#4154: Professor X

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

PROFESSOR X

X-MEN: THE MOVIE (TOY BIZ)

“Charles Francis Xavier possesses the most powerful mind on earth. The mutant telepath also known as Professor X can read the thoughts of others, impose his own will to take over other people’s minds or erase their memories. This visionary has dedicated his life to fighting for his dream of peaceful co-existence between man and mutantkind. To aid in this crusade, he founded a school for gifted youngsters to secretly train young mutants to control their amazing powers. Xavier now uses his special abilities to lead his clandestine team of “X-Men” into battle against Magneto and his brotherhood of evil mutants.”

It has been a week since the passing of Sir Patrick Stewart, and, honestly, I’m still kind of at a loss for words about it.  I never got the chance to meet him, but he had an immense impact on my life (along with many, many others), and there’s this sort of a hollow feeling about the whole thing still.  Sir Patrick took on many roles in his 86 years, but he devoted decades of his life to the roles of Jean-Luc Picard and Charles Xavier, both part of rather merchandise driven franchises, so he did at least get his fair share of action figures along the way.  His final film performance will be in December’s Avengers: Doomsday, where he reprises the role of Charles Xavier for the ninth and final time.  I’m jumping back to the very beginning of this particular journey, with his figures from the very first X-Men movie.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Professor X was released in the first series of Toy Biz’s X-Men: The Movie tie-in line, released alongside the second series in the spring of 2000, to coincide with the release of the first movie.  There were two variants released, with different suit colors.  The standard release was the blue suit with the red tie, while the slightly rarer variant was the black suit with the silver tie.  The figure is just under 6 inches…long I guess would be the best way to describe him?  Tall is incorrect, because he doesn’t stand.  He has 12 points of movement, but I hesitate to call it all articulation.  Why all the roundaboutness?  Because the figure’s hip and knee joints are super loose, so they cannot hold a pose or even really sustain the figure’s weight.  That would make this perhaps the only Xavier mold to properly recreate his paralysis, so kudos to Toy Biz on that.  The mold was new to this line, and it’s a little bit awkward at times, especially compared to the more naturalistic sculpting of some of the line’s other figures.  He’s a bit stiff, and most of the articulation is rudimentary in its implementation.  There are some interesting quirks to the mold; there’s two peg holes in the back meant to connect him to his chair, as well as an additional sort of lever, which moves his arms upward, for some sort of magnetic feature that’s kind of odd and hard to understand the utility of.  The head sculpt is an interesting piece in that it’s kind of hard to address its quality without talking about the paint.  The original release, the blue suit, leaves the head’s skin tone unpainted, which leaves the sculpt with very little resemblance to Stewart.  The black suited variant, however, fully paints the head, resulting in a far better likeness.  It’s honestly astounding how much of a difference the paint application can make.  Both versions of the figure include the same chair, a rather involved piece of work, with a magnetic feature on the back and a pull-back motorized feature for the wheels.  It’s an accurate recreation of the signature chair used in the movies, and Toy Biz would also re-use the same mold for their Marvel Legends Professor X a few years later.  Professor X also included a Cerebro helmet accessory, which I’m unfortunately missing from both of my figures.  The second round of figures from the movie also included a third Professor X variant, this time sporting his non-metal chair from his visit to Magneto’s jail cell at the end of the movie.  The main Xavier figure uses the same mold, with a third paint scheme (and once again paints the skin on the head, for a far better likeness), while the chair has been modified to be a little closer to the one from the end of the movie.  It’s not a perfect recreation of the piece seen in the movie, since it just changes the wheels and arm rests, but it gets the idea across.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The release of the first X-Men movie is the first time I can really recall being hyped for a movie release.  I followed all the news and casting announcements closely, and I was very excited about Patrick Stewart’s presence, as he was honestly the only actor I knew beforehand.  When the figures hit, obviously, my first figure was Cyclops, but when my Nana took my cousin Rusty and I to Toys “R” Us to pick out some figures for a “hey you finished school” treat, I got to pick out two more X-Men and I chose Jean and Professor X.  There was some back and forth about the choice, and a definite push to get me to buy Magneto and Wolverine instead, but I couldn’t be swayed, so I got my Jean and Professor X.  That was the blue suited Xavier, with the spotty likeness.  I got the clear chair Xavier next, courtesy of a trip to KB Toys with my Grandmother (which also got me Civilian Cyclops), and I kind of figured that was it for my movie Xaviers.  But, when cleaning my room a while later, I found a Toys “R” Us gift card I didn’t know the value of, and my parents told me I could get whatever the value of the card would cover.  The card had somewhere in the area of $2 on it, so I was left digging through the clearance bin, which is how I found the variant Xavier, thus rounding out the set.  None of them are great figures, but there are limited options for Stewart Xavier figures, and to that end, I do quite like them.

