Tag Archives: Hasbro

#3713: Endor Rebel Soldier

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

ENDOR REBEL SOLDIER

STAR WARS SAGA (HASBRO)

“When Han Solo, Leia Organa and Luke Skywalker land on the forest moon of Endor to destroy the shield generator protecting the Death Star II, they are accompanied by a squadron of commandos. Loyal and courageous, these soldiers are inteprid fighters for the cause of the Rebellion.”

Wow, a Star Wars Saga review?  I really must be scraping the bottom the barrel for review subjects.  I mean, going to Saga.  Saga, people.  I mean, in the 3712 reviews here on the site, I’ve only reviewed a single Saga figure up to this point.  Which, honestly, pretty good metrics, right?  And even the one review can be chalked up to it being my first year reviewing and me just not knowing any better.  What am I getting at here?  Well, generally, that Star Wars Saga, the line designed to tie-in with Attack of the Clones’ product launch, is…well, it’s not a great line.  It wasn’t great when it was new, and it has’t gotten better with age.  The figures were all sorts of pre-posed, impossible to keep standing, and frequently just sort of weird looking.  But, I guess I’m reviewing one of them, and none of you can stop me because it’s my site and I do what I want.  It’s at least an Endor Rebel Soldier, so I think that makes it better?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Endor Rebel Soldier is figure No. 33 in Hasbro’s Star Wars Saga line-up.  He was part of Collection 2 and was released in 2002.  There were two variants: one bearded and one not.  This one is the not, in case you couldn’t tell.  He was the later of the two releases, and the rarer when the line was new, though it seems like after the fact, they’re pretty evenly balanced.  The figure stands 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 10 points of articulation.  The articulation’s not a bad count, but it’s largely unusable thanks to how the sculpt is set-up.  Like the rest of the line, this guy is very pre-posed.  He’s got sort of a lunging-while-pointing-his-blaster look, which, I guess isn’t a terrible choice for the character.  Honestly, the arms aren’t bad (though they’re hit pretty badly by the sculpt interfering with articulation, since the jacket overlay piece covers the shoulders, making those joints essentially worthless), but the legs seem a little odd.  Also, with such a very specific pose, army building feels a little difficult, since you wouldn’t expect a bunch of guys to all be running around in exactly the same rather strange fashion.  Unlike prior Endor Rebels, this one got a removable helmet.  It’s a nice piece, and it sits very well on the head.  Said head is a nice sculpt of its own.  It doesn’t appear to be based on any specific Rebel from the movie, instead going for more of a general purpose thing.  The paint work on this figure is notable for being the first time we really got a proper deco based on what the Rebels are actually wearing in the movie, rather than the straight green up and down.  The camo pattern on the legs is a little odd, and the feet are the wrong color, but it generally isn’t bad, and the application works out pretty well.  He’s packed with his blaster rifle and a backpack.  The rifle’s a bit warped, since he was packed holding it, but it does at least get the cool blast effect piece, which is pretty nifty.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve always really dug the Endor Rebels, and the PotF one was one of my favorites from that line.  I wanted the Saga version, specifically the not bearded one, when they hit, but all I could ever find was the bearded one, who I begrudgingly bought, but decided to get rid of later.  I eventually got this one when I sizable run of Saga figures got traded into All Time way back in 2018.  Like last week’s Durge, I took the pictures of this guy pretty much right away, but just never got around to actually writing the review.  So, you know, here we are, I guess.  He’s not bad.  Not great, but given the rest of the line, he could certainly be worse.

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

#3712: Apocalypse

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

APOCALYPSE

MARVEL UNIVERSE (HASBRO)

