Tag Archives: Lion Force

#0175: Keith & Black Lion (Plus Voltron!)

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

KEITH & BLACK LION

VOLTRON CLASSICS We’re nearing the end of Voltron Week, with Part 5! Today’s review is a look at the final Lion and its pilot Keith from Mattel’s Voltron Classics. Keith is the team’s leader and the Black Lion is the most important of the set, connecting the other four to form Voltron.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Keith and the Black Lion were the final release in the line. They went up for sale on Matty Collector in October of 2012. Keith stands about 3 ¾ inches tall and features the same 18 points of articulation as everyone else in the line. Keith shares a body with Lance. It’s not a perfect sculpt, but it works fine, and Lance and Keith should have similar builds, so it’s a sensible reuse. The head is a new piece and looks pretty spot on to the character’s look on the show. Paint-wise, Keith makes out the best of the pilots, with really clean lines and details, and by far the best detailing on the head. Like Allura, he uses a molded skin tone instead of a painted one, but unlike Allura, he isn’t plagued by messy paint. Keith includes an alternate helmeted head, the final piece of the “Blazing Sword” and a key stand.

THE VEHICLE ITSELF

The Black Lion is the central Lion, and is definitely the biggest of the five. This isn’t quite accurate to the show, where the Lions were more or less the same size, but things were understandably fudged so that the final Voltron construction looked good. The Black Lion is about 7 inches tall, and features 29ish points of articulation. Like the rest of the Lions, this articulation is mostly limited by the various spring loaded features, though the back legs, tail, neck and wing thingies are all unfettered by the features. The sculpt isn’t terrible, but the proportions are noticeably off, obviously done to optimize the design of the fully assembled Voltron. Everything is sharp and symmetrical. The Black Lion features the most detailed paintwork of any of the Lions, which does bring him up a peg. All of the paint is cleanly applied with no bleed over or slop. The Black Lion included a fully assembled Voltron sword and shield, fully completing the five lions’ transformation into:

VOLTRON, DEFENDER OF THE UNIVERSE!

Voltron

Please do excuse the out of the ordinary background for Voltron. He’s too large for me to photograph in my usual set up, so here he is standing in my family room. Voltron stands 24 inches tall and features 25 points of articulation while in Voltron-mode. Voltron is of course made up of the five Lions, so most of the things said in those reviews apply here. He does have a sculpted face, which appears when the emblem on the Black Lion’s torso is pressed, popping the Lion’s jaw open. The face looks pretty spot on to what the character looked like on the show, and it’s painted with some nice detail work. Overall, Voltron was very definitely worth the wait to get all the Lions, and his size alone makes him quite the standout piece.

VoltronAccessories

 

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Like the rest of the figures from Voltron Classics, I had to pick up Keith and the Black Lion from Matty Collector on the day of release. It was quite the hectic day, as there were a number of other items I was attempting to get at the same time. I wound up being successful, only hitting a small handful of waiting screens, and completing my order in less than 10 minutes. Upon arrival, I noticed Keith’s extra helmeted head had been quite mangled in the package. I contacted customer service to get a replacement, but they seemed very reluctant to send out a new piece, and ultimately wanted me to ship Keith and the Lion back, and then they would send me another one once mine arrived. I wasn’t really keen on sending it back, so I ended up doing a bit of work to get the head into a less mangled state.

#0174: Princess Allura & Blue Lion

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

PRINCESS ALLURA & BLUE LION

VOLTRON CLASSICS

Voltron Week continues with Part 4!

Today, I look at the fourth of the 5 lions that make up Voltron. Once again, this is a figure from Mattel’s Voltron Classics. This time around, the pilot is the group’s token female, Princess Allura, pilot of the Blue Lion!

THE FIGURE ITSELF


Allura was the fourth release in the Voltron Classics line. The set containing her and the Blue Lion went up for sale over at Matty Collector in August of 2012. Allura is about 3 ¾ inches tall and has the same 18 points of articulation as all the other pilots in the line. Similarly to Pidge, Allura shows some improved articulation in the hips, as well as better movement in the knees, making her the best sitting of the pilots. Yay her. Allura’s sculpt is right in line with the rest of the figures, so it’s not bad, though she does have the same issue as Lance regarding the odd shape of her upper arms. The paint work on the figure is a bit of a mixed bag. She features some improved detail work compared to the others, and I do like the change to molded flesh tones in place of painted ones, but the paint on her hairline is pretty bad, with some pretty noticeable slop. It’s not as apparent in hand as it is in the photos, but it’s still there, and it’s pretty annoying to see this level of slop on a so-called “collector line.” Allura included an alternate helmeted head, a piece of the “Blazing Sword” and a key stand.