Sir Patrick Stewart brought an immeasurable level of class and depth to every one of his very many roles (yes, even the Poop Emoji), and had a sincere presence that’s not easily found.  He was also, by all accounts, just a very good person, who stood up for those he felt needed it, and we could honestly use more people like him.  Losing him is huge, and his presence will very much be missed.

#4153: Batman

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

BATMAN

SUPER POWERS (McFARLANE)

“As a child, Bruce Wayne watched as his parents were brutally killed in Gotham City’s Crime Alley. Traumatized by their deaths, he devoted his life to becoming the world’s greatest weapon against crime– the Batman.”

As prevalent as the character may be in toy form, I don’t actually review *a ton* of Batman figures around here, mostly because I think I’m just largely tapped out on buying new Batman figures these days?  McFarlane’s tenure with the DC license has had a lot of Batman figures, and their Super Powers line has Batman as its recurrent character.  Despite that, I’ve only thus far picked up and reviewed a single Super Powers Batman (I guess technically reviewed a Batman Beyond as well, but I feel like that’s different).  Well, they’re selling the figures in sets now, so I can’t avoid it if there’s a Batman variant, and if I’m gonna buy him, I guess I might as well review him.  So, here’s this Batman.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Batman is the first figure in Series 15 of McFarlane’s Super Powers line, where he’s officially numbered 73 in the overall line-up.  He’s the 12th Batman released in the line.  The figure is just the tiniest bit over 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 7 points of articulation.  This Batman marks the seventh use of the updated classic Batman mold, which was the only other Batman I’ve looked at from this line.  It’s clearly aiming to be a pretty close replica of the original Kenner mold, and it’s a good one at that.  I get why they keep using it.  What makes this release special?  The coloring.  The first release of the mold went for a pretty straight classic Batman blue and grey color palette, and subsequent uses have all tweaked it in some way.  We’ve gotten one subsequent take on that scheme through the crowd funded release, which was darker than the first version, and now we’ve got this one, which is…also darker?  Its aim is to be an early ‘90s Batman, per the naming, and I guess it does that fine, but it’s also not super different, aside from just being different.  It’s definitely a bit of different for different’s sake.  I know the Series 4 release was pretty hard to get, so I can’t say I fault McFarlane for wanting to put out another go at the mold with the blue and grey, but I also can’t say it’s terribly exciting.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I was very excited by the reveals of 13 and 14 of this line, but 15 was the first one where I just felt largely underwhelmed, and this Batman is certainly a large piece of that.  Maybe I’d feel different if I hadn’t gotten the Series 4 figure? I don’t know.  I do know I only have this one because I wanted the set.  He’s…fine.  Like, not bad, but just not anything to really give any much thought to.

#4152: Galactus

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

GALACTUS

FANTASTIC FOUR (TOY BIZ)

“Feared throughout the cosmos, the nearly omnipotent Galactus must consume the life energies of entire planets to satisfy his burning hunger! Only the herculean efforts of the Fantastic Four and Galactus’s former herald, the Silver Surfer, have prevented the world-devourer from making a meal of the Earth! But, should he return, the future of all mankind will once again be in doubt!”