Hey!  It’s October 17th!  That means today marks the end of the site’s 11th year.  That’s pretty crazy.  Last year was, of course, the end of my first decade, so I did an even more extravagant wrap-up than usual, which I think was a nice send-off to the big wrap-ups, so I’m not gonna do one of those this year.  I will however, still be doing my usual slightly more significant item to review, just to mark the day a bit.  I haven’t reviewed any figures from Hasbro’s Marvel Universe line since we were in the depths of the pandemic and the lockdowns, which feels sort of crazy, because it was at one time such a notable portion of my collection.  I’ve scaled it back a lot, though, especially with Legends having overtaken it on so many fronts.  But, there was a good five year stretch or so where it was one of my main jams.  A character that’s never *really* been one of my main jams, however, is Apocalypse.  Don’t get me wrong, I like some of what he’s been involved in, but something about him’s never fully clicked for me.  That said, I’ve had more than a few good toys of him, and, you know what, here’s one of those.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Apocalypse was released during Marvel Universe‘s third year, in the 13th overall assortment, which was the second of the year.  He’s figure 009, and shipped alongside Jim Lee Cyclops, First Appearance Wolverine, Cable, and Gladiator.  All of the new figures were X-themed, which was a first for the line.  The figure stands about 4 1/2 inches tall and he has 26 points of articulation.  Apocalypse is seen here in his “Messiah Complex” look, which was still pretty current at the time of the figure’s release, and also matched up with the Cable from the same assortment.  He was built on the larger male body introduced with Juggernaut the prior year.  It’s a very solid starting point, coming after Hasbro had finally weeded out their truly abysmal initial base bodies for the line.  This one’s got a surprising range of motion given its build, and is also quite stable on its feet.  He gets a new head, lower arms, hands, shins, and feet, as well as new overlay pieces for the shoulders and belt.  It’s a good selection of parts, and the mesh well with the underlying base body.  The hoses on the arms are a little limiting for poses, not as bad as you might expect, and I particularly l love the gesturing hand; it adds so much character to his poses.  Apocalypse’s paint work isn’t bad.  Hasbro was in a period of doing washes and such for accenting, so he gets a bit of that, which works quite well with the sculpt.  Apocalypse’s only accessory was a display stand with his name and figure number printed on it.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Like I touched on in the intro, I’m not classically much of an Apocalypse fan.  So, why is this guy my significant-year-end-review choice?  In the summer between my freshman and sophomore years of college, I was back home and spending a lot of my free time with my younger brother Christian.  A few times over the summer, he needed to go into work with me during the day, so I’d make it up to him by stopping by the Target on the way home, so that he could get something cool at the end of the day.  Target was, at the time, running a buy-one-get-one-free sale on Marvel Universe, so I’d buy one for him and get one for myself as well.  We built up a bit of collection that way, and it eventually got to the point of us actively hunting for the line together.  A good chunk of my MU collection went back with me to college that year, and I promised him we’d keep collecting as I got the chance.  A couple of days after I moved into my dorm, my parents were dropping off some supplies for me, and when I went down to meet them, Christian was also there, and presented me with this guy, who he’d insisted on getting me.  It was tremendously thoughtful.  My small MU collection was one of the things that helped get me through what would ultimately be a kind of rough year at school, and this guy was one of the most significant pieces for me.  I may not be a huge Apocalypse fan, but I’m a huge fan of this figure in particular.

