Tag Archives: hasbro

Oct 5 2018

Transformers “Power of the Primes” Sinnertwin by Hasbro

Happy Friday, Toyhounds! It’s been a bitch of a week, but I’m cooling down with a couple of adult beverages, easing into the weekend, and rewarding myself for a job well done by opening up the last of the Power of the Primes Deluxe Terrorcons! If you’ve been around for my looks at Blot, Rippersnapper, and Cutthroat, then you know that I am absolutely smitten with these foul and evil little cyber-beasties. And so without further delay, let’s check out Sinnertwin!

Here’s a quick look at him in his package, and once again I’ll say that I’m not a fan of this overall design, but I do love the character art on these cards. I’m anxious to see the packaging for the new line and hope we get something a little more inspired and exciting. Anywho… The Terrorcons are all packaged in their robot modes, but you get a picture of the beast mode on the bubble insert to give you a good idea of what else you’re getting. Give me a second to get him free and we’ll start with his robot mode!

And what a nice, clean robot mode it is! Sure you get his beast legs on the side of his robot legs and his beast heads hanging down his back, but what’s here is pretty tidy and there really isn’t a lot of kibble to complain about. I like Sinnertwin’s big boxy chest, and while his arms do look a little diminutive compared to the rest of his body, I’d like to have the shoulders bulked up a bit, it’s nothing so bad that it ruins the figure for me. His combiner connector is pretty obvious and there’s a curiously large hole in his chest to accommodate the Prime Armor piece.

The coloring makes a strong statement with mostly yellow and blue, spruced up with some red and silver paint hits. There’s even a little purple on the panels of his chest. He’s rather bright and cheerfully colored for a Decepticon, which is probably why there’s a Decepticon insignia on both his chest and his left shoulder. The extra paint on his legs really goes a long way toward a more premium feel, and they even painted some silver in on the outsides of his upper arms and shoulders. All in all, I find his deco pretty pleasing and more than a little reminiscent of Titans Return Wolfwire. And I guess that’s not a bad thing.

Sinnertwin features a rather robust head with a well-defined blue “helmet” and a rather stern looking face. The silver paint on the face looks great, but on close inspection the yellow paint on my figure’s eyes could have been a lot cleaner. I didn’t even really notice it until I got in close, but it’s the first time I’ve seen anything close to sloppy face paint on one of my Transformers in a long while.

In addition to his Prime Armor piece, Sinnertwin comes with a pretty simple gun, which he can hold in either hand or can be mounted on his shoulders if you want to really mix things up.

Sinnertwin’s transformation won’t win any awards for ingenuity, so feel free to just toss out the instructions. You simply tuck away the robot head, fold out the beast heads, fold the legs back into the body and deploy the beast legs. With just a few more tweaks, you’re all done. In keeping with the Terrocon pedigree, Sinner’s alt mode is a weird two-headed wingless dragon kind of thing. And here’s where this figure starts to fall a little flat for me. There’s nothing overtly wrong with his alt mode, but it doesn’t really impress or excite me either. I mean, he’s OK and all, but he’s no Twinferno. The dragon colors remain true to the robot mode and it’s nice to see that all that paint on the robot mode’s legs is still on display in this mode. I will say that I dig his adorable little split tail!

The beast heads can move independently of each other and the jaws can open and close, but I’m not a big fan of the hollow necks, especially when I position one of the heads up high and it’s really obvious. I do like that they added some silver paint to the top row of teeth. It’s a shame that paint for the bottom choppers wasn’t in the budget. At least the purple horns and red eyes are a nice touch.

Sinnertwin also has a port on his back so you can plug in his gun, because everyone knows that two-headed dragons are even more bad ass when you strap a laser gun to their back. You can also plug it into the holes at the top of either of his front legs. And here’s a real surprise… I think the Prime Armor piece works beautifully on this guy in his beast mode. It bulks him out nicely and adds some spikes. You can also still put his cannon up there, so long as you’re happy with it over one of his shoulders.

The last thing I wanted to do was end this run of Deluxes on a down note, but there you have it. Sinnertwin is a perfectly fine figure, but he lacks that certain something special that I found in each of his three Terrorcon brothers. To me he’s the French Cruller in my mix of donuts. Not bad, but still my least favorite in the batch. I guess somebody has to, and you’re it, Sinnertwin. But to be fair, this was an exceptionally great assortment of figures, so really Sinnertwin doesn’t have too much to be ashamed about. And with all four Deluxe Terrorcons open, I just have their leader Hun Gurrr left! Will it be next Friday? Maybe. It just depends if I want to bump him for some more Halloween-y content or not.

Sep 28 2018

Transformers “Power of the Primes” Blot by Hasbro

Last week I diverted away from the Power of the Primes Terrorcons to have a look at Punch-Counterpunch, so let’s swerve back on course this week by opening up my third of the Deluxe Terrorcons… and it’s Blot!

Man, Hasbro came up with some great names for the Terrorcons. Even in a team with characters named Cutthroat and Rippersnapper, Blot is still a stand out moniker. He comes packaged in his robot mode with some great character art at the top of his card in his beast mode. You get the Generations emblem in the upper right corner and the brand name running up the side which, even after a few lines of this package style, will never stop looking weird to me. I’ve been starting off all the Terrorcon reviews in their robot modes, so let’s get Blot out of that bubble and check him out…

Blot is built off of the same engineering as Rippersnapper, and just like Cutthroat and Sludge, he borrows some parts but the majority of the figure has been reworked to make Blot his own bot. With that having been said, I really dig Blot’s overall profile. He’s got a big, beefy chest, powerful forearms equipped with slashing blades, and some beast legs folded up on his lower legs that adds to his bulk without being too kibble-y. The back of the package refers to him as a foot-soldier and that’s exactly what his robot design conveys to me. To me, this is a no-nonsense Decepticon trooper through and through.

