Tag Archives: vintage vault

Jul 27 2012

Vintage Vault: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Zarak by LJN

Yes, we’ve come back around to LJN’s AD&D line again. Today we’re checking out another one of the standard figures. He’s Zarak, the Evil Half-Orc Assassin! It’s been a long week for me, so I’m just going to get right to it.

Zarak came on a standard AD&D card, with some subtle differences depending on whether you got him as part of Series 1 or Series 2. The character art is pretty cool. It’s a lot darker and more sinister than the somewhat goofy figure. As always, you get a rather lengthy bio blurb on the front of the card, which is more about the Race and Class than it is the specific character of Zarak. I always found it odd that LJN decided to do a Half-Orc figure and never a full-blooded one. Maybe they had one planned before the line was cancelled.

Out of the package and Zarak is an odd little fellow indeed. Yes, “little” isn’t what one tends to think of when one thinks of Orcs, but Zarak probably got his altitude-challenged nature from his human side. Still, he’s got a stout, stocky build and crooked shoulders, which helps give him an undeniably twisted look. I like his outfit, it’s black with some red trim, red gloves, and he even has a whip and a red pouch sculpted onto the back of his belt. I’m a little divided on the head sculpt. First off, he has a blue hood with a black outfit? Girlfriend, you need to learn how to accessorize! <double snap> It just looks weird and wrong. I’m tempted to pick up a spare and paint it red or black to see how it looks. And then there’s his face itself, which kind of looks like Shrek with chickenpox. He’s certainly an ugly bastard!

Zarak has five points of articulation. You get ball jointed shoulders, ball jointed legs at the hips, and a head that turns side to side. His short, stubby legs and arms don’t give you a lot of poseability, but the articulation is pretty standard for the line.

Our little assassin friend comes up pretty light in the accessories department, which is disappointing. LJN obviously didn’t use a lot of plastic on him, so one would think they could have thrown a few more goodies into the mix.  All he comes with is a little yellow dagger. How about the whip? Why not include a whip instead of just sculpting it to his back?

Even all the nostalgia in the world can’t help some figures, and Zarak is almost one of those. There’s not a lot of redeeming qualities here, but I still have too many fond memories of him as a kid to hate on him now. Granted, as a kid I just used him as toady, rather than a fierce assassin, but there was still always a place for him crawling around my Fortress of Fangs playset. Still, you can pick him up for pretty cheap nowadays and if you get him without his dagger, you aren’t missing out on much.

Jul 20 2012

Vintage Vault: Sectaurs Skulk and Trancula by Coleco

Today’s foray into the world of Sectaurs presented me with a real quandary. Generally speaking, I don’t like to feature figures that aren’t at least close to complete. That’s not usually a problem, since a majority of my features cover new, nearly new, or mostly new toys. Obviously, Vintage Vault can pose problems, and while some of the toys I have featured here have at least been close to complete, the stuff I’m looking at today is missing virtually everything. Nonetheless, Skulk and Trancula are so cool, and it’s been so long since I’ve been back to look at Sectaurs on Vintage Vault, I thought I’d make an exception here.

 

Obviously, no packaged shot, but Skulk came riding atop Trancula in a magnificent window box with his gear mounted beside him, still waiting to be clipped off the plastic tree. I’ve found this set to be among the harder ones to find complete, along with an example of Winged with his wings still attached. In fact, I picked up Trancula all by his lonesome from a fellow collector and Skulk came in an assortment of Sectaurs figures and parts that I grabbed a long while ago off of Ebay, so these two aren’t even from the same set. Skulk was loose, so I don’t have any of his accessories. I was tempted to just look at Trancula and come back to Skulk when I could get myself a better, more complete example, but then Trancula is a riding beast, so there’s no point in looking at him without including a figure.

I’ve already looked at one of the Sectaurs riding beasts, but in case you missed out, these toys are among the more clever ideas to come out of any of the 80’s action figure lines. They’re basically half toy, half puppet. You put your hand into the back and you can work the legs with your fingers and sometimes other parts of the toy via a lever or pull mechanism. Coleco wasn’t the first to come up with the idea of puppets interacting with action figures. I still remember being freaked out by the spotty, green alien hand in my old Mego Star Trek playset, but Coleco really took the idea and developed it into something new.

