Tag Archives: Mistakes were made

#0928: Black Panther & Hawkeye

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

BLACK PANTHER & HAWKEYE

CAPTAIN AMERICA: CIVIL WAR MINIVERSE

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Civil War was released yesterday, so now I get to write review all the associated merchandise in light of actually knowing what happened in the movie (which was seriously awesome, by the way). I’ve been steadily making my way through Hasbro’s small-scale line of figures; of the four characters I’ve looked at, three have pretty sizable parts. The two characters I’m looking at today, MCU-mainstay Hawkeye and newcomer Black Panther, both get decently sized roles, though one of them is definitely more pivotal to the plot than the other.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

These two are part of the first series of the Captain America: Civil War Miniverse line. Their pairing together isn’t the weirdest pairing the series has given us (that’s definitely Winter Soldier and Vision, who I don’t believe so much as glanced at each other in the final film), since the two have a brief bit of interaction. Still, Bucky would kinda seem like the more natural partner for Panther. But hey, I’m gonna wind up with the whole set anyway, so does it really matter?

BLACK PANTHER

PantherHawkeye3Early reviews of the movie were all very complimentary of Chadwick Boseman’s performance as the Black Panther, and man, they weren’t kidding. Guy just about steals the show! His figure stands 2 ¾ inches tall and he has the same 5 points of articulation as the rest of the line. The overall quality of the Panther’s sculpt is pretty good, but he seems to be suffering from a phenomenon similar to Crossbones, where the upper half of the sculpt is quite good and the lower half is less so. It’s not quite as pronounced on Panther, though, so it’s not too bad. He exhibits some tremendous texture work, replicating his rather distinctively patterned suit from the movie very nicely. I do wish his legs were a little less weirdly posed, as they make it very hard to keep him standing, but that’s really it. Paint is quite minimal on Panther, with detailing only on the eyes and collar. However, that’s appropriate to the movie, and the texture on the sculpt does the heavy lifting here. Panther is the figure in this pairing who gets the weird armor pieces. T’Challa’s is a little cooler than the others, since it at least fits well with him thematically. Still goofy as heck, but it is what it is.

HAWKEYE

PantherHawkeye2Hawkeye’s Civil War appearance is, to me, the closest he’s come to that super awesome comics version of Hawkeye that I always loved.  And that makes me very happy. You know what doesn’t make me very happy? This figure. That sounds harsh; I don’t hate him, but he’s far from what I wanted. He’s supposed to be based on Hawkeye’s new look from Civil War, but, um, that’s not what he’s wearing. He lacks the asymmetrical sleeves, and has two gloves instead of one. That’s not the biggest issue though. See, Hawkeye’s gun is holstered on his right leg, which isn’t correct, since Movie Hawkeye’s a lefty. A closer look shows that, not only is the holster on the wrong side, but his whole quiver set-up is totally reversed. Now, a quick Google search shows that the promo shots of Hawkeye had a tendency to get mirrored, so maybe that’s where the confusion came from. He’s still sculpted to hold his bow in his right hand, though, which would make the placement of his quiver on his right shoulder more than a little impractical. It seems to me that this should have dawned on at least one person during the development process. His paint’s not much better. In the movie, his costume has a number of different purples, but none of them are the garish shade that is used for the majority of this figure. Also, whatever you do, don’t look directly into those soulless black holes that have taken the place of his eyes. That’s the stuff of nightmares. Cap got actual eyes, so I’m not sure what happened to Hawkeye. Hawkeye is packed with one accessory: his bow. It’s got no drawstring, but at this scale, that’s a minor issue.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I picked up this set at the same time as Cap and Crossbones. I was a bit more interested in Hawkeye when I bought it, though I certainly didn’t mind getting Panther. After opening it up, neither figure is perfect. That said, Panther’s the real winner here, even with the leg issues. Hawkeye’s a little disappointing, because he’s just not the figure I was expecting.