Just before my winter hiatus last December, I wrapped up my reviews of the all the standard figures from Toy Biz’s Fantastic Four toyline.  I didn’t, however, quite look at *all* the figures, because they weren’t all exactly created equal.  If you’re doing really much of anything at all with the FF, you’re bound to run into their big, planet-eating foe, Galan of Taa, the Devourer of Worlds, best known as Galactus.  Galactus has a number of appearances on Fantastic Four: The Animated Series, and his herald Silver Surfer was present in the first series of the tie-in toyline, so it made quite a bit of sense for the big G to be included as well, and in fact he was, with a deluxe sized figure that I’ll be taking a look at today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Galactus was released in 1995, alongside the first series of Toy Biz’s Fantastic Four line.  He was his own stand alone release, a deluxe item offered up in a similar fashion to the dragons from the Iron Man line at the same time, and also somewhat like the Sentinel released in the X-Men line the year prior.  Galactus did differ from those other releases, however, in his use of electronic features.  The figure stands just under 14 1/2 inches tall and he has 7 points of articulation.  In terms of scaling, Galactus is clearly not quite the towering giant he tends to be, relative to the others, he’s got a good 9 inches on the standard figures, making him larger enough visibly to sell the idea, while not being so large as to be an impractical size for play and display. Galactus’s articulation is very much a restricted thing, with motion at the shoulders, elbows, wrists, and neck.  The neck is a very small degree of back and forth movement, and the arms, though certainly better in their range, still aren’t really doing much other than sitting at his sides or raising up a bit to hold his accessory.  Due to the electronic features, there is no movement at all in the waist or legs, so he’s a bit more statuesque in that regard.  He’s mostly just meant for standing there and looking rather menacing, which, to be fair, is kind of his main deal.  The mold was brand-new to Galactus at the time (tough the main bulk of it was later re-used for a second deluxe Galactus figure as part of the Silver Surfer tie-in line in 1998), patterned on his classic comics design, as well as aligning with his design as seen in the cartoon at the time (specifically his appearance in Season 1).  It’s more on the basic and stripped down side in terms of detailing, going for broader strokes, softer detailing, and some simpler line work.  The proportions are notably on the chunky side of things, and his head, already enlarged by the helmet, seems a bit too large for the body it’s sitting upon.  There are also some compromises made for the sake of the action features, with a mount on the torso for his accessory, as well as holes in the eyes where the pupils would be, in order to make way for the light up feature, and a spot for a speaker in his abdomen.  The most jarring of these is definitely the mount on the torso, but that’s easier to explain away as having a practical use on his armor, I suppose.  Though certainly leaning more into the toy side, the sculpt does still do a decent enough job of bringing his design into toy form, and it certainly fits well with the other figures stylistically.  The figure’s “horns” and skirt pieces are separate, removable parts on this release.  The horns can warp a bit (as seen on my figure), but do click into place securely.  The skirt pieces….don’t click into place securely, especially the back one, which will fall off at just about any given chance.  Galactus’s color work follows the usual hallmarks of his design, with a lot of purple and blue.  There’s some rather notable issues of matching between the different parts of his assembly, which is a little odd, but the design has enough segmentation to at least hide it a bit more.  Galactus was packed with a large “drill” accessory, which he can hold in front of him and which connects to the front of the figure.  There are actually two variants to the exact connection style of the drill, as seen in the photo, but the Galactus figure’s connection appears to remain the same.  There is a lights and sounds feature to the figure, and the drill interacts with this as well, but between the two copies of this figure I currently own, I wasn’t able to get either working to test it out.  For shame.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I got my original Galactus, at least in part, because he was defective.  The local KB Toys had one whose electronic features didn’t work, so he was discounted, and my dad bought it so that he and my granddad could repair him and get him into working order, and, boom, working Galactus.  For a while, anyway.  This guy got carried around a lot to a lot of different things and certainly got a lot of play time before spending about a decade in the garage, without most of his parts.  In recent years, I’ve put some more serious effort into returning him to his original glory, and found all of his original parts, minus a single horn for his helmet.  Do you know how difficult it is to find just a single horn for a Toy Biz Galactus?  Really difficult, I’ll tell you.  The most practical way to go about it, it turns out, is just buying a second, complete, Galactus, which I in fact did (well, my Dad did, swooping in to buy the second one for me like he did the original) over the summer, when I found one for a good price at Yesterday’s Fun while vacationing with the family.  Perhaps this figure isn’t quite as impressive as the more recent HasLab release, but he certainly fills out the Toy Biz Fantastic Four line-up nicely, and I’m happy to have him back together again.  There: now I’m actually done with the Fantastic Four reviews.

Flashback Friday Figure Addendum #0097: B.A.T.

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Flashback Friday Figure Addendum and tagged with , , , , ,

B.A.T.

G.I. JOE: A REAL AMERICAN HERO (HASBRO)

Hey there, it’s Friday.  Well, that sure is nice, I suppose.  Made it to the end of the week and all.  Aren’t we all so proud?  I am.  Okay, so let’s do that whole Flashback thing I like to do at the end of the week, once more jumping back into the world of G.I. Joe, with a return look at the original Cobra B.A.T.!

