Tag Archives: marvel

May 1 2013

Marvel: The Invisible Woman Bishoujo Statue by Kotobukiya

Ok, we’re on the final leg of this Marvel Trifecta. After today, I promise no more Marvel until next Monday. Hey, speaking of Marvel… people who know me know that I am driven by my undying love for The Fantastic Four. If you put a gun to my head and told me to pick only one comic that I could read for the rest of my life, I would instantly say FF. Well, that’s not entirely true. I would beg and plead a lot to not make me choose between my many children, but I’m pretty sure Fantastic Four would win the day. It’s the one comic that I’ve followed most consistently throughout my life and in the end, it’s the one that I can always get the most enjoyment out of, no matter who’s at the helm. That having been said, today’s Bishoujo statue has been on my want list for a very, very long time. Coincidently Koto’s treatment of the lovely Sue Storm has also been sitting at my local comic shop for a very long time. And so, I decided the time was right, and I went down there to pick her up about a week ago AND THE FILTHY BASTARDS HAD SOLD HER!!! So I tossed her in my Pile of Loot at Big Bad Toy Store before shipping it out.

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If you’ve seen one boxed Bishoujo statue, you know what to expect from most of them. Sue comes in a white window box that lets you get a little peak at the goods, but because she’s wrapped in plastic and trapped between two plastic trays, you don’t get that good a look. The panels feature the wonderful character art by designer Shunya Yamashita and the back of the box has a little blurb about the character and statue along with a photo of the actual piece. Sue Storm is a great character. She’s strong, smart, beautiful, a wife and mother, and she does it all without sacrificing her independence. Oh yeah, the box also trolls me by reminding me about the Jean Gray statue, which I don’t own and which is slowly making its way into the three digit price range on the collector market. Bastards!

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Starting out with the portrait, Sue’s face is extremely angular and the sculpt is quite soft, even for a Bishoujo. She’s got her head cocked a bit, she’s looking off to the side, and she’s twirling her windblown hair with one hand. It’s ok, but I think Sue deserved better. I’m tempted to tell myself it’s an older statue and Koto has come a long way, but there are plenty of older Bishoujo’s that can hold their own with the current crop. I guess what I’m saying is Sue’s face is a little disappointing. It’s not a deal breaker, but it could have been better. Maybe it’s me… maybe I just hold the character up to higher standards.

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The body on the other hand is fantastic. Her pose is pure cheesecake with one hand on her hip and leg bent in front of the other. It looks like she just pwned the enemy and is striking a pose while Reed takes a shot for their scrapbook. Just the silhouette on this piece alone is dead sexy. Her costume is pretty simple, as it’s just the traditional long sleeved version of the Fantastic Four outfit, complete with the “4” painted on her chest, but it’s the coloring on the costume that blows me away. Koto used a gorgeous, deep iridescent blue that I can’t possibly duplicate with my shite camera and non-existent photography skills. Suffice it to say, you really need to see this piece in person to appreciate the coloring. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before.

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Of course, one of my favorite things about this piece is the way Koto utilized the clear plastic to depict Sue phasing into invisibility. The effect is most apparent on her feet and hands, but there’s also a tiny bit on the tips of her hair. It’s an amazingly successful effect, particularly the way the clear parts blend with the opaque.

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Every time I look at this statue, it reminds me of Botticelli’s famous “Birth of Venus” and I think it’s partly the pose, but mostly the base. Of course Botticelli’s Venus was painted emerging from a clamshell and Sue is standing on the dying, broken hand of the Mole Man’s giant monster, from the cover of Fantastic Four #1, with the shell of her forcefield dissipating at her feet. It’s almost too close not to be intentional, but either way it gives me a chuckle. The giant sculpted hand for the base is very cool and nicely detailed. I’m not entirely sold on the forcefield shell, the plastic is a little too heavy and opaque to drive home the effect one hundred percent. It was a nice try though.

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If it’s fair to judge the popularity of retired Bishoujo statues on their aftermarket value, than The Invisible Woman is probably one of the least popular. She was released back in 2011, where a number of her peers have increased in value, while she still lingers at around $45-50. It could be that The Fantastic Four isn’t as popular these days, but I’m also tempted to think it’s because this statue is rather tame by Bishoujo standards. Let’s face it, for a lot of collectors, the appeal of this line is in the titillating skin and cleavage, and Sue is fully clad from head to toe. But I think this piece shows that you don’t have to dress like a slut to be sexy. Sue pulls it off. And maybe that’s why she remains my favorite MILF of the comic world.

