerchief around his neck is removable, but it’s cold on Hoth so I can’t imagine why he would want to take it off.

The backpack is an impressive piece of kit. It has a sculpted covering with all the little buttons and stitch marks and exposed sections of the packs instruments, along with cables feeding out of them and an antenna. The pack is removable, it simply pegs in the figure’s back and there are also two clips coming off the sides of the vest that tab into slots in the pack. The pack also has a hidden compartment, which houses a second face plate, just like that first Destro figure back in the old GI JOE: Real American Hero line!

The figure is packaged with the clean shaven face that I’ve been showing all along. It looks like this was Hasbro’s attempt to reproduce the soldier depicted on the card, and it does a pretty good job of it. He does look really young to me, but then Hoth wouldn’t be the first battle that sent kids off to fight. I also like that he’s got some rosy cheeks because it’s so cold! The helmet has a quilted hood with a comm device sculpted onto the side, a plastic scarf flap hanging off the other, and a pair of goggles on elastic that can be worn up or over the eyes. I think the goggles look better worn up than they do on over the eyes.

Hasbro took a page from the Figma/Figuarts book when it comes to the face plate. Pop off the top of the head and you can peel off one face and replace it with the other. The alternate face is bearded and looks more age appropriate for the horrors of ice trench warfare. I actually like this portrait a lot and until I can get a second one of these guys, I’m going to go with this face for regular display.

There are no surprises to be had in the articulation. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, and double hinges in the knees. The ankles have hinges and lateral rockers. There’s a ball joint hidden up under the vest, and the neck is ball jointed. The lower part of the tunic does get in the way of leg movement a bit, but the sides are slit and that helps a lot. I still prefer the double-hinged elbows and rotating hinges of Hasbro’s Marvel Legends line, especially when dealing with rifles, but what we get here certainly isn’t bad.

The Rebel Soldier comes with two weapons, a standard DH-17 pistol and an A280 rifle. Both of these are highly detailed sculpts and I even took a moment to admire how well the rifle matches the one seen in the film. My only nitpicks here are that they didn’t spare a little silver paint for the muzzle of the pistol and I would have liked a sling on the rifle. Hell, even the rifles that came with some of the Kenner Hoth figures had slings! The Rebel’s right hand is sculpted with a trigger finger that works well with both weapons and he can cradle the rifle in his off hand. The pistol fits very well in the holster.

I know I say this a lot, but I’m constantly teetering on whether or not to keep collecting this line. Too often, it feels like Hasbro is just phoning in the figures and not taking advantage of the larger scale. But then, just when I’m at that precipice and ready to jump off, Hasbro produces an amazing figure like this one. It’s kind of sad that they have released more than a few main characters in the line that don’t have the care and attention to detail that this nameless soldier does, but that doesn’t make me appreciate him any less. Quite the contrary. It’s releases like this that realize the potential of the line’s scale and status as “collector” figures, and keep me hanging around a little while longer. Now hopefully he’ll get a regular boxed release so I can get a couple more!

Jun 15 2020

Marvel Legends (Banner Hulk Wave): Shuri by Hasbro

My last excursion into Marvel Legends (several Marvel Mondays ago) saw me randomly drew Beta Ray Bill from the Pile-O-Shame, and I decided that I might as well finish off that wave and open the remaining figures. Keep in mind, I’m not building the Hulk BAF (those parts went to my nephew), but I’d still like to put the rest of this assortment to bed, since it’s already pretty stale. And so today I’m checking out the Princess of Wakanda, Shuri from Infinity War!

Black Panther is a Marvel movie that I enjoy coming back to, but very rarely ever finish. The beginning of that flick (let’s say the first third or so) is easily it’s high point for me and I really dig the stuff between T’Challa and his deceased father, but by the time I get about halfway through it, it starts to lose me and the movie feels like it fizzles out. And the less said about the final battle the better. Sometimes, I’ll just finish it in multiple viewings, but it’s safe to say I’ve seen the first half of it a lot more times than the rest. With that having been said, Shuri was a fun character and I was glad she got some screen time in Infinity War and Endgame. I was irked that she was conspicuously absent from the Marvel Legends Black Panther-themed waves, but now all is forgiven.