After being a fairly straightforward military-based line of toys, and then a mostly down to earth adventure series for the first 20 years of its life, in the 80s, G.I. Joe gave up on that whole real world thing and threw caution to the wind. Okay, that’s not true. The first year of the 3 ¾ inch line was actually pretty modest. Then 1983 added Destro and Gung-Ho to the line and all bets were off. Prepare for the neon colors, the wacky specialists, and even the Battle Android Troopers!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The B.A.T. was released in the 1986 series of G.I. Joe: A Real American Hero (which, as I noted in my Lifeline review, was a pretty good year for the line). The figure is 3 ¾ inches tall and has 15 points of articulation. That’s one more point than most of the line! Structurally, the figure was all new at the time, though his pieces would get used for a few other figures (though, none of them were B.A.T.s. It depicts the B.A.T. in its Cobra uniform, but there are actually some nice hints at it being a robot under the clothes, rather than just a normal person. The details are generally pretty sharp, at least for a figure of the time, and the mechanical arms in particular are very nicely detailed. The B.A.T. definitely looks unique from the other Cobra forces, while still fitting in great stylistically. The figure originally had a lenticular piece in the middle of the torso, detailing some of the B.A.T.’s internal mechanics. Sadly, my figure does not have this piece. The paint on the B.A.T. is decent, though not the greatest thing ever. The orange/yellow bits are a bit on the sloppy side, especially around the edges. That said, the overall look is pretty good. The Bat is pretty well accessorized, with four different right hand attachments (normal hand, claw, flame thrower, and gun), as well as a backpack to hold the extra attachments. Also, my figure has a small pistol thrown in, but that isn’t from the original figure.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I picked up the B.A.T. loose from local toy store All Time Toys this past summer. I’ve always loved the B.A.T. design, and I’ve had several of the figures over the years, but I never had the original. Now I do! He’s a pretty nifty little figure, though I do think he’s been surpassed by a few of his successors.

This review was published in November of 2015, about two months after I got the figure.  I believe I slotted him in relatively quickly for review, but the fall of 2015 was honestly a really populated time for new items in need of review.  I’d gotten more inventive in how I mixed things up to keep the reviews more unique over that summer, and I was keeping that going at the time.  The review proper I think holds up pretty well.  It’s one of my briefer text pieces, but that’s not always a bad thing.  Missing at the time of the original review was the figure’s chest lenticular, which I’ve since found a replacement for.  It adds a nice bit of pop to the figure, and certainly makes him look more, you know, finished.

#4151: Clone Trooper — 501st Legion

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , , ,

CLONE TROOPER — 501st LEGION

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (HASBRO)

“The clone trooper forces are gathering together for their next mission – and they want you to join them! With your own Republic Army Identification Card, you can become a member of the most elite fighting force in the galaxy. Your destiny awaits – join today!”

Listen up, here’s the story, about a little guy who lives in a blue world, and all day and all night and everything he see’s is just blue, like him, inside and outside.  

Oh, hey there, didn’t see you guys come in, you know, here on the website.  I was just singing thematically and what not.  What about?  Today’s Star Wars review, who’s another Clone, but his gimmick?  Well, he’s blue.  Da-ba-dee, da-ba-di.  Or some such.  The original clones were blue when they were Lieutenants, but by the time of Revenge of the Sith, the colors signified Legions and Battalions, not ranks.  The blue was then shifted to Anakin’s Legion, the 501st, and The Clone Wars would retroactively make the blue markings on Phase I armor represent the 501st.  And that’s how we get where we are now, looking that this rather blue figure today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Clone Trooper — 501st Legion was released right around the same time as the initial Star Wars: The Clone Wars tie-in push in 2008, designed to coincide with the theatrical film’s release.  He was a Walmart exclusive, seemingly chosen by color, much like his counterpart Commander Fox.  Unlike Fox, however, the 501st Trooper didn’t suffer a price bump, instead maintaining the standard price point for the line.  The figure stands 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 24 points of articulation.  The 501st Trooper uses the exact same mold as the original basic Clone Trooper mold from the line’s launch.  While it’s not quite as show accurate, it remains my favorite standard clone sculpt for this line, so I love seeing all of its uses, even if there aren’t all that many of them.  The paint work is where this guy changes things up, of course, with the most obvious change-up being the addition of the blue markings that signify he’s from the 501st.  The exact shade of blue used was always a bit back and forth.  This one’s on the lighter side, in contrast to the much darker blue used on the Rex from the initial launch.  It’s an odd bit of inconsistency, but I don’t hate the blue chosen here, so I’m not really complaining.  In addition to the extra details, the 501st Trooper also removes the heavy wash from the original clone, so that this guy ends up looking a fair bit cleaner.  While Fox, despite his higher price point, actually had less accessories than the figure whose mold he was sharing, the 501st Trooper not only gets the medium blaster and rocket launcher included with the standard Clone, but also includes the long blaster as well.  The blasters have a slightly brighter silver wash than the main assortment counterparts, which makes them look rather unique.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve never been much of a Walmart shopper, but I was especially not one when this figure hit, especially because the one closest to my parents house had an atrocious toy section, so there was no chance I was going to find this guy.  I knew he existed, and always kind of wanted one, but it just wasn’t really meant to be, at least not until later.  The first one of these I came across actually wound up going to Max, who also really wanted one, and I was already getting a bunch of other clones at the same time, so I let it slide.  When he decided to thin out his collection a few years later, I still hadn’t gotten one, so he passed it along to me, and here he is, having been in my collection for a bit now.  Like most of the early clones from this line, he’s a pretty fantastic all around figure, and just a lot of fun.