THE VEHICLE ITSELF

The Blue Lion is another “Foot Lion” like the Yellow Lion. As such, it’s bigger than the Green and Red lions, standing about 5 ½ inches tall and being roughly 10 inches long. It has 19 points of “articulation” that is mostly limited by the various spring loaded features. For a breakdown on said features, check out my review of the Yellow Lion, as they do the exact same thing. The Blue Lion shares most of its pieces with Yellow, but it does have a unique head and hatch cover, illustrating the Blue Lion’s more angular design. The Blue Lion has the best paint application we’ve seen so far on the lions, with more additional details, and pretty much no slop or bleed over. Maybe it’s just the color scheme, but the Blue Lion seems to be a sharper piece overall than the others.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve mentioned previously that I missed out on the subscription Mattel offered for the line, which meant I had to be on at noon for each release to guarantee I didn’t miss anyone. For some reason, Mattel decided to put the Blue Lion up for sale 15 minutes early, leading to some serious server issues and some overall widespread panic. I was able to place my order, but the site timed out on the very last page, leaving me uncertain as to whether the order had actually gone through. After about 20 semi-panic-filled minutes, I finally got my confirmation e-mail and all was well. I’m glad it worked out, because the Blue Lion ended up being my favorite Lion in the set!

#0173: Pidge & Green Lion

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

PIDGE & GREEN LION

VOLTRON CLASSICS

Voltron Week is going strong with Part 3!

So far, I’ve looked at the Red and Yellow Lions and their pilots Lance and Hunk from Mattel’s Voltron Classics. I’m moving from the team’s largest member, Hunk, to the team’s smallest member and pilot of the Green Lion, Pidge. Let’s check this set out!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Pidge was released third in the Voltron Classics line. He and the Green Lion went up for sale on Matty Collector in June of 2012. Pidge is just shy of 3 inches tall and has 18 points of articulation. The articulation is mostly the same as that found on the other two pilots, buy Pidge does have a much better range of motion on his hips, meaning he can sit in the cockpit of his Lion a lot better than the other two. Pidge’s sculpt is in pretty much the same vein as the other pilots, just smaller this time around. His head is quite large, which is accurate to the cartoon. They even managed to nail his goofy looking hair! The paint is pretty much on par with Lance; no real slop or bleed over, but nothing spectacular. Pidge includes an alternate helmeted head, a piece of the “Blazing Sword” and a key stand.

THE VEHICLE ITSELF

The Green Lion is another “arm lion” like the Red Lion. This being the case, the two are fairly similar in design. The Green Lion has 21 points of articulation, once again hampered by the spring-loaded features, stands about 5 inches in height and is about 9 inches long. The Green Lion has a lot of common design elements with the Red Lion, but only the legs and tail are shared between the two. Green has a brand new set of pieces to reflect the Green Lion’s more rounded design. The paint work on the Green Lion is the best we’ve seen so far, with lots of clean line work and some pretty decent details. I’m still not a fan of the stickers in the cockpit, but at this point, at least it’s consistent.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Having missed out on the subscription for Voltron Classics, I had to be online on the day of release for each of these sets. Pidge wasn’t too difficult to acquire, but there was a significant wait time involved. Thanks Mattel!

#0172: Hunk & Yellow Lion

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

HUNK & YELLOW LION

VOLTRON CLASSICS

Voltron Week continues with Part 2!

Yesterday, I looked at the Red Lion and its pilot Lance, the first release in Mattel’s Voltron Classics line. Today, I’m moving on to team Lion Force’s resident loveable muscle: Hunk. Hunk came packed with the Yellow Lion, which he piloted. Let’s see how that turned out!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Hunk was the second release of the line, packed with the Yellow Lion. They were put up for sale on Matty Collector in April of 2012. Hunk stands about 3 ¾ inches tall and features 18 points of articulation. His articulation is pretty much identical to that found on Lance. The knees are even more restricted here, and the hips also meet a bit of resistance, but overall, it works okay. Hunk’s sculpt is similar to that of Lance, but ultimately a bit better. Hunk’s more unique features make for a better constructed figure over all, and he doesn’t have the oddly proportioned upper arms present on Lance. Unfortunately, Hunk’s paint work isn’t quite as good as Lance’s, with some more noticeable slop, particularly around the headband and hair. Hunk includes a helmeted head, a piece of the “Blazing Sword” and a key stand.

