The package is a nice big window box with all the busy-ness of a Las Vegas billboard. Just check out some of my looks at Playmates’ Star Trek figures of the 90’s and you’ll see how much they love to scream at you with the package. In this case, the running theme seems to be GIANT, GIANT, GIANT!! I like the comic book style illustrations on the box, but the colors seem a little dull. Maybe my box is faded, I don’t know. The back panel of the box shows all three of the GIANT figures and includes a bio on Grifter. The Grifter figure is secured to the inner tray with twisties and his two blasters are mounted to the left and a collector card is mounted to the right. This is pretty collector friendly packaging. If you’re patient, you can get the figure out and get him back in for display with no worries. Also like the aforementioned Star Trek figures, Playmates did the whole Collector’s Number on the package thing to make you think you were buying some kind of rare and limited piece. Mine is numbered 7,428, which is actually the lowest number I ever had on a Playmates figure… by about 100,000.

While Playmates calls this a 10″ figure on the package, keep in mind he’s pre-posed so as not to be standing erect. He is defintely in the 1:6 scale, which would put him more in line with what we all consider the 12″ standard. And keep in mind, while this figure has a passable amount of articulation on paper, in reality, there’s only so much you can do with it, which sets him right in the middle of the whole statue vs. action figure debate. In theory he’s an action figure, in practice, I think he’s more a statue with some articulation. But we’ll discuss the articulation in a minute.

Essentially, this sculpt is the exact same one used on the smaller figure, just blown up to GIANT size. It’s still an excellent sculpt, but Playmates uses a much softer plastic on this guy than on the normal sized figure. Softer plastic means softer sculpt, plus you’re dealing with a sculpt designed for a much smaller figure. Add the two together and you are definitely losing something in the process. That’s not to say this is a bad looking figure, because it certainly isn’t, but unless you’re just looking for a nice big display piece, you will likely be more happy with the detail on the smaller figure. Apart from that the essentials are recreated nicely here. I like the determined, I’m going to kick your ass, expression in his eyes and the billowing of his trenchcoat works well if you have him just standing or in a running or lunging pose.

The colors are close to the smaller figure, but muted. While everything on the smaller Grifter was high gloss, GIANT Grifter is mostly flat matte paint with just a little gloss showing through on his shirt and mask. The flat paint used here is more realistic, but I tend to prefer the bright shiny gloss on my comic book figures. The red used on his mask and gauntlets looks a little deeper and definitely less vibrant. Playmates also changed the color of his belts from gold to green, probably to reduce costs.

GIANT Grifter has nine points of articulation. His head turns, his arms rotate at the shoulders and have swivel cuts in the forearms. His legs rotate at the hips and have swivel cuts at his boots. You can definitely get him into a few different stances, but there’s still only so much you can do with this articulation and his slightly pre-posed nature.

Grifter comes with his two trademark Kherubim blasters. These are decent sculpts and he can hold them very well in either hand. He also comes with a huge figure stand, which is the exact same stand that came with his smaller version, only GIANT.

So, if you haven’t sensed the theme here, it’s bigger but not necessarily better. I like this figure a lot, and I love having a huge Grifter to display on my shelf, but I wouldn’t trade my smaller one for this one if I had to make the choice. Nevertheless, he’s a cool item, but as soon as I had him in hand, I knew I didn’t need to hunt down the other two GIANT figures. Grifter’s my favorite, so I’m content to have him in this size, but I just don’t need Spartan or Maul. If you are interested in picking any of these up, they are just a little tougher to find than the regular sized figures, but they are definitely out there and you still won’t pay a lot for them. I seem to recall getting Grifter here for less than $20, shipping included.

Pike is a nice looking figure, although he’s basically just a dude in a mask, wearing an outfit made of a questionable color combination: Pea soup green and red. Hey, somehow he pulls it off. I think the main appeal of this guy for me is the fact that he wasn’t just cannon fodder on the show like the rest of the Troika, and this figure is a nice, faithful representation of that character. Ok, so in one episode I think he was thrwarted because he couldn’t find gas for his truck, but he was still leaps and bounds smarter than dudes like Slag.

Pike’s articulation is standard five points: Head, shoulders, hips. He’s also got a swivel cut in the waist and in both forearms. He’s a bit pre-posed making him tough to stand without his figure stand.

