Tag Archives: Mistakes were made

#1272: Wolverine – Old Man Logan

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

WOLVERINE — OLD MAN LOGAN

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“With incredible powers of strength and healing, Wolverine reveals his claws and uses them to slash down opponents.”

Okay, I know I’m trying not to critique the bios, but shouldn’t there be at least some mention of this being Old Man Logan in there?  Just seems a touch generic.  Oh well.

So, back in March, Logan was released, and met with near unanimous praise.  I gotta say, I didn’t really get it.  I mean, it was far from the worst comic movie I’ve seen, but I felt it had a lot of the same problems of the last two Wolverine films, but without Origins’ fun cameos or The Wolverine’s slightly more cohesive story to make up for it.  All it really had going for it was the R-rating, and I’ll be honest, there’s only so many times you can see people getting stabbed in the face before it loses its edge.  On the plus side, it did inspire an action figure, so that’s good.  Since Disney is discouraging licensees from releasing any direct tie-ins to the Fox movies, we didn’t get a Hugh Jackman Logan, but rather a Logan based on “Old Man Logan,” the Wolverine from the bad-future story that Logan the movie drew some inspiration from.  Yay?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Wolverine is part of the Warlock Series of Marvel Legends.  He’s the one figure in the set not to include a Build-A-Figure piece, taking the the loosely movie-themed figure slot from last year’s Deadpool figure.  The package just calls him “Wolverine”; no denotation of the storyline he comes from or anything.  There’s a part of me that wonders if they were initially planning for this to be a more standard civilian Wolverine figure at some point and that’s why the name and bio are more generic.  Who knows?  Anyway, the figure stands about 6 inches tall (just a smidge taller than the Juggernaut Series Wolverine), and he has 32 points of articulation.  Logan is based on OML’s look after he was integrated into the main Marvel universe.  It’s not wildly different from his prior appearances, but this way he fits in a bit better with the main X-Men figures.  He sports an all-new sculpt, which depicts him in his usual civilian garb.  I feel almost certain we’ll be seeing the body again for a 616 Logan at some point, just to get some more milage out of it.  The body is pretty solid; his general build is a pretty close match for the last Wolverine, so it looks more or less like the same guy.  The level of detail on the various bits of clothing is quite nice; not quite Star-Lord level, but given this is supposed to be a comic figure, that’s excusable.  The head is a pretty nice piece of work, and sells Logan as being as old and cranky as he should be.  Once again, the features on the face line up pretty well with his younger counterpart, or at least what we could see of his face.  He loses the wacky Wolverine hair, which makes him look a bit more average, but is also accurate to this take on the character.  The paintwork on this figure is pretty subdued; there’s a whole lot of brown going on here.  That’s pretty accurate, I guess.  The paint is all pretty cleanly done, and there’s even a touch of accent work on his face, to bring out all of those extra wrinkles.  Some of the rest of him could do with a little accenting work as well, but he’s on par with the rest of the line as of late, so I’m not really going to complain.  What I am going to complain about, however, is the complete lack of accessories.  When this figure was first shown, a lot of people were hoping there would be an extra 616 Logan head included.  Not only does he not get that, he also doesn’t even get extra non-claw bearing hands, which wouldn’t have even required any new tooling.  And on top of that, he’s the only figure in the set not to get a Build-A-Figure piece, leaving him feeling very empty for the $20 most places are charging.  Compared to last series’ Deadpool, who lacked the BAF piece but made up for it in spades with all the other extras he included, this is incredibly disappointing.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Logan was the third of the figures I found from this series, alongside Sunfire.  I wasn’t sure I was going to pick him up at first, but I sort of got caught up in the thrill of the hunt, and thus he was purchased.  He’s not a bad figure, but the lack of any extras really hurts him when he’s compared to the rest of the series, which makes him the weakest in the set, in my opinion.  Still, weakest in this particular set isn’t the worst thing ever, since the Warlock Series is probably my favorite Legends line-up in recent history.  And with that, my reviews of this series come to a close!

*Want an Old Man Logan figure of your own?  He’s currently in-stock with our sponsors over at All Time Toys!  Click here to check him out!

