Tag Archives: playmates

Mar 17 2010

Star Trek: TNG Captain Montgomery Scott by Playmates

You’re going to see a lot of vintage Playmates Star Trek figures cropping up in my posts over the next couple of weeks. I started collecting these 4″ figures back when they first came out. I was in my early 20’s back then and these were technically the first figures I ever purchased as a collector and not as toys to play with. I picked up a lot of the original two waves of Next Gen figures and was just starting to pick up a few of the Deep Space Nine figures when I stopped for whatever reason. I think it was probably because I was saving money to move out of state. Now, about 18 years later, I’ve decided to work on finishing this collection.

Scotty was one of three original crew members to appear in The Next Generation TV series, both Spock and McCoy showed up in different episodes, but McCoy just had a cameo and Spock’s two-parter was ok, but a little contrived and tiresome for me. Scotty’s episode “Relics”, on the other hand is one of my favorites. The crew finds a derilect ship with Scotty stuck in the Transporter’s pattern buffer. They save him, but he soon finds out that in the future he’s a bumbling fossil (and apparently an alcoholic) until his out-dated ideas save the day. We all learn a lesson about not treating our elders like worthless retards and Picard makes a rather audacious gift of one of the Enterprise’s shuttlecraft to Scotty. Wow, is he really allowed to do that? This episode also had the balls to show the classic Enterprise bridge exactly like it was in the old series… made of gray cardboard! Simply awesome.

I really liked the packaging on these figures. The background is so colorful and follows through with an overall animated look. And holy shit did Playmates advertise a lot of crap on these cards, all screaming at you in yellow bursts of text. Your Figure is Individually Numbered! Collector Card included!! Deep Space Nine figures coming soon!!! PLAY THE GAMES ON THE SNES AND GENESIS!!!! The front of this card is like a Las Vegas billboard.

Yeah, that numbering thing was an interesting tactic Playmates used to sell these figures as both collectibles and toys, but billing these figures as collector pieces was a joke. Hey, my Scotty is only 134,264 of I don’t know how many made. And that’s probably a low number. The fact that almost 20 years later you can buy these things mint and carded for under five bucks (Scotty cost me $4.99) just pours salt in the wound. But I don’t care. I love that these figures are dirt cheap and that I can pick them up making impulse buys on Ebay.

The Playmates 4″ figures are notorious for being highly stylized and almost caricatures of their subjects. In many cases, the figures almost look like animated versions of their live action couterparts. Its a design element that really turns some people off, but for the most part, I think it works pretty well. As the series went on, the figures slowly began to shed this curious appearance until by the time you got to Deep Space Nine and Voyager, the figures were a lot more like direct likenesses.

Scotty is a pretty good balance of the Playmates signature look. Its a really good sculpt with a nice likeness of the aged James Doohan. I particularly like the gray two-tone paint apps in his hair. He can also easily double as a classic film version of Scotty since he’s wearing the same basic outfit that he wore in Star Trek V and VI. The only real difference is this version is wearing one of the Next Gen style comm badges instead of his old insignia. His vest is really nicely done and sculpted complete with his little tool pocket and zipper.

The articulation here is pretty good. His head rotates at the neck, his arms rotate at the shoulders, he’s got swivel joints in the biceps and hinged elbows. His legs are jointed at the hips and have hinged knees. Scotty doesn’t suffer from being overly pre-posed like some of these figures.

Scotty comes with a bunch of accessories, but if you are familiar with this line then you already know they are mostly shit. Sorry, that may sound harsh. The sculpts on the accessories are actually ok, but they’re always molded in some obnoxious color plastic, in this case orange. I’m not going to go through the various engineering tools he has, but most of them are repacks of the tools that came with figures like Geordie and Data. Truth is I usually dump these figures into a bag and I have no interest in digging through it to get to Scotty’s, but you can see them in the packaged image. Scotty also comes with a Dilithium Crystal, a Starfleet style figure stand and a collector card. I loved the collector cards! These reminded me of the old Star Wars cards I used to get in Wonderbread. Christ, I’m old.

