Tag Archives: Hasbro

#1702: Qi’ra – Corellia

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

QI’RA — CORELLIA

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES

“At 18 years of age, young Qi’ra is already enmeshed in a life of crime, working for a gang on Corellia.”

Well, I’ve already burned through the “confusing Emilia Clarke for her other roles” bit for the first Qi’ra figure I reviewed, so I’m out of obvious intro material.  Darn.  Here’s this action figure, I guess.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Qi’ra is figure 66 in Star Wars: The Black Series.  She was part of the second round of post-Solo releases, packed alongside the bounty hunter 4-Lom.  As of right now, she’s by far the easier of the two to find of retail, and I kind of feel like that’ll stick.  Like her smaller figure, Qi’ra is based on her look from the film’s prologue.  It’s not her main look from the movie, nor is it a look that really interacts well with the other figures, but it’s a decent enough look nonetheless, and probably the one that has the easiest translation into toy form.  The figure stands 5 1/2 inches tall and she has 27 points of articulation.  Her articulation is a little more restricted than Han and Lando, but compared to your average Black Series release before them, Qi’ra is still pretty darn mobile.  Qi’ra gets an all-new sculpt, and it’s a pretty decent one.  Very similar to the smaller one, which makes sense, what with them being the same design and all.  I think the smaller one might actually have the slightly better Clarke likeness, but this one’s certainly not bad, and it’s definitely well-detailed.  Her paintwork is pretty good overall, but it does suffer a bit more than other recent offerings.  The biggest issue is definitely they eyes.  She’s using the printed face technique, but something seems off about this particular release, especially around the eyes.  It’s like the printing got misaligned.  Hopefully this is something that’s more or less confined to my figure.  Qi’ra is packed with her unique blaster pistol, just like her smaller counterpart.  It’s not much, but it’s pretty cool, especially since it even opens for re-loading.  That was an unexpected touch!

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Qi’ra was a purchase of convenience, really.  I found her at Target, and I needed to spend another $20 for one of their get $25 off $100 deals, so home with me she came.  And she was essentially free at that!  After the tremendous Han and Lando (and even Rey, for that matter), Qi’ra’s a slight step down in quality.  That said, she’s still a pretty decent offering overall, and definitely a fun figure.  Now, here’s hoping we can get her in her heist outfit, because that one was the coolest.

#1701: Lando Calrissian

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

LANDO CALRISSIAN

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES

“Smooth and sophisticated, Captain Lando Calrissian stands ready to retire from the life of a smuggler and instead become a full-time gambler (or “sportsman”, as he calls it), shuffling from card game to card game across the galaxy.”

For my second and third entries in this week of Black Series reviews, I’ll be moving over to the newest installment in the Star Wars franchise, Solo.  I’ve looked at the smaller figures, as well as the Black Series release of the main character, but now I’m going to look at one of the other major returning characters, and one of the highest-praised parts of the movie, Lando Calrissian!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Lando is figure 65 in Star Wars: The Black Series, released in the assortment that arrived on shelves alongside the other Solo-themed product.  This is Lando’s second time as a Black Series figure, in rather quick succession, actually.  He’s based on his main Solo look, which is certainly dynamic, and makes for a solid figure design.  The figure stands just over 5 3/4 inches tall and he has 27 points of articulation.  His articulation set-up is rather similar to Han’s, meaning he’s got quite a bit of range in most of those joints, and he’s a ton of fun to pose.  His sculpt is an all-new offering, and does a respectable job of translating Donald Glover’s version of Lando into figure form.  The likeness on the head isn’t quite as spot-on as Han or Rey; I think Glover might just have one of those difficult to capture faces.  On the plus side, the face is very expressive, and very in character for Lando, so it’s a nice change of pace from the blander expression seen on other figures in the line.  The cape and scarf are both separate, removable pieces, allowing you to mix and match looks, and give him a bit of variety.  The softer plastic isn’t too restricting of the figure’s articulation, and it still manages to hold the details pretty well.  Like Han and Rey, Lando makes use of the new face printing technique, to give his face more realism.  It’s not quite as convincing here as it was on the other two, in part due to the more cartoony expression.  Still, it looks pretty good, and it still avoids that lifeless look of the earlier figures.  The rest of the paint is really bright, and quite eye-catching, but there’s one small issue with my figure; the bottom half of his shirt is painted yellow rather than molded.  Not a huge deal, but on my figure the paint application is a little thin, so some of the underlying black plastic is bleeding through.  It’s not terrible, but a little annoying.  Lando is packed with his fancy blaster, which is the same model as included with his smaller figure, but this time it comes with a removable barrel attachment, and that’s pretty fun.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve been on the look out for Lando ever since the figures first started hitting.  I saw the ESB version a few times, but the figure never really grabbed me, so I never got him.  So, this one carries some extra weight.  He was a little tough to come by initially, but I managed to track him down during a completely not-toy-related stop to my local Target.  He’s another strong figure, and like Han, I’d love to have a main Billy Dee Williams version of this quality down the road.