#1257: Black Knight

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

BLACK KNIGHT

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

You know who’s pretty cool?  Black Knight.  He’s one of those characters I just really enjoy.  That’s probably why I own like every action figure version of the character out there.  Of those figures, one of them is a Marvel Legend.  Usually, that’s awesome, but…well, I get to that in a bit.  Without further ado, here’s Black Knight!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Black Knight was released in Series 3 of Hasbro’s first run on Marvel Legends.  This would mark his second figure ever, and it hit almost an entire decade after his first.  He’s not privy to a ton of figures, I guess.  This figure stands about 6 1/2 inches tall and he has 25 points of articulation.  The last two Black Knight figures I looked at were both based on Dane’s classic design, but this one opted for one of his more recent designs, which he sported in the back half of the ‘90s.  It’s more armored than he usually is, and it ditches his cape, in favor of a loincloth sort of thing, and also loses the chainmail for a smoother under armor.  I can’t say it’s my preferred look for him, but it keeps most of the important elements of his usual designs, so I guess it’s not an awful choice.  After inheriting a lot of Toy Biz’s un-used sculpts, Black Knight marked one of Hasbro’s earliest in-house efforts for Legends.  It’s definitely a product of its time, there’s no doubt about that.  He’s got a lot of the hallmarks of Hasbro’s earlier work: the slightly less detailed nature, the smaller stature, and the kind of obvious articulation.  Also, on top of the obvious articulation, there’s some serious limitation on most of the joints, especially at the elbows and knees.  It was a serious step down from the double joints of the prior Legends.  The legs in particular seem rather disjointed from the upper body sculpt; they’re not really to scale with the rest of the figure, and the sculpt just doesn’t feel as refined. With all that said, Black Knight’s sculpt actually isn’t bad, especially given how downhill the line went before the Return of ML re-launch.  The proportions of the upper half of the sculpt are actually pretty solid, and the details on the armor and such are fairly sharp.  The paint on Black Knight (and the rest of the early Hasbro Legends) was pretty by the numbers and bland, if I’m honest.  I mean, there’s nothing wrong with it, per se.  It’s clean and all, but it lacks any real spark, and just looks rather dull over all.  Dane’s design would have really been helped by some metallics and bolder accent work.  The purely molded shades don’t really do the sculpt justice.  Black Knight was packed with his Ebony Blade and a shield, as well as three of the Build-A-Figure Brood Queen’s legs.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

When Series 3 was first announced, Black Knight was definitely at the top of my list.  Of course, I was hardly the only one.  I ended up finding pretty much every other figure I wanted from this series first, because that’s how these things seem to work out.  I don’t actually remember the exact circumstances of how I got him.  I want to say my Dad got him for me, and I’m pretty sure I got him at the same time as Bucky from the same series.  I was happy to have him at the time, but I always knew he was less than stellar. He kind of marked a turning point for Marvel Legends for me: Series 3 was the last series I really sought out, starting a break from Legends that more or less lasted until 2014’s Infinite Series launch.  He’s not a bad figure, and in fact he’s better than I’d remembered him to be.  Still, he’s rather mediocre.  I’m hopeful that Dreadknight’s presence in the SDCC Raft set might signify a new version’s in the works.

*Well, here was the real review, but this guy got all click-baited for April Fools day 2017.  Read the altered version here.

#1251: Kilowog

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

KILOWOG

GREEN LANTERN: MOVIE (MATTEL)

You know how I rag on Mattel a lot, but sometimes they still do things right, and I can give them props?  This isn’t one of those times.