#0917: Corporal Hicks

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

CORPORAL HICKS

MOVIE MANIACS (MCFARLANE)

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Do you guys know what day it is? It’s Alien Day! Yes, in celebration of the 30th Anniversary of Aliens, today, April 26th (it’s 4-26, as in LV-426. Clever girl…) is officially Alien Day. There’s some cool contests and such, plus a whole ton of awesome Alien-themed merchandise, and even some showings of the first two films on the big screen. Obviously, I’d be remiss if I didn’t do something to celebrate. I’ve actually reviewed the vast majority of my Aliens collection, but have no fear; I’ve still got a few aces up my sleeve. Today, I’ll be looking back at one of the earliest examples of a figure based on Aliens’ human characters, with McFarlane Toys’ figure of Corporal Hicks. Buckle up guys; this might be a slightly bumpy ride.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

HicksMM2Hicks was released in Series 7 of McFarlane’s Movie Maniacs line. By this point, they had more or less given up on keeping true to the “Maniacs” half of the title, but that was a trend that started in Series 4, so no one was super shocked. Corporal Hicks was available two different ways: there was a basic release with a pulse rifle and un-helmeted head, and there was also a McFarlane Collector’s Club version that included a helmeted head, a motion tracker, a face hugger and egg, and a shotgun. My figure is the regular release, so I don’t get all the fun extras. He stands about 7 inches tall and has 9 points of articulation. Those 9 points don’t really amount to much of anything, though, since the figure is sculpted in this odd sort of leaning back/lunging forward pose (also, thanks to the fragility of McFarlane figures, my Hicks’ right shoulder broke sometime between me putting him in storage and taking him out to write this review). The best you can really do is turn his head and slightly change the pose of the arms. But, hey, the lack of movement’s okay, because the sculpt is really great, right? Well, not exactly. The sculpt definitely has its highlights, to be sure; the general level of detail on his uniform is quite good. There are a few inaccuracies, such as the ridges at the center of his chest armor, where it should be smooth, the fitting of the back of his armor to his shoulder blades, and the lack of one of his two belt pouches, but those are small. The main issue? The body that the uniform is resting on. Looking past the weird pose, the arms and legs are huge, way too huge for the torso. The arms in particular are super massive, and almost look misshapen. On top of that the head is a bit too small. Also, while I guess the face sort of looks like Hicks, it’s far from spot on (in fact, I don’t believe they ever officially got Biehn’s likeness rights; they weren’t very good about doing that sort of thing). He’s wearing his headset from later in the film, which makes him different from the NECA figure, but it also creates a slight continuity error, since he’s still got his shoulder lamp, which he’s ditched by the time he gets the headset. If there’s one area that’s pretty solid on this figure, it’s the paint (well, provided you aren’t comparing him to the NECA version). There’s the glaring issue of him being way too pale. He also lacks Hicks’ name at the top of his chest armor. The armored pieces are nice overall, but the camo is slightly off, and lacks the white elements. The camo on his uniform is pretty well-executed, though, and all of the small detail work is nice and tight, if a bit more basic than the NECA figure. Hicks includes his M41A Pulse Rifle (not quite as good as the NECA version, but not bad for the time), a locator, a knife, and a display stand that looks like the flooring of one of the Hadley’s Hope facilities. Later shipments of the figure also included the motion tracker included with the Collector’s Club version, but mine isn’t one of them.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’d actually seen Aliens when this figure was released, and I saw it at retail a few times, but for whatever reason, I didn’t pick it up (I think I was holding out for a Ripley to go with him). A few years later, I ended up getting him as a Christmas gift from my parents. This isn’t a figure that’s aged particularly well, especially in light of the far superior NECA version. Even when he was new, he felt sort of unfinished, due to neither the regular or exclusive versions offering a complete set of accessories. That said, taking him back out to review has reminded me of a lot of the more endearing qualities of the figure. There was a time when he was the best Hicks figure I owned, and I do still have some very fond memories of that.