#1700: Rey – Island Journey

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

REY – ISLAND JOURNEY

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES

“With the power of the Force awakening inside of her, Rey travels to the hidden world of Ahch-To. There, she seeks out Luke Skywalker as the last hope of the Resistance.”

I’ve bought a lot of Star Wars figures recently.  Try as I may to space them out, sometimes you’ve just got to paraphrase Tom Cruise and say “What the heck?” and do a week of Black Series reviews.  Because that’s just how I roll.  So, let’s kick this week off by answering the that question I love answering, “Where’s Rey?”  She’s right here!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Rey (Island Journey) is figure 58 in Star Wars: The Black Series.  She originally hit alongside DJ and Captain Rex in the first assortment of 2018, and she’s also received a re-pack alongside the Solo-themed offerings.  She was originally shown off prior to the Last Jedi releases, intended as a Force Awakens release.  But, since her Resistance togs appeared in both films, it was pretty easily re-fitted into a Last Jedi variant.  The figure stands 5 3/4 inches tall and she has 27 points of articulation.  Rey sports a mostly new sculpt, with her arms and hands being re-used from the Jedi Training version of the character.  I had initially thought this caused a slight inaccuracy on the figure, since she’s lacking the wrist covers that go with the resistance outfit.  However, after double-checking various stills from the movie, she actually removes those covers for some parts of TLJ, especially when she’s wearing the poncho that this figure added.  So, the re-use is actually warranted here.  The rest of the sculpt is really quite good.  The proportions are nicely balanced, and the details of her outfit are sharply defined.  The vest piece can be removed, and she manages to not look totally goofy without it, which is a plus.  My favorite part of the sculpt is definitely the head, which is my favorite Rey headsculpt yet (it’s managed to supplant the Titan Heroes sculpt), and has a really strong Daisy Ridley likeness.  As with the previously reviewed Han Solo (who Rey actually predates, of course), the paintwork on Rey is really strong, and helps to further elevate an already strong sculpt.  Her assortment premiered the introduction of Hasbro’s new face-printing technique into The Black Series.  As with Han, this adds a much more lifelike quality to the figure, almost on par with the likes of Hot Toys, and just makes the figure look that much better.  In terms of extras, Rey is pretty well packed, coming with her staff, blaster, and Luke’s lightsaber (all shared with the Jedi Training figure), as well as the poncho she’s seen sporting on Ahch-To.  The poncho’s just a simple cloth piece, but it’s better tailored to the figure than prior softgoods pieces from this line, and it does add a lot more to display options.  I’m kind of a sucker for a nice poncho.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Rey’s Resistance look is definitely my favorite of her three designs, so I’ve been on-board with this figure since day one.  The announcement that she was getting the poncho from TLJ and would be introducing the face-print tech only got me more on-board.  Of course, I had to find her first, which proved a little difficult.  I never lucked into her in her initial case packout, but the reissue made her a little easier to track down, and I was able to get her through Super Awesome Girlfriend’s work.  This is a really nice figure, and hands down my favorite Rey.  I liked the Jedi Training version quite a bit, but this one blows it out of the water.

