Tag Archives: 90s

#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.

#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.

#4144: Chamber

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

CHAMBER

GENERATION X (TOY BIZ)

“The privileged life of Jonathan Starsmore was shattered forever when his mutant ability emerged for the first time. Most of his chest and lower jaw was blown away because he couldn’t control the powerful psionic-biokinetic energy that exists within him. Chamber is the oldest of Banshee’s new pupils, but he’ll have to emerge from the shell that his injury has forced him into, before he can emerge as a leader of his fellow students.”

What’s an X-Men team without a guy with energy based powers he can’t control manifesting in a way that makes him an outcast, who also has a penchant for leather jackets? Well, like, I guess that’s maybe the New Mutants?  Generation X was having none of it, though, so when they officially made the group of youngsters that had teamed up during “The Phalanx Covenant” a proper team in Generation X #1, Jonathan “Jono” Starsmore joined the line-up, as Chamber, the guy with no lower jaw or upper chest.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Chamber was released in Series 1 of Toy Biz’s Generation X toyline.  He’s fairly pivotal to the comic’s first few issues, especially in regards to both Emplate and Penance, who were also in Series 1, plus there was also just a big push behind the character (and a sensible one at that, since he remained perhaps the book’s most signature character even well after its ending), so it all tracked pretty well.  The figure stands about 5 inches tall and he has 4 points of articulation.  None of the Generation X figures were very posable, but Chamber gets hit harder than most, due to his design removing the possibility of a neck joint, leaving him with just the shoulders and hips.  Chamber’s sculpt was all-new to him and remained unique.  It shows him in his team suit (which in 1995, he still wasn’t really wearing in the book, but it was showing up on the covers), with his signature leather jacket over it.  Chamber’s original prototype had a rather different sculpt, with a more visible break between the energy of his torso and his head, as well as closed fists and a zipped up jacket.  The final product is…well, it’s fine.  The jacket is a separate piece, and it’s got a nice flow about it.  The torso/head is a bit soft on the detailing, which makes it a little tricky to make out exactly what’s going on.  His hair does at least have a nice dynamic flow to it, even if it does somewhat have the consistency of a tootsie roll. Otherwise, the sculpt’s perfectly fine.  He’s a lot less pre-posed than other figures from the line, opting for a more basic standing pose, albeit one with enough flair to not be too boring.  He had a light-up feature worked into the torso, which was the same as the one used on the Fantastic Four Human Torch; pulling the string on his back would create sparks in the torso.  It has the benefit of not relying on batteries, but since it’s just a friction thing, used copies tend to be too worn down to work, and new copies tend to have seized up.  Mine’s somewhere between those two points, but still isn’t in working order.  The color work on Chamber is decent enough.  He matches up with the other team members in terms of uniform colors, and his base application is all pretty clean.  Mine’s taken a beating over the years as you can see.  Chamber is packed with a team logo display stand, and…well, that’s it.  Just the stand. 

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I didn’t have Chamber during the original line’s run proper, but I did have him very shortly thereafter.  Sometime in the summer of 2000, I got an X-Men 2099 Meanstreak, and saw the Generation X line-up on the back of his box, and got it into my head that I wanted Chamber and Skin, and my dad did a bit of hunting and we found these two at a comic shop sort of near by.  Chamber was the one I really wanted, and he’s always stood out to me as my favorite member of the team.  The figure’s honestly kind of mediocre, upon review, but the rather cool design of the character still bleeds through, and I do still quite like him.

And I almost let this review finish without noting it, but over the weekend, the site officially made it into its 14th year.  Man, time sure does fly.  Crazy stuff.  Thanks for reading everybody!

Flashback Friday Figure Addendum #0095: Ultron

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

ULTRON

THE VAULT (TOY BIZ)

We have arrived, dear readers, at another Friday, so it’s time for another installment of Flashback Friday Figure Addendum!  Today, we jump back a decade and some change, with a follow up look at Ultron!

Countdown to Avengers: Age of Ultron: 5 days remaining.