Even from the back he looks great. The beast kibble is worn as a backpack, and it adds to his upper body bulk without detracting from the aesthetic at all. His lower legs are filled out, and everything else back here is nice and clean. I’m such a fan of Hasbro taking those basic G1 scramble city limb robots and fleshing them out in Deluxe Class figures and Blot here is another fine example of why. I didn’t think they’d ever top the Aerialbot limbs’ Deluxe makeovers, but these Terrorcons are giving them a run for their money.

Blot’s deco is absolutely superb. The blue is so dark that it almost might as well be black. Add the purple and you’ve got the makings for perfect Decepticon colors. The additional silver, yellow, and metallic blue paintwork gives the figure a great premium finish that we’ve been seeing in a lot of these Deluxe Class figures recently. As much as I loved the Deluxe figures in Titans Return, the early releases suffered from a severe lack of paint apps, whereas Hasbro has been killing it with the paint on a lot of these Power of the Primes figures and it is much appreciated.

And that brings us to the head sculpt, and I’m happy to say that Blot is characteristically sporting a flat slab of head. The squared off “helmet” looks like it’s made to take a beating. The face is painted silver and he has a red visor across the top. Every bit of his face makes him look like an unpleasant fellow. I get the feeling that the phrase, “Oh crap, Blot showed up!” is a line often spoken at Decepticon gatherings.

In addition to his Prime Armor piece, Blot comes with his weapon. Back in the day, this was referred to as a slime gun and oh boy am I sticking with that! I’d like to think this thing just burps out nasty splotches of acidic, sticky slime onto his foes, which sends them staggering off and screaming, “OH PRIMUS, IT BURNS!!! GET IT OFF ME!!!!”

Oh yeah, you can also mount it on him on either the left or right side as a shoulder cannon. It’s nice to have options, plus this gives Blot the ability to use the gun for long range attacks while slashing up close enemies with his claws.

With some shared engineering and parts, Blot’s transformation is a little like Rippersnapper’s, but there’s enough new here to make him feel unique and the end result is this wonderful little ball of WTF. It’s like a cross between a slobbering fantasy beast and something out of MechWarrior and I love it to pieces. I especially dig how folding in the robot hands rolls out the third claw for his beast hands. The boxy head is nestled between two silver and yellow armor plates and there are little nozels, which I presume are designed to deliver some kind of hot death to Autobot fools.

There’s a protrubance behind his head that allows you to plug in his slime gun. I just wish he came with two so I could double it up and get a little symmetry going. The deco here is pretty much the same as his robot mode, which is a good thing. One irritating thing… both Blot and Rippersnapper have rub signs in their beast mode, but they omitted it from Cutthroat’s. Go all in, or don’t do it at all, Hasbro!

Three Terrorcons down and three direct hits! I absolutely love what Hasbro is doing with these guys. I’ll admit, Power of the Primes has been pretty hit-and-miss with me, but so far the Terrorcons have been making up for a whole lot of stumbles. This is easily my favorite sub-group since the Titans Return Aerialbots. And with just one more Deluxe and one Voyager Class left, I’m getting pretty excited about finally combining them to form Abominus!

Sep 24 2018

Marvel Studios “First Ten Years:” Iron Man Mk XXIII, Pepper Potts, and The Mandarin by Hasbro

Yup, the random Marvel Legends reviews are getting put on hold once again so that I can push one of these First Ten Years releases to the head of the line. This Amazon Exclusive boxed set of three figures from Iron Man 3 hit my porch this past weekend, and I was just too excited not to open it up right away. Let’s take a look!

Iron Man 3 feels like it was one of the most polarizing of all the MCU films. I still encounter people who have raging hatred toward it, and I really can’t see why. I can still remember when it hit home release on Blu-Ray and I must have watched it three times over the course of a couple of days, and my love for it didn’t even tarnish one bit. Hell, I’m long overdue for a re-watch now! Anyway, this is the first three-figure set I’ve picked up in this First Ten Years line, but the packaging is still the same. It looks good, it’s collector friendly, but I’m still not going to be keeping the box. With three figures to cover, let’s just dig right in and start with Pepper.

Never did I think I’d be so happy to own a Gwenyth Paltrow figure, but Pepper has been in a hell of a lot of MCU films and it’s long past time she got the Legends treatment. And It seems only logical to go with the movie where she actually got involved in the action. I mean, black sports bra or business suit? That’s not even up for debate. Unfortunately, this figure turned out decidedly average. In terms of sculpting and paint, this isn’t exactly a complex figure, nor did it need to be. The new sculpting for the top of the torso, as well as the bare feet, are new and appreciated, but the paint could have been a lot better, and that’s pretty sad considering it’s just a black top and black pants and virtually no intricate detailed paint hits to be had. The paint lines around her waist are downright sloppy and the bra straps could have been cleaner too. Hasbro has been doing some pretty nice paintwork in this line on even the little things like pouch buttons and belt buckles, so to see this kind of carelessness on a figure that required so little really hurts.

I do think the head sculpt is pretty solid for a 6-inch scale figure. It’s not a dead on likeness, but I can see some resemblance in there. I’d believe that Paltrow has one of those faces that could be tough to get right (I’d argue that even Hot Toys didn’t quite nail her perfectly), so I’m willing to be a little forgiving here. She also doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who would approve an action figure likeness, so I’m pretty surprised we got this release at all. Either way, the printing on the face is pretty clean and the hair sculpt looks good. Maybe since now Hasbro has done the head sculpt we can look forward to getting another version of Pepper.