The Blaster In Question #0057: Vigilon

Posted by Tim Marron in Nerf Reviews and tagged with , , , , ,

BlasterInQuestion1

VIGILON

VORTEX

vigilon1I know what you’re about to ask, so let me go ahead and answer it before you do.  No, I’ve still not heard anything from Mads but I’m staying optimistic.  That’s not what you were gonna ask?  Ok, weirdo.  Oh, right, that.  Yeah, I have no idea what the heck a vigilon is either but it’s the name of this week’s blaster.  Maybe taking a look at the blaster will inform us on the matter.  Let’s find out if that’s the case.

THE BLASTER ITSELF

vigilon2It’s not the case, it’s a made up word.  Anyway, the Vigilon was released in 2011 as part of the Vortex series of blasters.  It then disappeared with the apparent death of the Vortex line a few years later, only to be brought back in 2018 in the Target exclusive Vortex VTX line-up.  Really all that changed is the colors, so I’ll be reviewing them both as the same blaster here.  The Vigilon uses the same mechanism for launching the Vortex discs as most blasters in the line but with the added bonus of an integrated internal magazine that holds (officially) 5 discs.  I find it odd that the Vigilon has only ever been marketed as a 5-round blaster despite the fact that I can fit 6 discs in the magazine just fine without using any trickery, plus, you can keep another disc in the chamber, effectively giving the blaster a 7-round capacity.  The magazine vigilon3itself is an interesting design in which you open the loading gate with the release levers just above the trigger and load rounds in the side of the blaster rather than the top or front like we’re used to seeing on dart blasters.  Releasing the magazine cover is also rather satisfyingly snappy and makes it feel like something akin to a plasma weapon from the Halo franchise venting heat.  The outer shell is all original to the Vigilon, and while the green and orange color scheme of the first wave was fine at the time, the sky blue/neon green VTX colors really do it for me.  Just- MM, so good.  Naturally, the new colors are also carried over to the ammo which also looks quite nice and again, an improvement over the older version.  I mean, they work the same, they just look nicer while they do it.  The Vigilon gets the same performance as just about every other Vortex blaster out there.  The discs do travel far, but they vigilon4slow down as they fly through the air and end up floating a bit near the end of their flight path.  If you’re planning on using this as a weapon against your younger siblings, just make sure they’re not too far away, otherwise, even if your shots hit, they won’t have nearly the same impact as they would at closer range.  Plus, with some practice, you can do crazy stuff like bank shots off the wall and whatnot.  Then you can really make them feel like they’ll never be safe again, and isn’t that really the goal?  What do you mean that sounds abusive?  I’m just saying they shouldn’t feel completely at ease in their own home cuz they’ll never see the radtastic VTX discs coming.  Well, yeah, when you say it like that, you can make anything sound like abuse.  Anyway, the original Vigilon came packaged with just 5 Vortex discs, but the new VTX version comes with 10 and they look way cooler to boot.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION 

I don’t normally care too much about straight recolors, but the Vortex series was different and innovative in a way not often seen in the toy blaster market.  Moreover, it seemed to garner a decent fan base over traditional darts, so it’s fairly unique in that regard.  In reality, though, I just think the folks over at Nerf did a great job with the new colors.  I wish this had been what Vortex looked like from the get-go.  It’s just so- MMM, I love it.

