Tag Archives: Toy Biz

#0970: Silver Surfer

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

SILVER SURFER

MARVEL SUPER HEROES (TOY BIZ)

SilverSurferMSH1

Though they were best known for their 15 year run with the Marvel license, Toy Biz’s first work of note was actual doing toys based on Marvel’s Distinguished Competition. Toy Biz’s DC action figures were little more than knock-offs of Kenner’s Super Powers line. When Toy Biz was granted the Marvel license, their initial offerings were rather similar to what they had done for DC. They offered a rather broadly ranging line, covering the major corners of the Marvel Universe (barring the X-Men, who got their own line). Today, I’ll be taking a look at one of that line’s versions of the Silver Surfer!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

SilverSurferMSH2Silver Surfer was released in the third series of Toy Biz’s Marvel Super Heroes line. The figure stands about 5 inches tall and has 6 points of articulation. That’s actually a pretty low articulation count for a Toy Biz figure, and it’s even a bit low for this particular line. This figure is mostly the same sculpt as his Series 1 counterpart. The only difference between the two is the lack of neck articulation. It’s an odd choice, and it definitely limits what can be done with the figure, but I’d guess it had something to do with the vac metalizing. The sculpt isn’t terrible, but it’s not particularly great either. He’s similar in style to the Toy Biz Green Lantern, in that his proportions feel rather off, and the level of detail is very low. Also, his head is just very oddly shaped. It’s definitely too small, and the face (which is very ill-defined) sits too high. In fact, the head in general sits too high on the neck, and the whole construction there just looks weird. As far as paint goes, this particular Surfer doesn’t really have any, he’s just vac metalized. Later Surfer’s would at least get detailing on the eyes, but that’s not the case with this guy. Just the straight up and down silver for him. Silver Surfer originally included his surfboard, done up to match him. Unlike other versions of the board, this one was really thick, and it had wheels on the bottom. So, he’s not actually the Silver Surfer, he’s the Silver Skateboarder. Radical.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

The Surfer is the eighth of the 15 figures that I picked up from a vendor at this past Balticon. I…I’m not really sure how I feel about him. I mean, the chrome look is certainly cool, but the actual figure’s kind of a bit lame. Toy Biz definitely improved in leaps and bounds over the years, but this guy’s a disappointment even compared to the figures from the same line. I hate to be this down on a figure, but this guy, well, he’s not great.

#0969: Cyclops

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

CYCLOPS

X-MEN: AGE OF APOCALYPSE (TOY BIZ)

CyclopsAoA1

Man, I feel like I was just talking about Age of Apocalypse not that long ago. Oh, that’s right, I was! Back in May, I looked at the AoA version of the most popular X-Man, Wolverine. Today, I’ll be dipping back into that universe, to look at an X-Man who’s almost as popular, Cyclops! One of the things that the event liked to play with was which side of the battle certain characters were on. While classically villainous characters like Magneto and Sabertooth ended up firmly on the side of good, some of the more traditionally heroic characters found themselves on the side of bad. Such was the case with both Cyclops and his brother Havok. At the time, Cyclops as a villain was supposed to be really shocking, but it’s since become a rather predictable story beat (and Cyclops doesn’t stay evil in the story anyway, so…). Ah well. How about the figure?