#3711: Phoenix

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

PHOENIX

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

You know, I feel every few years, I have to review a Marvel Legends Phoenix. Just, like, some sort of cycle. They keep remaking her, and I keep buying her, and then the reviews come back around, rising from the ashes, like some kind of…phoenix. Ha. Good joke. Everybody laugh. Roll on snare drum. Wait, sorry, that’s the wrong publisher! This is Marvel, a Disney subsidiary! Maybe we go with this is the song that never ends? Hang on, I think I’m confusing that with “It’s A Small World.” “The Song That Never Ends” is Lambchop. I don’t know who owns that. Well, this intro’s just going swimmingly, then, isn’t it? Let’s just look at the figure!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Phoenix is a deluxe Marvel Legends release, hitting on her own as a Fall 2024 offering.  We actually got a pretty quick turnaround for release on this one, since she wasn’t shown off all that long before dropping at retail.  She’s decidedly a classic Phoenix, rather than Dark.  It’s only the third time we’ve gotten just a classic Phoenix in Legends.  The figure stands 6 1/4 inches tall and she has 32 points of articulation.  She’s got the updated pinless construction arms and legs from Shriek, along with a brand new torso set-up, which works in the more modernized articulation style like we’ve been seeing on the Spider-Men more recently, as well as adding in butterfly shoulders.  The whole thing’s a very solid set-up, and I look forward to seeing it show up elsewhere going forward. Jean’s got a new sash add-on, which sits a lot better than the prior pieces, and two different head sculpts.  One’s more standard Jean, and the other’s all powered up.  It took me a minute to warm up to the new heads; I was really a fan of the powered up head from the Dark Phoenix figure, and I wasn’t sure they’d be able to top it.  That said, these two are far more refined and subtle.  They’re very dynamic with the hair flow, and the face sculpts really capture that ’70s Jean look.  The color work on this release is a marked improvement on earlier versions, especially the prior Hasbro version, which was a touch murky.  This one’s got more pop, and the application’s much cleaner.  Phoenix is packed with two sets of hands (in fists and open gesture) and, for the first time since the Toy Biz days, a big, fiery Phoenix bird base, which serves as a major selling point for this release.  It’s a little tricky to assemble, and there’s no guide or anything, but once it’s built it’s very impressive, and even has an articulated neck for further posing options.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I genuinely didn’t think I needed this figure when she was announced.  I was happy with my 2016 figure with the alt head from the two-pack and the Toy Biz base.  Sure, it was hodgepodge, but I liked it well enough.  No need to upgrade, right?  But, I started to waffle as we got closer to release, and when I saw how nice she looked in person, I just couldn’t say no.  She’s so very much nicer than the prior releases, and I’m very glad I caved.  This is the definitive take…until Hasbro manages to somehow outdo themselves again in a few years, I guess…

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

#3708: Durge

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

DURGE

STAR WARS: CLONE WARS (HASBRO)

Genndy Tartakovsky’s Star Wars: Clone Wars is something I don’t talk about with any real frequency, but that’s not for lack of love, I assure you.  It’s easily the best thing from the prequel era released during the run of the three films, and even when you expand past that, it’s really only rivaled by the 3D Clone Wars, and that one needed a much longer run to achieve the rivalry.  While the show worked with a lot of pre-existing characters, it had a few originals, which included Separatist Bounty Hunter Durge, who serves as one of the notable antagonists.  Durge is surprisingly sparse on action figure coverage, but was at the very least part of the short tie-in line for the show.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Durge was released as a single figure in the second assortment of animated Star Wars: Clone Wars figures, released in 2003.  He was also subsequently re-released in 2005 as part of the “Sith Attack Pack” entry in the Commemorative DVD Collection, alongside Asajj Ventress and General Grievous.  Mine is the single release, though the two are more or less identical.  The figure stands about 3 3/4 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation.  As with all of the 2D animated figures, this one prioritizes form over function.  His articulation his limited to the neck, the shoulders, and wrists, with no movement below the torso at all.  The movement he *does* have is largely for minor tweaks to the one predetermined pose he’s got.  Ultimately, with Tartakovsky’s style, the glorified statue approach is the best way to handle things.  It translates very well to this set-up, and they’ve made him work pretty well from most angles.  He’s clean and he’s very stylized, and it’s very clear who it’s supposed to be.  His color work is flat colors, capturing the cel animation’s coloring set-up.  The application’s all fairly clean, and there’s no notable missing details.  He’s packed with his jousting-lance-thingy from the show, as well as one of the stands that was packed with all of the figures.  It’s not much, but none of these figures were very accessory heavy.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As much as I loved the show, I had very few of the figures from it at the time of their release.  The line was just generally hard to find.  Durge in particular was one I wanted but never could get.  I wound up getting him from Cosmic Comix back in late 2017, I believe?  I even took the photos that accompany this review back when I got him, but I just kept putting off writing the actual review until this very moment.  That’s just how I roll sometimes.  He’s pretty par for the course on this line.  They’re not astoundingly fun to mess with, I suppose, but they sure do look really cool.