#1697: Sasquatch

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

SASQUATCH

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

Huzzah!  Another Build-A-Figure is complete.  And, like last year’s Titus, this one was sort of by accident.  It’s not that I *don’t* like Sasquatch, and I certainly know more about him than I did the cyborg Tony the Tiger, but Deadpool-themed assortment with an Alpha Flight-themed Build-A-Figure doesn’t immediately jump out at me.  However, here we are, so I might as well review this thing.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Sasquatch is the Build-A-Figure for the somewhat predictably named Sasquatch Series of Marvel Legends, which is also the first of 2018’s two Deadpool-centric series.  His connection to Deadpool’s tenuous at best, but they *are* both Canadian, so I guess there’s that.  I’d also point out that this and the next assortment feel more like extensions of the X-Men subline more than anything, and that’s definitely a theme Sasquatch fits right into.  This is Sasquatch’s second time as a Marvel Legend; the last one was back during the Toy Biz days, when it was still cost effective to do such a large figure as a single-packed figure, rather than splitting him up.  This figure stands 8 1/4 inches tall and he has 28 points of articulation.  Despite some claims to the contrary, he’s an all-new sculpt.  Nothing on him is shared with last year’s Man-Thing BaF.  They may share some common ancestry somewhere along the way, but the final products aren’t the same at all.  Sasquatch’s sculpt is definitely bulkier than his last figure, and overall does a pretty great job of capturing a non-artist specific version of the character.  I quite like the calmer facial expression they’ve gone with here; it’s a nice change of pace from what we’ve seen in the past.  One thing I did notice about Sasquatch that I’ve been seeing crop up with more recent BaFs is how easily he pops back apart.  I don’t want quite go back to the days of no disassembly that we had going for a little while there, but my Sasquatch has a tendency to fall apart during fairly routine posing, which is more than a little annoying.  Sasquatch’s paint work is decent, but it runs into a problem we’ve seen before on BaFs like this.  What are meant to be subtle changes in the shading of his fur are made less subtle by the slight variations from piece to piece clashing on the fully assembled product.  It’s not terrible, but you can definitely see some rather jarring jumps on my figure.  With that said, I do prefer this to a shadingless lump of orange.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

So, like I mentioned it the intro, I really didn’t mean to finish this guy.  I got Deathlok and X-23 back in February, and I kind of thought that was the end of it.  Then I got Cable because I like the animated series, and I thought I might regret missing out on him.  Then I got Domino and Paladin because of coupon deals.  And then, all of the sudden, I had this headless Sasquatch sitting on my desk, and that seemed a little silly, so X-Force Deadpool was purchased and here we are.  This whole assortment is something of a sleeper hit for me.  I expected nothing from it, but I’m honestly pretty happy with it as a whole, and there are some definite pleasant surprises, Sasquatch included.

#1696: Paladin

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

PALADIN

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Paladin is a mercenary marksman who always has his eye on the bottom line.”

Ah, Paladin.  Truly the most–he’s really quite the–okay, I don’t have a lot to say about Paladin.  I mean, to be fair, nobody really does.  In the 40 years since his introduction, he’s not actually gotten much of a backstory…or anything, for that matter.  He just sort of exists to fill a mercenary slot when needed.  Like in this Deadpool-themed Marvel Legends assortment.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Paladin is the final figure in the Sasquatch Series of Marvel Legends.  He’s based on a more modern incarnation of the character, from around his time with the Thunderbolts.  Not his most memorable or distinctive look, but there’s a clear rationale behind this design choice, and that rationale is parts re-use.  I’ll get to that momentarily.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 32 points of articulation.  As noted above, Paladin makes use of some parts re-use, though not as much I’d initially thought.  He’s built on the body used by the last Blade figure (which in turn re-used some parts from the ASM2 Electro).  He gets a new head, forearms, hands, and shins, as well as a holster add-on piece which appears to be new, but I could be wrong on that.  The new parts are decent recreations of his comics designs.  The head’s suitably generic, and the padded forearms and shins help to differentiate him from Blade.  The holster is mostly just there to hide that Hasbro still hasn’t re-tooled the Electro legs to remove that little nodule on his left thigh.  Paladin’s paint work is really the main thing that signifies his modern influences.  His palette is swapped from the classic look, which was purple armor on black, rather than black armor on purple.  I find this isn’t quite as striking a design, but I suppose it’s not terrible.  The application is at the very least cleanly handled, so I’ll give him that.  Paladin is packed with a pair of golden pistols (re-used from Zemo) and a knife.  The knife can be nicely slotted into the sheath on his boot, which is cool.  Unfortunately, there’s one holster for two guns, and the guns don’t actually sit that well in the holster.  That’s kind of disappointing.  He also includes another leg to the Build-A-Figure Sasquatch.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Paladin slightly frustrated me.  When I heard they were making him, I was kind of excited, but when the prototype was unveiled with the modern look, I was a bit let down.  The more streamlined modern Paladin design facilitates the re-use more than the classic look would have, I suppose, but I can’t say I’m super into it.  I feel like with the amount of new pieces he got in the end, it wouldn’t have been too much of a stretch to go for an approximation of his classic design.  Because of this, I ended up passing on him the first few times I found him.  I ended up getting a bunch of store credit for Cosmic Comix after helping out on Free Comic Book Day, and they had this guy, so I ended up grabbing him from them.  He’s not a bad figure at all, and certainly works as a generic merc, but I do wish he were a little more distinctive.