HicksMM3

#0910: Shade

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

SHADE

JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED

Shade1

While DC’s Golden Age heroes have all more or less managed to stay in the spot light over the years, the foes that those heroes faced haven’t been quite so lucky. Even hardcore DC fans will struggle to name more than a handful. One of the few to not totally get lost in the shuffle between the various “ages” was the Shade, thanks in no small part to being included in James Robinson’s run on Starman. Shade’s had three action figures over the years. Today, I’ll be looking at the one based on his appearance in the Justice League cartoon.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Shade2Shade was part of Mattel’s Justice League Unlimited line. He was initially released as a solo figure in 2007, but he was also re-released later in a three-pack with Cheetah and Lex Luthor. The figure stands 5 ¼ inches tall counting the hat, and he has 5 points of articulation. JLU was Mattel’s first instance of applying the buck system to a DC line, and Shade was no exception. He was built on the skinny male body (a re-tooled version of the Flash). It’s a decent fit for Shade, though he should probably be a little taller and skinnier. He has a new head, which does a pretty awesome job of translating Shade’s look from the show. There’s no mistaking him for anyone else. Shade also has an add-on piece on his chest, to represent his jacket from the show, but it doesn’t work very well. It’s ill-fitting and overly bulky, and lacks any really defined details. A newly sculpted torso, or even just proper application of paint on the basic torso would have been much better. As it stands, the look of the figure is really off, which is a shame, given the quality of the head sculpt. The paint on Shade is pretty straight forward: white on the face, black everywhere else. It’s not particularly exciting, and it’s also not accurate; Shade on the show had a few different finishes on his outfit, and at least part of it was a dark grey. The single packed Shade included his cane (which he’s unable to hold), while the three-pack version was without any extras.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Shade was a rather rare figure back when he was new, so I never got one. Last November, while participating in Small Business Saturday, my brother and I were in a small nick-knack shop, where he happened upon a Secret Wars Wolverine in a small bin on a low-sitting shelf. A quick look through the rest of the surrounding bins found me this guy, for $1.99. This figure is a bit of a mixed bag, but for 2 bucks, I’m willing to let him slide.

#0904: Major Chip Hazard

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

MAJOR CHIP HAZARD

SMALL SOLDIERS (HASBRO)

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Small Soldiers does a fair bit of subverting people’s expectations. The title, the marketing, and the casting of the typically heroic Tommy Lee Jones as Major Chip Hazard (countering the usually villainous Frank Langella as Archer) all point to the Commando Elite as the assumed heroes of the piece. Heck, they even brought in Hasbro, who made their name with the “Real American Hero” G.I. Joe, to help design the figures seen in the movie. Their foes, the Gorgonites, are all grotesque monsters, clearly designed to make the Commando Elite look extra heroic by comparison. But the movie wastes no time showing the audience how wrong their perceptions were, and the Commando Elite quickly prove themselves a perfect antithesis to the noble Gorgonites; they’re cold, calculating, and with a desire to win their battle at all costs. Tommy Lee Jones’ Hazard is the worst of the bunch, a perverted, twisted version of the classic heroic soldier archetype.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

ChipHazard2Chip Hazard was released in the first assortment of Small Soldiers figures. Hazard would go on to get the most variants of anyone other than Archer, but this one presents him in his actual look from the movie. Well, more or less. The figure is about 6 ½ inches tall and he has 5 points of articulation. Yep, he loses the waist articulation, making him even less articulated than Archer. Wrong direction, guys! I’ve already harped on the articulation issues in my review of Archer, so I won’t get into it again. It should have been better, but that just wasn’t the case. Hazard’s sculpt is a bit more stylized than Archer’s; he still more or less resembles his on-screen counterpart, but his proportions have been made more “90s heroic” (smaller head, larger arms/hands). The likeness on the head is close, but not as close as Archer’s. Hazard still has sculpted, faux joints, but his are a bit less visible than those on Archer, which kind of hurts his representation of the toy in the movie. In addition, there are a few details that are missing or changed from the movie to this figure. He lacks the dog tags sported by his on-screen counterpart, as well as his customized belt buckle, and he has two smaller grenades in place of the single larger grenade he had in the movie.  Lastly, he his left forearm has protrusion (meant to attach to his accessory) which sticks out as being just sort of tacked on. Hazard’s paintwork is generally okay. The colors match up closely enough, which is good. The camo patterns are, understandably, not quite as detailed as the one’s movie Hazard had. The arms and legs make out perfectly alright in this respect, but the vest doesn’t work as well, with the pattern looking more like cheetah’s spots than a standard camo pattern. The grenades end up being the wrong color (they should be roughly the same color as the belt), and his belt buckle remains the same color as the rest of the belt, despite being red and silver in the movie. Hazard included a big missile launcher thing, which attached to his left arm. My figure doesn’t have this piece, but that’s just as well.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