Apr 30 2013

Avengers: Captain America Quarter-Scale Figure by NECA

Yeah, I know, yesterday was Marvel Monday, but I’ve decided to keep the week going with a trifecta of Marvel stuff, because that’s just how I roll. The availability of space has always been at odds with my collecting habit. So, what do I go and do? I buy a goddamn quarter-scale Captain America figure, that’s what! It’s the first purchase that I’ve made in a while that had me starting to wonder if I have a serious problem. The saner voices in my head told me that buying this thing was against all reason, because I have nowhere to put him and he’s probably destined to hang out in his box by my Mezco Thundercats Mega-Scale figures. On the other hand, everything about this guy is EPIC, and I have a lack of willpower, and that combination is the unholy formula that brings us to today’s feature.

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Cap here is my first quarter-scale figure. Yes, I knew how tall he was when I ordered him, but it wasn’t until I got him in hand that I really comprehended it. The box is massive and it doesn’t waste a lot of space. I’ve included my 3 3/4” Hasbro Cap for comparison. I love the deco on the box; it’s colorful and really captures everything that Cap is all about. Given how huge the box is, I expected mine to be pretty messed up in shipping, but it’s pretty heavy duty and apart from a ding on the top and some scratching on the large window, it’s not bad at all.

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The back has a list of people who worked on the figure, not unlike you might find on a Hot Toys box, which is pretty cool because if something’s messed up you know who to blame. The box is totally collector friendly as Cap is just tied to the tray, which slides right out. A fair word of warning, the plastic fumes from a regular NECA figure are bad enough, now magnify that by about six times. When I pulled the tray out and the fumes hit me, I was afraid I was going to pass out and wake up 50 years later. Because… like Cap got frozen… and he slept a long time… the fumes… they were… ok, moving on.

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Out of the box and Cap is one remarkably solid hunk of plastic. There’s a lot of heft here. I could seriously wield this thing like a weapon and do a lot of damage with it. Just to further put his size in perspective, your average Sixth-Scale figure comes up to his belt! It’s amazing to me that the durability on this piece matches its size. If he weren’t so expensive I’d be tempted to grab him by the leg and drag him around the neighborhood and have adventures with him. But I wouldn’t want to wreck him by doing that. And also, I’m 40.

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Ok, so he’s big and he’s heavy… how’s he look? Fantastic! Let’s start with the portrait. NECA did a great job with the likeness to Chris Evans and the way the mask is sculpted there’s a lot of convincing depth to it, even though the whole head is molded in one piece of plastic. The flesh paint on the face looks solid and while there’s a little slop under his chin, the rest of the paintwork on the head is just about flawless. The wings and the “A” are all part of the sculpt and they’re meticulously painted in a high gloss silver.

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The rest of the costume is faithfully recreated with all the little loving details. Every tiny square millimeter of the costume is textured, giving it a seriously realistic look. In fact, I’ll go one better. The Cap costume in the movie looked a little too puffy, like soft padding to me. The texturing on this figure makes it look more rugged and credible, like there’s a body-armor quality to it and it would have a chance of surviving an engagement with an enemy. But besides the texturing all the little seams and stitches are present, and oddly enough, I think I’m most impressed by the sculpted teeth on the zippers. The gloves look great and even the treads on the soles of his boots are sculpted as if they’re a prominently visible part of the figure. I have zero complaints about the sculpt on this guy… it’s every bit as epic as the size of the figure.

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The paint is vibrant and gorgeous. The combination of deep blue, bright white, and the crimson captures everything that is Captain America. The extra little touches of silver on the star and epaulets and zippers and fasteners all really make the figure pop. However, the paint is not perfect. There’s a tiny bit of bleed around the red and white vertical striping on his torso. There’s also a little rubbing on the white vertical panel on his left side, thankfully behind the shield. There’s a few tiny marks of red spray on his belt. All these imperfections are minor to say the least, and pretty understandable when you consider the amount of surface space being painted here. I’m also reminding myself that this guy clocks in at under $100, and honestly, I’ve seen similar little paint issues on far more expensive pieces, so I’m not complaining.

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Cap comes with his shield (well, duh!) and two interchangeable hands. The figure is boxed with his fists on, while the extra hands include a right hand designed to hold the shield as if he’s about to throw it, and a left hand that’s just splayed out. The hands are attached with pegs and just pop in and out. The first time I did it a bunch of red paint flakes appeared and I freaked out, but they were just from the inner post. Phew!

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The shield itself is an impressive piece. The paint on the front surface is metallic, and while it’s not as vibrant as the Hot Toys shields, it is very attractive. I was worried whether NECA was going to be able to pull off an acceptable metallic paint job across a surface as large as this shield, but they certainly did. If you look really closely, you can see some scratches on the inner red circle above the star, but you really need to get in close to see those imperfections.