#1695: Cable

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

CABLE

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“A powerful mercenary, Cable uses telekinetic abilities and combat expertise to get the job done.”

I started off my last Cable review by making fun of his box-bio’s hefty simplification of the character’s complex backstory.  For this one, I’m willing to cut Hasbro a little slack, since the character was presented in a much more simplified form in Deadpool 2, his appearance in which is one of the primary reasons he got this figure in the first place. Despite his lessened presence in the franchise in recent years, he gotten no less than two separate Marvel Legends releases in two years.  I’ve already looked at the first, and now I’m looking at the second.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Cable is figure 3 in the Sasquatch Series of Marvel Legends, joining Deadpool and Domino in the loose DP2 theme of the assortment. He’s based on a more classic look than the last Cable.  It’s a costume that was prominent on a few covers in the ’90s (though less so the actual interiors; that’s just how ’90s comics do), notably the cover to X-Force #1. It was also the look Cable was sporting on his first action figure, and in the X-Men cartoon.  It’s about as quintessential as you get for Cable looks.  The figure stands just over 7 inches tall and he has 30 points of articulation.  Like his predecessor, this Cable figure is built on the Hyperion body, though the actual pieces shared between the two are pretty minimal.  For the most part, this guy uses the Nuke variant of the body (so, he’s got the cargo pants and combat boots), but he gets a new head and arms (which are all distinct from the prior Cable figure, it should be noted), as well as an overlay piece for his shoulderpads/belt/suspenders, and another for his collar.  The head is the star part here, of course, and it manages to capture the spirit of Liefeld’s illustrations without really getting into the drawbacks behind them.  I particularly like how they’ve captured his glowing eye; that’s a nice touch.  The overlay piece is a little loose for my tastes, but it looks nice, and it means that Cable’s finally got shoulderpads!  Yay!  Cable’s paintwork is a good match for the palette that goes with this design, and the application, though sparse, is all clean.  Cable, being all about the guns, naturally includes three of them.  The biggest of them is an original design, and looks exactly like the sort of thing Cable would be brandishing on a cover in the ’90s.  There are also two smaller guns, which, fun fact, are both scaled-down Nerf guns.  The larger of the two is the Doomlands Vagabond, while the smaller is based on the Barrel Break.  They’re both nice gun designs, and they fit the style of the character quite well.  Thanks to our resident Nerf-expert Tim for helping identify the exact models!  I certainly hope this trend of scaling down Nerf guns continues.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I had a moderate interest in this figure.  I’m not the world’s biggest Cable fan or anything, but the fact that this is the design from the cartoon really gave me a reason to track him down.  Of course, he’s the most demanded in the set by far, so I missed him several times.  I eventually found him at Cosmic Comix, who got a case in a few weeks ago.  He’s a goofy figure to be sure, but that’s sort of the point.  I love him for what he is, though.

#1694: Domino

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

DOMINO

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Domino creates her own luck with a subconscious ability to predict the success of any given action.”