Articulation is everything I expect to find in an MCU Legends lady. That includes rotating hinges in the shoulders, elbows, and wrists. The legs have ball joints in the hips, swivels in the thighs, and double hinges in the knees. The ankles have both hinges and lateral rockers. There’s a ball joint just under the chest, no waist swivel, and the neck is ball jointed and hinged. I will say that the ankle joints look really chunky and I think they blew up her feet a bit to make them work a bit better with those larger joints.

 

Pepper’s right arm can detach at the shoulder and be swapped out for the one wearing the Iron Man armor sleeve and gauntlet. There’s also a repulsor blast effect part that plugs into the palm. This extra arm is a great addition and I’ll likely display the figure with this look most of the time. On the downside, there’s no articulation in the wrist, which means getting the repulsor effect to fire in a convincing manner isn’t easy. She can’t hold her the arm straight out without the effect shooting at a downward angle. Moving on to The Mandarin…

Now here’s a figure I never thought we would ever get. I’m sure there are still people salty over how Iron Man 3 treated one of Iron Man’s iconic arch enemies. Me? I thought it was great fun and a pretty cool twist, but then I was never a big fan of The Mandarin in the comics or the cartoons. Either way, here he is Trevor Slattery all decked out in his theatrical garb and looking pretty damn great. He’s sporting a pair of camoflague pants, military style boots, and a tunic and waist wrap that has a little bit of a Middle Eastern flavor to it. The real draw here, however, is the coat, which features some really nice attention to detail in the sculpt and some beautiful gold leaf paint on the fixtures and sleeves. Even the coat itself has an embossed floral motif running through it. Oh yeah, they even sculpted all ten of his rings on his fingers.

This head sculpt is absolutely spot on as well. From his long beard to his man bun, I think they did a nice job recreating Sir Ben Kingsley in the makeup.

The articulation here is good, but a lot of it is really hindered by the soft plastic coat. It’s also lacking some of the points we’re used to seeing on the male characters in this line. The arms have rotating hinges at the shoulders, elbows, and wrists, and no bicep swivels. 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. There’s … The neck has both a hinge and a ball joint. So, what’s here is good on paper, but apart from some gesticulations with his arms, I didn’t find him to be all that much fun to pose. And that brings us to the final figure in the set…

And also the quick and easy repaint: The Mark XXIII Hot Rod armor. I’m pretty sure this is a repaint of one of the War Machine figures (Hulkbuster Wave?), if not I’ll happily stand corrected. It’s also a figure that I have a bit of a disconnect with. I want to applaud the paintwork here because it really is excellent. The gun metal finish on the torso, upper arms, and head all looks great and the flame motif on the legs and metallic red paint on the lower arms also looks superb. So what’s the problem? I just don’t really like this deco all that much. It wasn’t a stand out armor for me in the film, and in as a figure I think it just looks unfinished and strange.

Because he’s a repaint of an earlier figure, he doesn’t come with any extra goodies. No extra hands, no repulsor effect parts, and that’s all pretty disappointing considering the price of this set, which I’ll get into presently. I don’t dislike this figure, but it feels like one of those lone Walmart Exclusives that I would pass up because it doesn’t feel essential to my collection and it doesn’t have a BAF part. Yup, just like all those Back in Black Deadpools that are clogging up the pegs at my local Target.

Wow, what a mixed bag this set turned out to be! I was excited for both Pepper and The Mandarin, but Pepper turned out to be a pretty mediocre figure and while The Mandarin is pretty solid, it doesn’t justify the $70 I paid for this set. Especially since I could have easily passed on the Hot Rod armor. Hell, $70 for a three-pack of normal sized figures without much in the way of accessories is pretty high even if they all turned out to be excellent must-have releases. Even more surprising to me is that the set appears to have sold out on Amazon, as currently only available from Marketplace scalpers at twice the price. If this were just Pepper and Mandarin at $40 I would have been a lot more satisfied with this purchase, as it is

Sep 21 2018

Transformers “Prime Wars Trilogy” Punch and Counterpunch by Hasbro

I’m supposed to be opening up another Terrorcon today, but then this fellow landed in my mailbox and I thought I’d bump him up to the front of the line. By 1987, I was 15 and I was already already getting out of buying Transformers. It was that strange time in my life where I felt I was too old to be buying toys to play with, and had yet to discover the joy of buying toys to collect them. As a result, a lot of the later and more gimmicky G1 releases passed me by. One of those was the very clever double agent known as Punch and Counterpunch. This character got a release a little while back thanks to a clever reuse of the the Classics Sideswipe-Sunstreaker mold, and now he’s getting a brand new, and all original, update thanks to this Amazon exclusive.

Exclusives often mean premium packaging, and that’s certainly the case here. Punch-Counterpunch comes in a collector friendly box with some bitchin’ artwork and a front flap that opens to reveal the figure through a window. He comes packaged in his robot mode as Punch with that weird Prime Armor Zodiac Wheel illustrated behind him on the tray. Before getting started, I should point out that this figure left the factory with a pretty serious QC issue, that being the shoulder joints assembled wrong. It doesn’t effect the figure in robot mode, but it does hinder the transformation. Thankfully, there’s a very helpful review on Amazon that explains how to do the fix. It’s quick and easy and doesn’t even require any tools. And with that behind us, let’s start with the auto mode!

Punch-Counterpunch is a snappy blue sportscar not too dissimilar from the original G1 toy only with all the curves and contours of a modern vehicle. I love the styling on this car and you get some nice sculpting in the form of hood vents as well as details to the front and back bumpers. The rear window is stickered silver, but the windshield and side windows are clear plastic, as are the headlamps. Some extra paint hits include the red wheels, silver vents just behind the front wheels, silver and black on the front grill, and red on the tail lights. The auto mode facilitates Punch-Counterpunch’s murky allegiances by forgoing any faction symbols.