And here she is looking fine in her Wakandan garb. The outfit is recreated with lots of sculpted detail and some very subtle texturing, which looks like some kind of advanced fabric weave. It’s so subtle that I really have to turn the figure around in the light to reveal it. I dig that! You also get some sculpted panel lines and some beautiful detail on the neck piece, shoulders, and chest. The deco is a mix of brown, tan, and glossy black along with some copper piping. Meanwhile the sculpted bicep bands are like a gun-metal gray. As always I appreciate the mix of gloss and matte finishes that Hasbro often does with these MCU costumes.

Shuri also sports a sculpted plastic sash around her waist, which drops down behind her legs. It’s textured like fabric with some sculpted stitch lines and a very fine frayed edge along the bottom. It’s meant to be held on by a sculpted belt-buckle looking device colored to match her arm bands. As much as I love the look of this waist garment, it does unfortunately impede her leg articulation.

Generally speaking, Hasbro’s MCU likenesses have been excellent and I think that’s the case here as well. It’s certainly recognizable to me as Letitia Wright. She has some sharply placed dotted face paint, and the hair sculpt is extremely well done, especially the patterns on the back of her neck.

Getting back to articulation, Shuri’s is pretty solid, with a couple of my usual nitpicks. The arms have the standard rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, but she’s a gal and we all know Hasbro only gives the ladies rotating hinges in the elbows, instead of the double-hinged elbow with bicep swivels that the dudes get. Shuri also has those weird elbow hinges that kind of stick out when the arms are bent at their 90-degree extremes. The rest is fine, though. She has ball joints in the hips, double hinges in the knees, swivels in the thighs, and both hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. She has a ball joint under her chest and the neck is both hinged and ball jointed.

Shuri comes with her vibranium gauntlets, which clip onto her wrists. They hold on very well, but I think it would have been cool to have these swap out with her hands to make them fully enclose her forearms. Either way, the sculpts look great and they each have some translucent blue energy crackling from the ends.

Shuri is a great little figure and I’m so very glad we finally got her in the Legends format. Hasbro did quite a beautiful job on the her, but that’s par for the course with pretty much all of their Black Panther figures. Heck, adding her to my collection makes me want to double back and finish off that M’Baku Wave. And speaking of which, while I did say that I’ll be finishing up the rest of this wave, I think next week I’ll detour back to the M’Baku Wave so that I can finally open Ulysses Klaue.

Jun 5 2020

Ghostbusters: Plasma Series (Part 2) by Hasbro

A couple of days ago I checked out the Ghostbusters from Hasbro’s new 6-inch Plasma Series figures, and as promised I’m back today to open up the last two figures, Gozer and Dana, and then put together the Terror Dog Build-A-Figure.

We saw the packaging last time, but here it is again. It’s strangely stylish and artsy, it’s collector friendly, and there’s a sentence about the character on the back panel along with some multi-lingual gibberish. I thought it kind of odd that Dana/Zuul’s box just has Barrett on the front for her name. Why not Zuul? Why not Dana? I don’t think her last name was played up all that much in the movie. Oh well. Each figure comes with one of six pieces needed to assemble The Terror Dog, or I should say A Terror Dog. Let’s go ahead and start with Gozer.

Surprisingly, we never got Gozer as part of Mattel’s line, but Diamond Select did one for theirs, although she was a bit chunky. NECA did release a really nice looking Gozer a while back, but she had very limited articulation and no actual Ghostbusters to go with her. I think Hasbro did a solid job on this one, especially since her costume isn’t the most interesting thing to work with. Her body is cast in a pink pearlescent plastic, which looks cool and seems pretty accurate to the screen grabs I’ve consulted. I like that they gave it some texture too. The only other sculpted detail are the weird clusters of bubbles scattered about here and there.

The head sculpt is passable, but I don’t think it’s great. It doesn’t feel like they were going for an actual likeness here, but more of a general similarity. I don’t dislike it, but the Ghostbusters’ portraits set a pretty high bar. Still, the hair sculpt looks fine, and the printed details on her face are good.

Her articulation is similar in many ways to Marvel Legends gals. The legs have ball joints at the hips, double-hinges in the knees, swivels in the thighs, and both hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. Her arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and elbows, and the wrists are on hinged pegs. Oddly, she has both a traditional ab-crunch hinge and a ball joint under the chest. The neck is ball jointed and hinged.