As I noted in my Archer review, I didn’t really have any of the Small Soldiers figures growing up. I think my cousin may have had a Chip Hazard (I know for sure that he had a Brick Bazooka) but I never did. I ended up finding Hazard at 2nd Chance Toyz last October, at the same time I got Archer. Of the two, Hazard’s the weaker figure. He’s less accurate to the source material, has less articulation, and generally just a less entertaining figure. However, being less entertaining than Archer doesn’t mean he’s not entertaining, and having the pair of them does inherently make both a bit more awesome.

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#0903: Archer

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

ARCHER

SMALL SOLDIERS (HASBRO)

Archer1

When it comes to 90s movies about toys that are actually alive, most people remember Toy Story. Or, on the more horrific side, Child’s Play. I’m not knocking either of those (well, maybe Child’s Play; not really my thing) but my go-to movie of this odd sub-genre is hands down Small Soldiers. The movie was, at best, a modest success, but it had some pretty awesome people involved. It was directed by Joe Dante (of Gremlins fame), featured the vocal talents of Tommy Lee Jones and Frank Langella (to say nothing of featuring the likes of Kirsten Dunst, David Cross, and Phil Hartman in live action roles), had visual effects by industry legend Stan Winston, a score by Jerry Goldsmith, and is one of the earliest examples of a film making use of a Led Zeppelin song. It’s an awesome movie. Toy makers Hasbro were brought on as consultants for the designs of the film’s lively action figures, and in return were given the rights to produce the film’s tie-in toys. Sadly, they weren’t quite as successful as they were in the film. Today, I’ll be looking at Archer, emissary of the Gorgonites, the heroic faction of action figures.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Archer2Archer was released in the initial 1998 assortment of Small Soldiers figures from Hasbro. The figure stands 6 ¾ inches tall and has 6 points of articulation. Here’s where we encounter the primary issue with these figures: articulation. The toys seen in the movie had a lot of articulation (they had to be able to move around in a fairly humanistic manner). The real life toys had 6 points, all cut joints. Letdown doesn’t begin to describe the articulation here. It’s made worse by the fact that the sculpt clearly emulates the articulation seen in the movie, but leaves it motionless. Clearly, they wanted the figures to be cost-effective, and that didn’t allow for the proper articulation. I’m not sure what the best fix would have been (short of charging more per figure), but there’s no denying that this is a major failing of these figures. With that out of the way, how does the rest of the figure fair? Not badly, actually. The sculpt does a pretty good job of capturing the toy design from the movie, especially the upper half. The proportions have been tweaked ever so slightly, making him a bit more squat than his movie counterpart, but it’s not that far off. One thing that is a bit off is the pose, which has Archer’s back totally straight, despite the character in the movie always having a slight hunch. It definitely throws off the appearance of the figure, which is a shame. On the plus side, the detail work on the sculpt is pretty great, and captures a lot of the smaller details seen in the movie. The paint on Archer is definitely a step down from what was seen in the movie, but that’s fair, since the one in the movie was a professionally painted prop, and this is a mass-produced figure. Given the circumstances, he’s not bad. The best work is on the head, which exhibits some surprisingly subtle work in a few spots. The rest of the figure is reasonable enough, especially for the time. There are a few details that go unpainted, but the general application is pretty solid. Archer was packed with a crossbow (with launch-able missile) and a knife. Mine, however, does not have those pieces.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

By the time I saw Small Soldiers (on VHS; I didn’t see it in theatres) the first assortment of figures had pretty much totally sold through. So, I had to settle for a weird variant version of Archer, which was the only Small Soldiers figure I owned for a good long while. When I finally had the resources to go pack and find some of the others, most of the figures had rather high after-market prices. Last October, at the suggestion of my friend Cindy Woods, I checked out 2nd Chance Toyz, a cool nearby shop that carry all sorts of older toys. They had Archer for an exceptionally reasonable price, so I picked him up. Sure, he’s not as cool as the figure in the movie, but he’s still a pretty fun toy in his own right. And that’s the important part!