#3707: Marcus Brody

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

MARCUS BRODY

INDIANA JONES: ADVENTURE SERIES (HASBRO)

In the more than a decade that I’ve been running the site, I’ve mentioned Indiana Jones only in passing, and only, like, three times at that.  I guess it’s just one of those franchises I’ve never had a major connection to.  Like, I’ve seen all the movies, and they certainly have their moments.  Last Crusade is genuinely just a good movie, which I do really enjoy, but outside of that one, they’re all just fine enough, I guess.  I’ve tried on the toys a few times in the past, and I just always wind up falling right back out of it.  I ended up passing on Adventure Series, Hasbro’s 6-inch line from 2023, pretty much as a whole because I couldn’t ultimately see myself sticking with it.  That being said, in all of the toy coverage over the years, we’ve never gotten a figure of my favorite character from the films, Marcus Brody, played by Denholm Elliot, whose other roles weren’t really keen for action figure coverage either.  There’s a sincere lack of Trading Places action figures is all I’m saying.  Hasbro did actually offer Marcus up for Adventure Series, though, and I got one, so I’m looking at British-guy-in-a-suit Denholm Elliot today!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Marcus Brody was released in a Fan Channel-exclusive Indiana Jones: Adventure Series two-pack, alongside a variant of Rene Belloq.  It’s a multi-pack of guys in suits.  Odd choice, especially since the two don’t share any scenes in Raiders.  I think they interacted a bit in the expanded universe, so maybe that’s what we’re going with?  Look, it got us a Marcus figure, so I’m not gonna stress about it too much.  The figure stands just over 6 inches tall and he has 31 points of articulation.  His articulation, which is pretty typical for the line as a whole, is a lot like the modern Black Series set-up, which works pretty well, and also makes a fair bit of sense.  It’s not, like, super great for crazy posing or anything, but it works fine for the type of character Marcus is supposed to be.  Marcus’ sculpt is a pretty respectable one.  It’s again got a Black Series vibe to it, which works fine by me.  The head’s got a pretty respectable likeness of Denholm Elliot, which is the most important part.  The suit sculpt is a little softer, but it does alright.  The multi-layered construction definitely works well.  The color work is generally basic.  The most in depth work’s on the face, which is using the printing.  Most of the rest of it’s molded plastic.  It’s generally clean.  There’s not a ton going on, but it’s accurate.  Marcus is packed with an apple (our second one of those in this scale from Hasbro, though its a different mold than the one packed with He-Who-Remains) and his large book, which opens up to a fully detailed interior page.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Marcus is my favorite part of the franchise largely because of Denholm Elliot in the role.  I’m a big fan of Elliot’s other roles, especially Trading Places and Noises Off, so the prospect of owning a figure of him was definitely a cool one.  I wanted to snag this figure, but the two-pack set-up was tricky, especially because I didn’t really want Belloq.  Matty wanted to go into a Gamestop a couple of months ago, though, and they happened to have the set on clearance, which made the whole thing easier to justify.  I offloaded the Belloq, and now I’ve just got a Denholm Elliot figure, which is pretty nifty.  Now, if I could just manage to find 1/12 scale figures of Eddie Murphy and Jaime Lee Curtis, I’d be all set for my own Trading Places set-up.

#3706: Doctor Strange

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

DOCTOR STRANGE

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Stephen Strange was a brilliant surgeon before an accident ruined his hands. Now he defends our reality from supernatural threats as Earth’s Sorcerer Supreme.”

