Tag Archives: All Time Toys

#0199: Vision, Hawkeye, & Vision 2.0

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

VISION, HAWKEYE, & VISION 2.0

MARVEL MINIMATES

Time for another entry in the tales of the Mates of Mini! Or something like that… More Minimates is what I’m getting at here.

This is yet another set from the Marvel Minimates line. The three characters looked at today all hail from the Avengers side of the Marvel Universe. The characters featured are Vision (who you can read about over in the Backstories Section), Hawkeye, and the variant release Vision 2.0.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

These three were released as part of series 20 of the Marvel Minimates line.

VISION

Vision has always one of the most important members of the Avengers in my personal opinion. The character was a prominent member for many years, and it was cool to see him get a release in the line. The figure is based on Vision’s classic look. He’s built on the standard Minimates body, which means he has 14 points of articulation and stands 2 ½ inches tall. He has 2 sculpted add-ons: a cowl and a cape. Both pieces are brand new, and look pretty much spot on to the character’s look. Paint is where my one real issue with the figure lies. They’ve attempted to depict him in mid-phase, which leaves his arms, legs, and cape permanently in a state of semi-translucence. It’s not terrible in theory, or if it had been a separate set of pieces, but as the standard look for the figure, it’s disappointing and ends up making him look awkward on the shelf. One other issue is that I feel his greens and yellows are a bit too washed out, especially compared to more recent releases. The basic details are handled well enough, though, and the figure features no noticeable slop or bleed over.

HAWKEYE

If Vision is one of the most important Avengers, Hawkeye is the quintessential member. It’s just not the Avengers without him. He’s also based on his classic look, and is built on the standard Minimate body. Hawkeye features three sculpted add-ons: a mask, a torso cover, and a belt/loincloth piece. These are okay pieces, but they feel incredibly dated, especially the bulky upper torso piece, which gives the character some inappropriate girth. Paint is okay, but once again the colors seem just a touch too subdued. There is also a small bit of slop around the boots, and the face doesn’t quite line up with the masks. Hawkeye includes his bow and a sonic arrow.

VISION 2.0

Vision 2.0, or Jonas as the hip and happening kids call him, is not quite as prominent as the other two reviewed here, but he is a neat little character, and he’s a great fit for the variant slot. He’s fairly straight forward, being a vanilla ‘mate accessorized with the same cape sculpted for the normal Vision. The figure is molded in clear green plastic, of which I am always a fan, with some painted details. While I do feel that the face may be a bit crowded, everything else looks pretty cleanly applied and well handled. This figure is definitely a lot more vibrant than the other two, which is kind of funny, seeing as he’s the only “modern” character in the lot.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I got these sets right around the time of their first release. Vision 2.0 was actually one of the very first variant sets I ever acquired, given my fandom of the character. The set was cool at the time, just to get Hawkeye and Vision, who were both essential members of the Avengers. Hawkeye certainly hasn’t aged well, but there have been a few more recent releases that improved greatly on this one. This is to date the only Vision available. That’s too bad, but it’s not the worst Minimate ever. Plus the character may actually be coming into a bit more prominence in the upcoming year or so. All in all, not a terrible set, but not really the greatest.

#0128: Superman

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

SUPERMAN

JUSTICE LEAGUE (MATTEL)

A large portion of my appreciation for DC characters comes from the DC Animated Universe, created back in the early 90s by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini, when they first started Batman: The Animated series.  Batman led to Superman and Batman Beyond, and eventually, they moved on to what many see as the greatest entry on the list: Justice League and Justice League Unlimited.
Kenner offered the initial figures for BTAS, and when they were bought out by Hasbro, Hasbro continued.  By the time of JL, Hasbro was interested solely in Batman and Superman variants, so they had no plans to release the team from the show.  Eventually, the license was moved to Mattel, and Mattel quickly released a set of the seven main characters.  Today, I’ll be looking at the Superman from that line.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Superman was modeled after his design on the show, specifically his look from the first season, although the differences are minor.  He stands just shy of 5 inches tall and features 5 points of articulation.  The sculpt is really sharp, and  very accurately represents the design on the show.  The design doesn’t really translate well to articulation, so Mattel seemed to go for the looks over movement, and I actually greatly prefer it this way.  I do wish that he had a little less of a hunched look on his neck, but overall, it doesn’t look too bad.  For the most part, Superman is molded in the appropriate colors where necessary, but what paint is there is fairly cleanly applied, and has no real issues.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

While I rushed to get the rest of the members of the team, I had plenty of Batmen and Supermen, so the two of them kinda had to wait.  Superman was actually not picked up individually, but actually was included with the Javelin 7, which I believe my brother and I bought a few years ago from a local toystore.  My brother kept the Javelin 7 to himself, and I got the Superman.  It’s probably one of the best animated Superman figures released, and fits nicely with the rest of the line.

#0099: He-Ro

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

HE-RO

MASTERS OF THE UNIVERSE CLASSICS

So, I’ve looked at Mattel’s popular DC Universe Classics line a few times before on the site.  Based on the popularity of that line, Mattel decided to create a similar line based on their own in house property Masters of the Universe, handled by the Four Horsemen, the group of sculptors responsible for the amazing work present in DCUC.  They called the line Masters of the Universe Classics, and they used it to spear head the launch of their online store Matty Collector.  I’ll go into the wonderfulness of that store (read: sarcasm) in a bit.

Anyway, in addition to monthly releases on the webstore, they also have a yearly San Diego Comicon exclusive.  He-Ro is one of those.