In the ’90s, there was this quiet sort of trend amongst new X-Men characters, where they took the basic power set of a prior character, but added “carries a lot of guns” to them, and there they were.  Domino was amongst that crop of characters, taking the luck-based gimmick of Longshot, and…adding guns.  The luck bit tends to get pushed to the side, but that’s seeming to change, with her new solo series and appearance in Deadpool 2.  She’s also gotten another Marvel Legends release along the way.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Domino is figure 3 in the Sasquatch Series of Marvel Legends.  She’s definitely based on a more recent incarnation of the character, though I’m not really familiar enough with her history to pinpoint exactly which costume this one is wearing.  I’m thinking this is meant to be the costume she wore during her run with Wolverine’s X-Force?  Whatever the case, it’s a fairly decent summation of her various looks over the years, and has the benefit of not looking anywhere near as terrible as some of them.  The figure stands 6 inches tall and she has 27 points of articulation.  Domino shares quite a few pieces with 2016’s Mockingbird figure.  She gets a new head, hands, and a slightly tweaked torso that removes some buttons.  Mockingbird’s sculpt was a pretty good one, and although it’s got some more specific details than others, they don’t stand out so much as to make the re-use to exceedingly obvious.  Also helping in keeping the two unique from each other are the shoulder harness and belt add-on pieces, which fit Domino’s more prepared nature.  It adds up to a solid looking sculpt that the average onlooker probably wouldn’t realize had any re-use.  Her paintwork is appropriately stark and contrast-y.  The mostly black and white thing translates quite well here, and the few bits of silver we get break it up pretty well.  The application is all nice and sharp.  The prior Domino Legends figure got pretty standard guns.  This one goes slightly more unique, but not at the same time.  The two guns included with this figure are the actually scaled down from the pair included with the 12-inch Legends Deadpool figures, and as an added bonus, the smaller of those two guns is actually based on Hasbro’s own Nerf Vortex Diatron (thanks to our in-house Nerf-expert Tim for spotting that one).  In addition to the guns, Domino also includes the right arm of Sasquatch.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Had the TRU that I purchased Deathlok from had a Domino in-stock, I would have likely gotten her instead of X-23.  But they didn’t, so I didn’t.  Given how much I liked the X-23 figure, that was probably for the best.  Nevertheless, it did spark in me a moderate desire to grab a Domino figure.  I ended up taking advantage of a Barnes & Noble coupon I had to get her for a pretty good deal.  Though I’m not overly familiar with her (I say as a man who owns three action figures of the character), I do quite like this figure.  She’s a lot of fun!

*Want a Domino figure of your own?  She’s currently in-stock with our sponsors over at All Time Toys!  Click here to check her out!

#1693: X-Force Deadpool

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

X-FORCE DEADPOOL

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Need someone to do the dirty work? Great news: that’s his favorite kind of work.”

This spring has been jam-packed when it comes to big blockbusters.  Wedged in-between event-film-10-years-in-the-making that was Infinity War and the decidedly-smaller-scale-but-base-breaking Solo, was the somewhat quieter, more laid back Deadpool 2.  I was apparently one of the few people on the planet not terribly thrilled by the first one, so I wasn’t expecting much from the sequel, but I actually rather liked it.  As a Fox-produced film, it’s got no direct merchandise from Hasbro, but it did get an assortment of loosely themed Marvel Legends.  There were two variants of the title character included, and I’ll be looking at one of those today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