If spiders creep you out, then you may want to stay away from Trancula, because he’s one big hairy spider, and yeah, I think it’s the hair that creeps me out. The fur is thick and brown and has various black patterns and markings on his big bulbous backside. It’s really pretty ceepy and disgusting. But, is he actually a spider? Not really. He’s only got four legs, but that’s your fault because you only have five fingers and the middle finger goes into a pull-ring that works his jaws. I suppose Coleco could have tacked on some extra non-working legs to bring the count up to eight, but I think that would have ruined the illusion. Besides, these are all alien mutant insects anyway. Nonetheless, his spider characteristics carry through to his face with his multiple red eyes. His jaws have white fangs on the top and bottom and, as mentioned, his jaws open and close at the command of your middle finger. There’s a sculpted saddle that snugly holds a Sectaurs figure so he can ride this beast into battle.

Skulk is a very cool and distinct looking figure. He lacks the humanoid facial features of many of the Sectaurs and shares his beast’s spider-like features. He’s got six red eyes scattered about his face and a small mouth with two big white fangs. The back of his head has a gross bumpy texture and, take note, my Skulk’s antenna have been clipped off close to the base.

The body, on the other hand, is more humanoid. His torso is a fairly standard Sectaur sculpt with a chiseled, muscular build and slight flares to the shoulders. His arms and legs are segmented, just like an insect’s, and they end in big white claws. Skulk features the standard Sectaur’s articulation, with the arms and legs attached with ball joints, his knees are hinged, and his head rotates.

Skulk comes with a ton of cool accessories and weapons, and as I warned earlier, I have none of them. The only thing I have with this figure is his harness. The harness secures snugly around his torso and has a really cool sculpted backpack. It also has a functional scabbard loop for his sword and a holster for his gun.

I’ve featured enough Sectaurs here that you should know by now how much I love the Sectaurs figures by themselves, but I absolutely adore the whole hand puppet beast and rider gimmick. Skulk looks amazing seated atop Trancula and the pair makes for a great display. You could argue that the Battle Beetle has a better biting gimmick, but Trancula’s creepy spider factor just pushes him over the top for me. I’m also always amazed at how well these ride-ons held up over the years, particularly where the hair is concerned. Sure, he’s got some scratches to the paint, but the fur is all clean and fresh, even after almost 30 years. Yeah, it’s too bad my Skulk is missing… well, everything, but don’t worry, we’ll come back to him somewhere down the road when I finally track down a complete version.

Jul 13 2012

Vintage Vault: Bionic Six Mechanic by LJN

We’re jumping back to Bionic Six this week. I know it was just two weeks ago, but I have a lot of B6 figures to check out, so you’ll just have to indulge me. We’ll keep the ball rolling with Dr. Scarab’s bad guys and take a look at Mechanic, that loveable dullard with a nail gun and soft spot for cartoons and small animals. He was basically the Lenny to Dr. Scarab’s George and while he was usually quick to try to pound any one of the Bennett family into goo, deep down he had a good heart that sometimes got in the way of Scarab’s evil plans.

Ugh, I’m still not digging on this packaging. Mechanic comes in the same coffin bubble on cardback that we saw with Glove, with his accessory in a little compartment above the figure. That black and white pattern on the card is just awful. I’m not real fond of the character art either. Sure, it’s recognizable as Mechanic, but it still looks more like mediocre fan art rather than a licensed work. At least the Bionic Six logo looks good. The back panel has a blurb about the cartoon and pictures of all the available figures, and for some reason Mother-1 is giving the Nazi salute and FLUFFI looks like he’s playing with himself. Hmm…

Before getting into anything else, let me point out that again, the gimmick with these figures was the use of die-cast metal and in some cases clear plastic. The idea sort of makes sense where the bionic Bennetts are concerned, but not so much with characters like Mechanic, who have no bionic parts. Nonetheless, Mechanic’s torso and lower legs are made of die-cast, while the rest is molded in plastic. It gives the figure a nice, satisfying heft, but does little else of any merit.

Overall, I think LJN did a good job with Mechanic’s sculpt vis-à-vis his animated counterpart. He’s the second biggest figure in the line, next only to the Bennett’s ape robot FLUFFI, or possibly JD if you count him wearing his hat. First and foremost, the head sculpt is pretty close. I’m not sure what all the pox marks on his face are all about, but his goofy mouth, eyes, and the way his little hat is perched precariously on his tufts of hair are all spot-on. The rest of the figure is equally accurate and I think Mechanic comes off as particularly good because his simple design, just a fat dude in overalls, is better suited to the die-cast parts. Although, I find the addition of his little die-cast nipples particularly creepy, the body sculpt captures the character design perfectly. The use of the translucent green for his Scarab emblem is just icing on the cake.