Gozer comes with two extra hands, each with effect parts attached to make it look like she’s shooting lightning out of her fingertips. The lightning is cast in a translucent purple plastic. It’s pretty standard stuff, but I dig it a lot. All in all a decent figure, but nothing terribly special. Let’s move on to Dana…

Well, technically, there is no Dana only Zuul. This is clearly possessed Dana and she’s looking pretty good. Both Mattel and Diamond Select gave us this version of Dana, although Mattel went a very different route with this figure, giving her swap out legs (and very little articulation) so she could stand or be posed on an included pedestal. I never picked up Mattel’s figure, I think it was an SDCC Exclusive, but I thought everything about it looked great, except for the likeness. Like Diamond, Hasbro went for a more traditional action figure with standard articulation in the arms and legs. On the downside, the sculpted dress kind of inhibits a lot of what you can do with her legs.

With that having been said, this figure’s early solicitation pictures did not impress me, but in hand I think she turned out fine. The dress has a billowy effect to it, although admittedly the sleeves are sculpted with the intend of the arms being down at her sides. The coloring here is pretty basic, but well executed.

The likeness isn’t at all bad either. NECA isn’t in any danger of losing their cred at sculpting Sigourney Weaver, but Hasbro’s is no slouch either. I know who this is supposed to be and it leans more toward realism than caricature. The printed facial features look great, I love the demonic red glare in her eyes, and the hair sculpt is particularly well done.

Dana doesn’t come with any accessories, which is a bummer since even though she isn’t missing anything I can think of, this would have been a prime opportunity to at least pack in one (or three!!!) more proton streams. So yeah, once again it’s the accessories (and lack thereof) that remains my biggest gripe with this series. But they did each come with a BAF part, and that leads me to our final stop on this assortment of figures is the Terror Dog BAF!

Once again, we didn’t get Terror Dogs from Mattel, but both NECA and Diamond Select tackled this doggo as packaged figures. Hasbro’s comes in six pieces (four legs, a body, and a head) and it all snaps together easily. It’s a decently sized figure and I think going the Build-A-Figure route on this guy was the right choice. Hasbro did a nice job with the sculpting here, as there’s detail over the entire body, giving him a rough, elephant-like look to his skin. The body still has a shiny finish and there’s some silver paintwork on his back, with each of the claws individually painted.

I think they did a fine job on the head sculpt, particularly inside the mouth where you can see his forked tongue and terrific rows of teeth. The jaw is hinged so you can display him with the mouth open or closed, but after Hasbro put all that work into his maw, it seems a shame to close it. I also have to say how much I dig the red metallic paint they used for his eyes. It looks great.

This guy has plenty of rotating hinges to offer up decent articulation. I think the only thing worth nit-picking is the upper joints in his back legs are just sculpted and not actually jointed, but I didn’t find that it mattered much when I was playing around with him. The only real downside to this beast is that if you want two for your display you have to buy the whole wave again, and I don’t know too many collectors who will be willing to do that. My guess is that Ebay will be full of this wave sans BAF parts. I know Hasbro has packaged some of their Marvel Legends BAFs as single figures as of late, and I’m hoping they will do it with this Terror Dog. I really do want another.

I think Gozer and Dana were fine picks to round out this wave, even if I don’t know that I enjoyed them as much as the actual Ghostbusters. Still, I’m happy Hasbro did these and I’m certainly glad to have them in my collection. They also make me very curious to see what the future plans are for the Plasma Series. Will we get another wave? Will we get ghosts? Are they going to go the Mattel route and give us a ton of variant Ghostbusters? Will this series eventually just tie into the new movie? Mysteries abound! But I know I’ll be waiting to see what comes next.

Jun 3 2020

Ghostbusters: Plasma Series (Part 1) by Hasbro

It seems like everyone’s had a run at making Ghostbusters figures. Mattel had a pretty successful line on Matty Collector with their roughly 5-inch Movie Masters line and some 12-inch figures. Mezco’s done some, Diamond Select has done a bunch, Blitzway has done some higher end ones. Even LEGO and Playmobil had their turns at the ecto trough. Well, with a new movie on the way, Hasbro has snapped up the rights, but before the new film hits, we’ve got a wave of six 6-inch figures from the original film and with a Build-A-Figure too! Now, because the Ghostbusters themselves are rather similar, I’m going to tackle all four of them in today’s review, and then I’ll be back on Friday to have a look at Gozer, Dana, and the Terror Dog Build-A-Figure!