I took a break from Marvel reviews all last month, largely because we’re in a waiting period on new Marvel Legends, which make up a substantial portion of my Marvel reviews.  Of course, that doesn’t stop me from digging into my backlog, I suppose.  I’ve had a number of “new” figures sitting off to the side waiting for a Legends-light period to slot them in, and I’m officially dusting some of them off!  And I do mean that literally…they’ve been sitting for a while you guys.  Anyway, here’s our second ever classic Doctor Strange, released more than a decade after the first!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Doctor Strange is a Walmart-exclusive Marvel Legends release, hitting in 2022 as a loose tie-in with the release of Multiverse of Madness.  He was only actually available online, rather than in-store, but that wasn’t a widely promoted thing, so it was easy to miss.  As noted in the intro, this was the first classic comic Strange since Toy Biz’s initial release of the character, all the way back in the Galactus Series, since Hasbro’s been sticking more to the modern side of things.  The figure stands about 6 1/4 inches tall and he has 32 points of articulation.  Structurally, Strange makes use of the lower half of the ANAD 2099 body, as well as the upper arms from Kang.  Beyond that, he’s all-new, though a number of the parts were re-used for the Spider-Man: Animated and Wong two-pack Strange releases.  Ultimately, it’s a good mix of parts, which does a really good job of conveying the flow and depth of the design.  The cape (which is one piece that is thus far totally unique to this release) is glued in place at the front, so it’s not going anywhere.  On one hand, it’s a little annoying not to be able to display him sans-cloak, but on the other it means it’s not flopping about and falling off, which I do like.  There are two main heads with this release, one “standard” and the other meditating.  What’s interesting is that they aren’t just a simple change of expression, but also have different hair styles.  The meditating one is more ’70s-inspired (and was in fact sculpted by Paul Harding, based on his own “Marvel In the ’70s” Doctor Strange sculpture), while the other is shorter and more modern.  I generally prefer the meditating one, but it’s limited by those closed eyes.  This is definitely one of those “wish I could swap the hair pieces” moments.  Strange’s color work isn’t bad.  It’s certainly bright and colorful.  The yellow paint on his cape is particularly sloppy, and I find the greying temples on both heads to be a little unsubtle in their application, but generally, things look okay.  Doctor Strange is packed with a third, masked head, based on his era of extra super-hero-y-ness in the ’60s.  It’s just a repainted Silver Surfer head, and it doesn’t actually match the body it comes with, but how else am I gonna build my Kurt Busiek’s The Order line-up?  Strange is also packed with two pairs of hands (spell casting and a fist/grip combo), spell effects pieces, the Wand of Watoomb, and the Axe of Angarruumus, which is all pretty fun.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I recall this figure being shown off, and I recall him going up on Walmart.com, but I never did get around to ordering him or putting any real effort at all into tracking him down.  It’s not that I didn’t want one, but I did still have the Toy Biz release, which is really, really good, and I just wasn’t in a rush to deal with getting a Walmart exclusive.  One with a broken tape seal showed up a few months after the fact at All Time, and I took that as a good sign that I should get one.  He’s a solid classic Strange, and a good update to the Toy Biz release.  I can’t say there’s much to him beyond that, but does there really have to be?

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

#3703: Darth Vader

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

DARTH VADER

STAR WARS: POWER OF THE FORCE (HASBRO)

“Inside the Death Star’s detention corridor, Darth Vader is intent on snapping Princess Leia’s defiance. Accompanied by an Imperial interrogation droid, the Sith Lord enters cell 2187, determined to learn the location of the hidden Rebel base from his royal prisoner”

Jumping from one caped guy in black to the next, in 1/18 scale no less!  So, look, guys, I have a lot of Star Wars figures sitting around here.  There’s a notable backlog of those guys I gotta work my way through, so I might as well do a little bit of that now.  And, if I’ve got a helping of Star Wars reviews coming at you, you know I gotta start it off with Power of the Force, because here I am with a bunch of Power of the Force, specifically.  The line had an impressive coverage of the depth of characters from the galaxy far, far away, but it also had a lot of variants of the main characters from the original trilogy.  For characters with similar looks for all three films, such as Darth Vader, the figures were pretty similar and meant to be more all-purpose, but before the end of the line, they started going a bit more movie-specific.  I’m looking at the line’s last take on Vader today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Darth Vader was added to the Power of the Force line in 1999, as part of the first of the two CommTech assortments that wrapped up the line.  As the line’s last hurrah, there was certainly a focus on heavy hitters.  The figure stands just over 4 inches tall and he has 8 points of articulation.  He’s got those extra swivels on his elbows, as the line experimented with going beyond the basic 6 they’d launched with.  It doesn’t do a ton, but it adds to the variety, I suppose.  For his last entry in the line, Vader goes decidedly back to the beginning, with our very first specifically A New Hope-inspired Vader, focussing directly on his appearance in the interrogation scene.  His sculpt was all-new, and is quite a strong one.  It wound up getting re-used a bit down the line due to how strong it was.  It’s a little pre-posed, again going into the scene specific bit, with his hands posed near his belt.  The proportions are solid, moving entirely away from the buff look of the early figures.  The details are also really sharp, which is nice.  The cape is cloth this time, which is a little awkward at this scale, but ultimately works okay if you get the posing right.  His paint work is simple, largely relying on molded black plastic, but there’s some variety worked in there.  Vader was packed with the interrogation droid (aka Dr. Ball, MD), who has its own little flight stand.  He’s also got the CommTech stand, for CommTech stand purposes.  He is, notably, devoid of a lightsaber, since there’s a hilt sculpted to the body, and he doesn’t use the saber in the Interrogation scene.  Later uses of the mold would fix that, though.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