2011’s Green Lantern isn’t a particularly well-regarded film.  In a lot of ways, I don’t think it deserves a lot of the hate it gets.  It had the misfortune of being released in a summer already pretty jam-packed with super hero movies, three of which hailed from Marvel and were generally above expectations.  Marvel fans wanted another Iron Man (which, in their defense, is what DC was promoting the film as; not their smartest move) and DC fan’s wanted The Dark Knight.  The end result is really more in line with Tim Burton’s Batman movies.  It definitely could have been better, but it was far from awful.  One of the movie’s better aspects was its cast.  The late Michael Clarke Duncan made his second turn in super hero flick (his first being the similarly maligned Daredevil; I ain’t defending that one!), playing the GL drill sergeant Kilowog.  He got a few figures courtesy of Mattel’s tie-in line.  I’ll be looking at the standard version today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Kilowog was released in the first series of Green Lantern figures, which hit about a month or so before the movie’s release.  The figure stands about 4 1/2 inches tall and has 8 points of articulation.  The articulation scheme on these figures was really strange; it’s not totally out of the ordinary to see lesser articulated figures in the 3 3/4-inch scale, but these figures randomly had extra shoulder joints, which tend to come after elbows and knees in the articulation hierarchy.  Also, while Hasbro’s started offering more lower POA figures as of late, their competing figures from 2011’s Thor and Captain America lines were fully articulated.  Heck, even Mattel’s own DC Infinite Heroes line was fairly decently articulation.  I’m not really sure why these figures were so out of sync with everything around them.  I’m getting distracted.  Sorry.  Kilowog had a unique sculpt initially, but it would eventually be reused for a number of variants as the line progressed.  It’s a reasonable translation of Kilowog’s movie design.  Of course, the problem with that is that his movie design wasn’t really their strongest.  I mean, it’s nice that he didn’t have the same muscle striation thing that Hal did, but he’s just for of lumpy looking.  Also, they seriously tweaked the shape of his head, which always bugged me; he looks more like Shrek than Kilowog.  Objectively speaking, the head on this figure was definitely the best part.  It’s actually so detailed that it looks rather out of place on the smooth and mostly featureless body.  They almost look like they belong to different figures.  Also, note that once again Mattel has made no attempt to work the articulation into the sculpt.  It’s especially bad at the waist, where there’s really no good reason to have a joint that obvious.  Like many of this line’s figures, Kilowog’s feet are bent back a little too far, which results in a lot of falling on his back.  Getting the two photos for this review was no small feat.  As far as paint, Kilowog was okay, but suffers from a very similar issue as with the sculpt.  The head has some very nice, very subtle work, which makes him look really lifelike.  Then the body seems to just let the paint go where it goes.  One thing that really frustrated me with this whole line was the inconsistency of the greens.  Pretty much ever lantern had their own shade, which was really odd, since that wasn’t true onscreen.  Was it really that hard to pick on pantone number and stick with it?  Each figure in the line included their own construct piece to slip over their ring hand.  Kilowog actually didn’t get a proper construct, but instead got the larger hand adapter piece, which allowed for him (and other larger figures) to make use of the constructs included with smaller figures.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I picked up a handful of the GL movie figures when they were first released, during my pre-movie excitement, and Kilowog was one of those figures.  No figure in this line is particularly noteworthy, but Kilowog was probably the best the line had to offer.  He’s got his issues, but he’s also got some saving graces, which is more than can be said about a lot of the line.

#1250: Baron Zemo

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

BARON ZEMO

MARVEL LEGENDS (TOY BIZ)

Earlier this month, I took a look at Baron Helmut Zemo, who’s one of my favorite Captain America villains. Well, he’s my favorite Cap villain that’s not a crazy leaping Frenchman…or a robot with face for a torso…look, he’s nearer the top of the list than he is the bottom, alright?  Anyway, I looked at Helmut, but he wasn’t the first Baron Zemo to face off against Cap.  No, that would be his dad, Baron Heinrich Zemo, who, amongst other things, founded the Masters of Evil.  Heinrich hasn’t been quite as prevalent to the toy world as his son, but he’s gotten a few entries.  He was actually the only Baron Zemo to be released during Toy Biz’s lengthy tenure producing Marvel figures, and was even one of the last figures they produced.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Baron Zemo was released in Series 14 of Toy Biz’s Marvel Legends, which was also commonly known as the “Mojo Series” after its Build-A-Figure.  It was the penultimate series of the line, and ended up being rushed into production so that Toy Biz could get it out before passing the license off to Hasbro.  The figure stands a little over 6 inches tall and he has 36 points of articulation.  As with so many of Toy Biz’s Legends figures, there was a definite priority placed on the articulation over the integrity of the sculpt on this guy.  For some, that was less of an issue, but on this guy?  Oh boy, it’s pretty bad.  Now, admittedly, there were some production things that made some problems crop up that weren’t on the initial prototype (mostly the neck), but this guy was always going to look sort of…weird.  His shape is vaguely human, I guess.  The hands and feet were definitely too large, the neck too long, the waist both too high and too thin, and the limbs too skinny.  His clothes are both uncomfortably clingy and oddly loose, in a way that he would have to have them sewn on him that way.  It just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.  I mean, if you take some of the pieces individually, there’s some good stuff there.  The head is pretty good, and captures his comics design pretty well.  The boots are also pretty nice, especially the fur lining.  The holster’s okay, but the gun’s non removable, which is always very frustrating.  Other than that, though, it’s pretty goofy.  Did no one stand back, look at this guy, and go “that looks nothing like a human?”  Because I did that.  On top of the very questionable sculpt, there were also some major quality control issues on this series in particular.  Most of the figures, Zemo included, were saddled with incredibly rubbery joints.  It makes getting him to stand quite difficult, and leaves him always looking the slightest bit deflated.  The paintwork on this guy is probably his strongest aspect.  It’s still not perfect; the gold pieces in particular are a real mess, and the washes can be rather hit and miss.  However, it’s still pretty passable.  Zemo included the head and upper torso of Mojo, as well as a weird staff thing.  The staff is kind of goofy; there’s a hole in the handle and a corresponding peg in his right hand, but he never holds it in a particularly convincing way.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I got most of Series 14 for as Christmas presents in 2006, and Zemo was amongst them.  I was happy to have him at the time (Legends was my absolute favorite line to collect at that point), but even when he was new, I knew he was less than stellar in execution.  This is definitely a figure I’d like to see Hasbro tackle at some point, especially since I liked their Helmut figure so much.