There’s a peg port on the top of the car, so you can plug in his yellow gun, or you can attach the included Prime Armor. Using the Prime Armor isn’t my first choice, but I do like that they sculpted boosters on it. Moving on, let’s check out Punch!

Oh, man! Punch’s robot mode takes the squat and boxy G1 design and polishes it up to a fine shine. The proportions are great and the car kibble is neatly confined to being folded up into his lower legs or tucked off the back of his shoulders. He doesn’t have any actual feet per-say, but he stands fine and I don’t even mind the gaps that are in his legs below his knees. The sculpted detail on his chest looks great and really invokes the designs on the original toy. As for the coloring, the blue and yellow makes for a beautiful combo, and overall this update matches the deco of the original toy quite well, right down to the red hands and the silver and red paint hits on his upper legs. Gone is the original toy’s rub sign and instead, Punch proudly wears the Autobot insignia in the center of his chest.

From behind he looks pretty clean too, although here he’s displaying almost all blue, which is a little hint about his alter-ego. The two halves of the car front on his shoulders are more pronounced from this angle, but I don’t think they look bad at all. And because the backs of his legs are the fronts of Counterpunch’s legs, they look finished as well. All in all, this is a great looking robot, which is all the more impressive when you consider that he’s something of a Triple-Changer.

The head sculpt is also a very nice homage to that of the original figure’s noggin, albeit it’s a lot more stylized here. He still has the black top to his “helmet,” but the antenna are a lot more pronounced. His silver mouth plate looks great and he has a set of narrow aqua-colored eyes. The top portion of the “helmet” is hinged so that it reveals the eyes on this side of the head while obscuring the ones on the other. As a result, it does have a habit of flopping down sometimes, but it’s not a big deal.

Punch comes with a yellow pistol, which we already saw mounted on top of his car mode. It’s all yellow and matches his chest. I like the design of this thing and it has some nice sculpted detail going for it. I seem to recall the original toy having a double-barreled gun, so some of the purists out there may scoff at this design. So let’s transform Punch into Counterpunch and send him into Decepticon territory.

Changing Punch into Counterpunch is super easy. Punch’s back becomes Counterpunch’s front. Just re-position the shoulders so the front quarter-panels of the car are flared out, rotate out his fists so the blue ones are showing, and flip the “helmet” up on his head to reveal his eyes and cover Punch’s. Finally, you flip up the panel revealing his Decepticon insignia and he’s all ready to go. Just like Punch, Counterpunch is a fantastic update to the original G1 figure and there’s nothing going on here that would really suggest he’s hiding a completely different robot mode. The shoulders can get in the way of the arm articulation a bit, but they look great, especially with those red mag wheels facing front and center. I also love how they faked out his windshield on his chest while the real one is folded up into his legs.

While Punch’s deco featured a combination of blue and orange, Counterpunch is mostly blue, with just a bit of orange poking out. He’s also got some really nice purple paint on the panels of his lower legs. From behind, Counterpunch is just as clean as his counterpart. I also like to add the Prime Armor piece to his back because it’s sculpted to look like a jetpack, while also hiding a lot of the orange of Punch’s torso. It’s nice to finally have a use for one of these Prime Armor pieces, since the gimmick doesn’t do a lot for me.

Counterpunch’s head sculpt is pretty damn distinctive with a silver chin showing through his chunky armored blue face and a pair of red eyes peeping out from under his black “helmet.”

I think it would have been cool to get an extra gun for Counterpunch to use, but alas he has to make due with Punch’s yellow blaster. It seems like a bad idea, as it’s a pretty distinctive looking gun and I would think at some point one of the Decepticons would be in a battle and say, “Heeeeey, isn’t that Autobot using Counterpunch’s gun? And where the hell is Counterpunch anyway?” 

In addition to the Prime Armor piece, you also get a Prime Master named Prima. I like the silver and translucent blue deco on this little bot, but to be honest, if I’m not getting a Pretender Shell, than I really haven’t got a lot of use for these Prime Masters, other than maybe populating one of my Titan Class cities.

Despite not having a whole lot of attachment to the character, Punch-Counterpunch turned out to be a really amazing figure. The robot modes are engineered beautifully and with an equally great alt mode, it doesn’t feel like anything was sacrificed for this rather unique gimmick. Indeed, I’d dare say that I rank this figure among my top five or so recent Deluxes and that’s saying a lot! This release was an exclusive to Amazon and at $25, he was a bit more than your average Deluxe Class Transformer these days, but not so much so that it felt like I overpaid. Sure, the QC issue is inexcusable, but I’d be more critical of the shoulder problem if it weren’t so easy to fix. Currently, Punch-Counterpunch is sold out on Amazon, but they do have an option to notify interested buyers when he becomes available again.

Sep 17 2018

Marvel Legends (Thanos Wave): Taskmaster by Hasbro

After two weeks of Marvel Monday Double-Features, I’m taking it easy today and going back to looking at just one figure. I’m also back to spinning the Wheel of Legends™, which isn’t actually a wheel, it’s just me rolling up my sleeve and plunging my hand into a box of figures and randomly drawing one out. This time I hit on Taskmaster from the Thanos Wave, which also happens to be my first figure from this assortment!

I was lucky enough to come across Taskmaster on the pegs while getting groceries at the local Target. I haven’t been so lucky with some of the other figures in this wave, particularly Iron Spider and Captain America, which have been eluding my toy hunts, and selling for scalper prices at most of the online retailers I visit. This is probably one of those waves that I should have just bought online in one shot, but I didn’t realize that until it was too late.