I’m a bit iffy on Pike’s accessories. The only thing I know he came with was a pair of batons that can be joined together to form a pole arm. Alas, I’m missing half of it. He also came with a figure stand, but I’m unclear as to whether it was the one marked Troika, or just a standard Daemonite stand. These are the tribulations you endure when you buy a big bag of figures and accessories, and the reference resources on these figures are few and far between.

I mentioned a couple of posts back that Playmates repainted a number of the WildCATS and tried to pass them off as wearing different outfits. They did the same thing with Pike here, painting him a nice gunmetal blue and calling it an EMP suit. I doubt I would have bought this figure on its own, but since it came in the lot, I guess he’s nice to have. Still, he looks more like he’s meant to be a statue than wearing a different suit of clothes.

And that brings us to Major Max Cash from Black Razor. The Black Razor was something of a third party power in the cartoon. It was a paramilitary organization designed to fight terrorists, and quickly found itself at odds against the WildCATS who were framed as bad guys. Of course, it didn’t help that the organization was infested with people possessed by Daemonites. Max Cash, who was also Grifter’s brother, wasn’t really a bad guy, but since he was against the heroes for a while, I listed him with the advesaries. He was also really downplayed in the cartoon, which is why I saved him for last.

Max’s action figure has the distinction of being the only figure that looks absolutely nothing like his cartoon counterpart. Sure, Playmates upscaled Slag and the Daemonite to look a little different, but the connection was still there. Max, on the other hand, is wearing some kind of battle armor that was never seen in the toon. They went completely off the reservation with this one. In the cartoon he just wore a blue and white uniform, here he looks like he’s wearing something he got out of Robocop’s garage sale. All in all, though, I like it and the silver and black make for a pleasing ensemble.

Max comes with two weapons: A rifle and a pistol. He also comes with a unique Black Razor figure stand.

And that wraps up Playmates’ WildCATS figure lines. It’s too bad that a few more bad guys weren’t made. I would have really liked to have seen Harm, the transformer robot get the toy treatment. It would have been cool to see him as a vehicle, but I would have been happy with a non-transforming figure too. I still have the deluxe ten-inch figures, and I’ll probably dig Grifter out sometime later in the week so we can have a looksy at him.

I know this line doesn’t get a lot of love. In truth, it’s nothing spectacular, but it is a solid effort by Playmates. And let’s face it, apart from the Ninja Turtles and sometimes Star Trek, Playmates’ doesn’t have a lot of wins under their belt. As a fan of the cartoon, though, I found these figures to capture a lot of what made the toon such a fun ride. They’re colorful styles and over-the-top sculpts make them lots of fun despite the prehistoric articulation.

 

Slag was one of Helspont’s henchmen and he’s some kind of magma rock creature. The toon version of Slag looked pretty crappy, as he had very little detail and was mostly just a big hulking orange guy who for some reason hissed like Cobra Commander when he talked. Thankfully, Playmates upped the ante with the figure’s sculpt and produced quite a nice looking creature. They gave him a rocky body with intricately webbed veins of magma running all over the place. Liquid Magma!!! There’s nowhere on this figure that isn’t brimming with detail and the paint apps really compliment the sculpt beautifully. Even if you don’t collect this line, but find yourself in need of a big hulking rock creature figure, Slag here would make a fine candidate.

Slag has eight points of articulation, which puts him pretty high up in the WildCATS line. His head can turn from side to side, his arms and legs rotate at the shoulders and hips, and he has swivel cuts in his wrists and his waist. He’s not terribly pre-posed either, so you can make good use of his articulation while playing around with him.

Slag comes with three accessories. You get a big club that looks like it’s made out of the same stuff he is. He also comes with a similar styled rock. I have no idea what it is. I guess he’s just supposed to throw it at you. And, of course, Slag comes with a Daemonite style figure stand. Speaking of Daemonites…

The Daemonites were the common foot soldiers in the cartoon. They didn’t get a lot of screen time in their natural form because they couldn’t survive long in the Earth’s atmosphere. As a result, they had to be carried around in egg-like stasis chambers and possess humans in order to move around freely. What the hell! The only time we usually got to see them was when they were trying to possess someone, getting evicted from someone, or when we saw them through VooDoo’s special sight. It was one of the few things that I didn’t like about the cartoon.