The coloring on this figure is also well executed. You basically get a combination of flesh tones, blue in the overalls and the orange in the gloves and hat. There isn’t a lot of slop or bleeding, but you do have that pesky chipping problem that plagues the die-cast parts of all of the Bionic Six figures. Even fresh in an unopened package, Mechanic had some paint chipping on his feet and on his backside. If you’ve shopped around for a loose example of this figure, than you know it’s almost impossible to find one with some seriously chipped up and dirty paint.

Mechanic features the standard points of articulation for this line. The neck turns, the arms have ball jointed shoulders and hinged elbows, and the legs have ball jointed hips and hinged knees. He can also swivel at the waist. Considering when these figures were released, it’s a respectable amount of poseability, although the exposed metal joints and screws definitely detract from the figure’s aesthetics.

A lot of the accessories that come with the Bionic Six figures are less than spectacular, but Mechanic’s actually fits the bill. You get a simple removable tool belt that hooks around his waist.

I’m going to rank Mechanic alongside Glove as being one of the better figures in this line. Sure, the die-cast is completely unnecessary and ultimately detracts from the figure, but LJN still managed to capture the character pretty damn well, given the context. I was always kind of disappointed that he didn’t come with his nail gun, and the paint chipping on the feet, straight out of the package is obviously a bummer, but overall, Mechanic is a solid effort in the line. I’ll give Bionic Six a rest next Friday to look at something different, and when I come back to it in two weeks, we’ll check out one of the Bennetts.

Jul 6 2012

Vintage Vault: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Hook Horror by LJN

Ok, I think it’s been long enough that we can stand to come back to revisit LJN’s AD&D line on Vintage Vault. Today we’re checking out another one of the poseable monster figures. LJN only did two of these (I’m not counting Tiamat, because he’s in a class all by himself!) and we’ve already looked at the Dragonne, so today we’ll take a look at the Hook Horror! THE HORROR!!! Today’s going to be a bit of a quickie, as I have some drinking social obligations later on and since there isn’t a hell of a lot to him, Hook Horror is a figure that I can do justice in a pretty short amount of time.

No packaged shot, but like the Dragonne, this fellow came in a window box. It’s nothing spectacular, but it does show off the toy pretty well and has lots of fun AD&D information on the back panel. Since I don’t have the package, I had to resort to one of my dog eared Monster Manuals for this one. Apparently Hook Horror is a neutrally aligned aberration that tends to live in caves and possesses its own language to communicate with other Hook Horrors.

The figure is a pretty good representation of official TSR illustrations. He’s a hulking black and gray creature, which despite having an overall humanoid appearance, features birdlike feet and beaked head similar to a vulture. He’s got little upturned ears and, of course, his powerful arms terminate into giant hooks. LJN did a nice job sculpting this beastie, as there’s a lot of texturing, particularly on his back, and the muscles on his chest are nicely defined. The coloring is pretty simple, as most of the figure is molded in black plastic, with the hooks and ears molded in a softer, yellow plastic. There’s some grey paintwork at the ends of his arms and legs, and his beak and eyes are painted yellow.

Despite being one of the poseable monsters of the line, Hook Horror still doesn’t have a lot of articulation. His head turns from side to side and his arms rotate at the shoulders. The rest of him is just a statue. Some cuts in the hips would have been welcome.

And that’s all I’ve got on the Hook Horror. Told ya this would be a quickie. He’s not a bad figure when placed in the context of the line, but he doesn’t come close to the amazing work LJN did on the Dragonne. Still, he’s relatively cheap to buy, I replaced my broken original for about $12, so if you want, you can put together a whole herd of these things to fight your heroes and not have to empty the treasure chest to do it. They tend to turn up in good condition, with the two biggest problems being loose arms that won’t stay up and chipping on the yellow paint around the beak. As I mentioned when looking at the Dragonne, I’ve always been surprised LJN went with Hook Horror as being one of the only two poseable monsters in the line, rather than one of the more higher profile monsters, but then I’m reminded that many more were planned before the line was cancelled. And that was a real shame.

Jun 29 2012

Vintage Vault: Bionic Six Glove by LJN

Another Friday, another Vintage Vault… and another toyline that I haven’t looked at here before! Bionic Six was probably one of the last cartoons of the 80’s that I watched religiously and I just recently took a spin through the series again, which is no small feat as there are a ton of episodes. The premise was a simple weekly battle between the evil genius, Dr. Scarab with his rag-tag band of terrorist freaks and the Bennetts, a family that moonlighted as the bionic superheroes, The Bionic Six. There’s a lot I love about this cartoon: The spectacular intro sequence, the animation, the characters, the voice work, the clever self-deprecating writing. Sure, most of the stories are crap and there are times when it gets just over the top ridiculous, even for a cartoon, but I was pleased to find that it wasn’t just nostalgia that had me going, I still genuinely like it.