#4150: Jetstorm

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

JETSTORM

BEAST MACHINES (McDONALD’S)

In this site’s 14 year run, there have been only two McDonald’s Happy Meal toy reviews, and only one of them was actually written by me.  These days, they don’t tend to be anything all that impressive, but back in the day, back in the ‘90s?  Well, also then they were frequently not that impressive, let’s all be honest.  But every so often you got some that went above the grade.  Offered something at the very least close to the level of quality you might actually even intentionally pay money for.  Today’s one of those.  Let’s talk about Beast Machines.  After a successful three season run with Beast Wars, Hasbro decided they wanted a sequel show, with the remaining cast of Wars returning to Cybertron after leaving prehistoric Earth, and facing Megatron and his army of Vehicons.  While Beast Wars was certainly no stranger to some pathos and serializing of the story, Machines took it even further, and the results were…well, they were mixed to say the least.  Between the two shows, two of the surviving Maximals, Silverbolt and Rhinox, found their sparks reformatted and transferred over to the bodies of two of the Vehicon generals, Jetstorm and Tankor.  Intrigue!  Silverbolt’s kinda my guy when it comes to Beast Wars, so keeping with that theme, I do also kinda like Jetstorm, and I’m looking at his Happy Meal toy today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Jetstorm was released as one of the 9 available toys in McDonald’s Beast Machines promotion, which ran in August of 2000, alongside the show’s second season’s debut.  They covered pretty much the whole core cast of the show, with figures that could transform into both modes for the characters, at least to some degree.  In his robot mode, Jetstorm is about 3 1/2 inches tall (I won’t say “stands” for reasons I’ll get to shortly) and he has 7 workable points of articulation.  So, why not “stands?” Because he really doesn’t.  In the show, Jetstorm would simply hover around when in his robot mode, and as such doesn’t *really* have legs.  The Hasbro figures (which were all quite off model) just gave him legs.  This one, on the other hand…well, you can split the nose of his jet mode in two and make it sort of sit flat, so there’s I guess sort of a way to make him stand like that.  It’s not really very stable, though, and obviously not accurate.  For most of the photos, as you can see, I’ve got him on a flight stand I personally provided, but he’s otherwise not great with remaining upright.  How’s that sculpt, though?  Honestly?  Not terrible.  Sure, he’s kind of chunky and clunky and all the other “unkies,” but compared to what Hasbro put out in the main line, it’s probably the closest any Jetstorm figure gets to actually being show accurate.  He’s even kind of posable, and also pretty decently painted, again, given the market here.  He transforms into his jet-mode, as you would expect, and it’s obviously gonna be pretty simple, but it works well, and the mode is sufficiently different from the robot one, as well as being decently accurate to the show model.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I watched a *little* Beast Wars when it was on, but not much.  Beast Machines, on the other hand, I actually saw a lot of in its first run.  Fox Kids was also running Avengers: United They Stand and Digimon in ’99, so I got into pretty much watching the whole block, Machines included.  I didn’t *love* it, but I dug the Jetstorm stuff, and then some re-runs of Wars caught me up to speed on Silverbolt, and I really liked him, so that kind of stuck.  Back in 2000, my cousin Rusty got this guy, and he didn’t really care about it, so I ultimately got to keep it, and I always rather liked it.  I couldn’t tell you what happened to it over the years, but I missed it.  Seven years working at a toy store gives you a lot of access to pretty much everything, so I did eventually see this guy come through, and Max pretty much forced me to take him home.  He really had to twist my arm on that one, I swear.  He’s fun.  He’s basic and clunky, and definitely a toy that came packaged with some food, but within the confines of what he is, he’s really cool.