#0896: Machine Man & Iron Man

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

MACHINE MAN & SUPERIOR IRON MAN – MECHANICAL MASTERS

MARVEL LEGENDS (3.75)

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As much as I love what Hasbro’s been doing with the Marvel and Star Wars lines, I do have to admit to being baffled by their recurring choice to give multiple lines of figures the exact same title. When they first started doing Marvel figures in both 6 inch and 3 ¾ inch scales, the larger figures were Marvel Legends and the smaller were Marvel Universe. They also offered some 12 inch figures, under the heading Icons. Well, by the end of this year, all three of those scales will be titled Marvel Legends. I’m sure that won’t be at all confusing. The 3 ¾ inch line has officially switched its title over, and the first product to hit is a series of two-packs. Today, I’ll be looking Machine Man and Iron Man from that particular series.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

This pair was released in the first series of two-packs in the new 3 ¾ inch Marvel Legends line, under the name “Mechanical Masters.” When these figures were shown off at last year, the assumption was that they would be single figures with a shared name, since that’s a pretty common practice for Hasbro. Then they just kind of showed up in two packs, which certainly caught me off guard. In addition to the figures, the set is also packed with a reprint of Superior Iron Man #1, which makes sense for one of the two figures, but not the other.

MACHINE MAN

MechanicalMasters2If you had told me five years ago that I would own two figures of Machine Man, I would have had a long hard laugh. Seems pretty out there to think that such a minor, low-tier character would warrant multiple figures, within a year of each other, but hey, here we are. The figure stands roughly 4 inches tall and has 19 points of articulation. This Machine Man is decidedly more modern take on the character than the larger figure. He’s based on his Tron-styled post-Nextwave design, which I believe is still his current look. More specifically, the character-unique parts (his head and forearms) are directly based on Daniel Acuna’s Avengers 50th Anniversary poster. The real tell here is the forearm configuration; he’s got a buzzsaw and a Sci-fi blaster sort of thing, which are lifted right from the poster. The sculpts are all pretty solid work; the technical stuff on the arms is particularly sharp. The head’s details are a little soft, but they stand out well enough for the scale. All in all, the parts look good, and match up with the mid-sized body that the figure is built on. Machine Man’s paintwork is passable; the general application is pretty clean, though the face is a bit sloppy. The metallic purple is pretty cool, but it probably would have looked a bit better if it were a little brighter, so as to stand out more from the black base color. Machine Man includes no accessories, not even an extra set of normal forearms, which ends up being a little bit limiting.

SUPERIOR IRON MAN

MechanicalMasters3This figure is the required heavy hitter of the set, and…yeah, that’s really all I got. I can’t really figure why this guy got packed with Aaron, since the two don’t really have any history. Retailers just like Iron Man, I guess. The figure is a little over 4 inches tall and has 24 points of articulation. This figure is based on the “Superior Iron Man” design, from the comic of the same name, after Tony became more of a jerk than usual. This figure gets a new head sculpt and uni-beam and re-uses the body of the Marvel Universe line’s Extremis Iron Man (which was also used for Iron Patriot). That was a decent Iron Man, but it wasn’t even the strongest of Hasbro’s Iron Man sculpt when it was new, and it feels really dated now, especially in terms of poseability. It was also pretty under-sized, and that’s made even worse by the fact that the new head is larger than the original. What’s more, the Extremis armor had a number of major deviations in design from the Superior armor, so it’s not even a particularly clever re-use. The paint is really what the figure hinges on to sell it as Superior Iron Man. Unfortunately, even that’s not really great. In the comics, the suit is bright white and sleek (it’s kind of similar to something produced by Apple), but here it’s mostly a dull silver. Also, while the design in the comics has the black sections, they seem to stand out way more here. With the base colors being darker, the light blue details also tend to be easily lost, which is a shame, because they could have helped to sell the differences in the armor a bit more.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I was obviously planning on getting this set as soon as they showed it, though I didn’t initially realize I’d be getting both figures. I got the set from my Dad, who found them while running an errand at Target. Machine Man is definitely the selling point; he’s got some really cool new parts and he’s a really fun version of the character. I do still hold out hope that we might see a Nextwave version down the road, but this one is definitely a welcome addition. Iron Man is kind of a waste of space, if I’m honest. His body is inaccurate and out of date, and I wasn’t much of a fan of the concept to begin with. But who cares? I got another Machine Man!