I don’t know why its taken this long to add this figure to my collection. He’s awesome, cheap, easy to find, and from one of my favorite episodes. And even though I display these figures loose, its a cool luxury to be able to buy them carded and be the first to open them up.

Mar 3 2010

Star Trek First Contact: Space Suit Picard, Deanna Troi and Dr. Crusher by Playmates

A short while back I took a look at some of the Star Trek Warp Factor Series of figures by Playmates. These were the oddball scaled 5″ figures that came out on the heels of Playmates more extensive 4″ line. Today I dug out a three more figures in the 5″ scale, this time released for the film First Contact. Now, these figures go really well with the Deep Space Nine figures previously shown, mainly because they are in the same scale and all of their uniforms synch up with the same style. Well, except Picard, since he’s wearing a space suit. I guess we might as well start with him.

While I have a slew of the Warp Factor series still in package, I don’t have any unopened First Contact figures to shoot pictures of. Suffice it to say, the packaging is a standard bubble on cardback. The First Contact logo was used at the top of the card, while the back panel had a generic blurb about the film, showed off all the figures in the series, and detailed the accessories that came with the figure on the card. Each figure also came packaged with a mini-poster of the warpship Phoenix in flight.030310A
There were actually two versions of Picard in this line. One had him in his regular duty uniform and one in this space suit. I really tried to find the one with him in his uniform, but god knows what tote it wound up in, or if I even still have it, so we’re going to have to settle for this version. I really want to like this figure, and while I don’t hate it, it has way too much working against it to really make me happy.

My biggest problem with Space Suit Picard is that his suit really doesn’t look all that much like the one warn in the film. Its sorta, kinda, maybe reminiscent of it, but not nearly close enough for a figure in this larger scale. In fact, it almost looks like Playmates based this figure off of a prototype or design shot or storyboard with a vague idea of what the suit design was going to look like. And then there’s the helmet. Ugh. The painted over visor looks terrible and the fact that there’s a fugly seam running right down the middle of the helmet in the most visible place on the whole figure really makes me wonder what Playmates was thinking. There isn’t even a Starfleet insignia anywhere on this suit, so with the helmet on, you’d have no way of even knowing this was a Star Trek figure. It just looks like generic space guy. Now, the helmet is removable, and underneith is a damn fine head sculpt of Patrick Stewart. In fact, its way too good for this otherwise sub-par figure.

030310B

The articulation on this figure also sucks. You get all five points of articulation from a vintage Star Wars figure… only in 1997. The shoulders and upper legs rotate, as does the head. That’s it. Its bad enough on its own, but when you consider that the other two figures we’re going to look at in this line have an excellent 13 points, it really feels like Playmates just phoned this one in to be done with it.

Thankfully, the ladies make out a little better…

030310C

Yeah, in terms of articulation and overall accuracy in  body sculpt, these figures are much better than Picard and his space suit. Both Troi and Crusher are wearing the same uniform, and if you look closer, you can see they’re actually wearing the same body too. In fact, this is the exact same body that Playmates used for the Jadzia Dax figure. I’m aware that all three actresses had different builds, but I don’t have a big problem with Playmates reusing the same female body, particularly since the uniform looks good and the articulation is excellent. In addition to the swivel shoulders and upper legs that Picard had, the ladies also have swivel cuts in the biceps, waist and thighs and hinged joints in the elbows and knees. Technically, their heads can turn, but their sculpted hair prohibits it. The head sculpts on Troi and Crusher are passable. I think Playmates got Troi’s likeness down a little better than Crusher’s, but both are ok.