The packaging is fairly reminiscent of Hasbro’s Star Wars Black Series in that there’s a cardboard box with a clear plastic tray and a cover that forms the bubble. The deco is rather creative, and the collector friendly box shows off the figure inside quite well. The back has a single line about the character inside and lots of multi-lingual stuff. It also shows the six figures in the wave and that each one comes with a part to build the Terror Dog, Vince. There’s even a bit of stylish art on the spines that’s strangely quirky and feels totally out of place. I’m going to use Peter Venkman to look at the basics on these figures, and then I’ll check out the different particulars of the other three Ghostbusters.

Peter comes donning the familiar pale gray Ghostbusters jumpsuit, showing off all sorts of sculpted wrinkles and rumples. The various pockets and zippers are there too, but the jumpsuit sculpt strikes me as being rather soft. And as we’ll soon see, Peter also happens to be the only Ghostbuster with his pants not tucked into his boots, which I thought was a pretty nice detail. The boots and gloves are painted with a black high gloss finish, and I can just make out a bit of his black t-shirt peaking up under the jumpsuit’s collar. Peter’s suit features the Ghostbusters logo on his right shoulder and a sculpted name badge on his chest to the right. His utility belt features a non-removable walkie-talkie, some other bits and bobs, and he’s got that weird yellow tube that comes out the back of the belt and into the front of his left pants leg. I subscribe to the running gag that these are in some way related to catching urine if the Ghostbusters piss themselves with fear. From the back we can see that he has sculpted elbow pads, and a hole in the back to help secure the Proton Pack. Yup, Hasbro heeded one of Mattel’s early mistakes and decided to make the packs removable, which I am extremely happy about.

I really dig the articulation on these guys, which happens to be very similar to Hasbro’s Marvel Legends line. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have double-hinges in the knees, swivels in the thighs, and hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, double-hinges in the elbows (Woo-Hoo!!!), and swivels in the biceps. There’s a ball joint in the waist and the necks are ball jointed and hinged. The jointing on these figures feel great, and they are tons of fun to play around with! Everything I said about Peter applies to the other three guys, except for the pants legs being tucked into the boots.

The head sculpts here are all very well done and they’re each instilled with some personality. Peter’s is an excellent Bill Murray likeness right down to his goofy smirk. The hair sculpt is particularly well done, and this figure uses Hasbro’s relatively new method of printing the facial details on instead of painting them. There’s a little mold flashing on my figure’s face, which I’ll need to shave off, but otherwise I couldn’t be happier with how this portrait turned out.

Next up is Winston and here we have another solid likeness, in this case to Ernie Hudson. The facial features are all very well defined, the printing looks good, especially his mustache, and his hairline is sharp. And as I understand it, if there’s a steady paycheck involved he’ll believe anything you want.

The heart of the Ghostbusters, Ray Stantz is a dead ringer for young Dan Ackroyd. You know, from before he lost his mind and started hawking skull vodka and gassing on about aliens and nine-eleven. I don’t think Ackroyd’s likeness is particularly easy to get down, so I have to give Hasbro some major props here for succeeding at it so well. Plus he has a great, almost blank expression as if he’s complimenting the third mortgage he just took out on his parent’s house. This is just great work for this scale.

And finally we have Egon, modeling the likeness of the late, great Harold Ramis. I think if I were to rank these likenesses from strongest on down, Egon might be at the bottom. But that’s not to say I think it’s a bad portrait at all. Hand me this head and I’ll know exactly who it’s supposed to be. I just think that Hasbro managed to capture the other three just a tiny bit better. To be fair, though, I don’t think there’s a bad noggin in the bunch. Sculpting the glasses as part of the head was definitely the way to go here, and I love how they sculpted his poufy hair.