THE FIGURE ITSELF

CyclopsAoA2Cyclops was released in the 12th Series of Toy Biz’s 5-inch X-Men line, which was entirely based around Age of Apocalypse. The figure is about 5 ½ inches tall and he has 10 points of articulation. Obviously, he’s based on Cyclops’ design from the Age of Apocalypse event. While Wolverine/Weapon X got a rather extensive redesign, Cyclops actually didn’t change all that much from his standard look of the time. Sure, there are plenty of minor changes, but the overall look is still pretty much the same. The biggest change is all the asymmetry. In the comics, Scott had lost his left eye in a battle with Logan, making him an actual cyclops. Isn’t that clever? Anyway, his visor has been tweaked so the eye slit is just on the right side, and they just kind of went nuts to play up the imbalance. With the asymmetrical armor, the pouches, the long hair, and the five o’clock shadow, the whole thing is very ‘90s. It’s almost quaint. The figure does a decent job of replicating this design, but holy crap is it stylized! His muscles are bulging all over the place, and his hands are huge, yet his head and waist still manage to be impossibly small. His head’s smaller than his bicep. That’s the kind of thing you might want to have checked! Also worth noting is that the structure and pose of this figure’s legs make him virtually impossible to keep standing for any length of time. On the plus side, the sculpt does have some pretty cool detail work, especially on the armored bits. He’s even got little sculpted scars across his eye! Cyclops’ paintwork is decent enough. The application is pretty clean,many the slightly metallic blue and yellow work really nicely. The hair’s a bit of a mess, but more or less gets the job done. The scars lose some of their subtlety with the huge red lines that have been placed on them, which is a slight letdown. Still, they aren’t terrible. Cyclops was originally packed with a weird gun thing and a brain in a jar. Classic Cyclops accessories! Mine, however, does not have these pieces.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Cyclops is another figure from the rather large assortment of figures I picked up at this year’s Balticon. Given that I was a huge Cyclops geek as a kid, it’s a little surprising that I didn’t get this guy when he was new, but I don’t recall ever seeing any of the Age of Apocalypse figures in stores. Honestly, this isn’t one of my favorite incarnations of the character. However, he’s not a terrible figure, and his ramped up 90s-ness does make him a bit of fun!

#0964: Mr. Fantastic

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

MR. FANTASIC

FATASTIC FOUR (TOY BIZ)

MrFantastic1

The 2005 Fantastic Four movie is definitely far from a perfect film. Yesterday, I touched on the casting of Jessica Alba as the Invisible Woman, which is often cited as one of the film’s biggest negative factors. On the plus side, they didn’t botch all of the casting. Chris Evans as Johnny was quite good, as was Michael Chiklis’ take on Ben. Ioan Gruffudd’s Reed Richards doesn’t stand out quite as much as those two, and he was unfortunately hampered by a lack of chemistry with Alba’s Sue of Julian McMahon’s Von Doom. Still, Gruffudd turned in a decent, stand-up performance. As with the rest of the cast, he got a handful of action figures from the movie, one of which I’ll be looking at today.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

MrFantastic3This particular Mr. Fantastic was included as a pack-in with the Fantasticar* that Toy Biz put out in the first Fantastic Four movie line. The figure stands just over 6 inches tall (without the neck extension), and he has 28 points of articulation. His articulation is a little weird, since it’s not in keeping with the rest of the figures in the line. That’s because this figure is actually a scaled down version of the 12-inch rotocast Mr. Fantastic. That figure’s hollow construction necessitated the “v” hips, and the lack of waist movement is due to the larger figure’s inclusion of an extending neck feature. At the smaller scale, the extending neck wasn’t feasible, but he still loses the articulation. Oh well. Aside from the slightly off articulation, the sculpt actually isn’t bad. I think the head has the best Ioan Gruffudd likeness of any of the Reed figures Toy Biz put out, and the body sculpt avoids a lot of the wonkier proportions that plagued a lot of the Fantastic Four movie figures. The longer forearms and larger than normal hands are a pretty cool way of showing off Mr. Fantasic’s powers, and I like the inclusion of all the smaller details on the gloves. Unfortunately, though the sculpt is a step-up from the other figures, the paint is a definite step down. Moving past the annoying scrapes of missing paint on my figure (which probably weren’t there when he was new), the paint is much more straightforward on this figure. There’s no accent work on any of the costume pieces, and there are several spots of noticeable slop, especially on the figure’s right thigh. On the plus side, the hair does exhibit some halfway decent work, so it’s not a total loss. Reed’s only real accessory was the extendable neck piece. It would have been nice to get a set of normal sized hands as well, but given that this figure was essentially an accessory himself, the lack of extra pieces isn’t unforgivable.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I picked up Reed at the same time as Sue, from a dealer at Balticon. I actually looked at the Fantasticar set a few times when it was on shelves but I never got one. In addition, I had the 12-inch version of this figure, which I liked quite a bit. The smaller version isn’t quite as impressive, but he’s still a pretty decent figure, and he might be my favorite version of the character that this line had to offer.