#1239: Katana

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

KATANA

DC COMICS MULTIVERSE (MATTEL)

Hey, remember when I was talking about Suicide Squad yesterday?  Well, I’m gonna do some more talking about it today.  If I’m very lucky, this will be my last bit of talking on the Suicide Squad front.  As noted yesterday, one of the biggest flaws with the movie was just how under-utilized anyone not named “Deadshot” or “Harley Quinn” was.  Boomer at least got some characterization (mostly due to Jai Courtney’s scenery chewing performance), but today’s focus, Katana, gets a whole lot of nothing.  No fancy introduction, no particularly good fights, next to no dialogue, and no anything else that would make her even slightly interesting.  Karen Fukuhara really tried to inject something into the character, but there just wasn’t anything there to work with.  Anyway, she got a figure, which I’m looking at today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Like yesterday’s Captain Boomerang, Katana was released in the second Suicide Squad-themed assortment of Mattel’s DC Comics Multiverse, which hit well after the movie’s release, thereby guaranteeing that most audiences would have zero interest in the figure.  You know what might have solved this problem?  Shipping all six figures at the same time! (In Mattel’s defense, the most recent series of Multiverse wasn’t split in two, so maybe they’re learning)  The figure stands about 6 1/2 inches tall and has 25 points of articulation.  The ab crunch can move a little bit this time, but not much more than Deadshot’s.  Of course, the elbows and knees are both unable to make it to a full 90 degree angle (really restricting for a sword wielding character).  Also, the ankles on this figure are essentially useless, which makes it very hard to get her to stand.  How do you screw up ankles this badly?  Okay, the movement’s not good, but it’s all for the sake of the sculpt, right? Well, that wasn’t the case with Boomerang, so it’s probably not a shock to find it’s not the case here.  All of the joints stick out like sore thumbs, her torso is flat and thick, her arms are super spindly, the legs and pelvis continue the trend of not really looking like any human ever, and the head doesn’t really resemble Fukuhara at all. Perhaps the worst piece of this already pretty bad sculpt is the sash which holds the sheaths for her swords.  The sash itself is super thick and juts out really far from the figure’s hip, in a way pretty much no real fabric ever would.  The sheaths are separate pieces, and they are actually too small to properly fit in the proper slots, leading them to shift out of place a lot.  This is particularly bad with the smaller front sheath, which tends to naturally fall so it hands straight down, thereby making Katana look like she has a certain appendage that she shouldn’t really have.  It’s really a mess.  Who looked at that and went “yeah, that’s okay?”   As far as the paint goes, Katana’s alright, I guess.  The colors are all pretty basic, but there’s at least some interesting character work on the left leg and the back of her jacket.  She looks way too clean to be from the movie, but she fits with the other figures in that regard.  Katana includes a long blade and a short blade, neither of which she can actually hold properly, as well as the head and pelvis of Killer Croc, the CnC I’ll never be finishing.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

After determining that Boomerang was only $1, I went back and also grabbed a Katana figure.  Not really sure why her, aside from the whole $1 thing.  I was actually in a bit of a hurry, so these were the only two I grabbed, and by the time I made it back to that particular Walmart, they’d been mostly cleaned out.  Alas, no more crappy $1 action figures for me.  I’m not gonna lie, Katana’s a really rough figure.  I’d have a hard time telling you whether she or Boomerang was the worse figure, just due to the large number of issues associated with both of them.  For $1, I feel like I got what I paid for, but I can’t imagine ever being willing to spend even close to full retail on this thing, even if I *had* liked the movie.

#1238: Boomerang

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

BOOMERANG

DC COMICS MULTIVERSE (MATTEL)

To quote Jack Sparrow, “There should be a captain in there somewhere.”