X-Force Deadpool is numerically the first figure in the Sasquatch Series of Marvel Legends.  A quite similar figure was released earlier, as an exclusive to HasCon 2017.  While the main figures are similar, they are not identical, and the accessory complements are completely different.  Both figures are based on Deadpool’s more monochromatic look from the pages of Uncanny X-Force, which is coincidentally quite similar to how Wade looks after taking a fair bit of damage in the final act of Deadpool 2.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall and has 32 points of articulation. On the outside, the figure’s doesn’t seem all that different from the one released two years ago in the Juggernaut Series, but he’s actually more different than you might think.  They share the same base body (the Bucky Cap), and the same head.  They also share the same shoulder harness and thigh holster.  Beyond that, he gets a new belt, wristbands, and ankle bands.  They succeed in making the figure moderately different, and by extension, more accurate to the original source material than a simple recolor would have been.  Even the paint masking is a bit different, and not just a simple palette swap.  The shaping of the black sections of his costume are actually the inverses of the last figure’s, which is another point in the accuracy column.  Sadly, Deadpool’s accessories have been stepped way back from both the HasCon offering of this costume and the prior standard release.  Still, he does get the swords, the rail gun, and the pistol (both painted in a fun blue color that makes them look vaguely Nerf-ish), and he also comes with the head of Sasquatch.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I had no real intent to pick up this figure.  I have the standard colors version from 2016, and I figured that was good enough.  Then I ended up with every other figure from the set, and I saw DP2, and I found myself kind of wanting this figure.  Sadly, by that point he’d sold out pretty much everywhere.  I eventually found him on Amazon for base retail, and here we are.  He’s a surprisingly enjoyable figure, and I’m happy I tracked him down.

The Blaster In Question #0056: Vagabond

Posted by Tim Marron in Nerf Reviews and tagged with , , ,

BlasterInQuestion1

VAGABOND

DOOMLANDS 2169

vagabond1I had an idea for a game show the other day.  It would be a similar structure to Who Wants To Be A Millionaire but instead of answering general knowledge and trivia questions, you have to memorize details of a persona that you’re given and then Mads Mikkelson interrogates you about it while being as menacing as possible.  What does this have to do with Nerf?  I have no idea but I could not think of an intro for this blaster to save my life, so here we are.  This week we’ll be taking a look at another entry in the “we can’t legally just call it Borderlands” series, a.k.a. Doomlands 2169,  Specifically, let’s talk about the Vagabond.

THE BLASTER ITSELF

vagabond2The Vagabond was released in 2015 as part of the Border- Doomlands 2169 series of blasters, a full 154 years before when the name suggests.  It uses a 6-round rotating cylinder like the Strongarm or Disruptor, but in the case of the Vagabond, it is pump action instead of slide action.  The shell of the Vagabond is all original, including the cylinder itself which is way longer than it needs to be.  In keeping with the Doomlands look, there is a panel on the right side of the blaster that is clear and allows you to see the internals, which is a nice touch.  With the cylinder being as crazy long as it is, the barrels have openings almost all the way down their length so you can put a dart in the side and push it to the back to seat it ready for firing.  It’s an odd choice and vagabond3makes me wonder why they didn’t just shorten it down and have it load from the front like a normal revolver style blaster, not to mention all the plastic and weight they’d save by getting rid of the enormous front end.  It really seems like Nerf was going for a shotgun here, given the pump action and the sharply angled grip, but without any ability to fire multiple darts at once, it just ends up being a really big revolver in need of a nose job.  The pump grip itself is large and nicely textured so you can get a solid hold of it.  There’s a rail along the top of the blaster for accessories like scopes and whatnot, at least in theory.  The angle of the grip makes aiming down the barrel kind of hard to do comfortably, but it too is well sized and has enough texture to provide the necessary traction.  Performance-wise, the Vagabond gets a resounding “it’s fine.”  It shoots just a little softer than most other blasters on average, probably in part due to the internals being taken directly from the Rebelle Guardian Crossbow.  It’s not a huge difference, and it will probably get overlooked by your younger siblings when you bust into their room, plus there’s that great big front end that’ll most likely leave an impression.  The Vagabond comes packaged with 6 Doomlands colored Elite darts.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION 

I really can’t think of any reason why the front of the Vagabond is that huge.  I guess it’s just a stylistic choice.  I mean, we’ve seen similar enormous extraneous pieces of plastic on other Doomlands blasters like the Negotiator, but I didn’t really care for those either.  As long as it doesn’t affect the blaster’s ability to, you know, blast, I suppose it can stay.  But seriously though, Mads, if you’re reading this, hit me up about that game show.