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The back of the shield is fully sculpted and features two permanently attached soft plastic belts. To get Cap to hold the shield, you just need to pop off the hand and slide the loops through the arm. Some may take issue that the hand isn’t actually holding the inner strap, but I think it looks fine the way it is, and the shield stays in place quite well.

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Cap has a ton of good articulation, but he is by no means what I would call “super” articulated. Make no mistake, this is an action figure and not a statue. You can get him into a lot of great poses, but some of his joints don’t have the same range of motion as you would find on a smaller figure with similar joints. Here’s what you get… There are ball joints in the neck, shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees, and ankles. The legs feature hip joints not unlike Mattel’s DCUC style, which allows for a wide stance. You also get swivel cuts in the thighs. The torso features a swivel in the waist and a ball joint in the torso. About the only joint here that isn’t terribly useful is the torso ball joint. It offers very slight movement, which is why I’m particularly glad that the waist swivel is there. Swivels in the biceps would have went a long way, but the ball joints in the elbows help a bit in their absence. Overall, what’s here is really good and serves to make Cap as fun to play around with as he is impressive to look at.

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And there you have it… am I at all sorry I bought this figure? Nope. Do I have any idea where I’m going to put it? Nope. In the end, my guts told me he was too spectacular to pass up, and now that I have him, I can say it was a great decision because I absolutely adore this figure. NECA supposedly limited this guy to a production run of 7500, but he’s still readily available at a number of e-tailers and his price hasn’t even begun creeping up yet. Quite the contrary, the MSRP was $99, but I got him from BBTS for $85. You get a lot of figure for that price, and while I was a little late at getting my Pre-Order in for the Quarter-Scale Iron Man, I’m hoping I can still get it fulfilled. If I do get Iron Man, I’ll likely pull a shelf out of one of my bookcases so the pair can be displayed as they deserve to be.

Apr 8 2013

Iron Man 2: Whiplash (Ivan Vanko) by Hasbro

No Marvel Universe today, but it is still Marvel Monday and with my anticipation growing for Iron Man 3, I thought we’d mix it up a bit. Hasbro is crapping out on the toys for Tony’s third box office outing, and so I’m forced to look elsewhere to express my excitement for the film in plastic form. Today we’re turning the clock back to 2010. It was a time when Hasbro was supporting the Marvel Movieverse by producing some excellent 3 ¾” Iron Man figures. In fact, the only problem with the Iron Man 2 line was that the pegs were clogged with dubious variations of Stark’s armor, making it hard to find some of the figures I really wanted. Case in point: I never saw Whiplash on the pegs. That is until a few days ago when he was hiding at Target behind some Avengers figures. Let’s check him out…

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Holy hell, it’s the Iron Man 2 packaging! The last time we saw this on FigureFan Zero was over a year ago, but hey if Walmart can fill their pegs with Rise of Cobra figures, why can’t Target sneak a little Iron Man 2 behind their Avengers? I usually buy my figures when I’m going grocery shopping so it isn’t as apparent, but on this day the young lady running the register was faced with a 40 year old dude buying nothing but a single Iron Man figure. She looked at the figure and said, “Wow he’s an ugly guy!” I simply replied, “That is Mickey Rourke, my dear!” then I took my purchase and walked off whistling a jaunty tune. I’d like to think it was a transaction she would long remember. Anyway, seeing these cards again is a real blast from the past. I love the presentation here and Hasbro really packed these bubbles with goodness.

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This version of Whiplash is from the scene in the film where Ivan tried to get all up in Tony’s shit at the race. He’s wearing his own version of the arc reactor rig and wielding two energy whips. The rig is one seriously complex design and I was dubious as to whether it could be pulled off effectively in a 3 ¾” scale figure. I’ve got to say, Hasbro did a pretty good job with it. The metal framework is sculpted right onto the figure and carefully painted silver. Hasbro even did their best to replicate all of Ivan’s crazy tats. Most of these are just drizzles of black paint, but it’s a nice attempt all the same.

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The lower half of the figure features Ivan’s rumpled jumpsuit with the top half of it draped down around his waist and behind his legs. There is some wonderful sculpted detail at work here as well, with all the wrinkles and tearing. Unfortunately, Hasbro went off the reservation on the coloring. They used brown for the jumpsuit when it should have been orange.

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As for the portrait, well, he’s got long hair and a mustache so you can kind of see who it’s supposed to be. Truthfully, the face gives off some kind of creepy baby vibe for me. I think it’s the large forehead. There are some paint apps for scars and wrinkles in his forehead. It’s certainly not one of Hasbro’s better likenesses, but getting all the “character” of Mickey Rourke’s face into this scale would have been all but impossible. I’m going to give Hasbro a pass on this one.