#0865: Big Guy

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

BIG GUY

BIG GUY & RUSTY THE BOY ROBOT

BigGuy1

It’s not uncommon for an adaptation to outshine what it’s adapting. Often movie or TV adaptations of books will far outpace the things that spawned them, at least in the public eye. Most of the time, though, the adaptation is better known because it’s more widely available. Enter the strange case of Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot. If you look up the comic on Wikipedia, you’ll note that the series was created by Frank Miller of all people (and there’s no mention of crack whores anywhere in sight!  Weird). That’s about it, because the entry for the comic is pretty sparse. The entry for the cartoon, however, will actually net you quite a bit of info. See, the cartoon ran for a whole two seasons, and managed to inject backstory and connecting through lines to pretty much every episode, despite only being a Saturday morning cartoon. It’s generally viewed as being the more formed version of the characters. But, while you can still find collections of Miller’s original series, getting episodes of the show is pretty darn hard, which has made the show pretty much unknown to anyone who didn’t see its original run. Still, mention the name and a lot of people will think of the cartoon. To the cartoon’s credit, it did manage to get a handful of toys of the two titular characters, including the figure I’ll be looking at today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

BigGuy2Big Guy was released as part of the smaller-scale Big Guy & Rusty the Boy Robot line from Bandai America. Yes, I know, it’s Bandai. They don’t have an amazing reputation on this site. Bear with me. The figure is roughly 6 ¼ inches tall and has 6 points of articulation. Here’s where things get a little strange; he has cut joints at the shoulders, wrists, and …knees. Yeah, cut joints at the knees. Instead of, I don’t know, hinge joints? He also has absolutely no movement at the neck, waist, elbows, or hips. You see the pose he’s standing in? That’s pretty much the only pose you’ll be getting out of this guy. His movement was so stunted that they had to release a whole separate figure to replicate his flying pose, which isn’t even all that different from the basic standing pose! Why the lack of movement? Well, his torso houses a battery compartment. Pressing the figure’s chest insignia made the eyes light up and allowed him to say some dialogue from the show. It’s an okay gimmick (not that it works on mine all these years later) but it hardly warrants the totally lack of posing options. In the figure’s defense, he does have one thing going for him: the sculpt. It’s not a perfect recreation of his look from the cartoon, but it manages to be pretty close, and certainly closer than a lot of cartoon toys from the same time. So kudos to Bandai for at least making him look like the character. Of course, the back of the figure is riddled with exposed screws, due to the electronics, but hey, small victories, right? The paintwork on this guy is generally pretty clean, if perhaps not super exciting. The figure is cast in white, and the blue is painted on. That’s about it. It’s true to the show, so I guess that’s fair. This figure originally included a small-scaled Rusty figurine. However, mine did not have the proper Rusty, but instead included the larger scale Rusty from the Deluxe Big Guy figure, which was rather out of scale with this one. Darn.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I picked this figure up from a flea market (the same one the netted me Perseus, in fact). I had a flying Big Guy when I was younger, but I couldn’t begin to tell you where he is now. This one was quite reasonably priced, so I went for it. As an action figure, he’s quite a letdown, given his total lack of posability. As a representation of Big Guy, more along the lines of a statue? He’s okay. Certainly not the worst thing ever. I liked the show, and I’m happy to have a Big Guy for the shelf, so I’d call it a win.

#0856: Black Panther

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

BLACK PANTHER

MARVEL UNIVERSE (HASBRO)

BPantherMU1

Poor Black Panther. He should be a really prominent character, but he always feels like he gets the short end of the stick. He has trouble keeping an ongoing comic (often due to poor creative direction), he’s mostly relegated to guest star roles in all the various Marvel cartoons (barring the truly awesome Avengers: Earth’s Mightiest Heroes), and he didn’t even get an action figure until the early 00s (and even then, it was only in the-10 inch line. It would take a little while longer before he got a normal 5-inch figure, just as the scale was starting to go away). Fortunately, it looks like his luck should be changing with the release of Civil War, as well as his solo film in 2018. Why not look at one of his action figures?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