Alright, now we get to the main event! Before, I was looking at figures of the various Avengers members from the upcoming movie, but from here on out, it’s all Ultron all the time! Poor Ultron went quite a while without seeing any action figures. He didn’t even get a figure in Mattel’s Secret Wars line, despite being a part of the comic upon which the toyline had been based (thanks Mattel…). He was finally granted a figure during ToyBiz’s 5-inch Marvel heyday.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Ultron was released as part of ToyBiz’s The Vault line. The Vault was one of several one series lines that ToyBiz released around the same time, covering lots of different parts of the Marvel universe. The Vault is named after the Marvel universe high-security prison of the same name, and it featured a line-up of three lesser-known Marvel villains. This figure is on the larger side for this scale, at roughly 6 inches in height, and he has 16 points of articulation. The figure features an all-new sculpt, which remained unique to this figure. I’m not 100% certain, but I don’t believe this design is one from the comics. It definitely isn’t the “classic” Ultron, that’s for sure. It plays up the more robotic aspects of the character, which I suppose is a plus, but it lacks the elegant simplicity of the classic design. All that said, it’s a perfectly reasonable sculpt from a purely aesthetic standpoint. There are a nice variety of textures and details, and that helps to liven the figure up a bit. I quite like the clawed hands and two-toed feet. The head is probably the figure’s weakest point(and that’ll be a recurring point for the rest of the week); Ultron’s had loads of different body types over the years, but the one thing to remain fairly consistent is his head. It’s not awful here, but it’s pretty far from the standard Ultron noggin. It’s too thin, and it looks particularly pinched around the antennae. And speaking of those antennae, they represent another pretty big departure from the usual Ultron look. They should be further down on his head, hovering over his cheeks. Instead, they start where his “ears” would be and go upwards, looking a bit like a rabbit’s ears. The figure also suffers from some somewhat wonky paint apps. The actual color of his outer shell is wildly inconsistent, ranging from sliver with very slight blue overtones to a rather deep metallic blue in a few areas. Also, there’s this weird thing on his torso and lower legs where he’s got these strange somewhat transparent dark grey brush strokes. I don’t really know what they’re supposed to be, but they just kind of stick out and they were rather different from figure to figure. Ultron was packed with some sort of containment piece, which went over his head and hands and plugged into his shoulder. It was kind of cool, but ultimately non-essential (and I lost mine anyway). In addition to the restraints, Ultron also has a light-u feature, which made his eyes glow red when a button on his back was pushed.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

This figure was actually my very first exposure to the character of Ultron. My dad, who was an avid Avengers fan, purchased one for himself, and when I asked who he was I was presented with several of his comic appearances to read. I pretty much immediately fell in love with the character. Not long after, I received my own Ultron figure as a Christmas gift from my good friend Pat Sponagle. Sure, he’s not the most accurate Ultron figure, but he was the only one in existence at the time. And, as the old saying goes, beggars can’t be choosers. Eventually, I got the more classically inspired United They Stand Ultron, but this one served as one of my favorite figures up to that point, and he still holds some meaning to me. Inaccuracies aside, he’s a good toy.

I’ve encountered a few of these pre-Age of Ultron reviews in my addendums, and its an interesting reflection to see how excited I was for a movie that a lot of people just sort of overlooked.  11 years later, I’ve gone back and forth on my feelings a little bit, but I do think Age of Ultron is still the Avengers movie that feels the most like an actual Avengers comic, so I stand by my excitement.  Part of the countdown was reviewing all of the Ultron figures in my collection at the time, in successive order, which started off with this review.  It’s a review I stand by.  This isn’t a *bad* figure, but it sets a trend for sort of wonky Ultrons, especially from Toy Biz.  Missing from my original review were the figure’s accessories, namely a shoulder-mounted cannon and a set of restraints, which I have subsequent re-discovered.  As noted in the original review, they’re sort of weird and non-essential, but pretty fun.