It took me a surprisingly long time to get this figure.  When I really jumped into the Power of the Force thing, All Time even had a sealed one, but I didn’t snag him at the time, and he sold before I got him.  My first encounter with this mold was actually one if its later uses, namely the comic pack version, so I did at least know what to expect.  I wound up snagging this one loose just a few months ago.  He’s honestly pretty solid, and probably the best Vader in the line, so it’s a good note to go out on.

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

#3699: Blue Beetle

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

BLUE BEETLE

DC SUPER HEROES (HASBRO)

For years, Blue Beetle was theorized to be in the unproduced fourth wave of Kenner’s Super Powers, but when the full line-up was finally found, this was proven untrue. What *was* true, however, was that Blue Beetle was meant to be in the unproduced fourth wave of *another* Kenner DC line, namely Total Justice. Our first hint of this was his appearance in several pages of the Total Justice coloring book, eventually followed up by shots of the prototype. While Kenner themselves would never produce a Blue Beetle figure, their successors at Hasbro would eventually put out Kenner’s scrapped one, giving Ted his very first action figure in the process.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Blue Beetle was released as part of one of the four DC Super Heroes two-packs released via HasbroCollectors.com in 1999. He was packed alongside a Flash variant and a tiny version of the Atom wearing his Teen Titans costume. The figure is about 5 inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation. Beetle’s sculpt was new to him, but, like a lot of the Total Justice sculpts, parts were reused in the JLA line. In particular, his legs were used by Red Tornado. The sculpt is…well, let’s call it interesting. It’s hands down one of the most preposed and hardest to get standing sculpts of the TJ era. As you can see, I actually had to use a Protech stand to keep him upright for the photos. He’s also exceptionally skinny, made even more egregious because Ted’s usually a slightly stockier guy. Here, he looks like a swimmer, and a particularly skinny one at that.  That said, I do quite like the etched-in details for the costume, something that most of the JLA fill-in figures wound up lacking.  His head uses a multi-part assembly for the googles, which allows them to be clear plastic.  Unfortunately, there’s no actual light piping or anything, so the ultimate result is kind of a muddy amber appearance.  In terms of the rest of coloring, he’s decent enough.  A little on the dark side, and while I’m never one to complain about metallic blue, I don’t know that it quite feels right for Ted as a character.  Application is at least pretty cleanly handled, though.  Despite having a left hand clearly molded to hold something, Ted was without any accessories of his own.  Presumably, had he been released single, there would have been some sort of fractal armor accessory, which we see a little more of in those coloring book pages.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I don’t recall the exact circumstances that lead to me getting this figure.  I know I owned the whole boxed set he came from, and I know I got them from my parents for some sort of occasion.  Maybe Valentines Day?  I remember that Cosmic Comix had all four of the sets in stock, and I’d gotten the Green Lantern/Doctor Polaris and Superboy/King Shark sets already, and I’d looked at this one a bunch of times, so I’d wager my dad probably caught me eying it and bought it for later.  This was my first real exposure to Blue Beetle, and it’s admittedly not all that great a figure.  I do really appreciate the quaintness of him, though.