With the jumpsuit bodies so similar to each other, Hasbro had to really nail the portraits on these guys and I’m so happy to say that they did it. The figures look great together and I’m excited to have a look at their equipment. As I mentioned earlier, I’m very pleased Hasbro decided to make the Proton Packs as separate accessories. If you collected Mattel’s line then you no doubt remember that the first releases had the packs permanently attached and only later did they release new versions of the team with detachable packs. Permanent packs became a problem when Mattel started eyeing up an Ecto-1 release for the figures to sit in. Could it be that Hasbro is planning something like that? I do hope so!

While the peg holes in the back could have been used as a cheap and lazy way to attach the packs, I’m happy to say that the pegs are just to secure the packs on the figure. They do each have shoulder straps and a waist strap all cast in soft green plastic. The straps can be unhooked on the lower left side to help get them onto the figure and pressing it into the back makes certain that it isn’t going anywhere. As a result, the packs fit so well it actually looks like they might be permanently attached. The sculpts for each pack appear to be identical to me, with all the crazy tubes and wires coming off of it. There’s some solid paintwork on these as well, there’s even a bit of variation on the red lights on the lower part of the pack. The only gripe I have is they didn’t get the warning stickers on them, but at this scale I guess that would be tough. Surprisingly, the packs don’t make the figures all that back-heavy and I was able to stand them just fine without having to lean them forward hardly at all.

The wands tab into the sides of the packs very securely and the hoses seem to be pretty durable. They can be pulled out of the bottom of the pack and pegged back in again, which is a nice alternative to having them tear out if stressed too much. The wands look good, but it’s worth noting that they lack a little detail that Mattel had on there’s, most notably the red wire loop on the end. The figure’s hands are pretty well designed to grab the wand in the back with the right hand and cradle it in the left and they look damn good with the wands at the ready. In addition to the Proton Packs, each figure came with one accessory, and here’s where Hasbro lost me just a little bit. But I’d better not get ahead of myself.

Venkman comes with a Ghost Trap and overall I think it’s a nice piece. There’s plenty of detail and the paint is very well done. On the downside, it doesn’t come with the foot pedal and cord like Mattel’s did. Also, Mattel’s was a solid chunk of plastic and Hasbro’s is hollow. Granted, that’s not a big deal, but still worth mentioning. Luckily with the scale being similar, I can swap out Mattel’s in place of Hasbro’s.

Ray comes with his Ecto Goggles, which can be worn up on his forehead or down over his eyes. This is a pretty simple accessory but it fits well and looks good on the figure. There’s a hook on Ray’s belt where you can hang these, but they don’t stay put very well.

Egon comes with his PKE Meter and I think Mattel did a much better job with this accessory than we got here. It had more detail and you even got a few different ones with the arms at different positions. I do, however, like that it can be pegged onto Egon’s belt when he’s not using it, even if it’s always on and detecting ghosts. Still, this is another case where I may swap in Mattel’s accessory for this one. And since it’s so damn small, I think Egon should have been bundled with as econd Ghost Trap. Hell, maybe all of them should have been.

And finally, we have the biggest slap to the face Hasbro could have done. Winston comes with a proton stream. And he’s the only one that comes with a proton stream. So you get four Ghostbusters and only one freaking stream. What the hell, Hasbro? How could you possibly have made such a terrible and disappointing decision? I realize Mattel didn’t include any with there’s in the beginning but they did eventually. It’s a real shame because the stream attaches to the wand perfectly and it looks great! My God… What a pisser! OK, let’s move on to some comparison shots with the old Mattel figures…

I think the sculpted details in the Mattel bodies hold up fairly well. Some of the details are even crisper, and I like some of the differences, like the folded gloves tucked into the belt. But boy those head sculpts have not aged well at all. I mean, they weren’t all that great to begin with, more like caricatures than actual likenesses. The Mattel Proton Packs have some sharp details, but they look skinny and demure compared to Hasbro’s big and beefy Packs.

I’m sure we will eventually get Slimer in the new line, and possibly even some of the more iconic ghosts, but until then the Mattel ghosts work great with the new figures. I pulled all of mine out of storage and I’ll be displaying them with Hasbro’s figures for sure.

And if you bought Mattel’s Walter Peck then you have a Containment Unit that displays great with these guys. It even works with the new Hasbro traps.

And finally, here are the boys with Diamond Select’s Mr. Stay-Puft bank.