030310D

Unlike the Deep Space Nine figures, which came with only big components to the Defiant, these figures come with actual weapons and equipment. Unfortunately, in keeping with their smaller 4″ Trek figures, Playmates decided to mold their accessories in ridiculous colors. Troi comes with an equipment satchel, a phaser, a PADD, all of which are solid bright red plastic with no other paint apps. Oh yeah, she also comes with a shot glass, because after one scene from the film, Playmates seems convinced Troi is an alcoholic. Dr. Crusher comes with a hypospray, a tricorder, and two other pieces of medical equipment, all of which is bright orange. These brightly colored accessories were bad enough with the smaller scale figures, but its really unacceptable with these larger figures. If Playmates didn’t want to spend money on paint apps, they could have at least molded everything in gray or silver. Also, like the smaller scale Trek figures, these come with pegged display stands fashioned to look like the comm badges. These are actually pretty nice.

030310E

Ironically, the poorest figure of the bunch has the best accessory. Oh, Picard still comes with a red phaser, but he also comes with a compression phaser rifle that is not only nicely sculpted, but its actually molded in black and has silver paint apps. So, at least we have one decent accessory to pass around.

While I know I have more of these figures floating around, I know I don’t have a complete set of the First Contact releases. Although, now that I have them dug out of storage, I wouldn’t mind completing the set. For the most part, these are decent enough offerings, accessories notwithstanding, and they can still be had for very little latinum if you shop around enough.

030310F

So, why all the Playmates stuff lately? Well, part of it stems from having dug out a bunch of these figures and the fact that I’m sort of rediscovering them. I actually plan on looking at some of the 4″ scale figures in the near future as well. But if you’ve been following the industry news lately, it really looks like Playmates is in some serious trouble. There aren’t many companies that could afford to take the kind of hits they did in 2009, what with their two major product lines (Star Trek and Terminator Salvation) flopping. They’ve put their number one property, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on hiatus, cancelled a line of wrestling figures that were shown as recently as Toy Fair, and now it looks like they are turning over their distribution to Diamond Comics. So, while I’m really not happy with Playmates lately, I have to admit, once upon a time, they gave me a lot of pleasure with their figures and I guess I just wanted to remind myself of that.

Feb 26 2010

Star Trek: Warp Factor Sisko, Dax, Chief O’Brien and Jem’hadar by Playmates

I spent some time digging some random shit out of totes today, and I came up with some figures that I had almost forgotten even existed. The Star Trek Warp Factor series. I still have fond memories from the 90’s of hunting down Playmates 3 3/4″ Trek figures, mostly from The Next Generation, but I had forgotten all about these larger scale figures and so I thought I’d take a look at some of them here today. My totes are really badly sorted, so lets just go with the random four I came up with: Captain Sisco, Chief O’Brien, Jadzia Dax, and a Jem’hadar.

022610A

These figures come on pretty nice cards, although the cardbacks on these seemed to be really vulnerable to creases and… yep, warping. Ha! I own quite a few of these figures still on the cards and I don’ think there’s a really good one in the batch. The front does a good job of showing off what you’re getting and the back panel has a bio card for the character and a few pictures of other figures. If I recall correctly, this line cast its net far and wide across the corners of the Trek universe, and no franchise was spared getting the Warp Factor treatment.

022610B

The sculpts on these figures are not bad at all, or at least not bad for Playmates standards. Let’s face it, most of their 90’s era Trek figures went more for a stylized look rather than realism and these figures are no different. I think Sisco’s sculpt is the best, they really captured his likeness well, and after that its a close race between O’Brien and Dax. I think Dax gets a little edge here because O’Brien’s noggin seems way too big. Either way, they’re all pretty good. The uniforms look good and I like how they took the time to sculpt O’Brien’s sleeves rolled up a bit. I do think they could have made Dax’s spots a little clearer. The Jem’hadar’s likeness is ok, but then he’s just a generic alien. He does have a cool tube coming out of his neck to pump in doses of that white shit that they were addicted to. It also looks like he has flowers molded on his uniform. Weird. Either way, I really hate this figure because  he’s pre-posed, but I’ll get to more on that in a minute.