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Whiplash has just about all the articulation you could want in this scale. There are ball joints in the neck, shoulders, hips, and ankles. The arms feature swivels in the biceps, hinged elbows, and swivels at the wrists. The legs feature swivels at the thighs, and double-hinged knees. He also has a ball joint in the torso. The only issue with articulation on my figure is the top hinges in the knees don’t want to work and with the hinges being soft plastic, I don’t want to try to force them. At least I can still bend his knees using the bottom hinges.

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Naturally, Whiplash comes with his whips. These are cast in sculpted bendy plastic and can be posed in a variety of ways. They are rather heavy and don’t fit rather loosely in Whiplash’s hands. If you have an extra pair of those tiny clear rubber bands kicking around, this would be a good opportunity to make some use of them.

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One thing I miss about the Iron Man 2 figures were these awesome stands and illustrated card overlays. I think these were a great idea and really do a lot to add to the presentation of the figure. Here, Hasbro wasn’t just giving us a stand, but a cool little display backdrop as well. I can’t recall anyone else doing anything like this in this scale and it only serves to remind me how much we’ve lost in only two years. Blame the cost of plastic or profit-mongering, but we just don’t expect to see this kind of thing these days.

I dig Whiplash a lot and I’m really glad I stumbled upon him hanging on the pegs, especially since I doubt I ever would have gone out of my way to hunt him down online. He couldn’t have been an easy figure to tackle, but Hasbro brought their “A-game” and rose to the occasion. Best of all, I can finally close the lid on my Iron Man 2 collection, as this guy was the only figure I was missing, apart from some of the more wild and undesirable versions of Tony’s armor.

Mar 16 2013

Avengers: Black Widow Movie Masterpiece 1:6 Scale Figure by Hot Toys

Way back when, the Iron Man 2 version of Black Widow very nearly became my first Hot Toys purchase, but she sold out before I could get the funds together and she was going for ridiculous prices on the second hand market. And so that honor eventually fell to Captain America. But some things happen for a reason, and one look at Widow’s second version from Hot Toys and I found myself actually glad I missed out on the first, because I can’t say as that figure has aged well. Needless to say I pre-ordered The Avengers version as soon as Sideshow put her up. It was a long wait until December and then, as is often the case with Hot Toys releases, she was delayed and delayed again until finally arriving fashionably late here in the middle of March.

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The packaging is nowhere near as flashy as my previous Hot Toys purchases, but it certainly gets the job done with just enough style to boot. The figure comes in a window box with a cardboard sleeve over it. The sleeve has a newsprint-style photo of Widow on the front with the Avengers logo in foil print. Apart from the fine print on the back, the only other printing on the sleeve are the two hourglass emblems on the sides.

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The interior window box is silver with the same hourglass emblems on the sides, the Avengers logo on the front and “Black Widow” in big print on the top and bottom. The back panel has the usual Hot Toys credits listing the people who worked on the figure. The window shows off the figure, but until you open her up and clear all the plastic and wrap away, you won’t really get a great look at her. Inside the window box, the figure rests in her tray, flanked on both sides by her accessories and extra hands. Her stand is positioned at the bottom of her tray, between her legs. Sometimes less is more, and in this case I think there’s a certain minimalist grace to Widow’s package. Nonetheless, long time Hot Toys collectors may feel let down by the lack of flashy presentation here. But enough about the packaging, it’s time to get her out and see what we’ve got…

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Let’s deal with the elephant in the room… rooted hair! ROOTED HAIR!!! Widow’s rooted hair was the only thing that made me think twice about ordering her. I am not a fan, because it’s often hard to manage and quite frankly the idea of sitting at my desk and brushing and styling the hair on an action figure comes dangerously close to making me reconsider my hobby. It’s one of those things that when successful, it looks amazing, when unsuccessful it looks terrible. It’s a big risk to take on a $200 figure. But even more so, I have a real problem with inconsistencies, meaning if I have one Hot Toy figure with sculpted hair, I think they all should have sculpted hair. That’s my borderline OCD talking. Either way, I was a little bit terrified to open her up and see what I was going to be up against.

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Fresh out of the box, it certainly looks rather frazzled, but I don’t think it’s as bad as it could have been. There are inevitably going to be some stray hairs, but even those are usually easy to get under control. Most of the problem comes with when you’re manipulating the figure and her hair gets mussed as you can see in some of the photos. On the other hand, if she’s going to be on the shelf and left alone for a while, spending five minutes to get it under control is worth the pay off. Besides, I always thought Widow’s hair was a little too perfect during the intense battle scenes of the movie, so a few flyaways here and there don’t bother me all that much. I’m not going to say Widow converted me to an advocate of rooted hair, but in this case Hot Toys knew what they were doing and in retrospect, I probably wouldn’t change it. 