So, Suicide Squad was DC’s less sucky live action film from last year.  Of course, when your claim to fame is “not as bad as Dawn of Justice,” you may not be on the strongest footing.  As I noted in my review of Mattel’s version of Deadshot from the film, it did have its moments where it didn’t totally suck, or at least hinted at not sucking as much.  It was kind of like watching a clumsy kid on a bike riding up a ramp; there’s promise, and you hope things end well, but it pretty much always ends with a disappointing crash of reality, and leaves all the participants worse than they were at the start.  With a few exceptions, the movie’s cast really did try their best to salvage the film, putting in the best performances they could of the material they were handed.  Outside of Will Smith (who almost manages to save the movie), the performance I was most impressed by was Jai Courtney’s Captain Boomerang.  After seeing him give a number of rather forgettable turns as generic action heroes, Courtney actually did the good captain some justice.  The fact that he was so underused (especially given Boomer’s long history with the Squad) is one of the film’s greatest failings.  He ended up getting a figure from Mattel, which I’ll be looking at today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Boomerang was released in the second assortment of the Suicide Squad sub-set of DC Comics Multiverse, which hit stores late last year, well after anyone was actually interested in Suicide Squad figures.  Good move there Mattel.  The figure stands about 6 1/2 inches tall and has 23 points of articulation….in theory.  As I noted in the Deadshot review, a lot of the joints on this figure are significantly limited in range of motion.  The elbows can at least make it to 90 degrees, which is something.  Of course, on the flipside, there’s the torso crunch; remember how Deadshot’s ab-crunch was essentially useless?  Well, Boomerang goes right past “essentially” and straight to “completely.”  Seriously, the joint cannot move.  At all.  What is even the point of including this joint if it literally provides no extra movement.  All it does is stick out like a sore thumb on the sculpt.  All of the articulation sticks out, as a matter of fact; there doesn’t appear to be even the slightest attempt to work any of the joints into the sculpt organically, resulting in a figure that strangely offers the worst of both worlds in regards to sculpt and movement.  I guess the sculpt has some merit.  The head looks passably like Jai Courtney’s Boomer, albeit one who’s been scrubbed and cleaned within an inch of his life.  He’s also got a rather bland expression, which seems rather out of place. The rest of the body is…well its there.  Most of the details are rather on the soft side, and he looks rather clunky and outdated compared to most modern figures.  The worst offender is the torso/pelvis, which isn’t really shaped like any human ever, much less Boomerang from the movie.  The coat is inaccurate, mostly because it’s just a re-use of the Dark Knight Rises Bane coat.  They aren’t really that close in design, and it also doesn’t fit the new body sculpt, so it just looks awkward and poofy.  Under the coat, there’s a holster piece, which is glued in place.  It looks rather weird and tacked on, and it can’t really hold a boomerang all that well, thanks mostly to the ill-fitting jacket.  The paintwork on Boomerang isn’t the worst work I’ve seen, but it’s not particularly great.  Everything is just solid colors, with no real weathering, which is really essential on a figure like this.  There’s several noticeable occurrences of slop, and overspray on the neckline.  Lots of details, such as the zipper on his shirt and the buttons on his jacket are just left completely unpainted.  And, to top it all off, the silver paint they used is already starting to flake off.  Boomerang comes packed with three of his namesake weapon.  They are each stamped with a large “CHINA” branding, but what else is new.  They don’t really resemble any of the boomerangs he uses in the film, and on top of that he can’t actually *hold* them, thanks to his hands being sculpted into weird, generic grip poses.  If you’re already sculpting him new hands, why not at least make it so he can hold his signature weapon?  Boomerang also includes the other arm of Killer Croc, which he, amusingly, can actually hold pretty well.  Maybe Mattel thought they were actually making a figure of Captain Killer Croc Arm?

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Ethan, you didn’t like the movie, you don’t like Mattel, and you don’t like DC Comics Multiverse.  Why, dear God why, did you buy this figure?  That’s a good question.  Remember how I got the Son of Batman figure for $5 on clearance?  Well, this guy was sitting next to him on the shelf.  He had no price tag, but I was curious, so I took him to the price scanner, to see if he was also $5.  He wasn’t.  No, he, along with all of the other Suicide Squad figures at my local Walmart, was $1.  And for $1, there are few action figures I’d say no to.  This is an awful figure, make no mistake.  Don’t pay full price, ever.  But if you see one for $1?  Well, okay, he’s still awful, but at least he’s cheap, and therefore a little more worth it.  At least this way my Deadshot figure’s less lonely.