022610C

The articulation on these four are a really mixed bag. O’Brien and Dax come out on top. Their heads rotate, their arms rotate at the shoulders, have swivel cuts in the biceps and have hinged elbows. Their legs rotate up at the groin, have swivel cuts in the thighs and are hinged at the knees. Not bad, not bad at all for figures of this vintage. Sisco is curiously missing a lot of the others aritculation, which is surprising. He’s got no arm articulation below the shoulders and no swivel cuts in the thighs. He looks really bad standing because his legs are pre-posed in a ridiculously wide stance. The reason here is so that he would look better sitting down (more on that in a minute) whereas neither Dax or O’Brien can be seated without spreading their legs really wide like they’re doing some kind of freaky yoga. Seems like you can’t have it both ways with these figures.

The Jem’hadar’s articulation is useless. He has all five points of articulation that a vintage Star Wars figure would have, plus a hinged elbow in his left arm. What the fuck? Why? If you’re going to put a hinge in one arm, why not the other? What’s worse is that his right arm is bent really tight and all I want to do is straighten it. He looks like he’s made to be holding a weapon that he didn’t even come with. Oh yeah, he can swivel at the waist, which none of the other figures can do. His legs are bent a little at the knees and one foot is bent so you can pretty much pose him in a slight action stance, but nothing else.

You would expect big figures like these to come with all sorts of cool gear, like tricorders and phasers, or disrupters, but no, Playmates decided to give each one a big accessory and stiff them on everything else. Sisco comes with his Defiant command chair, Dax comes with the Defiant’s helm station, O’Brien comes with an engineering station and the Jem’hadar comes with some weird control columns, which makes me hate him even more. Sisco’s chair is easily the best of the bunch, but it pretty much has to be since the only decent way to display him is sitting in it. But hey, at least he looks really great sitting in it. Its also made entirely of plastic and not some half plastic, half cardboard construct.

022610D
Yeah, because Dax and O’Brien’s console stations involve you folding cardboard cutouts to make up their stands, which works ok, but still feels kind of cheap. And while O’Brien’s was easy to make, you practically have to be an Origami Wizard of the First Order to get Dax’s to come out right. Don’t get me wrong, the plastic portions of these consoles are very cool, especially with the beautifully detailed stickers applied to look like the controls. Although, I’m thinking the stickers should have come pre-applied because without them the carded figures look like they have random hunks of plastic next to them. Oh yeah, and keeping consistant with his shitty figure, the Jem’hadar’s consoles suck. They don’t even lock together or anything so they just wind up toppling all over the place. I hate this fucking Jem’hadar figure.

022610E

I appreciate what Playmates was trying to do with these consoles, but using cardboard on part of them was just half assed. I would have rather either paid a few dollars more to get a proper console, or just got some fucking phasers and other shit instead. Remember the 3 3/4″ figures and how much shit they came with? Sure most of it was molded in some crazy color like neon orange or purple, but at least they had accessories. Dax and O’Brien would have been excellent if they had just come with some weapons and accessories. And with a little better tooling and articulation, Sisco would have been able to stand without looking like a total jackass. As a result, even the best figures of this bunch leave me disappointed. Still, I’m kind of intrigued now to check out some more of these.

Feb 21 2010

Terminator Salvation: Hunter-Killer with T-700 by Playmates

I’m not sure what will hurt the Terminator license more in the long run, the terrible movie that was Salvation or the fact that Playmates won the rights to produce the figures and toys. Either way, since the movie stuck with a lot of the traditional Terminator designs developed in the actually good movies, I was a bit interested in seeing some of these toys. Yeah, I realize these toys have come and gone from the shelves, but thanks to that bargain bin clearance toy graveyard known as Ross, I was able to grab a couple of these for next to nothing.

022110J
If you are unfamiliar, the Hunter-Killer, is the VTOL aircraft used by Skynet to hunt down and kill humans. It was shown in flashbacks (or are those flash-forwards?) in Terminator and Terminator 2. The original prototype was also shown in Terminator 3. My first impressions is that this thing is pretty small, not for the 3 3/4″ scale, but for the original price tag. Seriously, Playmates? $24.99 for this thing? It must be pretty awesome when you get it out of the box. Hmm… doesn’t feel heavy enough to have diecast in it. Doesn’t say anything about batteries, so we know there’s no electronics.