#4142: Megatron

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

MEGATRON

TRANSFORMERS: MACHINE WARS (KENNER)

The success that was Transformers in the ‘80s sort of waned as they moved into the next decade, with the Generation 2 rebrand never really finding its footing in the market.  The franchise was given new life, however, in 1996 with Beast Wars, which shifted the focus to creature-based alt-modes, and found a solid fanbase, which was a mix of old and new fans.  Some of the old fans were still longing for vehicle-based Transformers, and Hasbro/Kenner gave it another try in 1997, with the KB Toys-exclusive Machine Wars line.  It wasn’t really a smash success, running only 12 figures across different sizes, all of them re-using molds from earlier runs.  It did, however, serve to get some unused and rare molds out, so I guess that was pretty nice.  And, in a weird turn of events, it got me a Megatron.  Let’s look at that figure today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Megatron was released as part of the “Basics” assortment of Transformers: Machine Wars, which was the smaller scale line of figures.  He was one of four basic Decepticons, all of them jets.  Megatron shared his mold with his “clone” Megaplex (and indeed the art of the two characters is swapped between their packaging, with the Megaplex art appearing on Megatron’s card and vice-versa), and they both served to finally release the cancelled G2 Skystriker mold.  In his robot mode, the figure stands 4 inches tall and he has 9 workable points of articulation.  The articulation on these smaller guys was pretty solid, offering a good basic assortment of joints, with a good range of motion.  The arms and legs are all balljoints, so there’s a lot to be done with them, keeping him on par with the typical Legends/Core class figure of the modern line.  His mold is a good precursor of things to come.  It feels stylistically a lot like a G1 animation based figure, with a lot of good classic robot elements at play.  Though not sculpted to *be* Megatron, the head has a certain degree of a Megatron vibe to it, especially with the helmet shape.  Megatron’s alt-mode is an F-22 Raptor fighter jet, which he transforms into with some spring assistance under the back of the figure.  The arms and legs fold up decently enough, but definitely do just hang there a bit.  He’s got some landing gear, which folds out of the legs and the nose of the cockpit.  The color scheme here is a sort of turquoise/sky blue and white set-up, which doesn’t feel very Megatron-y, and in fact feels a bit more heroic, if I’m honest.  This, coupled with his lack of any sort of faction symbol, does kind of muddy a bit who he’s meant to be.  Megatron is packed with a blaster with a removable muzzle.  It can be disassembled and stored in the backs of his legs for when he’s in jet mode, or just doesn’t feel like carrying around a gun, I guess.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Megatron was more than likely my first ever Transformer, but I didn’t know it at the time.  My grandparents on my dad’s side got the four grandchildren each one of the jets for Christmas in 1997, and Megatron was the one I got.  I tore him open at our Christmas gathering, and the packaging certainly didn’t make it home, so I didn’t know his name or the line he came from.  When I actually got into Transformers later on, this guy’s total lack of any markings led me to believe he was a knock off of some sort.  He did get a lot of use, more often than not with my Star Wars figures, where he served as a droid companion.  Over the years, he fell to pieces and I honestly don’t know where any of my original figure ended up.  A few years ago, one of the later re-decos of this mold came through All Time, which led to me realizing it was an official Transformer mold and doing a little digging, resulting in my discovery of who exactly this guy was.  And then, not terribly long after, a full run of Machine Wars came through, giving me a chance to snag this guy to replace my original.  I really quite like this one.  He still doesn’t feel like Megatron, but perhaps that’s why I like him so much.  He can just be what he was to my much younger self, which was just a cool transforming robot toy I knew very little about.

#4140: Jubilee

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

JUBILEE

GENERATION X (TOY BIZ)

“Jubilation Lee spent lots of time in the malls of Southern California before she first displayed her mutant powers. It was her time spent as an X-Man, however, that may have spoiled Jubilee – now that she’s just another student at Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters. But considering her studies will include how to fully develop her ability to create explosive plasma ‘fireworks’, there’s bound to be plenty of excitement.”