BPantherMU2Black Panther was part of the first series of Hasbro’s Marvel Universe line. He’s based on the Panther’s classic look, from his time with the Avengers in the late 60s. The figure stands roughly 4 inches tall and has 24 points of articulation. Panther is built on Hasbro’s first attempt at a mid-sized male body. It was only used for him and two variants of the Punisher. The reason it didn’t see any further use is quite simple: it’s not very good. Sure, parts of it look pretty decent, but the overall assembly looks very awkward. The upper arms in particular are about as tall as they are wide, which just looks odd. In addition, the articulation scheme is weird and makes the figure pretty stiff. You won’t be getting much more than a basic standing pose out of this guy, which just isn’t right when you’re talking about Black Panther, a dude who does his fair share of crouching! The head, lower arms and lower legs are all unique to this guy. I like the head a lot, and it’s definitely the best part of the figure. The arms and legs do at least put some effort into detailing Panther’s striped gloves and boots, but they suffer from the same odd proportions as the rest of the body. The left hand is bigger than his face! Panther has paint for his eyes and… that’s it. Just the eyes. The rest is straight black plastic, which makes him a bit flat looking. Some highlights, or even painting the gloves blue, as they were often showed in the comics, would have done a lot to help this figure, but alas, no such luck. Black Panther was packed with a staff with a blade on it, which Wikipedia tells me is a naginata. It never struck me as particularly in keeping with Panther’s aesthetic, so I lost it at some point.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I’ve always liked Black Panther (I chalk it up to his Keith David-voiced appearance on the 90s Fantastic Four cartoon). So much so that when I was 7, I made one of my Batman Forever Batmen into a custom Panther using some black tape. When Hasbro showed him as one of the first MU figures, I was pretty excited to see him there, and he was one of my first purchases from the line. Unfortunately, he got saddled with the worst of the initial bodies, which held him back. He’s not a terrible looking figure, but he’s not super fun either, which is disappointing. On the plus side, Hasbro just re-released him in their Avengers Infinite line, using the later mid-sized body (used on Falcon), so the character wasn’t totally forgotten.

#0846: Black Lightning

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

BLACK LIGHTNING

DC UNIVERSE CLASSICS

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As much as I loved DC Universe Classics, the problems with the line (which were mainly distribution-based) cropped up pretty early in its run. While the first series received fairly even distribution, series 2 and 3 were fairly spotty in coverage (possibly due to slow sales on Series 1). By the time Series 4 came along, it seemed things had mostly been sorted (apart from the odd instance of several variants being easier to find than their regular counterparts). Then came Series 5. See, Walmart is notoriously difficult to work with, especially if you’re a toy maker. In order to carry a line, they’ll frequently demand an exclusive series. Because of this, they did not carry the first four series of the line. To ensure their support of future series, Series 5 was given to Walmart as an exclusive. Walmart under-ordered and ended up sending no more than a single case of figures to many of its stores, with some receiving none at all. The end result was one of the hardest to find series in the line, with individual figures commanding extraordinarily high prices on the aftermarket. Black Lightning, who was having a bit of a career revival at the time, had the misfortune of being one of the figures in this set.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

BlackLightningDCUC2Black Lightning was, as noted in the intro, released in the Walmart-exclusive fifth series of DC Universe Classics. The figure stands 6 ½ inches tall and has 25 points of articulation. Lightning uses his Ed Benes redesign from the relaunch of Justice League of America. It was his current look at the time, and it happens to be far less dated than his original and 90s looks. It also had the added benefit of not requiring much new tooling. He uses the mid-sized male buck, with a unique head sculpt. The buck is a decent match for Black Lightning’s build from the comics and it allows him to fit in seamlessly with the rest of the line. While it was top-notch at the time of its release, it’s starting to show its age a bit, especially at the shoulders. Also, the poor quality of the plastic on this particular series makes Lightning’s body prone to warping, and some tearing at the joints, which is a definite negative. The head sculpt is fairly decent; it does a fairly good job of capturing Lightning. It’s not super distinctive, but neither was Lightning at this point. Unfortunately, it’s got some pretty obvious mold scarring, which is made worse by the fact that he’s bald. He looks like he’s taken some damage. The paint work is okay but not great. The base colors are nice and vibrant, which is good, but some of the lines, particularly the yellow for the belt, are really fuzzy. Also, while the prototype for this figure had clear goggles, allowing his eyes to be seen, their totally opaque on the final figure. Lightning included no accessories of his own, but he did include a piece of the C-n-C for this series, Metallo.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I had no luck finding any of Series 5 in stores when they were released, so I ended up having to buy this guy second-hand, without his Metallo piece. I was quite enjoying him in Justice League at the time, so I was glad to find him at a semi-reasonable price. The final figure is sadly a bit lacking, mostly due to the lower quality of the materials used for this figure. I’m happy I have him, but his lower quality contributed to me not going out of my way to find any of the others from this series.