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As for the portrait itself, this is a solid representation of Scar-Jo, but not a perfect one. It’s not one of those instances where I marvel at whether or not I’m looking at a figure or the actual person. The nose and mouth and overall face structure are great, but I think maybe the eyes needed to be a little bigger? I’m not sure. I do know the paintwork is so good that it’s downright eerie. I thought the head sculpt on the Iron Man 2 version was passable, and I think this is an improvement over that release. In the end, it’s still an amazing sculpt and I’m perfectly happy with it. The body is a huge improvement over the train wreck that was the Iron Man 2 release. Some may argue that the proportions still aren’t quite right, but I think she’s pretty spot on.

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I wasn’t expecting to have a lot to say about Widow’s outfit. I mean there’s only so much you can do with a leather body suit, right? Well, in hand I really am impressed. The material has just the right weight and pliability. It fits the figure extremely well and yet it hardly inhibits her articulation. Although, granted there’s only so far I’m willing to go with her hip joints, because I don’t want to pull the stitching. The blue piping looks great and there are even more subtle “panel lines” running throughout, plus the SHIELD patches on the shoulders are superb. The stitching is all neat and clean and sculpted rubber boots blend wonderfully with the legs of the suit.

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Widow features a regular belt with her hourglass belt buckle and a second weapons rig which rests on her hips and secures her two thigh holsters around her legs. The straps are all tight and look amazing and I absolutely love the minimalist approach to the holsters. They basically just hold the muzzle of the weapons and yet they are totally secure. The weapons rig also has four sculpted pouches with non-removable throwing discs, two front and two back.

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Widow comes with a lot of hands! These are all easily swapped out, and you also get an extra set of posts in case you snap the ones that come on the figure. She comes packaged with a set of fists attached, you also get a set of pistol hands, you get a right hand designed to rest on her hip, and you get a right hand that is designed to hold her throwing discs. I don’t often do a lot of hand swapping with my figures, so the gun hands will spend the most time on my figure. You also get a set of “tazer effect” fists to allow her to show off her “Widow’s Sting.” These come in a separate tray and accompanied by a second set of bracers. These parts have some blue paint to show off the electrified effect of the sting. It looks Ok on the fists, but it’s barely noticeable on the bracers. 

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Accessories… Assemble! On paper, it looks like Widow comes with a lot of goodies, but in reality once you get through all the hands (so many hands!) there’s not a lot here that I’m interested in. I’ll start with what I considered essential and that’s her guns. She comes with a pair of Glock 26’s. These compact little beauties were great choices for her in the film and Hot Toys really nailed their 1:6 versions. Not only do they look great, but they actually have spring loaded action and removable clips with painted rounds showing at the top. These pistols fit perfectly in her holsters and in her set of gun hands.

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Next up is the Chitari rifle. The Chitari were the only thing I didn’t like all that much about The Avengers, so I certainly didn’t consider this piece essential. On the other hand, it is a pretty cool looking alien rifle and I am very glad they included it with the figure. It’s nicely sculpted and beautifully painted, but it doesn’t have any moving or removable parts. Will I ever display it with the figure? Probably not.

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Lastly, you get a pair of her teeny-tiny throwing discs. I don’t scoff at extra accessories, but it’s hard to justify the point of these little things. She can barely hold them and I can’t imagine many people choosing to display her with them.

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Black Widow set me back $189 and there are no regrets here. She’s a fantastic looking figure and well worth the wait. I know some people have been grousing about the cost. She is, without a doubt, what would be considered among the basic assortment of Hot Toys figures and yet she was $20 more than the last Marvel Hot Toys I bought (First Avenger Cap was $169), but if you take into account the rising costs of everything, I don’t think the increase is all that bad. I mean if Deluxe Transformers can jump a third more in price in a year, the extra Andy Jack it cost me to get Black Widow doesn’t seem so bad.

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I’m not setting out to pick up a full set of Avengers, but rather just cherry picking my favorites. Indeed, the next Hot Toys purchase I make will be doubling back to pick up Red Skull. On the other hand, if Thor hangs around long enough at any e-tailers, I might be tempted enough to pick him up at some point.