The cast of Generation X, which spun out of the “Phalanx Covenant” crossover, were a lot of new faces for the franchise, but in addition to the team’s two veteran advisors of Banshee and Emma Frost, the main team also had Jubilee, a fairly notable junior member of the main team in the years prior, who was, much like Kitty Pryde before her, graduating to her own team.  While the main X-Men line under Toy Biz rather dragged its feet on adding Jubilee to the line-up, her more prominent placement on Generation X would prove a quicker path to the action figure treatment.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Jubilee was released in the first series of Toy Biz’s Generation X line.  She was one of four team members in the opening line-up, and was the only returning character in the batch.  As touched on in the intro, this was the first of the three Jubilees under Toy Biz’s tenure, and also just the first Jubilee figure in general.  The figure stands 4 7/8 inches tall (with a slight crouch) and she has 6 points of articulation.  I’ve mentioned before that Generation X was a less articulated line than its compatriots from Toy Biz, for whatever reason.  Jubilee continues this trend, with no elbow or knee joints.  Her scaling is also off relative to the X-Men line (and, honestly, even relative to the other Generation X figures), since she’d be over 5 inches tall if standing straight, and that’s not really right for a character usually depicted as being on the shorter side.  I guess she fit in fine with those later run Wolverines that were always so large.  Jubilee’s sculpt was new to her and would remain mostly unique; only the head saw re-use, for another Jubilee figure.  She’s seen here sporting her Gen X team suit; it’s still got the signature yellow raincoat and gloves, but gives her a little bit more of a super heroic look than more civilian gear that she tended to sport.  It’s not a bad sculpt.  There’s a lot of pre-posing to it, though, and she definitely feels rather bulky for Jubilee.  Look at the size of those hands and feet!  I do quite like the head sculpt, though.  It feels pretty on the mark for the character, especially within the usual Toy Biz style.  Jubilee’s color work is rather basic, but generally does what it needs to.  There’s a lot of yellow, as there should be, and the paint (which has taken a rather notable beating on mine) is applied fairly cleanly.  Jubilee is packed with a blast effect (which her spring loaded left arm can “throw”…sort of) that was shared with the X-Force line’s Exodus, released the same year, a pair of roller blades, and a display stand.  Honestly, not a bad little set-up. 

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Jubilee is quite an early one for me.  I know she pre-dates my family’s move to the house I spent most of my childhood in, which puts her probably in my first ten?  Wow, that’s crazy early.  Anyway, since I was into X-Men: The Animated Series, and she was a core cast member, she was definitely high on my list, and my dad made a note of that and she was a surprise for me one day when he came home from work.  She’s been kind of an unsung part of my collection since that day.  I can’t say she was ever my favorite or top of my list, but she’s just always been a part of my collection, which is kind of nuts.  She’s far from perfect, and kind of awkward to fit in with the rest of my X-Men from the time, but still very much in the category of nifty.  And I do like that.  I like a figure that’s nifty.

#4138: Call

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

CALL

ALIEN: RESURRECTION (KENNER)