#4149: Dr. Mid-Nite

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

DR. MID-NITE

SUPER POWERS (McFARLANE)

“The original Doctor Mid-Nite, Dr. Charles McNider, lost his sight to a grenade, and fought crime alongside the original Justice Society of America.”

Before Matt Murdock’s debut as Daredevil in 1964, the premier visually impaired vigilante was Dr. Mid-Nite, a golden age DC hero who first appeared in 1941.  In contrast to Murdock, who was truly blind (albeit with greatly increased senses otherwise), McNider’s vision returned in the dark, allowing him to still see at night or through use of special darkened lenses.  What does that mean?  Mostly, it means that sick-ass goggles were a standard part of his costume design, and who doesn’t love that?  Toy makers certainly do, if the decent number of Dr. Mid-Nite figures out there is anything to go by.  Here’s another one!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Dr. Mid-Nite is the final figure in the 14th assortment of McFarlane’s Super Powers line, where he’s figure 72 in the overall line-up.  He’s the third of three JSA members in this set, seen here in his classic costume.  The figure stands just under 4 3/4 inches tall and he has 7 points of articulation.  Mid-Nite is built on the line’s original Superman base body, admittedly not one of my favorites, mostly due to the kind of oversized nature of it.  McNider was classically shown to be of a more average build, so I’d have more expected the Flash-style build.  It seems to have been largely chosen because they had the cuffed boots for it, used by Black Adam in this same assortment.  It’s worth noting that the Starman from the three pack was on the same mold, and McNider did pass himself off as Ted in-universe for a while, so there’s at least some internal consistency there.  He gets a new head sculpt and a belt add-on piece.  Sizing aside, it all fits together pretty well, and I do especially like the head sculpt, which manages to get Mid-Nite’s classic look down pretty great.  It’s all topped off with a cloth cape piece, and its honestly one of the best capes in this last run of figures.  There’s just something about the particular material that hangs really well on the figure.  The color work on this figure is appropriately bright and eye catching, which I always do like.  The paint application’s generally okay, though there’s some notable slop and bleed over around the goggles on the head, which I don’t love.  Otherwise, though, it all works out okay.  Mid-Nite includes no accessories, which isn’t all that odd for the line, but I do kind of wish they’d included his pet owl Hooty.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I quite like the JSA in general, but Dr. Mid-Nite’s always been a particular favorite of mine, going back to the old DC Direct PVC collection figurine.  I’ve picked up a few of his other figures over the years, but, with the advent of adding more JSA members to the Super Powers line-up, he’s certainly been high on my list.  He was by far the figure in this set I was most looking forward to.  While I’m not crazy about the choice of base body, I do still love the final product, and he’s absolutely my favorite of the set.

#4148: Penance

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

PENANCE

GENERATION X (TOY BIZ)

“The young woman called Penance possesses the mutant ability to internalize negative energy around her, turning her body into a diamond-hard, razor-sharp weapon. Held prisoner by the energy-stealing mutant Empath for an undetermined number of years, she escaped and was transported to the doorstep of Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. Now, Banshee and Emma Frost face the challenge of reaching out to help a girl who can slice apart anything she touches”