Like Slag, the Daemonite’s looked somewhat different in the cartoon. The general shape was the same, including the extra set of eyes and the extra set of arms, but the cartoon Daemonites were green, which made them look more like lizards to me. As with Slag, Playmates went above and beyond to produce a really cool looking creature here. I absolutely love this figure. The four beady eyes, the massive toothy rictus grin and the disgusting blue veins running all over it’s body. This is a cool looking beasty. There’s a bit of disconnect between the color used on the body and the limbs, but I don’t think it detracts from the figure all that much.

The Daemonite has seven points of articulation. All four of his arms rotate, his legs rotate at the hips and he can swivel at the waist. Unfortunately, this figure can be really tough to stand, probably because of his chicken legs and his hunched pose. I should also note that I own two of these figures and while one is perfect, the other came out of the package with a really messed up bent leg, which prevents him from standing all that well without the figure stand.

The Daemonite comes with a blaster, a stasis pod, and the same figure stand as Slag. The blaster is a cool design, but unfortunately it’s just cast in one drab tan color. It could have definitely benefited from some paint apps. The stasis pod doesn’t do anything, but it is pretty nicely sculpted.

I dig that Playmates went the extra mile on these guys, especially since there weren’t as many bad guy figures as there were heroes. Had they designed them closer to their cartoon counterparts they would have probably looked pretty crappy. Although, there’s so much detail in these guys they do look a bit out of place next to the simpler animated/comic book style sculpts of the WildCATS themselves. I sometimes use Slag in my Star Trek displays and the Daemonite is so damn cool that he often warrants a spot on one of my display shelves even when the rest of the WildCATS figures are put away.

I’m going to finish it up next time with the two verions of Helspont’s stooge, Pike, and Major Max Cash, member of The Black Razor outfit and estranged brother to Grifter.

 

I call Spartan the leader of the team, but I suppose that’s debatable since Jacob Marlowe funded them and pulled all the strings. But he spent most of his time chilling in his crib with his sexy computer-woman, Void, while Spartan led the team in the field, so to speak. It’s also worth noting that Spartan’s real body got wrecked so he had to have his brain downloaded into his current cybernetic one, although most of the time you couldn’t tell that he wasn’t flesh and blood.

Ok, so let’s get the obvious out of the way. My Spartan figure suffers from the crotch rot. All the white paint has peeled off his gonadular region. Ha Ha. Get all your cuties off, so we can move on. The problem here is that Playmates painted the dark blue figure over with white so not only does it peel, but it looks real hokey on the legs as well, like someone did a bad custom job with a bottle of Whiteout. Apart from the poor lasting power of the paint, I really like this figure. He’s extremely faithful to his animated counterpart, the head sculpt is excellent, and he’s one of the least pre-posed of all the figures in the line.

Spartan has seven points of articulation, including a rotating head, arms and legs that rotate at the shoulders and hips, and his wrists will swivel at the point where they pull off.

Spartan came with two swappable hands. His right one showed damage and revealed his metal skeletal framework. The left one has dayglow energy shooting out of it. I didn’t seem to get the left one with my loose figure, so he’s perpetually attacking with the lightning. He also came with a figure stand, and possibly other stuff like a Halo Industries walkie-talkie. Maybe a weapon? I don’t know. I’ve never seen him use one in the toon.

Next up is Maul. He’s sort of The Incredible Hulk of the line, right down to his green and purple color scheme. The main difference is that Maul is pretty soft spoken and not usually inclined to the high collateral damage. Like many of his teammates, Maul is a crossbreed and he’s sort of a surrogate big brother figure to VooDoo. His main power, apart from being big and strong, is his ability to make himself even bigger. I won’t fault Playmates for not translating that play feature to his figure form.

On the contrary, Maul’s figure is a slam dunk. The sculpt is excellent, the paint apps are nice and clean, and once again we have a figure that is the spitting image of his animated self. I suppose the only thing I can say about him is he could have been slightly bigger, but he still looks fine standing next to his other teammates.

Maul comes with detachable armor for his fists, a silver crowbar, the token Halo Industries walkie-talkie, and a figure stand.

Oddly enough, Playmates gave Maul here the best articulation out of the whole line. True, his head cannot turn because of the way he’s designed, but in addition to the standard arms and legs rotating at the shoulders and hips, Maul has hinged knees, a swivel cut in the waist, and swivel cuts in both thighs. I can’t imagine why this was the one figure that got all this treatment, but it does make me a little bitter that Playmates couldn’t bestow the same articulation on the rest of the line.