The Alien movies are neat on a number of different levels, and one of the more interesting aspects of the franchise is that it didn’t really have much in the way of a cohesive vision.  Each subsequent entry in the story being helmed by a different crew of creators made something patchwork, with each entry unique to itself, for better or for worse.  There are, however, through lines on the movies, some obvious ones, having to do with narratives, timelines, and even returning characters, and others less so.  One of my favorite running gags has to do with each entry’s resident synthetic, and the advancing alphabet of their names, starting with Ash, progressing to Bishop, skipping a movie, and then getting to Call.  Heck, they even kept it going with Prometheus, which had David, but then Covenant gave us Walter, and it kind of ruined it.  I don’t wanna talk about that, though, because it just upsets me.  So, we’re jumping back to Call, the focus of today’s entry!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Call is another of the six standard figures released by Kenner in 1997 to tie-in with Alien: Resurrection.  She’s one of two “humans,” though that’s sort of a relative term for both her and Ripley, so I guess maybe there’s actually no humans in the line-up at all?  The figure stands about 6 1/4 inches tall and she has 5 points of articulation.  She’s structurally very similar to the previously reviewed Ripley figure, which makes a degree of sense, them being in the same line and all.  The height of the figure is due to her rather extreme posing; were she standing straight up, she’d be closer to 7 inches, so, I guess if you were so inclined, you could try to slip her in with your NECA figures, what with them not doing a Call and all.  Of course, stylistically, I don’t know that she’d really fit.  She’s got that aforementioned pre-posing, which comes with it a sort of lack of use for the articulation, which mostly is just there for some minor tweaks to help her stand.  And that’s good, because standing can be a bit iffy for her.  Finding that center of balance takes some doing, for sure.  Her pose is I guess sort of similar to Ripley, but just slightly tweaked for variety’s sake.  She’s only got one gripping hand, instead of two, but hers is at least meant to actually hold something, so that’s an improvement.  The head sculpt doesn’t look *unlike* Wynona Ryder.  Certainly there’s some of her in there.  A better paint job might help, for sure, but she’s aided by having hair that actually looks about right, unlike Ripley.  She’s wearing the one jumpsuit she wears for the whole movie, which I suppose does make sense.  She wears a vest over it in the movie, which isn’t here, but it’s close enough, I suppose, and its got some nice sculpted detailing. The paint’s perfectly fine, if not anything to write home about.  Very basic on the head, with some nice accent work on the uniform.  Call is packed with two guns (which she can only hold one at a time), a pair of arm blades (because maybe she’s also a Predator?), a crawling face hugger (which actually makes a lot of sense, since she gets attacked by one in the water sequence), and a chest burster.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The story of how I got Call is, if you can believe it, the exact story of how I got the Ripley figure I reviewed two weeks ago.  I never really sought any of them out, but a few years ago, this pair was donated to the Farpoint Charity Auction, and my dad got them for me.  Both of them have been sitting unopened for a while, but I finally did the thing and opened them.  Of the two, Call actually works a bit better, I think.  Apart from only being able to hold one gun at a time, she does interact with her accessories a bit better, and she’s generally more in line with her movie appearance.  With no other Call out there, this one’s really the only option, if you *really* need a Call, and also, she’s not terrible.

#4136: Emplate

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

EMPLATE

GENERATION X (TOY BIZ)

“It’s unknown how long the evil being known only as Emplate has existed. Uninterested in plots of destruction or world domination, the mysterious mutant has one concern only: satisfying the eternal hunger that possesses him. To do this he feeds on the genetic marrow of other mutants – the younger the better! This, coupled with his ability to rechannel energy that he absorbs, makes him a most dangerous threat to Generation X”

The ‘90s X-Men spin-off Generation X started off in the pages of the main books, coming out of the “Phalanx Covenant” crossover, so, they’re first antagonists were, you know, the Phalanx.  When they got their own book, they also got their own antagonists, and first amongst them was Emplate, a dark and mysterious villain that nobody knew anything about, who actually turned out to be related to a member (or rather, members) of the team.  What? That totally *never* happens in an X-Men book.  Since Emplate was right there at the start of the book, he was also right there at the start of the toyline, getting his first, and thus far only, action figure!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Emplate was released in Series 1 of Toy Biz’s Generation X toy line, as one of the two antagonists in the line-up.  The figure stands 5 1/2 inches tall and he has 6…ish points of articulation.  The Generation X figures were all less articulated than the usual Toy Biz Marvel stuff, lacking the usual elbows and knees in particular.  Emplate’s neck joint is also essentially motionless, but he does at least get movement on his left wrist, by virtue of his extending hand action feature.  The sculpt on this figure was new at the time, and remained unique to this figure for the the entirety of Toy Biz’s run.  It’s based more on his earliest appearances, and it’s definitely got a lot of stylizing to it.  It’s certainly distinctive, though feels maybe a bit more tame than the art from the books.  There’s a lot of smaller work going into it, though, which is quite nice.  Emplate’s color work is sort of monotone, with big stretches of the same basic colors, mostly molded.  The purple/grey/black set-up made him stand out nicely from the other figures in the set, and do help sell a particularly villainous vibe to him.  Emplate was packed with a standard Generation X logo stand, as well as a figurine of DOA, his little Renfield-like buddy from the comics.  Honestly, I love the recurring “little guy” inclusions from this era of time.  We got some really neat extra characters this way.  I mean, DOA?  Who could imagine getting a DOA figure?  Well, I guess anyone who owns the guy.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I didn’t read Generation X when it was new, so the only figures I got when they were hitting were the Jubilee and Banshee, who I knew from elsewhere.  I got some back-issues towards the end of the ‘90s, and wanted some of the figures, but they got scarce for a bit there.  Well, the team members, anyway.  Emplate?  He was never scarce.  In fact, he was kind of the bane of my existence for a while, as I kept spying Generation X packaging at comic shops, only to find it was Emplate, yet again.  I didn’t get an Emplate until I was an adult, back in 2020, in fact, as part of a large batch of loose figures I picked up while working at All Time.  He and DOA were both present, making for one of the few instances of a complete figure in the batch.  If nothing else, it’s a unique pair.