Okay, so there’s this Marvel character named Penance, and their identity is all mysterious, and they’re wrapped up in some sort of weird…bondage related gear, and their gimmick is like, pain, and being literally edgy.  Would you believe that this has happened twice, with two completely unrelated characters?  Because it has.  And one of them is objectively better than the other, but given that one of them was “let’s take Speedball, a fun lovable character and make him angsty and broody and just totally ruin him,” the other one being “better” isn’t exactly high praise, but it’s where we are here.  Introduced in Generation X #1, Penance was a big ol’ mystery character, though she was originally intended to be a random Yugoslavian girl named Yvette.  A creative team change just kind of made things more complicated, as it was revealed that Penance was in fact Monet St Croix, and that her fellow Gen X team-member who was supposedly Monet was actually Monet’s younger twin sisters Nicole and Claudette fused into one being, masquerading as their older sister.  An altercation with Emplate (who was revealed to be the eldest St Croix sibling, Marius) put Monet back in her own body, and the twins into Penance’s body, but then they got removed as well, and the body that was Penance continued on as “the Hollow” for a bit?  Are you confused?  Well, yeah, that tracks.  Me too.  Anyway, here’s this figure of Penance, from when she was secretly Monet St Croix…well, at least in continuity, if perhaps not in reality.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Penance was released in the first series of Toy Biz’s Generation X tie-in line.  She’s the final team member in the set, though I suppose “team member” is at times a loose term with her.  She’s got the uniform, though, is more what I’m getting at.  The figure stands about 5 inches tall and he has 4 points of articulation.  Penance’s sculpt has a lot of similarities to Chamber in its approach, with its even more limited articulation relative to the others in the line, the sort of softer detailing, and the decision to put her in a team uniform she was wearing on the covers, but still not in the book at this point.  The softness is odd, especially for a character like Penance, whose whole gimmick is “real sharp.”  It’s not the worst, overall, and it covers the basic details of her design alright.  I think the head, particularly the hair, seems to miss the mark a bit on how she looked in the comics.  It’s just got too much volume and roundness in its shape.  Penance has a built in slashing action feature; pushing down the lever on her back swings the arms up and down. In terms of coloring, Penance is sort of brighter than she maybe should be, I feel.  She was wearing mostly black in the comics, but here it’s a sort of mid-tone purple.  It seems…off?  I feel like the softness of the sculpt wouldn’t be as obvious if it weren’t as bright.  Penance was packed with four shackle pieces that go on her arms and legs, as well as a display stand.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I don’t really have much of an attachment to Penance as a character, aside from knowing this figure existed, and reading some early issues of the comics back in the day, and she’s not exactly one I really invested myself in after the fact.  She’s…you know…kinda confusing.  The figure isn’t confusing, I suppose, but she’s also not great.  It’s a design that didn’t really translate all that well, and without the attachment to the character like I had with Chamber, it’s hard to feel much about this figure.  It…is?  So, that’s what she’s got going for her.  Existence.  Well, it puts her ahead of some of the other team members.

Flashback Friday Figure Addendum #0096: Time Traveler

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Flashback Friday Figure Addendum and tagged with , , ,

TIME TRAVELER

MICRONAUTS (PALISADES)

Welcome to Friday everyone! We made it! Hooray!  And I’m here to talk about Micronauts, for a second time in the same week!  Is that even legal?  We’ll find out, I guess.  Here’s a second look at the Time Traveler!

Mego’s Micronauts line of the ‘70s was never a super huge hit, and it was definitely overshadowed by the many toys first toylines of the ‘80s, but it does still have something of a cult following. This cult following helped get the line a relaunch in the early 2000s, courtesy of fan-favorite toy company Palisades. Palisades put a lot of effort into bringing Micronauts back. Sadly, the line was cursed with several pretty awful factory issues, causing the final figures to suffer, hurting the sales of what was already a pretty niche line. This came back to bite Palisades pretty hard, leading to the end of their Micronauts line after just two full series, and their eventual bankruptcy. Kind of a bummer. So hey, how ‘bout those figures, though? Let’s have a look at what is perhaps the most iconic of all Micronauts figures, the Time Traveler!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Time Traveler was part of the first series of Palisades’ Micronauts line. The figure was available in four possible color schemes, two transparent and two opaque. This one is the clear translucent one, which is a pretty direct recreation of one of the original Time Travelers, with just a few minor differences. He’s 3 ¾ inches tall and he has 18 points of articulation, same as his 70s predecessor. Sculpturally, this figure is more or less identical to the original version, but there are a few differences to note. The real differences are on the head, which is a little thinner than the original and features a higher level of detail work. It’s certainly a higher quality sculpt than the original, though I’m not sure I prefer it to the original. It’s in that weird area of being a more modernized sculpt that still possesses many of the style tics of the vintage toy, but without the nostalgic charm. The Time Traveler possesses no actual paint, but his head and all of his chest plates are done in a nice vac-metalized gold. The golden head is actually another change from the vintage figures, where all of the Time Travelers were silver. While the original Time Traveler figures each only included a single chest plate, chosen at random from the four possible designs, Palisades’ Time Traveler included all four of the original plates, as well as two new designs (though, I could only find four of the chest plates when I went to take the pictures!). My personal favorite is the “windows” piece, but they’re all pretty cool. The Time Traveler also included the L-port piece from the original figure, as well as a black display stand.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Palisades’ Micronauts line, amongst other things, was not super easy to find, especially before the introduction of all the online toy buying options we now have. I did end up finding a Time Traveler at an out of the way toy store around the time of release, but it wasn’t this one. Unfortunately, the first series figures were incredibly fragile and he ended up breaking, which was a definite bummer. I ended up getting this guy many years later, courtesy of the Toy Robot Museum, near Allentown, PA. Even with all of the factory issues and the slight changes from the originals, this guy’s a lot of fun, and I’m definitely glad I managed to find one.