#3697: Alpha Ranger

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

ALPHA RANGER

XEVOZ (HASBRO)

Do you ever have one of those moments where you see something and, like, a whole branch of memories you’ve largely forgotten just all click into place?  I mean, I guess I sort of do that a bit.  Sort of a theme of this site, isn’t it?  Am I being weird?  Probably.  But, you know, like the good sort of quirky weird, right?  Right.  So, the aforementioned “core memory unlocker” in this case is Xevoz.  If you’re not familiar (by which I mean if you weren’t a ten-to-twelve-year-old in the early ’00s who caught their two year run), Xevoz was a line of constructible action figures made by Hasbro, who licensed out the general style from Stikfas, another early ’00s line, albeit one aimed at a slightly older audience.  They were rather customizable, and each built around a core concept or idea, with a “standard” look open to variations.  They launched with minimal fanfare in early 2004, and ran four waves up through mid-2005, at which point the line ended with less fanfare than it started.  They never really had the same cultural impact of other lines, and they exist now only in my memory.  Like Leonardo DiCaprio.  Or Torengos.  Anyway, here’s a review of a Xevoz guy!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Alpha Ranger was one of the three “Basics” in Wave 1 of Xevoz.  They were the lowest price-point figures, and generally kept the parts count a little lower and the designs a little less involved.  In addition to dividing the figures into different price points, there were also different factions within the fictitious world of Xevoz.  Alpha Ranger is one of the “Neo-Sapiens”, which is what happens when you mix Keanu Reeves with Doug Jones.  Okay, not really.  Abe did wear a lot of black, though.  I’m getting sidetracked.  In actuality, they were the standard sci-fi humans of the set-up.  The Alpha Ranger’s main body set-up is made up of 15 parts, and results in a figure that stands about 6 inches tall and has 14 points of articulation.  The core, stripped-down body has him in a rather basic jump-suit, with minimal additional detailing.  In general, the line was pretty stylized and blocky, which aided with the customizing approach.  This represents a pretty standard “human” in the style, which is a neat view.  The standard build as shown in the instructions that accompany the figure uses the helmeted head, and puts on his shoulder and knee pads, as well as his chest plate and back pack.  It results in a design that’s not terribly far-removed from a Colonial Marine, which is cool by me.  Certainly fits my vibe in collecting.  I also quite enjoy the visor on the helmet, because it’s got this sort of Cyclops meets Deadshot feel, which also works for me.  There’s a handful of additional parts (though less than others, since he’s a “Basic”), including two different heads (one a basic unhelmeted look, the other one that looks a bit like a shrunken head; the second one is supposed to be this set’s “gag” piece, which was one sort of humorous piece included with each set), a smart-gun-style Pulse Cannon (complete with arm attachment), a rifle, a knife, and a pistol.  You can reconfigure stuff and swap out parts to get a number of different looks, which is especially cool if you’re looking to get an army of these guys set-up.  The paint on Xevoz was generally minimal, but what’s there works out alight.  Any additional detailing was addressed by stickers, which there were a good number of, in case you wanted extra customization.  Personally, I’m not much of a stickers guy, but it’s still cool.  There was also, like, a game that they tried with them?  You assembled this little hex-thingy, and there were stats based on the different pieces included.  I never got much into it.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I had a small handful of these as a kid.  I remember the KB Toys my grandmother frequently took me and my brother to had a bunch of them, and they were on clearance, so this was probably at the tail end of the run?  The Alpha Ranger was one of the ones I had.  I lost parts to most of them, and so they kind of just faded out of my memory.  It’s okay, though, because All Time came through with the save.  A collection of Xevoz got traded in, and did the previously mentioned core-memory-unlocking.  There was an Alpha Ranger, missing exactly one piece, and after a quick dig, I found that piece from my original.  It was destiny!  I’m quite happy to have him back, but now I just need to avoid jumping back in.

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

#3687: R5-D4, BD-72, & Pit Droids

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

R5-D4, BD-72, & PIT DROIDS

STAR WARS: THE BLACK SERIES (HASBRO)

“Peli Motto makes quick work of refueling and repairing battered ships with the help of R5-D4, BD-72, and a team of hyperactive pit droids.”

There’s a lot of cool things going for Star Wars as a concept, but one of the most infinitely marketable pieces has to be the droids. There’s just so many models, and there’s a bunch of unique names thrown at the models, and when they introduce new models, we get to see them get worked into the background with other, older models, and that’s cool too. And there are so many toy possibilities, too, which works out very well for me, a toy collector. The titular character from The Mandalorian having a distrust of droids at the outset did limit the droids he interacted with initially (barring, of course, IG-11, whose just too awesome to be limited), but they’ve worked their way into the show as it’s progressed, and there’s even been enough of them to warrant a whole special pack. How about that?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

R5-D4, BD-72, and the Pit Droids are a Target-exclusive Star Wars: The Black Series offering, which started showing up mid to late summer.