And here’s Taskmaster out of the box and brimming with all his Classic-styled goodness. Yup, it was only a couple of years ago that we got the previous release of Taskmaster, but that was a more modern appearance and as much as I loved that figure, this is the one I was truly waiting for. Who needs all that tactical armor when you’re this good at what you do? The dark blue body suit features painted orange sleeves, an orange and white area around the neck, and good old fashioned buccaneer boots and gauntlets both in white. Newly sculpted bits include a holster on his right thigh held on by straps, which feature sculpted stitching and gold-painted buckles. He has a single strap around his left thigh, and a waist belt with several pouches and a gold belt-buckle with his emblem on it. From the back, Taskmaster is just a wall of cape, and that’s a good thing, because Taskmaster without a cape never felt right.

Taskmaster’s hooded portrait is absolutely fantastic. The hood is borrowed directly from the previous release and here we get a better look at the sculpted gold cord that holds his cape around his neck. It’s also secured with a peg in his back. And, oh man, that head sculpt! The skull has a great finish that looks like decaying bone with a broad rictus grin and deep set eyes. The hood is not attached to the cape, which means it doesn’t curtail the neck articulation.

And speaking of articulation, here is everything I’ve come to expect in my Legends figures. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, double hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the biceps. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have double hinges in the knees, and swivels at the thighs and tops of the boots. The ankles are both hinged and have lateral rockers. Taskmaster has a swivel in the waist, an ab-crunch hinge below the chest, and the neck is both hinged and ball jointed. All the joints feel great, and Taskmaster even has some strong ratchets going on in those shoulders of his.

Taskmaster comes with both a sword and shield. The sword is a repack of the one included with Baron Zemo way back in the Mandroid Wave. The hilt has been repainted to be a little less yellow and more of a pale gold. My only complaint here is that there isn’t a loop or something for him to wear it. The shield is the same mold used for the previous Taskmaster’s shield, complete with a hinged clip and a peg. It works really well, but I worry that the clip will stress and break over time. He can still wear the shield on his back, but seeing as how I’d have to remove the cape to make that work, it’s not something I’m likely to do a lot.

Taskmaster also comes with a pistol, which happens to be the same mold they used for Paladin’s guns from the Sasquatch Wave. Unfortunately, I somehow managed to lose Taskmaster’s gun after opening the package. I’m sure it’ll turn up, but for the purposes of this review I borrowed one from Paladin. After all, he has two guns and just the one holster so it seemed only fair to have him share. Anyway, the mold is the same, but Taskmaster’s gun is colored to match his sword’s hilt, so it’s more of a pale gold than the one you see here in the pictures.

I didn’t think I could be this happy about getting another release of Taskmaster so soon, and yet here I am absolutely thrilled to have this figure on my shelf. I’ll go out on a limb and say that this is probably the version that most collectors were looking for and I think Hasbro’s intentionally strategic in the way they release these. With no Classic version out, more people were probably going to say, “Well, I’ll get this version in case they never do another.” But with this line, it’s becoming more and more apparent that no character is off the table. Not that I mind, the modern version is certainly no slouch, but this one is a terrific figure and it just scratches a certain itch.

Sep 14 2018

Transformers “Power of the Primes” Cutthroat by Hasbro

It seems like all I’ve been doing this week is working and sleeping, but the weekend is here and I’m going to ease into it by taking some time to enjoy myself and open up a brand new Transformer! It’s been a while again since my last Transformers reviews, but I had some other things I wanted to get caught up on. That’s all done and now I’m ready to continue my look at the Power of the Primes Terrorcons. I should be able to stick with Transformers on Fridays at least for the next few weeks. A while back I reviewed Rippernsapper and today I’m opening up Cutthroat!

I don’t have much new to say about the packaging, except that I really dig the character art on the card. Cutthroat is shown in his beast mode and looking mighty fine. I’ll also toss out there how surprised and pleased I am that Hasbro can still get away with using the name Cutthroat on a children’s toy. Yeah, it has other, less violent, meanings, but it’s still a word that conjures up a pretty grisly imagine in my mind. I’d like to think this Terrorcon got his name not because he drives a hard bargain, but rather because he literally slices people’s throats with the sharpened edges of his metal wings. When I looked at Rippersnapper, I started with his robot mode, so let’s keep that trend going for the rest of the Terrorcons…

When I first glanced at pictures of Cutthroat I wrote him off as a quick-and-dirty recycling of Swoop. Getting him in hand tells a whole different story. There are certainly similarities, but so much of this guy has been completely reworked that the resemblances are fleeting. The arms and upper legs are the same, the torso has a similar shape, the combiner port is still buried in the back, and both bots wear their beast heads on their chest and their wings on behind their shoulders. But what impresses me is how much re-sculpting Hasbro did here. The wings are completely redone, as is the detail work on the torso. The lower legs are completely new as well. His profile may be similar, but Cutthroat is bulkier and decidedly less sleek.

He’s a damn clean looking robot from behind too, and you have a few different options on how you can position his wings. The deco on this figure is pretty out there, but it’s certainly faithful to the original toy. You get some dark green in the torso and lower legs, some purple in the wings, hands, and around the neck and chest, and yellow in the arms, upper legs, bird legs, and “helmet.” These are not colors that I would think to put together, but I can’t say as I hate it. Little extras like the silver and blue paint hits on the legs and silver up near the shoulders make for a nice touch.

I like the head design a lot, but it doesn’t scream Cutthroat to me. With that having been said, the yellow “helmet” looks great and the silver face and red eyes are both sharp and snappy. He’s got a bit of a grim expression, maybe a little pissed off, but he’s not quite selling me on being a vicious Terrorcon.

