I don’t have an in-package shot of the figure, but it came on a simple card with a still from one of the films, showing Robocop against an exploding background. The figure was mounted under a fairly sizeable bubble with his face exposed and everything that he came with laid out beside him. The goodies include two swappable chest plates, two swappable helmets, and his trademark Auto-9 sidearm.

As already mentioned, there was no shortage of different versions of Robocop, but this was one of the few that wasn’t just the same figure with a different soundchip. The sculpt is quite good, and while the face isn’t necessarily a dead ringer for Peter Weller [or maybe it’s supposed to be Robert Burke from Robocop 3, or Richard Eden from Robocop: The Series? -FF], I think it’s close enough for an early 90’s toyline in this scale. The uncovered chest is sculpted with all sorts of hoses and circuitry and painted silver, red, green and black. The rest of the figure shares much of the same sculpt with the other 4-inch Robocops, which is to say it’s a quite decent looking figure and looks pretty close to the big screen counterpart. I do have a slight issue of leg warpage on mine, but that might not be common to all the figures.

The swappable armor gimmick is simple enough as the chest plates just snap on to his torso and the helmet, which is made of soft plastic just fits right on over the head. With the regular non-damaged armor in place, it’s tough to tell this figure apart from the regular ones. The biggest giveaway is the visor on the helmet, which is painted on, instead of clear red plastic to support the light up feature. The damaged armor looks really good, especially the visor, which has a hole that lines up with Murphy’s eye like in the movie. Unfortunately, the damaged chest plate doesn’t fit all that well and tries to pop off at the left shoulder.

The other big difference with this particular version of Robocop was the additional articulation. While the electronic 4-inchers only had four points of articulation, which consisted of arms that rotated at the shoulders and legs that rotated at the hips, this Murphy introduces hinged joints to the elbows and knees. Unfortunately, there’s still no neck articulation, which was understandable for the electronic figures, but kind of inexcusable for this one.

Overall, I think the paint job is a little better on some of my legion of electronic 4-inch Robocop figures. They’ve got a touch more blue and better gloss, making them a smidgen more movie accurate. But aside from that, this version of Murphy is my favorite in the 4-inch scale. Between the armor gimmick and the added articulation, you just have more display options and far more play value. And for that reason, if you’re going to hunt down just one of these 4-inch Robocops, I’d recommend going with this one.

Robocop toys are a tragic subject for me, since I love the two films [YES, I SAID THERE WERE ONLY TWO!!!! 😡 -FF] and I’d love to have a crapload of nice figures based on the property. The problem is that most of the really nice figures are as expensive as all hell and a lot of the others, well they aren’t that great. That’s not to say there weren’t some decent or at least passable toys out there that can still be had for little money. Toy Island made a crapload of Robocop figures starting around 1993. A lot of them were electronic, most of them were in the 4-inch scale, but today we’re going to look at one of the 8-inchers.

The packaging is long gone, but I’m pretty sure this guy came mounted on a card, rather than in a box. I can be completely off base on that one, as the early 90’s were my College years and hence is mostly a blur. The immediate downside of this figure is that at about eight inches, he’s not really in scale with a lot of other figures. Although he does fit in pretty well with any Megos you have lying around.

The sculpt here is pretty darn good. There are some proportion issues with the legs, which look somewhat underdeveloped, especially from the knees down, but from the waist up, I’m pretty impressed. The detail in the armor is pretty spot on and I like how the speaker is concealed in the ribbed portion of the chest. His right hand is molded to hold his weapons and his left hand is molded open. The head sculpt is pretty spot on, although the glossy flesh tone used on the exposed half of his face looks pretty waxy and fake. But, hey, this is clearly a toy and not a replica or high-end collectors figure. The color and finish on the armor is also really nice and screen accurate. Generally speaking, this is one nice looking figure.

Robocop has ten points of articulation. His arms rotate at the shoulders, have hinged elbows and rotate at the forearms. His legs rotate at the hips and have hinged knees. The head, unfortunately, doesn’t turn because of the electronics in the head.

Robocop’s accessories include his trademark high-powered automatic pistol, an M-16 style assault rifle, and an arm cannon attachment that can be swapped out by pulling off his forearm and plugging it into the socket.

The figure’s electronic gimmick is fairly simple, but still effective. Press the button right in the middle of his chest and the visor lights up red and he sounds off one of three clips. One is weapons fire, the other two are voice clips saying either “Freeze” or “Uphold the law!” Neither are direct rips from Peter Weller, but they sound good enough. I would have loved to hear, “Dead or alive, you’re coming with me,” but I’m guessing that might have been a little too hardcore for a kids’ toy.

When I pulled this figure out of storage, I was pretty amazed at how well it held up. I expected time to have exposed all this stuff as total crap, and that’s not the case at all. Don’t get me wrong, there are some pretty sub par toys in my vintage Robocop box, and we’ll get to those in good time, but this guy is nice enough that I opted to put him up on my shelf rather than return him to his Rubbermaid tomb in the back of the closet. He looks pretty nice and I’m absolutely amazed to find that his electronics still work perfectly, despite me being a dumbass and leaving the batteries in him for nearly a decade.