#4134: Snarl

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

SNARL

TRANSFORMERS: BEAST WARS (KENNER)

“Snarl is seldom seen until the instant he attacks. His camouflage coloring allows him to sneak into Predacon base-camps undetected. Powerful legs give him the ability to lunge forward to attack startled enemies, and in robot mode he can jump straight up to escape incoming missile fire. Snarl is a fearless fighter whose gnashing, serrated teeth and razor-sharp claws are enough to fend off would-be attackers. if they know what’s good for them!”

If there’s one era of Transformers I’m decidedly light on coverage around here, it’s Beast Wars, which is, honestly kind of amusing, given its the incarnation of the franchise that really introduced me to the whole concept.  I guess I had other focuses in the ‘90s for the most part, so they never quite clicked with me.  As such, I don’t have a ton of connection to this version of things (with the most notable exception being Silverbolt, who is one of my favorites in general).  That said, it didn’t *totally* pass me by back in the day, so let’s look at one of the very few figures I actually got during the original run, Snarl, who, it should be noted, is not the G1 guy who turns into a stegosaurus.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Snarl was released in the second year of Kenner’s Beast Wars line, as part of the fourth wave of “Basics,” the smallest of the main classes.  In a three figure assortment, he was the lone Maximal.  Yay for good guys.  Snarl was notably not included in the cartoon, so he’s just a toyline guy (though his Japanese equivalent, Tasmanian Kid, was in the Beast Wars II anime, so there’s *sort of* some cartoon coverage there).  In robot mode, the figure stands about 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 11 practical points of articulation.  Beast Wars marked a real turning point for articulation in the Transformers world, and Snarl showcases that, with a range of motion that’s on par with, if not a bit above the standard for the era in which he was released.  His robot mode is a pretty fun, rather basic and by the numbers design.  It’s got a bit of kibble, especially on the back, but the main bot works in the beast elements rather cleverly.  He’s got sort of a cannon thing that mounts on his arm, which is neat, if not terribly involved or anything. Snarl’s alternate beast mode is a Tasmanian devil…well, allegedly, anyway.  Whether it, you know, actually looks like a Tasmanian devil is a different matter.  Common opinion is that he looks more like a quoll?  Honestly, I don’t really know much about either animal (at least in real life; I’m obviously familiar with the Looney Tunes character, who this beast mode *also* doesn’t look like).  It’s at least a pretty neat look, with a fairly intuitive transformation sequence, and the end result is sufficiently different from his robot mode.  The cannon thing becomes his tail, and it is tied into his action feature.  There’s a spring-loaded launching thing, which, in contrast to the usual set-up, actually has the spring in the “missile” part, which launches the main figure forward.  It doesn’t do a lot, really just scooting him forward maybe an inch if he’s on a smooth surface, but it’s good for general amusement.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

This figure was either my first or second Transformer…I don’t know exactly which, but definitely in the first two.  I got him on a trip to, I think either Toy Works or Toy Liquidators, which I went on with my Nana, most likely in celebration of finishing up Kindergarten (which also means it was probably my last notable day of fun before I fell down my parents’ kitchen stairs and broke my collarbone, landing myself in a brace for most of my first summer break), where I was allowed to pick out a selection of stuff.  The break down was two Toy Biz Marvels, a Tom Cruise from Mission Impossible (bought because his name was also Ethan, and pretty much no other reason), and this guy, who I mostly got because he turned into a Tasmanian devil…or at least a close approximation.  I don’t know why exactly this guy called out to me, or even why he stuck with my collection, but he did, and I even managed to unearth his tail a few months ago to complete him.  He’s just a thoroughly fun little figure, and I quite like that.