Cutthroat comes with two accessories, but only one of them really matters to me and that’s his gun. It’s a compact double-barreled rifle, which is a pretty good update to his original G1 weapon and he can hold it in either hand.

The other piece is his Prime Armor, which attaches to each side of the bird head on his chest and has a compartment to put a Prime Master figure in there if you like your robots with ridiculously beefy chests. I’d toss it away, but it doubles as a hand for Abominus, so I guess I’ll need it when I eventually combine these guys.

Cutthroat transforms into some kind of monster bird and once again I’m pleased by the way he sets himself apart from the Swoop mold. The beast head still folds up over the robot head and the arms still fold in at the sides, but instead of folding up onto the back, the legs just collapse to make a longer body. From the front he’s got mostly bird stuff going on, but the stubby tail in the back looks decidedly more reptilian. He has a notch on his back where you can stow his gun between his wings and it looks like it could still serve as a functional weapon for his beast mode.

The colors here are more or less the same as in his robot mode. As for articulation, you get ball joints where the legs meet the body and hinges about halfway down. The wings are hinged at the body so they can flap and hinged again about a third of the way in so they can close up or spread out. The mouth is hinged, but the neck can only look up so far, which isn’t always the best for flying poses, but it works fine for when he’s just standing around.

I mentioned in my Rippersnapper review that these will be the first versions of the Terrorcons that I’ve ever owned and so far I’m enjoying the hell out of them. Cutthroat is a great looking figure and he’s loads of fun to play around with. I love when Hasbro takes the old basic-sized G1 toys and beefs them up to Deluxes. It really fleshes out all new possibilities for these characters. Next week, I’ll tear open another of the Deluxes, because I’m anxious to get through these guys and combine them to form Abominus!

Sep 10 2018

Marvel Legends (Sasquatch Wave): Paladin by Hasbro

Welcome to another Marvel Monday, and if you haven’t been a regular, you should know that I’m very VERY far behind opening and reviewing my Marvel Legends figures. Last week I finally wrapped up the Sandman Wave and today I’m going to knock off another wave by opening up Paladin this morning and then coming back tonight to have a look at the Sasquatch Build-A-Figure. And then I’ll only be something like five waves behind! Holy shit… I better get started!

I guess Paladin is a generic enough moniker that the Hasbro lawyers had to slap “Marvel’s” in front of it on the box. But hey, at least his name is there. Back in the day this fella would have been sharing a slot with someone else in a box that would say something like “Mercenaries of Mayhem.” Either way, when it comes to Marvel characters, Paladin is not what I would consider an A-lister or even a B-lister for that matter. He does, however, manage to turn up a lot in the Marvel Universe. And while I’ve mostly encountered him through reading Daredevil as well as Heroes for Hire back during the Civil War, he’s crossed paths with a whole bunch of Marvel heroes and villains over the years, and he’s almost as old as me! And while collecting Marvel Legends has become all about universe building for me, I’ll still concede that he was the one figure in this wave that I was least excited for.

But that’s not to say I dislike this figure, because he’s actually pretty cool. Not everyone from the funnybooks needs a flashy costume for me to like them, but it sure helps when the character isn’t high on my list. And yet Paladin here manages to bust out from his generic design, thanks to some sharp sculpted details on Hasbro’s part. He is, after all, just a dude in a purple suit with some tactical gear and it would have been very easy for Hasbro to whip this figure up with a painted buck and make him the budget figure of the wave.

But they didn’t! The armored vest, which is sculpted as the torso, is a stand out piece of work including some really nice texturing, panel lines, and individually painted silver clips securing it on his person. Not that it’s new, it’s simply recycled from Blade, but it looked great then and it still does now. I also dig the segmented strip that runs down his spine. The legs (also grabbed from Blade) feature knee guards and some exposed ribbing behind the knees, and the armor is rounded out with some new black segmented boots and bracers on his forearms. Paladin also features a molded tactical holster secured to his left thigh with a pair of straps and silver painted buckles. I dig the look here a lot and the purple and black deco with the little hits of silver is certainly pleasing on the eye.

The portrait is pretty solid as well, even if the design is rather generic. Paladin wears a purple hood with a black segmented stripe running from front to back, and a pair of gold lens goggles. The lower half of the exposed face has some nice and sharp facial details and an appropriately grim expression. There’s some gold over-spray on the goggle frames, but nothing too terrible.

The articulation is fun and functional. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have double hinges in the knees, swivels in the thighs and the tops of the boots, and the ankles have hinges and lateral rockers. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, double hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the biceps. The torso swivels at the waist, has an ab crunch hinge, and the neck is both hinged and ball jointed. There’s some weird play in my figure’s hips. If you hold him by the legs, you can shake his upper half a bit, but oddly it doesn’t effect his hip joints at all.

Paladin comes with a pair of gold pistols that look like they might be from the same mold used for Nick Fury’s sidearm back in the Giant Man Wave. This time they’re cast in gold plastic. I like this gun a lot, it reminds me of a Luger and it sports some great detail. And while two guns are nice,  Paladin only has the one holster, so I guess he’s always going to have one at the ready.

Finally, Paladin comes with a tanto-style combat knife that tucks into a sheath on his right boot. The grip is painted black and the gold and guard are both gold.

Universe building! That’s what Legends is all about for me. So I’m perfectly fine getting a character that doesn’t mean all that much to me, so long as the figure is decent. And that’s certainly the case here. Paladin looks great and makes some sensible re-use from the Blade figure, while still managing to feel somewhat fresh. And that’s a wrap for the individually packaged figures in this wave. Come on back tonight and I’ll have a look at the Sasquatch Build-A-Figure!

