RIPPLEY

FORTNITE: VICTORY ROYALE SERIES (HASBRO)

Fortnite has become quite a merchandising juggernaut in the last few years, and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon.  Just in the realm of action figures alone, there are no fewer than three toy companies that hold the license.  Despite still never having played the game even a single time, I’ve looked at offerings from both Jazwares and McFarlane.  Hasbro has just recently gotten in on things as well, offering up their own 6-inch-scale line of figures, dubbed the Victory Royale Series, which is just starting to show up now.  And, at this point, I’m not even gonna fight it, really.  So, let’s look at Rippley, a little blobby guy added during Chapter 2’s first season in the game.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Rippley is one of the four figures that make up the first basic assortment of Hasbro’s Fortnite: Victory Royale Series.  The line just started showing up at retail in the last month or so.  Rippley’s kind of the resident “goofy” figure, in with three of the more straightforward designs.  The figure stands about 6 1/2 inches tall and he has 31 points of articulation, which, yes, even includes a neck joint, as much as it might look like it doesn’t.  In general, Rippley’s articulation scheme follows the set-up we’ve seen on Hasbro’s Classified figures, albeit without the drop hips and butterfly shoulders.  It’s a pretty good set-up, and while he’s slightly more restricted by his design, he’s still quite posable.  As far as scaling goes, Rippley and the rest of the assortment will more or less fit right in with Jazwares own Legendary Series offerings, as well as other 6-inch-scale Hasbro lines (barring the slightly under-scaled Overwatch figures, but that line’s dead anyway).  Rippley’s sculpt is all new, and it’s pretty fun.  He’s a little bulkier than the others, and the blobby parts are very smooth and basic, but all of his gear has an impressive level of detail and texturing, which really adds a lot.  In order to facilitate proper posability in the neck joint, the top of Rippley’s blobby self is designed for removal.  It’s pretty seamless, since it connects right at the edge of his vest, and it stays nice and secure.  You could be forgiven for not even realizing it was removable, honestly.  Rippley’s color work is generally pretty basic, but it works.  I really dig the translucent blue, and the cartoony smile on the face is a nice touch.  I’m curious to see if Hasbro decides to do the other color variants, just to get more uses out of the mold.  Rippley is packed with the Sludge Hammer harvesting tool, Containment Pack back bling, and the pump shot weapon, sporting the Rippley Wrap, a string of words that mean it’s translucent blue, like he is.  I can get behind that.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As stated in the intro, I’ve still not played any Fortnite, nor do I ever really intend to, so I don’t *technically* have a reason to keep buying any of the toys.  Hasbro taking over the 6-inch line didn’t feel like something I needed to try or anything, but then I saw this blob guy, and I just really found him way too nifty to pass on.  Plus, hey, I got to try out the line, so that’s cool.  At least as far as Rippley is concerned, the line doesn’t feel too terribly far removed from what Jazwares was doing, but I guess that’s not a bad thing, since those figures were pretty cool.  Rippley is a lot of fun.  I’m as unlikely to grab more of these as any of the other Fortnite lines, but I’ll still probably be grabbing them if they look cool.  And Rippley certainly looked cool.

Thanks to my sponsors over at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure to review.  If you’re looking for cool toys both old and new, please check out their website.