#4132: Carnage

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

CARNAGE

SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES (TOY BIZ)

“Of all Spider-Man’s foes, Carnage is perhaps the most dangerous, the most feared! Criminal Cletus Kasady shared a prison cell with Eddie Brock (better known as the Lethal Protector, Venom) – that is, until Brock’s symbiote freed its human host. However, Venom left behind a fragment of his alien costume, which bonded with Kasady… creating the sinister menace known as Carnage!”

When the Spider-Man spin-off Venom had gotten too popular to suitably serve as a proper antagonist in the Spider-Man titles, it was decided that the spin-off needed a spin-off, and thus, we got Carnage.  He’s sort of the ur-example of the Marvel approach to new characters in the ‘90s, where they’d take a successful character concept and make it more violent, more edgy, and more extreme, and it’s further dialed up, because Venom was already kind of that to Spider-Man himself.  Carnage was Venom on steroids (which is funny, since he was always depicted as being much smaller and skinnier), and should absolutely not have worked in the long run, but…he did? Like, actually kind of worked within the larger universe, and has proven to have a life outside of the characters that spawned him.  It’s honestly a bit remarkable.  Two years after his 1992 comics debut, he got his first action figure, and I’m looking at that figure today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Carnage was released in the first series of Toy Biz’s Spider-Man: The Animated Series tie-in line, in 1994.  The line was more directly based on the cartoon designs (unlike a lot of the other Toy Biz Marvel “tie-ins” which trended more towards comic based), but in the case of Carnage, that was sort of a moot point, as he hadn’t really had enough time to develop distinctly deviations in his appearance the way some of the others had.  The figure stands 5 inches tall and he has 10 points of articulation.  His articulation scheme is pretty much the Toy Biz standard at the time, though he does get a waist joint, which wasn’t always a guarantee.  Said waist joint is tied into his action feature, as is his right shoulder; turning the figure at the waist moves his arm up and down, in sort of a chopping motion.  Carnage’s sculpt was all-new, and would serve as the basis of a few figures to follow, as it was scaled up for the 10-inch line, repainted for the “Maximum Carnage” tie-in, and ultimately slightly re-tooled for the later unmasked Carnage mold.  It’s a good sculpt.  It’s got the basic set-up down well, with good proportions and all of the important details.  His far more fluid symbiote design is handled via sculpted details, which feature a lot of texturing and “movement”.  The paint aids in this, using a relief style of black accenting to bring out the most from the sculpted texturing.  It does a surprisingly good job at replicating Carnage’s distinctive visual design from the comics.  Carnage was prone to creating a lot more constructs out of his symbiote than Peter or Eddie, so this figure showcases that with three different clip-on pieces, with an axe, a claw, and a more generic goopy symbiote thing.  They clip on easily enough, and help further sell the Carnage look.  The only sort of downside to them is that they’re totally smooth, rather than replicating the texturing of the main figure.  There’s at least some paint work to help sell it, but it’s not quite the same.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As a kid, I had a surprising number of Carnage figures in my collection, but I seemed to have just missed this one.  Given how many others I had, I never really put the effort into tracking this one down, since he seemed rather basic.  As is the case with a lot of other “never put the effort in to track it down” Toy Biz figures, I wound up getting this one mostly because a complete loose one landed in front of me at work a few years ago, and given he had all three of the attachments, I didn’t really feel like I could pass him up.  While he mostly serves as a precursor to the figures that followed and would slightly tweak the formula, I gotta say, as a first figure, he comes out of the gate swinging for the fences.  There’s not really much you could do better, and he’s just a solid all-around figure.