#1229: Bane – Detective Mode

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

BANE – DETECTIVE MODE

DC COMICS MULTIVERSE (MATTEL)

banedetvis1

Hey look, another DC Comics Multiverse figure.  These figures are always sooooooooooo great, right?  While the line switched over to the 6-inch scale last year, there are still quite a few entries from its earlier, 3 3/4-inch scale, based primarily on Arkham Origins and Arkham Knight.  I watched my brother play through Knight, so I’m familiar with that one, but I don’t really know Origins all that well.  Amusingly enough, I actually own more Origins merch than any of the other games.  There were just a lot of toys from that one, I guess.  Anyway, I’ll be looking at one of the smaller Origins figures, Bane.  Of course, it’s not a basic Bane.  No, no, this is a wacky variant Bane.  Let’s do this.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

banedetvis2Detective Mode Bane was released in Mattel’s small-scale DC Comics Multiverse line.  I couldn’t begin to tell you what series.  I didn’t follow the line super closely, and from what I can tell online, no one else did either.  The back of his box shows Arkham Knight, Arkham Origin Joker, and some sort of Batman derivation.  I’m guessing he hit around the time of Arkham Knight’s release?  The figure stands a little over four inches tall and he has 16 points of articulation.  He’s built on the same mold as the standard Arkham Origin Bane figure.  It’s okay, I guess.  Not the worst thing Mattel’s put out.  I guess he sort of looks like Bane from the game.  It’s hardly the most exciting Bane look, and the figure suffers from the same clumsy articulation issues that plagued pretty much this entire line.  The paint’s what makes this figure “unique.”  As his name denotes, he’s based on how Bane looks when he’s viewed by the player using Batman’s Detective Vision in the game.  In the game, this means the foes are seen through an x-ray filter, showing off their skeletons and what not.  For the figure, it means he’s molded in clear blue plastic, with a skeleton pattern hastily painted on the front of the figure.  He ends up looking like one of the Skeleton Men from Scooby Doo, Where Are You?.  I don’t think that was quite what they were going for, but that’s what they got.  An x-ray figure is really the sort of thing you have to fully commit to, not just a quick repaint  (for instance, every “Emperor’s Wrath” Darth Vader has at the very least an actual skull imbedded in the middle of his helmet), so this ends up looking more like a guy wearing goofy makeup than anything else.  Bane included no accessories, because why offer anything new with this figure, right?

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Like the Knightfall Batman I reviewed two weeks ago, this guy was another figure given to me by my Super Awesome Girlfriend, picked up during one of her stress buys.  The fact that he was a gift from her is probably the best that can be said about him.  I mean, I’ve still owned worse figures, but this one’s not offering a whole lot of positives.  The gimmick is cool in theory, but as usual, Mattel was lazy about it, and that makes him kind of a pointless figure.  I can’t really imagine what the market for this figure is supposed to be.  People who like failed concepts?

#1213: Falcon

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

FALCON

MARVEL LEGENDS (TOY BIZ)

falconml1

I’ve been a Falcon fan for quite some time, and while that’s really easy nowadays when you can walk into just about any store and have your pick of *multiple* Sam Wilson figures, that was hardly the case a decade ago.  That being said, even as a minor character, Sam’s actually been pretty lucky when it comes to action figures, finding his way into the relatively compressed line-ups of Mego’s World’s Greatest Superheroes and Mattel’s Marvel Superheroes: Secret Wars, as well as getting five different figures during Toy Biz’s tenure with the Marvel license.  Today, I’ll be looking at Toy Biz’s last stab at the character, courtesy of Marvel Legends!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