Naturally Bionic Six had a toy tie-in, or was that the other way around? LJN produced a short-lived line of 3 ¾” scale action figures. Included were all the Bennett family and all of Dr. Scarab’s evil minions. Sure, there were a few major omissions (What? No Dr. Sharpe???), but for the most part everyone was represented and there were even a few vehicles and a playset. The figures were rather unusual for the time as they featured the use of both plastic and die-cast metal, and some translucent parts to emphasize the Bennett’s cybernetic nature. Today we’re going to start with one of my favorite bad guys of the series… Glove! He was Dr. Scarab’s second in command and basically the Starscream of the Bionic Six universe. Every week he’d try to overthrow Scarab and become the leader, and every week it somehow backfired on him.

And there’s the packaging. The figures came under a coffin-shaped bubble on a standard cardback. Their accessories rattle around in a little compartment above the figure, and as you can see often drop down into the figure compartment. Honestly, I was never fond of the packaging LJN went with here. The crazy black psychedelic pattern on the white card just looks cheap, and not very relevant to the cartoon. On the other hand, I like the use of the Bionic Six logo and Glove’s character art is quite good. The back of the card shows photos of all the figures that were available. It’s a serviceable package, but nothing that makes me feel bad about tearing open this 27 year old figure. Mwahahahaha!

Out of the package, Glove is sort of like a mix between a vintage GI Joe and a Micronaut. He’s a pretty heavy figure for his size, due to the die cast metal used in his torso and legs. He’s not a bad representation of his animated counterpart. The head sculpt isn’t quite there, it looks more like his fellow bad guy, Chopper, to me. Still, overall this sculpt and deco hits all the main points of Glove’s animated design. His green military-style helmet, crisscrossing bandolier straps, and belt of grenades are all spot on, as is his one torn pants leg. I also really dig the translucent scarab emblem on his chest. The legs do feature some unfortunately ugly seams down the fronts, another recurring issue with some of this line’s figures due to the use of die-cast.

One of the problems with LJN’s Bionic Six figures can be the paintwork. Sure, part of the problem is that these figures suffer a lot of paint chipping when played with, but some had issues right out of the package. In this case, however, Glove is actually quite neatly painted. He’s a colorful fellow and I really like the two-tone purple used for his shirt and skin and the way the red and yellow contrasts with his black pants. There’s some slop around they yellow on his grenades, but nothing too bad. Detailed paintwork and die-cast metal don’t usually mix well, so I’m not going to nitpick Glove’s paint too much.

Glove’s articulation includes a rotating head, ball jointed shoulders, hinged elbows, ball jointed hips, and hinged knees. He can also swivel at the waist. He isn’t exactly super-articulated, but he sure beats the standard five points that some figures of the time utilized. Some bicep swivels would have helped a lot.

You get two accessories with Glove, one of which is… well… his glove. It clips on over his left hand and holds on pretty well. It’s a fairly detailed little piece, although I would have been perfectly fine if it were permanently attached to the figure. The other accessory is a black wrist gun that clips onto his other arm. Again, there’s some nice sculpting here for such a little accessory.

All in all, I think LJN’s figure does Glove proud. The personality of the character is well represented here and he’s definitely a colorful and attractive looking figure. Did he really need the die cast parts? Nope. While it sort of makes sense for the members of the Bionic Six, Glove’s character doesn’t have any bionics so the use of metal is just a continuation of that gimmick that does little to benefit the figure other than giving him a nice heft. Still, this is one of my favorite figures in the Bionic Six lineup and I’m happy to have a fresh, straight out of the package example for my display shelf to replace the loose-jointed and paint chipped version from my childhood.

Hail, Scarab!!!

Jun 22 2012

Vintage Vault: Wheeled Warriors Armed Force by Mattel

It’s long past time that I introduce a fresh toy line to Vintage Vault, so here we go. Today we’re checking out the Wheeled Warriors. Introduced by Mattel back in 1985, the Wheeled Warriors were a somewhat short lived line of vehicles with a load of customization and play value, summed up by the tagline, “quick changing fighting machines!” The battle raged between the good guys, called the Lightning League, and the bad guys, The Monster Minds. Like all good toy lines of the 80’s the Wheeled Warriors featured a cartoon tie-in, called “Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors.” Unlike a lot of the 80’s cartoons, this one was ret-conned from a toy line that didn’t really have any characters or story and it shows. It was well animated enough and sometimes entertaining, but despite the fact that it featured Mattel’s vehicle designs it just didn’t mesh well with the toys. The bizarre mix of magic and fantasy elements and the ungoing story involving space exploration and the quest to find the lead character’s father seemed obviously tacked on.