THE VEHICLE ITSELF

The Yellow Lion is bigger than the previously reviewed Red Lion. It stands about 5 ½ to 6 inches tall and is about 10 inches long. It has 19 points of “articulation,” though, like the Red Lion, most of this is restricted by spring features and the like. The nature of the springs in the articulation does allow you to get a few more poses out of this one than the Red one, but nothing really substantial. The sculpt is fairly basic, with relatively little in the way of fine details, but this is in keeping with the design of the show. The paint is alright, I suppose. There are a few fuzzy lines, and I’m still not happy about the choice to use stickers in the cockpits, but it could be worse. The lion has the same two action features as the Red Lion, plus a button to allow the robot to be disconnected once it’s been attached to Voltron, an extra neck joint so the lion’s head can be used as a foot, and a piece that swings down to make the foot more stable. The old stuff is still rather pointless here, but the additional features do all adds something of value, which is appreciated.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Like with Lance and the Red Lion, I had to get on Mattel’s site at noon the day this set was released in order to insure I got them. Hunk wasn’t too difficult to get, but I did have to go through more wait screens this time around, and he sold out faster than Lance. Thus began the uphill climb on acquiring the figures.

#0171: Lance & Red Lion

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

LANCE & RED LION

VOLTRON CLASSICS

In a rare move for me, I’m doing a theme week. This week is officially Voltron Week!

I’m actually a bit too young to have seen Voltron in its original airings, but through the magic of syndication, I got to watch at least once a week when I would stay at my grandparents. I was never super hooked on it, but I always enjoyed watching it. Sadly for me, there were no toys readily available, aside from the toys from Voltron: The Third Dimension, which just wasn’t the same. So, I went many years without any Voltron toys.

In 2011, Mattel announced they had acquired the Voltron license, and they would be releasing the 5 main characters and their lions from the original cartoon through their online store. Surprisingly for Mattel, they didn’t completely suck.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The first release of the line was Lance, packed with the Red Lion. The two were released as a set and were available on Matty Collector in February of 2012. Lance stands about 3 ¾ inches tall and features 18 points of articulation. Not a bad assortment of articulation, though wrist and ankle articulation would have been nice, and the mobility of the knee joints is a bit restricted. Lance’s sculpt is pretty good. Nothing amazing, and his upper arms are a bit strange looking, but he follows the look from the show pretty well. The paintwork is nice and clean; no slop or bleed over. Lance included an alternate helmeted head, a piece of the “blazing sword,” and a stand based on his “lion key.” I would have liked it if they had made the gun removable from its holster, but overall, he’s not too bad.

THE VEHICLE ITSELF

The Red Lion is about 5 inches tall and about 9 inches long. He has 21 points of articulation, though most of those have been rendered useless through various springs and such. You can get the lion into a few poses, but nothing really substantial. Mostly, it’s just got the one pose. The sculpted work is nothing spectacular, but it’s not bad either. There are plenty of sharp details, and everything looks appropriately symmetrical and accurate to the show. Interestingly, the most detailed section is the cockpit, which is the section least likely to be seen all that often. Still, can’t blame them for putting in the effort. The paint is perfectly fine. Sparse, but well applied. One thing that does bug me is the use of stickers (and not even well applied ones at that!) for the details in the cockpit. The lion includes two “action features.” One allows the legs to be sprung out by pressing two buttons. The other allows the hatch to the cockpit to be opened through use of Lance’s key stand. Both are kind of cool, but nothing all that impressive.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I missed out on Mattel’s subscription to the Voltron figures, so I had to get online at noon on the day of this set’s release. It wasn’t too bad with this particular set, though I did have to wait through the usual white screen of death a few times. The figures are cool. Nothing amazing, but entertaining, and certainly a step towards satisfying that Voltron-shaped hole in my collection. Lance was always my favorite of the pilots, so his release being first was really awesome.