falconml2Falcon was released in Series 14 of Toy Biz’s Marvel Legends, which was their penultimate series for the line.  There were two versions of Falcon available: classic and modern.  The one seen here is the more common classic version, based on Falcon’s second costume.  The figure stands a little over 6 inches tall and has 40 points of articulation.  Falcon was built on the body from the first ML Iron Fist, which is an interesting choice to say the least.  While the Iron Fist body looked great in the prototype stage, it suffered from some real issues on the final figure, and a lot of that was passed on to Falcon.  The biggest issue is the shoulders, which jut way too far out.  Also, the under the shoulder joint fails to go all the way into the torso, leaving his arms forever slightly out to the side.  He looks like his arms are connected to his torso by a weird tube thing.  In addition to the arms, the exposed portion of the torso looks more like a grill rack than an actual person’s pecs, which makes Falcon look rather frightening.  Beyond that?  I guess the rest of the sculpt is decent enough.  The body was a lot less gangly than a lot of the TB Legends so that’s good, and the legs are actually not badly done (well, apart from those crazy nonexistent muscles).  In addition to the Iron Fist pieces, Falcon got a new head, forearms, hands, and feet, as well as slightly tweaked upper arms and shins.  The head’s always been one of my favorites from this era of Legends; it just really seems to capture the character well, and just has a nice heroic quality about it in general.  The hands are probably some of the most convincing hands TB ever put on one of their Legends, but also serve to showcase just how stupid the finger articulation was most of the time; what good does that joint do the figure?  The forearms and biceps have the wings attached.  The segmentation of the design allows for much more natural posing than was exhibited in the MU Falcon, and the wings are quite nicely detailed, with each feather being carefully defined and textured.  In terms of paint, Falcon is about what you’d expect from a TB-era Legends figure; lots of washes and airbrushing that vernally looked much better on the prototype than on the mass produced figure.  For some reason, all of the joint pins have been done in bright red plastic.  In the case of the elbows and gloves, this means there’s paint somewhat sloppily thrown over them to cover this up, but for the discs in the shoulders and the neck, this means a bright red stripe running across his skin.  Also, this figure seems to be exhibiting an issue similar to the Young Avengers Patriot figure where the pieces molded in white are slowly soaking up the color from the much darker joint pins, which is a slightly disturbing thing to see.  Both versions of Falcon were also plagued by a mix-up in the assemble process, causing the paint on the pelvises to actually correspond with the other version of the figure.  Amusingly, a similar issue showed up on the prototypes, only it was the forearms/hands that were mixed up that time.  Falcon included his trusty bird sidekick Redwing, who can be plugged into Sam’s back, as well as the lower torso of Series 14’s BaF Mojo.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Series 14 is one of the few series of Legends where I wanted every figure in the line-up, and Falcon here was no exception.  While I actually got most of this particular series for Christmas the year they were released, I didn’t get Falcon as a gift.  I ended up getting him from Cosmic Comix, who were getting a pretty steady stream of Legends at that point.  The figure hasn’t aged very well at all, but I was very happy with him back in the day.  I’d love to see Hasbro redo this guy at some point.

#1203: Vixen

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

VIXEN

JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA (DC DIRECT)

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Following the winding down of the well-regarded Satellite Era of the Justice League, DC tried to inject some new life into their flagship super team.  Marvel was having a great deal of success with the Avengers, who had, for about 15 years at that point, been made up predominately of a number of B and C list heroes who didn’t have books of their own (i.e. Hawkeye, Scarlet Witch, Vision, Wonder Man, Captain Marvel, etc).  Enter Justice League Detroit, a smaller scale team.  The only mainstays from the prior era were Aquaman, Martian Manhunter, and Elongated Man, all notably lower tier.  They were joined by a brand new cast of heroes: Steel (no, not the one from Superman), Vibe (no, not the one on The Flash), Gypsy, and Vixen.  The team was…less than successful, and after a short run, they killed two members and rebranded again.  Personally?  I kinda enjoyed the run.  Sure, it had its flaws (Vibe was little more than a walking stereotype), but there was a lot to like.  Perhaps the only new member to make it out of that run unscathed was Vixen, who happened to have one of the more interesting power sets.  She sort of hung around in the background for a while, before being brought in for a recurring role in Justice League Unlimited and subsequently being brought back onto the team in the comics for Brad Meltzer and Ed Benes’ post-Infinite Crisis relaunch of Justice League of America, which just so happened to get her a figure.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