And so that’s it for the good guys of my Playmates WildCATS collection. All in all the heroes were well represented, with the exception of Jacob Marlowe. I’m guessing Playmates didn’t think that kids were jonesing for the middle aged wealthy midget, but I would have been happy to get him. Here’s a guy who gets rid of enemy guards by dropping a suitcase with a million bucks cash in it and tells them to take it and get lost. Gotta love it. Playmates also produced repainted variants of Warblade, Zealot, and Spartan, but I opted out of hunting those figures down. Playmates also produced some larger scale versions of some of these heroes, but I’ll save that until I’ve been through all the main line. The WildCATS also had a vehicle, the Bullet Bike, but I’ve yet to add that one to my collection.

Next time… The Troika!

 

Warblade is the part-human noob of the bunch, as he was recruited to the team in the first episode of the toon. It was kind of similar to what the X-Men series did with Jubilee, but Warblade assimilated pretty quickly and before the end of the episode he was rattling off his teammates’ names and kicking arse like he’d already been around the block more than a couple of times. Being green wasn’t an element of his character that extended onward and VooDoo more or less remained the sympathetic and grounded teammate who kids could better relate to.

Warblade has never been one of my favorite characters, mainly because his character design is just batshit crazy in only the way the 90’s knew how to do it. Maybe it’s the neon green ponytail or the red eyes or his ape like posture, but he’s a far cry from his human computer genius counterpart. I seriously love most of the character designs in this series, but Warblade is the one exception to that rule. Nonetheless, his suit is a pleasing blue and silver and Playmates did a great job sculpting the cables that crisscross his chest and then feed out to his arms from the back.

Warblade’s signature power is in his arms, which he can elongate, and he can morph his hands into claws or metal blades. These powers carried over pretty well to the figure, which uses pop off hands as accessories. There’s a set of claws, a large blade, and a normal hand. The rubbery cables plug into a socket in whichever arms you care to attach. In addition to the extra arm attachments, Warblade comes with a Halo Industries walkie-talkie and a figure stand.

There are seven points of articulation on Warblade. His head turns, his arms and legs rotate at the shoulders and hips, and you can swivel his forearms where they detach. It’s standard articulation for ten years ago, but pretty stale now, plus Warblade’s hunched pre-posed sculpt doesn’t help a whole lot either. You can get some decent poses out of him, although given the lack of knee articulation, I would have preferred him a bit more upright. Ok, enough about Warblade, let’s move on to my man man, Grifter…

At the other end of the spectrum, Grifter is my favorite member of the WildCATS team and my favorite figure in this enitre line. As the human, gun-toting, smart mouth with a shady past, he’s designed to be the team’s bad-ass and this figure does the character justice. The sculpt is spot-on, from his tuft of blonde hair that crops up past his mask, to the billowing trenchcoat and even the little details on his belts. The paint apps are excellent and the black and red on his mask and gauntlets really make the figure pop. This is what a comic book/cartoon figure is supposed to look like, folks. He’s glossy and very toyish and there’s just something about him that really clicks with me.

Grifter has eight points of articulation. His head turns and his arms and legs rotate at the shoulders and hips. He also has swivel cuts in the forearms and in the waist. Once again, it’s not a lot, and while he is somewhat pre-posed, it isn’t as bad as Warblade or some of the other WildCATS figures.

Grifter comes with no less than three weapons, which include a a Kherubim blaster, a shotgun and a blaster pistol. Sadly, the pistol wasn’t included with my loose figure, but I can’t say as I miss it. Considering Grifter was always depicted in the cartoon wielding two of the Kherubim blasters, I’d rather have just had an extra one of those and one day I will likely buy a second figure just to get it. He also comes with the same figure stand and walkie-talkie as Warblade.

As I mentioned before, the WildCATS figures aren’t exactly highly sought after collectibles these days. If you’re in the market you should be able to find these guys carded on Ebay for under $15 a piece, and just as often you can usually find three or four of them in a lot for less. I can probably live without having an unopened Warblade, but sooner or later I will pick up a carded Grifter to hang on my wall.