Sep 10 2018

Marvel Legends (Sasquatch Wave): Sasquatch Build-A-Figure by Hasbro

I’m back this afternoon with the second half of my Marvel Monday Double-Feature! As always, I’ve been a good little collector and bought each of the individually packaged figures from the Sasquatch Wave, and now it’s time for my reward… The Build-A-Figure Sasquatch!

Sasquatch is about as simple as these BAFs can get. There are six pieces spread out over seven figures (90’s Deadpool didn’t come with any!), and those pieces include the arms, the legs, the torso, and the head. The pieces went together real easy and the end result a big shaggy orange hunk of Tanaraq.

Indeed, I absolutely love the way this figure turned out, but I feel a little bad because I don’t really have a lot to say about it. But that’s not the fault of the figure, as it does everything it needs to do quite splendidly. The sculpted shaggy coat on the body looks great and I love the gradations in coloring from orange to brown. The coloring looks especially nice on his chest and back. I also appreciate that they added a little extra carpeting around his upper back and shoulders. The right hand is sculpted into a fist and the left into a grasping hand, each of which offer up some nice options for posing him. The sculpting on the feet is pretty spectacular too. If I had to nitpick anything here, I’d say the darker color of the wrist hinges is a little distracting against the lighter color plastic of the hands.

The head sculpt is excellent even if the facial features are a little soft. I love the broad shape of the face and the high placement of the nose. The eyes are red with pink pupils and there’s a very little bit of shading around the face itself. The bushy eyebrows and mutton chops which frame the face are well done and I dig the way the rest of the hair blows back, allowing for a bit more range of motion in the neck articulation than he might have had otherwise.

Speaking of articulation, Sasquatch has it all where it counts. You get rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, single hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the biceps. The legs have rotating hinges in the hips and ankles, double hinges in the knees, swivels in the thighs, and lateral rockers in the ankles. There’s a swivel in the waist, an ab-crunch hinge, and the neck is ball jointed and hinged. The chunky joints on this guy feel great and he’s loads of fun to play around with.

I think my biggest complaint here is that Sasquatch is going to look really lonely on my shelf and I wish he had been the BAF in an Alpha Flight inspired wave. Yeah, that would probably never happen and I’m certainly glad to have this figure, but it also brings back those bitter feelings over the ridiculously exclusive Puck BAF Wave. Hasbro gave us Northstar and Aurora in the 4-inch Marvel Legends line, so they are certainly a good bet to appear in the 6-inch Legends lineup eventually. We did get a Guardian as part of the old Hasbro Marvel Legends line back in 2008 or so, and while I’d be tempted to go back and pick it up, that figure has not aged well, so I think I’ll hold off. Besides, it looks like we’re getting a new Guardian figure pretty soon. I guess for now I’ll just have to keep Sasquatch on that miscellaneous BAF shelf that I have down near the bottom of the case.

As for this Wave, I think it was an excellent assortment of figures and I was thrilled to be getting most of them. 90’s Deadpool and X-23 were musts for my shelf, Cable and Deathlok turned out fantastic, I’ve wanted a do-over for Domino for a while now, and even Paladin, my least anticipated figure in the bunch, turned out to be pretty good. And while I wasn’t terribly keen on getting another X-Force Deadpool, he’s such a vast improvement over the last retail release, I’ll count him as a very nice surprise. Next week I’m going back to spinning The Wheel of Legends. Which wave will it wind up on? Lizard? Thanos? Sauron? Apocalypse? Cull Obsidian? OMG… I’M SO FAR BEHIND!!!

“Here we go… Deadpool-Sasquatch Team Up and… Holy crap, that’s a lot of AIM Soldiers over there. Not really our thing, but there aren’t any Avengers in this wave so it’s just you and me, Shaggy.”

“Hasbro didn’t give me any guns, so you’re just going to have to pick me up and throw me like a spear.”

“That’s it… don’t worry, they never see this coming.” 

“Woah, big guy. Watch the fingers. I ain’t buying you dinner.”

“YEEEEEAH!!!! HERE I COME, BITCHES!!!!” 

Sep 3 2018

Marvel Legends (Sandman Wave): Sandman Build-A-Figure by Hasbro

Welcome back, Toyhounds, to a Marvel Monday double-feature. Earlier today I checked out the last boxed figure from the Sandman Wave, and now I’m finally ready to slap this guy together. So let’s get right to it…

Flint Marko is made up of a total of nine pieces scattered throughout this wave, that includes the torso, legs, and arms plus two heads and two swap out sand implements for his hands, allowing for a bit more customization than I’m used to seeing even on the Build-A-Figures. From the waist down he shares all the same parts as the Absorbing Man BAF from a few years back, and the torso is the same too, which isn’t too surprising as Hasbro did the same thing for their 4-inch Marvel Universe versions of Creel and Marko. Even the belt is lifted from the previous figure, but that’s fine because it all works. The brown trousers are coupled with his trademark striped green shirt, the belt has some nice texturing to it and has a silver belt-buckle and the shoes have a glossy black finish.

The arms begin transitioning to sand just below the biceps into a pair of enlarged forearms with some truly incredible sand texturing. The right hand is sculpted into a giant sand fist, while the left hand is grasping, making them perfect for poses with Marko battling it out with Spidey.

You get two portraits with the figure, the first is just a regular head and it continues Hasbro’s tradition of injecting plenty of personality into their villain head sculpts. Marko’s sneer is magnificent and there’s so much rage packed into this portrait. The various lines that make up his expression are very well defined and they even did a great job texturing his hair. If I had one complaint here, it’s that the paint could have been sharper on his teeth and along his hairline, but I really had to get in close with the camera to even notice either.