Dec 12 2012

Marvel: Bishoujo X-23 Statue by Kotobukiya

Today’s item was one of those rare instances where I heard that Koto was doing the statue before I actually saw the prototype. My first thoughts were that they overreached with this one. There are plenty of Marvel ladies that are well suited to this line, but Laura Kinney’s history features some hardcore shit and her character is built on a foundation of pain, suffering, and tragedy. Could Koto and Shunya Yamashita successfully pull this one off and give X-23 the cutesy bishoujo makeover? Let’s find out…

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If you own any of these Koto statues, then you know what to expect from the packaging. X-23 comes in a white window box adorned only with some examples of the original character art and some shots of the statue on the back. The box is shorter than many of these usual packages to conform to the statue’s crouching posture. You can get a pretty good look at the goods through the window, but as always, parts of the statue are wrapped in protective plastic and nestled between two clear plastic trays, so you can’t really get the full experience until you remove her from the box.

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Before getting to the statue, here’s a word of warning: X-23’s claws are pegged into sockets and they can fall out, probably so that if they are stressed they will detach rather than break. Two of my statue’s claws fell off while taking her out of the package. I didn’t realize it and thought I was dealing with a QC issue of missing claws. Fortunately, a little search of the carpet turned them up before FigureFeline could snatch them and carry them off to his bottomless lair of plunder behind the sofa. Apart from the removable claws, the only other thing you need to do is plug the statue into the base. Doing so required me to stretch out her legs a bit so that each of her feet wound up in the appropriate place on the stand. It was a little more effort than is usually required with these statues, but all worked out fine in the end.

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As mentioned, X-23 is posed down on one knee. She’s the same scale as any of the other recent statues in this line and she has a satisfying heft to her, but her posture makes the statue a lot shorter than most.  I think it’s a great pose for the character as it manages to convey a little poise and action at the same time. She has all four of her knuckle claws extended. Her left claws are touching the ground, while her right hand is cocked at the elbow and ready to strike. Her right foot has its claw extending from her boot. She looks like she might be recovering from a strike and getting ready to pounce back into action again.

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Moving on to the details… let’s start with the head. X-23 is an interesting statue because rather than going for overall cheesecake, most of the cutesy element is confined from her neck up. I think the sculptor did as good a job as possible melding the spirit of the Bishoujo line with X-23’s character, which in itself was no easy task. That having been said, something was definitely lost between the original artwork and the final sculpted effort.  For starters, the artwork featured eyes with more personality and character, whereas the final product’s eyes have more of a generic anime look. The artwork also featured an interesting little smirk on her lips and the final went with more of a cutesy little smile. Ultimately, I see more of X-23’s attitude in Shunya Yamashita’s art than I do in the statue; nonetheless what’s here is still plenty good. X-23’s hair is sculpted in a nice, dynamic wind-blown fashion and features that cool translucent effect at the edges.

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From the neck down, it’s hard to argue with anything this statue offers. X-23 is wearing skin-tight black pants, high, chunky boots, and a black sports bra-looking affair. The black finish on her clothes varies from matte on her boots and kneepads to high gloss for her top, pants, and sleeves, and all of it contrasts beautifully with her light skin tone. She has excellent sculpted detail in her abs, and I love the way her shoulders hunch up suggestively. Other great little touches include the silver skull emblems and individual buckles, along with the intricate treads on her boots, the medallion hanging from her choker, and her gilt chain belt.

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X-23’s base isn’t one of the more intricate designs we’ve seen in the line. It’s a simple grey circle designed to look and feel like concrete. It’s a wonderfully rough and realistic texture that balances out the soft leather and skin of the figure itself.

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While it may sound like I had issues with this statue, I still think X-23 is another solid effort by Koto and I’m very satisfied to have her in my collection. Keep in mind, I’m not a hardcore fan of the character, but rather a casual fan by way of my love of all things X-Men. My guess is that this statue will be better received by Bishoujo collectors rather than diehard fans of the character, finding themselves considering a place for it in their X-23 collection. But then I could be completely off base on that. She’s been available for a little while now, and set me back about $50 shipped. It wouldn’t feel like a Bishoujo feature without me mentioning how I think these are some of the best valued statues on the market… and hey, I just did!

Aug 11 2012

Vintage Vault: X-Men X-Force Cable (2nd Version) by Toy Biz

It’s been a long week and I am more than a little bit hungover, so I’m afraid today is going to be a quickie… Vintage Vault hasn’t been back to Toy Biz’s early 90’s Marvel figures in quite a while, so I thought we’d remedy that today and start throwing some more of these into the mix in the weeks ahead. Today we’ll check out the second version of Cable where he dons his deep space armor.

