THOR
AVENGERS: INFINITY WAR (HASBRO)
Okay, you had to know which Infinity War figure I was reviewing today. You just had to. Because it’s Thursday, aka Thor’s Day. When a guy’s got the day named after him, he’s kind of a lock for the subject of the review. If you’re thinking to yourself, “hasn’t Ethan already done this gag?,” the answer is yes, I very definitely have. I very definitely will again. It’s probably a safe assumption that I’ll do this with every Thor figure I remember to do this with going forward (so, probably about a 50/50 split; I’m forgetful). Anyway, here’s my latest Thor!
THE FIGURE ITSELF
Thor is another figure from Series 1 of the basic Avengers: Infinity War line. Thor’s design has not changed drastically since we last saw him in Ragnarok. Well, actually, a little before we last saw him in Ragnarok, truth be told. He’s got both of his eyes again. As of yet, all of the trailers and the like have shown him still sporting the eyepatch. It’s still possible it will be healed during the film. Of course, Hemsworth wasn’t actually wearing the eyepatch on-set for Ragnarok, and I don’t believe he was for Infinity War either. It’s always possible licensees were seeing unfinished shots from the film, in order to preserve Ragnarok’s twist, and now we just have a bunch of inaccurate Thor figures. I guess we won’t know until we see the movie. Anyway, the figure stands 5 3/4 inches tall and he has 11 points of articulation. Like yesterday’s Star-Lord, his sculpt has some definite similarities to last year’s Legends release. Understandable, since they’re adapting similar looks. The Hemsworth likeness is halfway decent. It’s not amazing, but it’s hardly like it’s impossible to figure out who it is. The body, particularly the proportions, feel a bit more cartoony and exaggerated than the others I’ve looked at from the line. I think that’s largely the arms, which have almost a Popeye sort of feel about them. It’s not like it looks bad or anything, just slightly different from the previously established style. The rest of the body is fairly well detailed, and his costume is quite well-defined. The paint on this figure is passable, but definitely more on the basic side. Where Cap’s hair went too brown, I think Thor’s goes too yellow, adding more to that whole cartoony thing. Also, his eyes seem a bit off. Or maybe it’s his eyebrows. Either way, he ends up looking like he just remembered he didn’t put the trash out to the road last night. That’s not how I tend to think of Thor looking. Thor is packed with his new weapon, Stormbreaker, which is actually pretty cool, and has some pretty awesome electricity effects going on. Also, like the other figures in the set, Thor’s got an infinity stone, specifically the Space Stone.
THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION
Thor seems to be a rarer figure in the first Infinity War assortment, as he’s the one I’ve seen the least. When I found most of the others, he wasn’t there, so I ended up getting him alongside Widow the new day. I wasn’t even sure I was going to get him, but I sort of wanted all of the stones. He’s not a bad figure. Perhaps a little bland in terms of design (having the eyepatch probably would have helped), but he’s still cool.
Another week, another late review. One of these days I’m going to get the hang of this. And what’s that? April 1st? Time for jokes and pranks and whatnot. Well, kinda, I don’t have quite the same elaborate gag-posts Ethan pulls off, but this week’s blaster is a joke in and of itself in a way. That’s me saying it’s bad. It’s a bad… you know what? Nevermind. On to the review.