The alternative damaged portrait is even more amazing. He’s screaming with rage as the left side of his face took a hit and is revealing its true sandy nature. The way the sculpt transitions from skin to textured sand is beautifully done and I honestly think that this is the head I’m going to go with most of the time for display. The teeth are painted a little better on this one, but you can still see a lot of the flesh colored plastic bleeding through. I’m tempted to nitpick that the tongue isn’t painted, but I assume that’s because his head is supposed to be reverting to the color of sand, so I’m OK with it. Either way, this noggin is a masterpiece!

The articulation here is standard stuff for a regular Legends release. The legs have rotating hinges in the hips, double hinges in the knees, swivels up near the hips, and hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders and elbows, swivels in the biceps, and hinged pegs for the wrists. There’s a swivel at the waist, an ab-crunch hinge in the torso, and the neck is both hinged and ball jointed.

In addition to the extra head, you also get a couple of swap out hands in the shape of sand-weapons. One is a giant hammer and the other is a spiked ball. They can each be used on either arm. I was a little concerned that the elbow and shoulder joints wouldn’t be able to hold the weight of the big hands and sand-weapons, but that doesn’t seem to be a problem at all.

For a figure with so many recycled parts, Sandman still manages to impress where it counts, and while Creel came out first, I’d definitely give the nod to Marko here as the more fun of the two figures. And with Green Goblin, Shocker, and Jackal all in this wave, Hasbro sure has managed to cover a lot of ground when it comes to Spider-Man’s Rogue Gallery.

And that’s another wave in the bag. Hasbro continues to blow me away with the work they’re putting into the Legends line. The figures in this wave are solid across the board and represent an excellent assortment of additions to my already massive 6-inch Marvel collection. How long can they keep this up? Well, there doesn’t seem to be any end in sight. On the downside, the distribution here continues to be a problem, and while Spidey-UK, Jackal, and Kamala where all easy to find, I never saw Green Goblin or Spidey 2099 at retail. I cringed at having to pay a little extra for these figures at the time, but when I look at what they’re going for now, I can see that I didn’t get beaten up too badly. Next week, I’m going to put the random reviews on hold again, as I just have one more boxed figure in the Sasquatch Wave to look at, so we’ll wrap up that assortment with Paladin and the Sasquatch Build-A-Figure!

Sep 3 2018

Marvel Legends (Sandman Wave): Spider-UK by Hasbro

Today is the first day in a while that I get to open the final figure in a wave of Marvel Legends and cobble together a Build-A-Figure. Indeed, I don’t think I’ve done it since I started randomizing my Legends reviews several months back. And yet here we go! I’m finally going to have a look at the final boxed figure, Spider-UK, and then later tonight I’ll be back with the Sandman BAF… let’s get rolling.

It’s no secret that Spider-Verse was like a license to print money for Hasbro. A book that introduced dozens of new versions of Spider-Man, all waiting for their turn to populate the action figure aisles at $20 a hit. And I’m not complaining, because as hokey as it was, I still really enjoyed Spider-Verse. It was one of the last Marvel books I read before I threw up my hands and surrendered at the crap their publishing now, and I’m getting a real kick out of all the figures that it spawned. Earth-833’s version of Billy Braddock comes in your standard Legends packaging, although neither his name or that of his alter-ego appears on the front of the box. Instead, you just get “Multiverse Spider-Men” He does, however, share his tray with a rather large Sandman appendage.

And here he is out of the box and looking pretty sharp. I’ll get to a few nitpicks about this figure in a bit, but none of them have anything to do with his overall appearance. The suit is primarily blue with the red spider-webbed area on the front of the torso and shoulders, and wide white borders invoking a bit of a Union Jack flavor. The blue is really snappy and the black webbing is pretty sharp and clean. I really dig the red spider-emblem on the back too. All in all, I’d say this is a pretty cool variation on the traditional Spider-Man costume using most of the original colors. One of the common complaints I see about Hasbro’s Spider-Man figures is the unpainted elbow or knee pegs not matching the color of the outfit on both sides, but since Spidey-UK’s arms and legs are all blue, you don’t have that problem here.

The head is a lot more traditional with the red and black webbing pattern covering the entire mask. The eyes are almond shaped with thick black borders and I like that they’re sculpted, rather than just painted on. My figure has a bit of mold flashing around the jawline, but that’s easily shaved off.

Articulation is good, but I’m so used to my Webheads having shoulder crunches that when they don’t it really sticks out and sadly that’s the case here. The arms do have the usual rotating hinges in the shoulders and wrists, double hinges in the elbows, and swivels in the biceps. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs and lower legs, double hinges in the knees, and both hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. There’s a swivel in the waist, an ab-crunch in the torso, and the neck is both hinged and ball jointed. The joints themselves are all solid, no mushy plastic here, and he’s genuinely fun to play around with.

I have to admit the lack of extras hurts this figure a bit. I’m used to getting extra hands with my Webheads, but here you’re just stuck with the fists. I prefer to have at least one thwippy hand with my Spider-Figures, and it doesn’t seem like it would have been a big deal to paint an extra set of hands to match. Besides the extra hands, it would have been really cool to get his travel Talisman, if not as an accessory then at least sculpted onto his arm. That seems like a bigger oversight to me.

Ultimately, Spider-UK is a fine figure, and I’m happy to be able to add him to my Spider-Verse shelf, but if I’m being honest, he feels very basic. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by some of the extras I’ve been seeing lately, but at least one set of extra hands feels essential for my Spider-Man figures. With that having been said, I like this costume a lot and I think Hasbro did a nice job with it. It’s a solid release in what was an extremely solid wave of figures. And if you’ll be so kind as to web-swing back around here later tonight, I’ll have a look at the Sandman Build-A-Figure!