Anywho, today we’re going to look at the lead vehicle from the good guys, Armed Force. Each of the vehicles had a signature weapon and Armed Force’s is a giant claw. I don’t have a package shot, but these vehicles came in slightly elongated window boxes with the core vehicle on one side and the various parts mounted to the right. The packages displayed the toys well enough, but the deco wasn’t terribly attractive or exciting. Someday I may get to feature a packaged Wheeled Warriors toy here, but I won’t be going out of my way to get one.

And there’s Armed Force in all its stripped down glory. The set includes the vehicle’s chassis, hinged cockpit, driver figure, drive frame, the claw arm, a missile, and three guns. You also got six wheels, but mine is missing the two extras. The missing wheels are basically the same as the smaller ones, but have a swirly pattern instead of the gears. Remember, the gimmick here is complete customization, so each of the vehicles had sockets to plug the weapons into and even the drive systems and wheels could be pulled out and interchanged. Armed Force has enough sockets to get everything onto the vehicle, minus the two extra wheels, and still have three sockets left over.  There are plenty of custom options for each individual toy, but ideally the more toys you had the more you could play around with, plus each side had an Attack Pack available with extra parts. You can even link up multiple vehicles. It works better in theory than practice, but you can still do it!

The Armed Force toy itself is a very nice piece. The body is cast in white plastic and paired with some gorgeous gold vac-metal to give it a snazzy look. There are sculpted panel lines, vents, hoses and various other thingamajigs all over and even some colorful decals on the top with the Lightning League logos. The canopy opens up to reveal the cockpit for the driver figure. The drivers aren’t much to rave about. They’re smaller and less detailed than Kenner’s MASK figures, and only feature four points of articulation (shoulders and hips) but having a removable driver is still a cool bonus. The use of gold vac-metal carried over to some of the parts as well and the claw arm has a simple chomping gimmick that can be worked with the lever on the back.

I absolutely loved the concept of these toys as a kid, but between Transformers, GI Joe, and Star Wars my allowance and Christmas wish lists were always already spoken for so I never owned any. When I finally tracked down this decent and almost complete Armed Force, I was a little apprehensive about what it would be like in person, particularly since these things aren’t cheap. When it finally arrived I was happy to see that it lived up to, and possibly exceeded, my expectations. These are really fun and well- designed toys that hold up extremely well. If Mattel wanted to they could easily re-launch this line under the Hot Wheels brand and probably be pretty successful with it. I know I would buy the hell out of them. But for now, I’ll have to be content with hunting down the vintage versions. Oh yes, we’ll be looking at more Wheeled Warriors in the future!

Jun 15 2012

Vintage Vault: Sectaurs Skito and Toxcid by Coleco

Its Friday and that means its time for another AD&D… oh wait, sorry, force of habit. As I’ve been promising for a while now, we’ll give AD&D a break for two or three weeks. today we’re taking a look at those loveable mutant insect warriors from the planet of Symbion. I’ve featured the Sectaurs here on FigureFan numerous times in the past, but this is actually the first time I’m looking at one of the bad guys from the Dark Domain of Synax. Part of the reason I pushed this one back from last Friday was because I was desparately looking for some of the stuff that came with him. I have all his accessories, but somewhere, I have an envelope with the mini-comic and other ephemera. Alas, I still couldn’t put my hands on any of it, so we’re going to just press on with the figure.

No in package shot. One day, I’ll get around to actually looking at one of these figures or beasts in a package. I remember getting Skito in a window box, but I’m pretty sure some of these figures were available carded as well.