#0769: Cable & Stryfe

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

CABLE VS STRYFE

X-MEN: STEEL MUTANTS

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The X-Men were so popular in the 90s that they not only had two books of their own, but also a whopping three spin-off titles. Two of those, Excalibur and X-Factor, had been launched in the 80s, and the other, X-Force, was a rebranding of the New Mutants in order to make them more “extreme.” This included adding Cable, a dude who’s mutant power was apparently being a big dude with a gun, aka being the personification of 90s comics. Cable had a twin/clone, called Stryfe. Let’s look at some figures of those two today!

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

This pair was released in the second series of Toy Biz’s X-Men: Steel Mutants line, because apparently the X-Men just weren’t 90s enough.

CABLE

CableStryfe2Oh man, here’s Cable. Why’s he called Cable? God only knows. Maybe he used to work for Comcast. That would certainly explain his surly nature. The figure stands 2 ½ inches tall and he has 4 points of articulation. Cable had quite a few figures in the 5 inch X-Force line, and this one uses Series 2’s Rapid Rocket Firing Cable as sort of a reference point. I don’t know if it’s based on a specific look, but it does present a slightly more subdued look for the character than usual. He doesn’t even have shoulder pads! His sculpt is generally pretty well handled. He’s got a good amount of detail, and his build does set him apart from the other figures in the line. Plus, I do dig that assymetry. His pose is pretty straight forward, with no real outlandish poising or anything, and he’s decently balanced, so there are no issues with getting him to stand. Cable’s paint is pretty much on par with the rest of the Steel Mutants. There’s a fair degree of bleed over around the edges, but he doesn’t look atrocious. The colors are pretty well chosen, and he looks pretty sharp.

STRYFE

CableStryfe3Yes, you read that name right. He’s named Stryfe. And it’s spelled with a “y.” Because 90s. Strule also stands roughly 2 ½ inches tall and has those same 4 points of articulation. Stryfe is presented here in full 90s glory. Check out that head gear. Seriously, that helmet looks like Liefeld deliberately set out to out-Wolverine Wolverine. I suppose they succeeded in that effort. Doesn’t make it look any less stupid, but more power to him. He appears to be inspired by the Stryfe figure in the 5-inch line, though he’s lost most of that figure’s interesting armor detailing, which has the unintended side effect of drawing more attention to just how goofy the main design of the character is. It doesn’t help matters that his sculpt is just markedly inferior to that of his pack mate. Cable is nicely sized, full of detail, and not in a super goofy pose. Stryfe is the opposite of those things. The size is particularly egregious, since he’s a clone of Cable, and should therefore be about the same size. That coupled with the long monkey arms, the strange lunging pose of the legs, and the ill-fitting cape makes for a really rough looking figure. The paint doesn’t really do him any favors either. He’s mostly a somewhat drab silver, which only further highlights the blandness of the sculpt. It is, at the very least, clean, which I suppose is a plus.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

This pair was purchased for me from Yesterday’s Fun, alongside the previously reviewed Cyclops and Mr. Sinister set, courtesy of my Super Awesome Girlfriend. Unlike the other set, I never had either of these guys growing up. In fact, this set represents the first, and to date only, Stryfe figure in my collection. So, there’s that. Cable is a pretty solid figure, but Stryfe is easily one of the weakest figures this line had to offer, resulting in an oddly balanced set.