Well, a few weeks ago I picked up a Lot of figures off of Ebay in order to get at a Darkchylde figure that was in there and the Lot happened to include a carded Voodoo. It all came flooding back to me and a few days later I managed to hunt down a pretty good and nearly complete collection of the whole series loose at a ridiculously low price. That’s no great feat, since these figures aren’t exactly hotly sought after these days. Today, I’m going to look at the three ladies of the Covert Action Team: Voodoo, Zealot and Void.

One undeniable thing about Playmates is that they know how to make obnoxiously exciting packages. The figures come on a pretty simple bubble and card, but I absolutely love the presentation, mainly because they’re so colorful and feature great character art from the comic. The card fronts were all personalized with a picture of the character. The backs of the cards vary, but they all have a short bio of the character that follows the cartoon, rather than the more mature themed comic, so you won’t see anything about Voodoo being a former erotic pole dancer. I guess Playmates didn’t think the kids were quite ready for that. Let’s start with Void…

In the cartoon, Void was the personification of the Covert Action Team’s computer. Besides having a wealth of information, she could open the void gates that teleported the team to wherever the Daemonites were wreaking havoc. She has the simplest sculpt of the bunch, but she’s still a damn cool looking figure, thanks to her entire body being vac-plated giving her a mirrored chrome effect. She has some muscle lines on her torso and her fingers are sculpted, but apart from that she’s pretty featureless, which is perfectly in line with her character design. Her face is regular flesh tone with red lips and blue eyes. The eyes are the only beef I have with this figure, as Playmates should have left them without pupils.

Void doesn’t come with any accessories apart from her stand, which does feature a nifty back piece that snaps on and allows the figure to appear as though she’s levitating as she always did in the cartoon.

Zealot is the team’s resident femme fatale warrior hottie and her figure certainly looks the part. She’s wearing a crimson one-piece with a plunging chestline and crimson boots and arm bracers. The colors on this figure are really nicely done, even if she is mostly just crimson and skin tone with some silver and black accents. Playmates did a nice job with her headsculpt. Sure it’s heavily stylized, but it still manages to look both attractive and fierce. Her white hair is done up in a ponytail, which is actually fitted with a swivel cut, so you can position it in a variety of ways.

Zealot comes with two swords and a pole axe. Unfortunately the sword blades are soft rubber and are very prone to warping if you aren’t careful. I’m not a big fan of the axe, since she doesn’t hold it all that well and her preposed arms aren’t really designed for her to wield it all that well anyway. Zealot also comes with a pegged figure stand. All in all Zealot is a figure that just oozes comic book charm.

Voodoo’s character changed quite a bit in the transition from comic to cartoon, but I’ve already mentioned that above. Her cartoon counterpart reminds me a lot of Jubilee in the X-Men cartoon. She was a noob and I recall her often being picked on by Zealot. She was basically there to give the kids someone to relate to. Voodoo sports a tight purple and yellow bodysuit with removable gold kneepads. She’s a great looking figure, but she really suffers from being pre-posed, even moreso than the other two ladies. Her hip is thrown seductively to the side and one elbow is bent to rest on said hip. Her head sculpt is my favorite of the three, especially with the cool way Playmates sculpted her long flowing black hair. She’s super cute and matches her character art quite well.

Voodoo comes with the two removable gold kneepads, a gold shield and a sword-spear thingy. Her pre-posing isn’t terribly well suited to her weapons, but she can hold her sword ok, and her shield clips on to her wrist. She also comes with a pegged figure stand.

I think the reason I liked these figures so much when they came out was because they walked the fine line between toys and collectibles. Their pre-posed nature and their figure stands made them great for display. On the other hand, I’m not sure how much fun they would have been to play with because of their limited articulation. Each figure has the bare minimum of five points: Rotating neck, rotating arms at the shoulder, rotating legs up at the hips. They’re good for a few poses, but I think rather limited in their play value.

Playmates was marketing these figures right about the same time as their Star Trek figures. Obviously, these are bigger and I think a lot more faithful to the source material, but apart from that the two lines have a lot of similarities in their execution. Its hard to put my finger on why I love them so much, but I guess it mainly comes down to the fact that they’re colorful, flashy and look great on display and are based on a cartoon that I still dig re-watching every now and then. Sure, I would have loved to see better articulation, but apart from that they are excellent comic/cartoon figures in every other way.