And there’s Skito. Damn, I love the designs on these figures. They’re so very distinctive. Skito’s head sculpt is a little more human-ish than some of the bad guys we’ll eventually look at. He is separated from the good guys by having an olive colored skin. He’s also sporting pointy ears, fangs, and a set of cool, segmented antenna. There isn’t a lot of variation in the core bodies of these figures. Skito features the usual armored chest with flared shoulders, four fingered hands, both of which can hold his accessories, and feet that end in three pointy toes. The rest of Skito’s color pallet features a lot of black and green. His feet desolve from green into borwn. As always, I like the slightly metallic twinge on his chest paint.
Skito has the same standard points of articulation as all the Sectaurs. His head turns, his arms have ball jointed shoulders. His legs feature ball jointed hips and hinged knees. Not exactly super articulation by today’s standards, but not bad for the day. You can get some decent poses out of him.
As always, you get some cool gear with the figure. Skito features a removable harness that goes across his chest and around his waist. It includes a fully functional shoulder holster for under his right arm, and a scabbard loop on his left hip. The pistol is a little grey snub-nosed affair with a wonderfully detailed sculpt. The sword is also grey, slightly curved and the blade is segmented as if its made from bone or something. Lastly, he comes with a small shield.
Of course, one of the gimmicks of the Sectaurs line was the psychic link between the characters and their little buggy sidekicks. In this case, Skito’s is Toxcid. Toxcid’s big claim to fame was his ability to spit acid in people’s faces. The toy replicates this by allowing you to fill up the bug with water and squeeze it to shoot. I used to use Kool Aid to give it a red venomy look. In terms of play value, Toxcid probably isn’t the most exciting of the bug companions. He isn’t at all articulated, and unless you’re actually going to fill him with water and squirt people, he just kind of sits there. Still, I think his gimmick works better than some of the other bugs in the line. At least he doesn’t have a grappling hook built into him. Either way, he is a very nice sculpt and the coloring on him is very cool.
The Sectaurs figures continue to amaze me. As a kid, I was totally in love with this line, even though I never owned any. But nowadays they impress me all the more because of how well they hold up after all these years. Skito is a fun, well designed figure with lots of cool gear and he’s totally representative of this line as a whole. What’s more, they display beautifully on any retro-themed toyshelf or even beside my Masters of the Universe Classics.
Jun 8 2012

Vintage Vault: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Mercion by LJN

Hey guys, its Friday and that means Vintage Vault. I know, I know. I promised something other than AD&D this week, but I’m going to have to beg your indulgence for just one more week as when I pulled the Sectaurs figure I was originally planning on looking at, I found I needed to do some additional tote hunting for his accessories. So, let’s extend the Friday AD&D marathon just one more week and check out this figure. And holy hell, its even still carded!

Ah, yeah, the card has seen much better days, but that’s ok. We still get the point and I don’t feel so bad about tearing it open. The card proclaims Mercion as a Good Cleric Female, which gives her the distinction of being the only girly-girl in the poseable figure line. Check out the price tag… Bradlees! Holy shit, I remember Bradlees! For you young’uns, it was basically a forerunner to the big box stores like Target. You could buy all sorts of stuff there and they usually had some pretty good selections of toys and action figures. Mercion was originally ticketed at $2.97!
As we saw when we looked at the cardback for Melf, Mercion has a little bio about her race and class under her character art. I really dig the character art, even if it is a bit at odds with the actual action figure. What does disappoint me a little is that the blurb points out that the clerics’ main weapon was the mace or hammer, and Mercion comes with a staff. No biggie. At least they didn’t give her something as uncharacteristic as a sword. The back of the card is identical to Melf’s with some artwork displaying some of the other characters on top and some rather poorly composed photos of some of the PVC monsters on the bottom. Ok, let’s tear this baby open and bask in the funk of pure, unspoiled 80’s air.
The bubble may have yellowed, but the figure inside is minty fresh and that’s doubly cool because she has so much in the way of softgoods garb. Much like the wizards, Kelek and Ringlerun, you don’t get to see a lot of the sculpting on Mercion’s body because she has an actual belted tunic and a hooded cloak. You can see her boots and her plate armor covered arms and gauntleted hands. Her head sculpt is pretty solid, especially for a line where hardened, ugly faces are the norm. Mercion’s fairly attractive and has long sculpted blonde hair. If you peek under her tunic, she actually has a full set of sculpted armor. When I was a kid, I actually did a little custom work on my worn version by painting her hair and removing the rest of her tattered tunic. The result worked pretty well for a completely different figure.
I really can’t say enough great things about the softgoods outfit. The tunic is perfectly shaped and neatly belted at her waist and tied at the back. It looks better than it should on a figure in this small scale. The sparkly cloak hangs around her neck with a tiny piece of silver thread and is easily removed for when she needs room to move and put the smackdown on some evil.
Articulation? If you’ve been reading these AD&D figure features for the past couple of months, then you should know what to expect, but Mercion throws us a little of a curve. Her head and hair are all sculpted in one piece with her body, so there’s no head movement. You do still get ball joints at the shoulders, and the legs are ball jointed at the hips.
As previously mentioned, Mercion comes with a staff. In fairness, it does have a mace head giving it some potential as a bashing weapon. But based on the character art on the card, I think its intended to be more of a magical piece. She can comfortably hold it in either hand, but not really both at the same time.
  