See, the problem is that it isn’t pretty awesome. In fact, besides being small, its got a lot of other problems, the biggest of which is that its completely unpainted. Ok, now you can argue with me until the end of time as to whether or not this is how the vehicle was intended to look. I don’t care. The fact is that the package shows a metallic-silver toy. The box holds a vehicle that is simply unpainted brown plastic. I realize the toy clause, “actual product may differ from photos” and I also realize that at least they put it in an open window box, so you know what you’re getting, but this is re-god-damn-diculous. This is a fucking unpainted toy, plain and simple. We pay twenty-five bucks for this thing, and Playmates pockets the money they saved from not painting it? What a bunch of jerks!

Beyond that, the sculpt is actually very good, which is probably why the lack of paint pisses me off so much. There’s tons of detail in the hull plating and in the underlying wires and circuitry. If I ever get the ambition up and decide to spray this thing with a nice silver enamel paint, it will probably look unbelievable. As it is, its like taking a great looking Testers model kit and putting it together without any paint. It looks unfinished.

Besides the fact that at $24.99, Playmates should have been able to paint this toy and still make a huge profit, the Hunter-Killer doesn’t do a whole lot. The VTOL rotors rotate, which is cool. There are two firing missiles, which is ok, I guess. And the landing gear folds up. But apart from that, the only thing it does is have a hatch that opens to store a 3 3/4″ T-700 figure that comes with it. The figure sucks. Its made of bendy plastic, and like the Hunter Killer itself, the figure is completely unpainted and cast in the same brown as the HK. The sad thing is, that this is probably the exact same figure that they slap on a card and sell for $6.99. The fact that the figure goes into the HK makes me wonder whether Playmates knows a good goddamn thing about the franchise at all. The HK was a fucking machine, it didn’t need another machine to fly it. Unless, its just stored in there to deploy, which I think is pretty stupid too.

If you actually bought this thing at a store and at full retail, I really hope you had the backbone to take it back. Or at least put a brick in the box and toss it through a window at the Playmates, Inc. Home Office. [Disclaimer: FigureFan does not condone violence toward any person or corporate entity, any statements made to that effect are made purely for entertainment purposes only. Kids, don’t throw bricks! – DZ.] Its an insult to kids and toy collectors that Playmates can sell a blatantly unfinished toy. And even if it were the right color, the price tag is still way too high. Look at the GI Joe Bravo vehicles. They’re so much better and more substantial than this thing, come with much better figures, and they retail for under $20. Yes, I realize that Hasbro owns that license, but you can’t tell me that Playmates had to pay through the nose for Terminator, because frankly I can’t believe they could afford to.

That’s it. Deep breath and I’m done.

Feb 21 2010

Star Trek (2009): 1:6 Scale Captain Christopher Pike by Playmates

I don’t pull a lot of punches when talking about Playmates these days. Sure, their Ninja Turtles are awesome, and sure the 1990’s 3 3/4″ Star Trek figures were great for the 90’s and even today still have their special charm. But these days, generally speaking, they suck as an action figure company. I have, in the past given them some props when they deserved it, but nevertheless, they spend an awful lot of time at the business end of my whooping stick. Well, when Toys R Us started clearancing out their Trek figures, I decided to pick up one of the 12″ figures. I only wanted one, so I wasn’t going to get Sulu or McCoy, and Kirk was out because he looks like he has the head of a 13 year old boy. It came down to either Alpha Spock or Captain Pike. Considering Pike was more indicative of the series as a whole, as he had the Starfleet uniform and equipment, and seeing as how a Pike figure is a pretty unique item, I went with Pike. Imagine my surprise to find that this is a pretty nice figure.