First and foremost, we’ve got the one “proper” figure of the set, R5. R5’s reappearance on the show was a fun little touch, since we’d seen nothing of the little guy since his motivator blew in A New Hope. Obviously, with stuff still happening on Tatooine, it’s not the craziest thing for him to reappear, but I don’t know if anyone was expecting him to actually get to go on a full-fledged mission with Mando.  R5 got a GameStop-exclusive Black Series release back in 2017, but that was on the old, smaller Astromech body.  Since then, of course, Hasbro has totally redone the Astromech, and we actually got an updated R5 on that body last year as a single.  This one is more or less the same as that one, albeit with a few minor differences.  Regardless of release, he’s a new head on the body of R2, which is pretty typical of an R5 (you know, unless he’s the GREATEST R5 FIGURE OF ALL TIME).  It’s a pretty solid mold on its own, and the new head makes it nice and distinctly different from the prior R2.  The one structural difference between this figure and the single is that his motivator panel, removable on the single, is new glued in place.  His paint work is pretty much the same, and is likewise pretty similar to the R2, just with some adjusted colors.  Application is generally pretty clean, which is cool.  I’ll be honest, though, I kind of miss the shiny silver sticker from the GameStop one, as hokey as it might have been.  In terms of accessories, R5 gets the same five attachments as his single release (borrowed from the R2 mold), as well as brand new swappable side panels featuring the jet boosters used by R5 in The Mandalorian.  Presumably, we will at some point see these get used on some form of R2 re-release, since it was the only notable attachment missing from the last one.

Since first debuting as a pack-in figure with the original Cal Kestis figure in 2019, we’ve had our fair share of BD droids.  Most of them have actually just been BD-1, but the BD that appears in The Mandalorian is officially a different droid, BD-72, making this officially a new character.  The mold’s a straight re-use, which is fair enough, because it’s quite a nice one, being surprisingly poseable *and* surprisingly stable for a mold of its size.  It’s got a new deco, which is fairly basic, but heavier on the blues than the original.

Now we get to the real meat of the set.  Look, R5 and BD are all well and good, but the real reason anyone’s buying this $40 set isn’t for the two minor tweaks to prior releases; no it’s for the Pit Droids!  Though we’ve technically gotten a Black Series Pit Droid once before, it was in one of the Disney Parks-exclusive multipacks, which is far from the most convenient way to get a new mold.  Thankfully, this set makes up for it, with two whole Pit Droids, each in their own color scheme!  Yay!  The figures both stand 4 inches tall and they have 23 points of articulation.  They’re quite poseable, and I’m glad their smaller size doesn’t make them too spindly to allow for that.  The sculpt is a solid recreation of the design from the movies and shows, and definitely looks he part of the Pit Droid.  It’s a nice, clean visual, and it’s translated well here.  But, one of the coolest things about the Pit Droids is how they fold up when not in use.  Their smaller figures could never quite capture that, but these ones actually do!  Sure, it’s a little fiddly to get them there (and there’s no instructions like a Transformer would get), but you can get a surprisingly accurate folded up look out of these two.  In terms of coloring, we get one Pit Droid in tan, and the other in maroon.  The bulk of the coloring for both is molded, of course, with paint for the “eyes”, and a little bit of accenting for both.  On the tan guy, it’s a little more subtle, while the maroon guy gets some more obvious offsetting.  Of the two, I’m partial to maroon, but they’re both fun.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I quite like Pit Droids, but they’re frequently tricky to get as figures due to weird release schemes.  I wasn’t thrilled when the first Black Series one was stuck in a Parks set with other figures I didn’t really need, so I do like another option.  Not sure Target-exclusive set with other figures I don’t need is *ideal*, but it’s not the worst thing ever.  Since I opted not to grab the single R5 release, he’s not really a double up for me, at least with this mold, and another BD isn’t the worst thing.  Plus, I do get two whole Pit Droids, and they’re truly fantastic little figures, so I’m happy to have them.