Mercion may not be a major stand out figure in this line. She’s pretty normal looking, doesn’t come with a flash assortment of weapons, she’s just generally low key. I think the expertly crafted and fitted softgoods are definitely her strongest point and she does look great standing on the shelf with the rest of her good adventurer chums. She can be tough to find with her tunic and cloak in good condition, but even if you need to get her without any of her softgoods, the sculpted armor still makes for a decent figure or variant.
Jun 1 2012

Vintage Vault: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons Ogre King by LJN

Its Friday, and that means its time for a look at another action figure from LJN’s AD&D line. This update will be the last time I devote Friday’s to strictly AD&D as next week Friday becomes the only day of the week for Vintage Vault and it will feature a rotating lineup of toylines. AD&D will continue to be featured heavily on VV, I’ve got lots more figures to look at, but it just won’t be every week. We’re ending the Friday AD&D Marathon today with another one of the Giants in the line. Its the Evil Ogre King!

As with the Northlord Barbarian, The Ogre King is a larger and more deluxe assortment of figure, but he’s still meant to be scaled with the rest of the figures and hence he’s a Giant! While pitting the Northlord Barbarian against this guy may have seemed like a fair fight, I used to love having to send a whole party of adventurers against him, and he usually wound up hurling Melf or Elkhorn before one of the more substantial adventurers did him in. Good times!
As an Ogre, you would expect this guy to look mean and green. Well, he’s certainly green, but the head sculpt could use a little more mean. There’s a lot of attention to detail in the head, and he’s certainly a whole bucketload of ugly, but I think he could have done with a fiercer expression. He sort of looks like he’s smiling and possibly about to invite you to tea.
The Ogre King also features some rather peculiar armor choices. He has a gladiatorial style ensemble for his right arm, which is accompanied by various belts sculpted across his chest. He’s also got what looks like a segmented plate armor tube top that comes up just under his chest. Its capped off with a removable soft plastic belt and “skirt” that is made to look like an extension of his stomach armor. His legs have knee guards and he has armor for his calves, but his feet are left bare. Its a bit of an odd choice of coverings. I would think an Ogre King could afford better protection. You could pretty much just stomp on his toes and then stab him in the heart.
The paintwork on this figure is solid enough, but once again its a bit odd. The aqua colored armor is peculiar, but certainly makes for a distinctive looking figure. I do really like the dark green used for his skin. There is a variant, which uses a much lighter skintone, that I don’t think works as well.

The accessories for the Giants all follow the same pattern, so just like with the Northlord Barbarian, Ogre King comes with a helmet, a removable soft plastic belt, a sword, a shield, and a spare weapon, in this case a spiked mace. The belt features a loop so you can store the spare weapon, although this figure can only store his mace there as the sword blade is too big to fit. Indeed, the sword is a pretty wild shaped piece with a blade that bellows out and features a notch in the edge. The hilt is nicely sculpted and painted yellow. The shield is long with an embossed dragon motif and the yellow, black, and aqua coloring matches the rest of the figure’s motif. The helmet is a simple cap that balances procariously on his head. I help it stay in place with a dot of bluetack.
Ogre King’s articulation is identical to that of the Northlord Barbarian. The head turns, the arms are ball jointed at the shoulders, and his legs are ball jointed at the hips. Not exactly super articulated, but it gets the job done.

There’s no bones about it, The Ogre King is a strange figure. I have to confess that I really dig it, but I think a lot of that love comes mostly from nostalgia. If I hadn’t owned this figure as a kid and spent tons of time playing with it, I don’t think I would be nearly attached to it. Even now, its pretty far down on my list of AD&D figures. One thing that is pretty cool about him is that you can army build him and mix up his accessories to get a pretty convincing little band of Ogres together to fight. As with the Northlord Barbarian, he’s pretty easy to find with all his goodies and minimal paintwear for around the $25 range. if you’re looking for extras to fill in your ranks, you can probably find incomplete versions for a little less.
May 28 2012

Vintage Vault: M.A.S.K. Rhino with Matt Trakker and Bruce Sato by Kenner

Here we go, the final regular MASK edition of Vintage Vault, and I saved the biggest MASK toy in my collection for last. Its the Rhino, a big extended semi cab that converts into a mobile command post, missile base and recon vehicle. This is one really cool and really fun toy and it took me a little while to get mine complete again. As always, let’s start with the figures…