Little backstory on He-Ro.  Towards the end of the original Masters of the Universe line, they had planned on rebranding the line “The Powers of Grayskull”, and moving the focus from He-Man to his distant ancestor He-Ro, a heroic sorcerer who had helped establish the Eternia we all knew and loved.  The line never took off, but a lone prototype of He-Ro was produced.  This figure is based on that.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

He-Ro was released as the 2009 San Diego Comicon exclusive for Masters of the Universe Classics.  He’s based on the unproduced He-Ro prototype from the 80s.  He stands about 7 inches tall and he has 24 points of articulation.  In a similar fashion to DC Universe Classics, MOTUC is built on the buck system.  However, MOTUC has two bucks: Male and Female*.  He-Ro is built on the male buck.  I hope that didn’t shock you.  In addition to the base body, He-Ro has a new head, lower arms, kilt-thingy, boots, and chest/cape combo.  These pieces are all well done, and have a lot of great little details.  The head has a bit of a young Arnold Schwarzenegger feel to it, which actually really works for the character.  The paint on the figure is well applied, no slop or bleed over.   I feel like he could possibly use a few accents to highlight some of the subtleties of the sculpt, but it’s not bad by any means.  He-Ro includes two accessories: a power sword and a staff thing.  The power sword is the same sword that’s been used many times over the course of the line, but this time molded in a clear, sparkly blue, which is cool if you’re into that sort of thing I suppose.  The staff is brand new, and can open up to show off the gem inside the top.  It was possible to get a green, red or purple gem.  I got purple.  So there…

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

If you’ve read my DCUC reviews, you know I’m not the biggest fan of Matty Collector.  I also wasn’t a fan of the price tag associated with the figures.  They were selling for $20 a piece (at a time when DCUC were still under $15), and when you added in Matty’s outrageous shipping costs, you weren’t getting one of these without dropping at least $30.  Of course, the price mattered not, because the only way you could get the figures was to get onto Matty’s site at noon (eastern time) the day they went up and pray to God that you were able to get one within the less than 10 minutes the figure was in stock.  And to make matters worse, Matty wasn’t willing to up their bandwidth to allow for the increased traffic, so you’d get stuck in perpetual loading screens.

I was a moderate fan of Masters of the Universe, but all that was enough to make me say: “I’ll spend my money elsewhere.”

But then a funny thing happened.  Mattel decided to release a select few MOTUC figures in two packs with DCUC figures.  Perhaps this was my chance, I thought!  But then they arrived and they were $40 retail.  Which definitely killed my excitement.  But then, the Toys R Us near me went out of business (well actually it moved across the street, but they still sold all of their stock because…?) and I found a Skeletor & Lex Luthor two pack for $15.  For that price, they were worth it.  And Skeletor was actually a really cool figure!  So, I decided to track down a few more.  I found He-Ro at a nearby toy store called Alltime Toys, who had him for about $25, which was pricey, but not outrageous.  And here he is.  And wow this review is a lot longer than I was expecting it to be.

*Okay, so technically there’s a few variations on the male body to allow for, like, furry characters and stuff, but it’s the same underlying musculature, and I really liked my witty banter back there.  Yeah, it was witty!

#0021: The Vision

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

VISION

MARVEL LEGENDS (TOY BIZ)

Today, I’m looking at the first of what I’m sure will be many Marvel Legends reviews.  Back in the early 2000s, this was THE line to collect.  They had killer sculpts, awesome paint, and of course, a huge quantity of articulation!  And let’s not forget the scalper appeal.  While this line didn’t start the trend of action figure scalpers, its high demand and tendency to pack fan-favorites as short-packs led to high prices, and a whole lot of “legitimate businessmen” trying to corner the market.  It was so great.  No, wait, I meant the other thing.  Terrible.  It was terrible.   I’ll be looking at the Vision figure from the line.  For those of you who are unaware (which is probably a large portion), the Vision is a long standing member of the Avengers.  He was a synthezoid (basically an android) created by the villain Ultron to destroy the Avengers.  However, he was created using the brain-patterns of Wonder Man, a reluctant villain who the Avengers had tried to help before his unfortunate demise.  Apparently, Wonder Man’s emotions overpowered the synthezoid, and he rebelled against his creator and joined the Avengers.  There’s a lot more to his story, but that’s the basic gist.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Vision was part of the seventh series of Toy Biz’s Marvel Legends line. He stands roughly 6 inches tall and has 33 points of articulation.  He also included a clear poseable stand that can simulate his flying ability.  He was available in both regular and “Phasing” versions.  The regular has a normal paint job, while the phasing is cast in various translucent plastics.  I managed to get a hold of both versions, and since they’re the same sculpt, I’ll be looking at both today.  The phasing version was technically the variant.  I say technically because Vision was only one to a case, meaning which version of him was in said case was fairly random.   Both figures depict Vision in his original green and yellow costume.  Vision was built on a base body, with the details added via paint.  The body’s fine, though the abundance of articulation does give it some odd proportions.  The head is this figure’s real strong point.  It’s an all new sculpt, and it’s really well done.  It has that perfect “just too perfect to be human” look, which is great!  The painted figure has some sharp paint ops that really highlight the sculpt well.  For this reason, I think the regular version is a bit better than the phasing version, as the details can get lost in the clear plastic.  Both figures are topped off by a nicely done rubber cape.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

So, you saw the displeasure up there about the whole scalpers charging insane prices thing?  Yeah, that pretty much sums up my experience with this figure.  While I was eventually able to track down both versions of this character for my collection, it wasn’t until well after Toy Biz’s Marvel Legends were done and gone.  Being less than one per case (thanks to the variant) he was near impossible to find, and instant scalper bait, resulting in a high after market price.  I was fortunate enough to track down both versions loose from a local toy store that had just bought someone’s collection, which made me a happy collector indeed!