There’s the packaged shot of Cable… I mean Grizzly… no, I mean Cable. Yeah, what we’ve got here is an error card with Cable in Grizzly’s packaging. This guy came to me as part of a lot, in which I got double screwed because it was supposed to be the first version of Cable, not the second version on the wrong cardback. Ah, well. I was going to keep this figure carded as a curiosity and eventually said, screw it, I need that wall space to hang other carded figures, so I decided to tear him open and feature him. Error or not, I’m still in love with the early Toy Biz Marvel packaging. I think these are some of the best comic inspired figure cardbacks. They’re colorful, the character art is great, and they kind of look like comic covers.

Out of the package, and we can see that this indeed isn’t the more iconic version of Cable, but it is still pretty damn cool. He’s in his bulky deep space armor, complete with a removable clear dome helmet over his head. You just need to pinch it a bit to undo the clips and take it off. The armor has a lot of sculpted detail, particularly for this fairly simple line. You know he’s from the 90’s because even in space armor, he’s still covered in enough belts and pouches to make Rob Liefeld blush. The head sculpt is classic Cable with a grim, angry visage. All in all, well done.

As always, Toybiz did a great job with the colors on this figure. Cable is bright orange and blue with a great glossy finish that makes him work so well as a comic book character in toy form. Unfortunately, they could have done a better job with the actual execution of the paintwork. Most of it is good, but there are a few spots, particularly on his legs that look like they might have been painted by blind cats.

Cable features six points of articulation. His arms rotate at the shoulders, his legs rotate at the hips, and his knees are hinged. The head doesn’t turn, otherwise it’s about the same level of articulation I expect from these 90’s Toy Biz figures. There’s not a lot of dynamic posing possibilities here, but just enough so that you can still have a little fun with him.

Cable comes with a big gun, but what else would you expect? It’s a big silver rifle and it has some kind of rapid-fire gimmick that completely eludes me. Either mine is broken or it just never worked right. It’s a nice piece of killing hardware, but since he has no elbow articulation, he can just hold it awkwardly with one hand, striaght out.

I’m always a bit unsure of how the current collector community feels about these 90’s Marvel Toy Biz figures. Sure, there’s been a lot of water under the bridge since these were hanging on the pegs, and you can’t deny that they’re thoroughly dated, but I still can’t help but love them, and they’re cheap as all hell, which makes them fun and painless to collect. If I had to do over, I might not have opened as many, because I love the packaging so much and they do look great hanging on the wall. At the same time, these figures have such a colorful, toyish charm that really meshes well with their comic book roots. It just makes me want to pick them up and play with them.

[Phew… and that’ll be a wrap for the week. Star Trek Saturday may or may not be back next week. We’ll see how things go. In the meantime, I’ve got a lot of stuff backing up in the toy hopper, so I’ll see y’all Monday with something new. –FF]

Oct 13 2010

Vintage Vault: X-Men Rogue by Toybiz

I’m a BIG X-Men fan. So much so that I was even able to sit through multiple viewings of all those shitty movies. But my real love has always been in the 90’s cartoon series, the comics and the old Toybiz action figures. I’m in the process of rebuilding my old collection of X-Men figures, so in the coming weeks, I’ll be liberally peppering this blog with looks at some of these figures. I thought we’d start with Rogue. Not the best figure to start with, but once we get this major disappointment out of the way, it’s all uphill from there… almost.

I loooove the cards on these figures. The artwork is great, they’re bright and colorful, just like a comic book figure package should be, and they’re not ashamed to advertise the figure’s gimmick, no matter how useless or annoying it may be. They’re also pretty simple, with a nice big bubble displaying the figure. The reverse side shows the gimmick at work, features a blurb about the character, and lots of photos of all the other X-Men figures you NEED to own. The figure also comes with a collectible character card, which is cool, but it always seemed stupid that you didn’t get a card based on the figure you just bought. Instead it was a random crap shoot. What sense does that make?

Moving on to the figure… oh, Toybiz, how do you flub this major a character? The saddest thing about Rogue is that 90 percent of this figure is really fine. The body sculpt is great, the outfit is classic and well recreated complete with jacket and separate removable accessory belt. Her stance is wide, but she isn’t terribly preposed, which is great because preposed figures is one of my big pet peeves. The colors are pretty much spot on, too.

So what’s the problem? Rogue is a butter face, as in everything is fine butter face. Look, I understand that this is a line for kids, not for collectors, but still, how could anyone at Toybiz signed off on this head sculpt? The hair is fine, but look at the expression on her face. She looks like Tammy Faye Baker scared out of her mind. She looks like one of those Real Ghostbusters figures where you press a button and the eyes pop out in sheer terror. I don’t know what kind of look they were going for here, but it sucks.

Rogue’s articulation is pretty basic. Her right arm rotates at the shoulders and her legs rotate at the hips and have hinged knees. Her right arm is hinged, but that’s all you get here. Her hair and jacket collar sculpt prevent any neck movement as her head and body are sculpted in one piece. Her left arm does rotate at the shoulder, but if you move it around a lot, you risk messing up the action feature.