Normally, I care nothing about packaging unless its an exclusive or a 12″ figure. I just like to put my large scale figures back in their boxes for storage and display. And with that said, Playmates has some very nice packaging for these 12″ figures. Its got a simple, nice big window to show off the figure, some photos and blurbs and the like. But I’ll be damned if this packaging didn’t piss me off as I tried to open it. Unlike any sane or rational company that has their boxes open from the top or bottom, these open from the side. Once open, you can slide the inner tray out and start cutting the figure free from the gaggle of twisty ties and clear rubber bands that hold him in. Even if you do get him out without damaging the package, you’ll soon notice that the stand is trapped under a sealed blister on the back of the tray. Bastards! I suppose I could cut it out with a razor, but considering Pike here will spend most of his downtime in the package, I’m leaving it in place for now.

Ok, so lets get the head sculpt out of the way. It looks pretty good… if only it were supposed to be someone other than actor Bruce Greenwood. Its a good sculpt on its own, there just really isn’t that much of a likeness. The graying paint apps around his sideburns are a nice touch, though, and actually the sculpted hair on the whole is pretty good. All the paint apps on my figure’s face are quite good, with no noticeable slop. This is certainly passable for a mass market release, but what does upset me a bit is that the sculpt on the figure is noticeably different than the one pictured on the back of the box. There’s no attempt at chicanery here, since you can clearly see what you are getting through the window, but obviously something happened between the initial prototype sculpt and the final figure. For a thirty dollar figure, I think they could have done a little better in this department. But at least it doesn’t look downright silly, like Kirk’s head.

The outfit is fairly simple but very good. His gold Starfleet shirt is very close to movie accurate, and complete with rank fringe and an insignia that are actually sewn in and not just stickers like some of Playmates previous 9″ scale Trek figures. The pattern on the shirt adds an authentic, quality feel to the shirt and while the black undershirt is faked by being sewn in around the collar, you could barely tell unless you were looking for it. The pants… I’m not too sure about. They’re brown, and I’m almost positive they are supposed to be black. I own the movie on Blu Ray, I should probably know this, but I’m sure someone out there can confirm or correct me on this point. The boots are rubber with some nice little details on them.

For a mass market figure, the articulation on this guy is not only excellent, but rather surprising considering it is a Playmates product. Its not quite at the same level of Mattel’s recent twelve-inchers used in their Ghostbusters and DC Movie Masters lines, but its close… oh so close. The main thing missing here are the floating plates that create enhanced shoulder movement in the upper chest. Now keep in mind, folks, Mattel’s figures retail for sixty dollars and Pike was half that price at his initial offering. Either way, I’m very happy with the articulation here, but then I don’t buy a lot of figures in this scale, so I may not be as picky as the next guy. His hands are molded to hold his equipment, and they do that quite well.

Pike isn’t loaded down with accessories, but he definitely comes with all the essentials. He has a phaser, a communicator, a utility belt that holds them both and can be removed, and a pegged figure stand in the guise of the Starfleet insignia. The phaser is absolutely fantastic. I have the Playmates prop roleplay toy for reference, and it really is like they shrunk it down for this figure to use. Obviously, there are no electronics or moving parts, but the sculpt and paint apps are excellent. The communicator is ok, but nothing special and it doesn’t open. For the price point, a tricorder would have been welcome, but I can’t recall him using one in the movie, so I won’t gripe too much.

With the general level of quality exhibited by this figure, its hard to believe its put out by the same company that did the shitty 3 3/4″ and 6″ Star Trek figures or pulled the now notorious, “fuck you, you’re never getting a complete playset” bridge scam. At the $30 price point, you are probably getting what you pay for. At the $14.98 clearance price, I feel like a got a great value. Its really too bad the head sculpt on the Kirk figure is so bad, otherwise I’d pick it up in a second at the discounted price, although I must admit, I’m really tempted to go back for either Alpha Spock or the Quinto version. Either way, its just really cool to have a Captain Pike figure in my collection.