The Rhino comes with not one, but two figures, Bruce Sato and an alternate version of Matt Trakker. While most kids probably preferred the Thunderhawk version of Matt over this one, the Rhino was the only way to get the Bruce Sato figure. And Bruce was pretty prominent on the cartoon, so he was an important figure to have in any collection. He’s a fairly solid looking figure, with a jumpsuit, sculpted boots and a black, detailed vest. He does suffer from the blank face syndrome that many MASK figures do, as there are no paint apps on his face to really accentuate the sculpt.
Sato’s mask is called Lifter. Its power is basically a combination forcefield and tractor beam. The mask is a decent enough design that actually looks more like a hood, but its the same color as the mask that comes with Matt, so the two are a little too similar for my taste.
As for Matt, this is certainly the less iconic version of MASK’s leader, as he isn’t wearing his grey flight suit, but rather a brown jumpsuit and orange vest. The sculpting is mostly in the vest, and there’s some decent paintwork on the silver accents. The head sculpt appears to be identical to the version that comes with the Thunderhawk.
Matt comes with the Ultra Flash mask. Again, its certainly less iconic than Spectrum, (which is ironic since this is the one depicted in the MASK logo!) but I really dig the design. It looks really robotic and the orange matches up with his vest pretty well. As the name suggests, Ultra Flash’s power is blinding enemies. I used to use this Matt Trakker figure as another character.

As always, both figures feature seven points of articulation. The heads turn, the arms rotate at the shoulders, the legs move forward at the hips, and the knees are hinged. This pair are solid enough figures, but ultimately I think their color schemes are a bit too alike to make them really stand out.
And then there’s the main attraction… Rhino is a big honkin semi cab with an extended front. It looks absolutely fantastic, with its mix of burgundy red body and silver, chromed out parts. There’s lots of detail in the mold and the sides are adorned with sticker stripes to give it a little character. Even though its scaled for the smallish MASK figures, its still a sizeable and impressive toy, rolling along on twelve real rubber tires. All the windows are transparent, the doors open and the detailed cab interior comfortably seats two figures. What makes Rhino really impressive in this mode is that there’s really no way to tell it changes into anything. It just looks like a really cool toy truck.
Rhino features a ton of different hidden features, some of which can be used while the thing is in vehicle mode, and some are intended for when its deployed as a missile command post. In vehicle mode, the smokestacks can angle forward to become machine guns, the front grill shoots out to become a battering ram, and the passenger side seat can eject a figure out through the door. Ok, that last feature never really made sense to me. Is it supposed to be tossing out unwanted passengers? I never really got it. Either way, the Rhino can convert to a formidable attack vehicle while its powering down the highway. I used to love making this thing ram Jackhammer.
For something a little more stationary, the back of the cab pulls back to open it up and reveal the little missile command post. A ramp drops down to give the figures access. The launching missile itself looks like its big enough to take out a small city, and there are computer banks and terminals inside and a radar dish on the top. While in this command post mode, the back of the cab can detach to form its own cool little off-road vehicle and the smokestacks can still angle forward into machine guns to help defend the position.
The designers threw a lot of stuff into Rhino and the result is just an amazingly fun toy. Its a bit unlike a lot of MASK vehicles, where it doesn’t so much have a single conversion mode, but just a lots of gimmicks and gadgets to play around with. Its not the only big truck in the MASK line, but it is the first, and in my opinion the best. Next to the Boulder Hill playset, this was probably the one Series 1 toy kids nagged their parents over.
Rhino is a tough MASK vehicle to get complete and in good condition. There’s a lot to go wrong with this thing. The chrome pieces often wear down and often snap off, particularly the mirrors. The windows scratch up easily and the various springs and retaining tabs wear and break over time. And don’t even get me started on the stickers. There’s lots of them and they peel and chip, and as you can see in the photos, the interior stickers love to curl up. My Rhino has its share of blemishes, but its at least complete and in honest, good working condition. Complete versions even in rough shape can often get close to $100 on the secondary market, and if you’re looking for a showpiece, $150 is probably closer to the mark.
And that wraps up all the MASK features that I had planned when I started doing these about seven weeks back. It was a fun ride through what is still one of the underdog toylines of the 80’s. We’ll definitely be coming back back to other MASK toys in the future (and there are plenty more to look at!) as it will work its way into the rotation of Vintage Vault in the coming weeks.