vixen2Vixen was released in 2007 as part of the first series of DC Direct’s Justice League of America line.  The figure stands about 6 1/2 inches tall and has 9 points of articulation.  That articulation’s pretty much good for having her stand there, and that’s about it.  Vixen is sporting her costume from the mid ‘00s which is really just a slight variation of the same basic design she’s been sporting since her first appearance.  I can’t say it’s my favorite design of hers, as it leans pretty heavily on the ‘00s obsession with putting every female character in a catsuit that was three sizes too small.  She, like all of the figures in the line is based on Ed Benes’ artwork.  At this point in their run, DC Direct was pretty much exclusively doing artist-based figures, which was rather a mixed bag, since not every artist’s work translates into three dimensions all that well.  Vixen is kind of weird and lanky for the most part, excepting of course for her breasts, which give an impression not unlike a pair of watermelons strapped to a tree.  It’s an odd look to say the least.  And, as far as posing goes, she looks like she just took a really deep breath and is trying not to let it out, resulting in her chest jutting forward and her shoulders being strangely raised.  She also seems to have had her hips removed at some point, which has had the effect of causing both of her legs to point off to the left in the way that no normal human legs ever would.  Her left foot also appears to have slipped out of place in her boot, since that’s about the only way it could end up that particular shape.  Her arms are probably the best parts of the figure, aside from their intended pose being a little vague; they’re actually shaped like arms, so that’s a plus.  The hands are actually a halfway decent sculpt, but end up being slightly on the large side (and the fingers are also prone to bending out of shape).  The head sculpt is…well, it’s something.  Not sure that something is *good* but it’s something.  The hair’s nice, I guess?  Just try not to look too closely at the face.  Vixen made use of some metal for her bracelets and the pull tag on her zipper.  It’s a nice touch, but the free-floating bracelets can get rather annoying when posing the figure.  Vixen’s paintwork is mostly pretty clean.  The jumpsuit seems a little on the drab side, but it’s not awful.  Once again, try not to look too closely at the face, especially not the lips or eyes.  And that’s not even addressing that super whacky hairline she’s sporting.  Vixen’s only accessory was a display stand with “Justice League of America” painted on it.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I actually bought this figure from Cosmic Comix when it was brand new.  I was even excited for it.  At the time, I was really into Brad Meltzer’s run on Justice League of America, and I also really loved Vixen’s recurring role on JLU.  Time has been kinder to the latter of those things, but less so the former.  Also, I believe this was also about the time that I sat down and read the Detroit run, so that probably had something to do with it.  In hindsight, like Meltzer’s run on JLA, time has not been kind to this figure.  She’s rather indicative of this period at DC Direct, which wasn’t a very good one.  It was right about the time I stopped collecting their figures and moved over to DC Universe Classics.  I actually sold off a lot of the other figures from this period, but there hasn’t really been a better Vixen figure, so this one’s stuck around.

Wow, two “bleh” figures in a row.  I swear, I’ll try to review something better tomorrow!

#1202: Cheetara

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

CHEETARA

THUNDERCATS (2011)

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You thought I was done with the Thundercats reviews, didn’t you?  Well, so did I.  But, I really don’t know how to quit buying action figures, and the more figures I have from any given line, the more reason I have to say “one more couldn’t hurt.”  Back in April of last year, I looked at Lion-O, Tygra, and the Tower of Omens from the 2011 re-launch of Thundercats.  Today, I look at yet another member of the team, Cheetara.  No points for guessing what cat she was.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

cheetara2Like Lion-O and Tygra, Cheetara was released as part of the first series of basic small-scale Thundercats figures from Bandai.  The figure is about 4 inches tall and she has 17 points of articulation.  After some genuinely impressive work with the articulation on Lion-O and Tygra, Cheetara is a real step down.  She gains bicep swivels lacked by the other two, but at the cost of wrist and ankle movement, and on top of that, the bicep joints are really ugly.  Also, instead of the nice hinged hips from the prior figures, Cheetara gets v-hips.  Oh goody.  My faaaaaavorite.  They seem to have attempted to make up for the v-hips by adding a pair of swivel joints to each thigh.  The first set of swivels are sort of the reverse ange of the v-hips, and the second is a more straight lateral cut.  In theory, they’re supposed to mimic the movement of a normal t-joint, I guess, but in practice, they’re just sort of a big mess of twisting meat.  And, they’re pretty hideous to boot.  But hey, I’m glad they didn’t ruin the figure by giving her those no good hinged hips from the other two figures; that would have been the worst.  Okay, I’ve ragged on the articulation, but what about the sculpt.  Well, for one thing, it’s pretty much torn apart by all that ugly articulation.  Even on its own merits, though, it seems like a step down.  The head is okay, I guess, and the torso sort of tries to capture her cartoon design, but the arms and legs are just a total mess.  They lack any real organic shape and seem to be out of scale with the head and torso.    Her hands are the same size as her head for pete’s sake!  It’s a sad state of affairs when a figure’s paint being “acceptable” is the high point of the figure, but here we are.  There’s nothing really spectacular about the work, but it’s mostly pretty clean, and the colors match up well enough with the cartoon.  There’s some slop in a few areas, but given the rest of this figure, it could be worse.  Cheetara includes one accessory: her staff.  It’s made out of soft plastic, which makes it look more like a brown spaghetti noodle than anything else.  Also, since she lacks any wrist joints, she can’t really hold it very well.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

When I picked up Lion-O and Tygra two summers ago, I had also wanted to get a Cheetara, but Yesterday’s Fun didn’t have her.  In the year following, they must have picked her up along the way because I got her from them last summer.  She’s disappointing to say the least.  I mean, I’m glad to have her, I suppose, but after being pleasantly surprised by Lion-O and Tygra, Cheetara was a sad return to form for Bandai America.