The action feature is a Power Upper Punch. You press the lever on her back and her left arm springs up. Yeah. Not exactly the first thing I think of when I think of Rogue, but then considering her primary power was sucking the life force out of people and absorbing Mutant powers, it’s kind of hard to replicate her specialties in an action gimmick.

Despite the awful expression on her face, it’s hard to hate this figure. There’s a lot to like here. She’s fun and colorful and she fits in really great with the other X-Men figures. The crazy thing is that Toybiz used almost the exact same sculp to create a Deluxe large scale version of Rogue, but we’ll check that one out another time.

Mar 21 2010

X-Men Ninja Force: Deathbird Figure by Toybiz

If there’s one thing you simply cannot overestimate, its the popularity of ninjas in the 90’s. Yeah, they were popular in the 80’s too, but that doesn’t help my segue into today’s post. So, yeah, pop culture in the 90’s was obsessed with ninjas and nowhere is that fact better displayed then on the pegs of the toy aisles. It was such an awesome force of nature that even companies who produced traditionally non-ninja figure lines had to get into the act. This phenomenon can best be summed up in two words: Ninja Force!

Both Hasbro and Toy Biz banked on the Ninja Force concept. For GI Joe, just having Snake Eyes and Storm Shadow and Jinx and all the other ninjas just wasn’t ninja enough to appease the ninja-hungry 90’s toy buyer. No, they had to create GI Joe: Ninja Force. Toy Biz had an even farther reach by introducing the concept of X-Men: Ninja Force. The story involved Wolverine and Psylocke heading off to Japan to fight aliens and ninjas, and possibly alien ninjas, but then the story isn’t as important as the fact that we were seeing something as unlikely as X-Men ninja figures.

I used to have a few of these figures back in the day, but I was never all that enamored with them and where they wound up is anyone’s guess. However, I was recently re-introduced to them when I picked up a lot of miscellaneous figures off of Ebay and Ninja Force Deathbird happened to be one of the extras in the lot. I’m really glad she was in there, because you can easily toss out the whole ridiculous ninja angle, and you have a pretty good figure of everyone’s favorite Shi’ar mutant, Deathbird.

The packaging is certainly colorful. All the cards are the same on the front with a seriously pissed off animated-style Wolverine on the top and the figure displayed in a huge bubble. Behind the bubble is the X-symbol made up from two crossed katana swords. Wow. Just, wow. The back panel shows off some simple instructions on how to equip the figure with her exo-armor and shows off the other figures in the line along with some of the Spider-Man animated figures too.

The sculpt here is pretty simple, but I like it a lot, and its improved by the accessories included to turn regular Deathbird into exo-armor wearing Ninja Deathbird. Actually, there’s really nothing ninjafied at all about this figure as her armor is pretty reminiscent of some of her comic book appearances. The base figure just features a painted purple body suit and arm-length gloves. Her face sculpt is excellent and her mask is permanently attached, but her purple feathered cowl is removable to show off a little mutant birdlady cleavage and her wings come off too.

Or at least, her wings are supposed to come off. Despite my figure coming mint on card, I don’t think she was stored in very good conditions because as soon as I got her out of the package the peg that holds her wings on snapped off from being brittle. I glued them back on so they look great, but unfortunately that inhibits one of the figure’s cool play features. Her arms can peg into the wings to make them move with her arms, or you can detach them to give her arms independent articulation. Either way, this figure looks really awesome with wings spread and spear in hand.

Her exo-armor pieces are purple vaccuum plated, which give the figure a pretty striking look when attached. Mine have aged well, but it doesn’t take much to make these things start to flake. The armor set consists of front and back pieces for the torso and two arm pieces that are attached to the front chest piece by flexible cables. She also has two leg pieces. The cables could be a tad more flexible as they do either inhibit some of her armo movement or just pull the arm plates off if you try to move them too much.

Deathbird’s articulation is pretty good. She has ball joints in her shoulders, rotating joints in her hips and hinged knees. Her head also rotates from side to side. If your figure isn’t broken like mine, the wings rotate up and down. While the leg armor does cover up her knee joints, it doesn’t inhibit her articulation at all, which is pretty cool.

Overall, this figure was a nice bonus and looks really great on display. The only problem is I don’t really have any other X-Men or even Marvel figures in this scale to display her with, so right now she’s just a stand alone piece, but I’m still glad to have her. In fact, just looking at her has motivated me to go dig out my Star Trek X-Men comic and give it another read… maybe Second Contact too!