And so, in the end we have some absolutely terrific figures, with some very good and some other ho-hum accessories. With the exception of the Proton Packs, nearly every accessory included with these guys feels in some way like a step down from the ones that came with Mattel’s line. And when I come down to it, it just makes Hasbro look kind of cheap. Could you really not afford to give each figure a proton stream? Could you not have tossed in an extra PKE Meter with the arms down? Maybe give us one opened trap with the closed one? Are you planning on selling an accessory set later on down the road? Or maybe there’s a plan to pack a proton stream in with ghosts? I can just imagine how many Winston figures I’m going to see on the pegs with the proton stream missing. ARGGGGHHH!!! But with all that having been said, I don’t want to end this review on a sour note. I really do dig these figures, and while I’ll concede that my older Mattel figures are now obsolete, I can at least repurpose some of their gear and their ghosts. Join me back here on Friday and I’ll have a look at Gozer, Dana, and the Build-A-Figure!

May 25 2020

Marvel Legends (Banner Hulk Wave): Beta Ray Bill by Hasbro

One of the great things about having such a deep backlog of Marvel Legends is when I dig my hand into my pile of shame, there’s no telling what will come out. Case in point, today we’re going back to the Banner Hulk Wave and opening up Beta Ray Bill. I knew Bill was in there somewhere, and I’ve been hoping to get him in a random pick for a while now!

This assortment remains one of only a few few Modern Legends waves that I didn’t hunt down too enthusiastically. I wasn’t all that excited about the Banner Hulk BAF and I wound up giving a lot of the parts to my nephew anyway, but I may borrow it someday to review here. Eh, probably not… I think I’ve got enough on my plate as it is! Anywho, I have to give Hasbro some major props for the branding on this package. The snappy logo used for Bill’s name could have easily convinced me that it’s a movie tie-in. Sadly, no such luck, but the future holds many possibilities. There’s not a lot that could get me to want to go see a Thor movie starring Natalie Portman, but slap Beta Ray Bill in it, and I’ll be there.

Behold! Beta Ray Bill out of the package and looking damn cool! I’ve always found his backstory to be a little wanting, but who needs a great backstory when you’re an epic space man-horse in Asgardian armor? Egads, I love comics! The armor in question is a lot simpler in design than what The God of Thunder is usually wearing, but it’s still easily recognizable as being cut from the same cloth. Or mythril. Or whatever Asgardians make armor out of. From below the chest down it’s just smooth and black and showing the details of Bill’s fine muscles. The chest armor is painted with a gun metal gray finish that has a bit of a hammered texture to it. You also get two sets of the silver discs, similar to the ones that appear on Thor’s armor. A set of burnished bronze shoulder armor and sculpted wrist wraps round out the ensemble nicely. Not to forget the cape, of course! From behind, Bill is basically just a wall of cape! But it’s a very nicely sculpted cape!

With a face any mother could love, the head sculpt was easily going to make or break this figure. Happily, Hasbro did not disappoint. His horse skull visage is so grim it’s adorable and they really nailed the way his pronounced brow frames those pupil-less eyes. His head is topped off with a silver Asgardian winged helmet and the best surprise is that he has a hinged jaw! The sculpted tongue was a nice touch as well. Superb!

Bill conforms to most of the usual points of articulation I’m used to seeing on my beefy horse-men. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, there are double-hinges in the knees, swivels in botht he thighs and the lower legs, and the ankles are hinged and have lateral rockers to keep his feet flat on those wide stances. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, double-hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the biceps. The neck is both hinged and ball jointed, and I’ve already mentioned the hinge in the jaw. The biggest change up here is that he has a ball joint under the chest instead of the usual ab-crunch hinge.

Naturally, Bill comes with his trusty weapon, Stormbreaker, which makes me wonder what weapon he’ll have if he shows up in the MCU. Maybe he’ll just wind up with the Stormbreaker with the Groot handle. Either way, this mighty weapon is cast in gold plastic, has a ribbed grip, and a soft plastic lanyard coming out of the butt cap. Mine also has some ugly paint splotches on it. Boo!

Beta Ray Bill is one of those super fun characters who desperately needed an action figure. He’s also one of the stand-out figures for me from this assortment, and that’s saying something because there are some genuinely solid figures in this wave. So much so, that I may just work on wrapping up the remaining figures before moving on to more randomness.