It’s the Marvel Captain America: Civil War Iron Man Stark Strike Gauntlet Blaster… from Hasbro. At least, that’s what the friendly marketing guy in the video ad for this product told me. It’s the longest name for a Nerf blaster I can think of since the Nerf N-Strike Accu-Zombie Elite Strike Fire Mega Fury Strike Rapid Modulus Strike Fire Strike Strike… from Hasbro. The MCA:CWIMSSGB… fH was released in 2016 as a tie-in product for the Captain America: Civil War film. The blaster uses spring power to launch the dart, but instead of using it to push a plunger into a cylinder to create air pressure, the spring just impacts the dart directly. I’ve mentioned this system a couple times I the past, largely in reference to how terrible it is, and that assessment holds true here as well. The body of the blaster is pretty good, actually, the main feature being that the actual blaster part pops up from the rest of the platform before allowing you to fire. The construction feels solid and the sculpt is all new with 
some painted gold accent work here and there. The only controls on the blaster are the two buttons on the back, one causes the blaster to pop up, the other fires. Interestingly, due to the nature of the firing mechanism, even if the blaster is primed, it can’t be fired without a dart in the barrel, I assume to prevent the spring from beating the crap out of the internals of the blaster. The strap is small but I can still get it around my adult-sized wrist without too much trouble. Unfortunately, the problem with arm-mounted blasters is that aiming is pretty much out of the question. They say you can’t lick your own elbow, and it seems just about as impossible getting a sight-picture with it too, not that aiming would improve your chances of hitting anything with this blaster. As said before, calling the ranges on this blaster “disappointing” would be the understatement of the month, that is, if it fires at all. More often than not, the shock of the top part snapping up into position is enough to shake the dart forward in the barrel to where it no longer presses on the firing lock, meaning you have to re-seat the dart before the blaster will fire. If it does work, then you can watch the dart go flying up to about 10 or 15 feet. Woo… So unless you have some really emotionally fragile siblings, this blaster won’t help much when you decide to bust into their room and light them up. It’s probably best to leave it back in your room. The Marvel Captain America: Civil War Iron Man Stark Strike Gauntlet Blaster… from Hasbro comes with 2 Eilte darts in red and black but I seem to have lost mine, oh well.
If there’s one staple of Nerf blasters that always comes back, it’s revolvers, ok, revolvers and jolts, but let’s stick with the revolvers for today. All things considered, it’s a good design. There’ve been so many iterations that pretty much any issues have already been ironed out, but if you look at Nerf Revolvers over time, they have this odd trend of steadily getting smaller and smaller cylinders, and in turn, lower capacity. Today’s blaster is the first example of a 4-shot revolver I can think of, but as we’ve seen from Toy Fair last month, it won’t be the last.
Ok, first things first, I know I give Nerf a decent amount of ribbing over the naming conventions for their blasters, but when the other 3 blasters in a line have names containing “falcon”, ”hawk”, and “raptor”, there’s a pretty clear theme that they’re going for. With that in mind, what the double deuce kind of name is Quadrant? I get the name references the 4 barrels in the cylinder, but it throws off the whole bird-of-prey thing they set up. Anyway, the Quadchickadee was released in 2018 as part of the Accustrike series. As mentioned before, it is a 4-shot revolver that works more or less like any other revolver at this point. The construction is all new and pretty solid, like you’d expect from a Nerf blaster of this size, and the ergonomics are good. The proportions are kind of weird, what with the top half of the blaster being rather large and bulky. 
At the very least, it’s not terribly top heavy which is a concern I had before it was released. What I don’t quite get is why the barrels are so far apart in the cylinder. Typically, the benefit of lower capacity in a revolver is a lower profile, but the cylinder for the Quadbearded-tit is barely smaller than the one in the Hammershot, which holds 5 rounds normally. But in addition, modders have shown it can handle 7 rounds in the same space quite handily. It just feels needlessly limiting to cap the capacity at 4, especially when it doesn’t even enable some other gimmick or function in the blaster. The performance is on par with other Nerf pistols. It doesn’t have the most power or range ever, but no one expects it to. Being in the Accustrike series, there’s nothing mechanical that separates this from any other blaster, all that means is it’s orange and comes with Accustrike darts as opposed to standard Elites. The darts do actually make it a little easier to hit targets from further away, so they’re good for surprise pot-shots at your younger siblings, with or without busting into their room first. The QuadAndean Cock of the Rock (it’s a real bird, look it up) comes packaged with 4 Accustrike darts.