In October of 2015, I decided to rip the band-aid off on discussing Palisades’ Micronauts, and really did just jump right into it there, huh?  Back when they were new, I was downright obsessed with the Palisades run, but I only owned four of them during the line’s actual run. It was ultimately better that way, I think, because it’s a frustrating line.   My review holds up fine, but I was missing two of the chest plates at the time, which I’ve since found again.  Unfortunately, in the mean time, he’s also succumb to the dreaded Series 1 quality control issues, and one of his elbow joints has cracked, so these new photos are *very* carefully staged.  I do still love these figures, but it’s definitely better from afar.

#4147: Commander Fox

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

COMMANDER FOX

STAR WARS: THE CLONE WARS (HASBRO)

“Commander Fox heads a squad of clone troopers who accompany Padmé to the palace of Ziro the Hutt. She hopes to reopen negotiations with the Hutts, who have been tricked into believing the Jedi abducted Jabba’s son. The commander finds a hostile reception when the group arrives at Ziro’s lavish palace on Coruscant.”

The last time I was talking about Clone Wars, it was the Genndy Tartakovsky 2D-animated series, which actually aired between Attack of the Clones and Revenge of the Sith, but there’s *another* Clone Wars animated series, launched with a 2008 theatrical film that served as the pilot to the show, which ran for seven seasons over the course of 12 years, and actually got a lot more toy coverage.  A lot of toy coverage that I happen to own, so behold, a new Star Wars theme for me to dive into for a good long while!  The back bone of Hasbro’s Clone Wars tie-in line was, unsurprisingly, the clones, and today I’m looking at one of those, Clone Commander Fox!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Commander Fox was released early on in Hasbro’s Star Wars: The Clone Wars tie-in line, right around the initial launch assortment and the theatrical release of the movie in 2008.  He was an exclusive release to a retail chain that shares his taste in being primarily red.  And also his taste in just being…the worst.  And turning on the people that trusted them.  Man, maybe Fox was a better fit for an exclusive than any of us knew in 2008.  I’m getting side-tracked though, aren’t I?  Fox was a standard packaged figure stuck into a clamshell, which was used to justify charging an extra $6 for him, which didn’t go over well at the time, but then people bought him anyway, so I guess no lesson was really learned.  Fox was seen here in his Phase I armor, which was all we knew him in at the time.  The figure stands 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 24 points of articulation.  Fox was entirely built from parts re-used from other figures in the launch assortment.  He’s predominantly the first Captain Rex figure, minus the removable pauldron and with the alternate helmeted head from the first Obi-Wan.  While the parts aren’t bad at all on their own, it’s a slightly awkward combo, mostly owing to the fact that the head sits a bit too high on the neck joint, so he’s got a bit of giraffe neck going on.  Otherwise, the figure’s mostly being sold by the new paint scheme.  The red seems a bit too dark, and the application’s a bit sloppy around the edges, but he’s at the very least pretty unique.  Fox is packed with a DC-15 long blaster rifle, and a pair of DC-17 blaster pistols.  He was notably lacking in the missile launcher style accessory that prominently featured in the early line releases, despite his much higher price point.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I recall Fox being released back in ’08, but I never actually saw one at retail, so I never had a chance to debate whether he was worth the extra money or not.  2008 me probably would have caved, if I’m honest.  That said, it was actually 2019 me that ultimately did the caving, when I got the chance to snag a sealed one through work at a stretch of time where he’d actually fallen a bit in value.  It’s honestly wild that he was so much more expensive than the main line, because he feels rather behind where most of this line was.  He’s certainly not bad, mostly by virtue of working from a really good bank of parts, but he’s a little awkward in his assembly, and he just has this overwhelming feeling of being rather phoned in.  Hasbro just hadn’t quite worked out how to make these repainted exclusive clones work to their advantage just yet for the line.