*The Fantasticar didn’t actually appear on-screen until the 2007 sequel. The one that this figure was included with was a Toy Biz-original creation, since the movie design had not yet been developed at the time of this toy’s release.

#0963: Power Blast Invisible Woman

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

POWER BLAST INVISIBLE WOMAN

FATASTIC FOUR (TOY BIZ)

SueAlba1

The Fantastic Four haven’t really had much luck when it comes to movies. The recent Fant4stic was a total box-office bomb, of, like, epic proportions. Before that travesty, there were two other theatrical Fantastic Four movies, which weren’t bad, but were far from great. One of the more present issues with both 2005’s Fantastic Four and its sequel Rise of the Silver Surfer was the questionable casting choice of Jessica Alba as Susan Storm, aka the Invisible Woman. As is the case with just about every Marvel movie, Fantastic Four got its own line of toys, which included a couple versions of Alba’s Invisible Woman.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

SueAlba2Power Blast Invisible Woman was released as part of the first series of Toy Biz’s Fantastic Four movie tie-in. There were actually three different variations of this figure released. The figure I’m looking at today is the fully visible version, but there were also fully invisible and “half-and-half” versions available. She stands about 6 inches tall and has 38 points of articulation. Sue comes from around the point when Toy Biz was focusing on articulation above all else, and it kind of shows. Sure, she’s got a lot of movement, but she looks more like a drawing mannequin than an actual person. The joints are really obvious and she’s painfully skinny, to a degree that no living person should be. The waist is the absolute worst, though; it’s actually a bit smaller than her thigh in diameter, which is beyond off. These are proportions that would look strange even on a comicbook character, but on a figure that’s supposed to be based on a real person, they’re downright laughable. At the very least, the figure’s head is a pretty spot-on likeness of Jessica Alba, right down to that slightly condescending sneer she was sporting for about 99% of her screen time in the movies. The hair is a separate piece and whole it’s a little on the thick side, it’s not atrocious, and there’s at least some nice detailing. Sue’s paintwork is probably the figure’s strongest point. Everything’s pretty clean overall, and there’s even some nice accent work on the uniform of the blue, which helps keep it from getting too monotonous. Her face is also surprisingly well-done, especially at this scale. Invisible Woman included a disc-firing base, which I think was supposed to represent here powers somewhat, but it just ends up being weird.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Sue was one of the more difficult to find figures in the line at the time of release, so I didn’t have this figure when she was new. She ended up being one of the 15 figures I picked up at this past Balticon. The figure’s definitely wonky, especially in terms of proportions, and Alba’s Sue is far from one of my favorite characters, so I can’t say this is one of my favorite figures. But hey, she was $2. I can’t really complain.

#0962: Gambit

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

GAMBIT

X-MEN: CLASSIC (TOY BIZ)

GambitLightUp1

The ‘90s were quite good to the X-Men. They several top selling comics, a few video games, and a cartoon. But, most importantly, they had an awesome, hugely expansive line of action figures, courtesy of Toy Biz. Earlier figures in the line were fairly straightforward versions of the X-Men, but as the line continued, Toy Biz started experimenting with a number of different gimmicks to keep things interesting. The very first “gimmick series” gave each figure a light-up feature. Though light-up features weren’t new to the line, these figures were different in that, rather than lighting up themselves, they used a two-part light-up feature that allowed them to light up their accessories. Mostly, the series was just an excuse to release new versions of a few outdated figures. Today, I’ll be looking at Gambit from that series.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

GambitLightUp2Gambit was released in the X-Men: Classic “Light-Up Weapons Series,” which was the 13th series of figures in Toy Biz’s 5-inch X-Men line. This was Gambit’s second figure in the line, after getting his first back in Series 3. The figure stands about 5 ½ inches tall and has 9 points of articulation. His articulation isn’t terrible, but the light-up feature’s inner workings are in his chest and right arm, which reduces the posablilty of the right shoulder quite a bit and also necessitates removing the usual elbow joints. Though the X-Men line was meant as a tie-in for the cartoon running at the same time, the figures tended to be more directly based on their comics appearances. Gambit actually looks to take a lot of influence from his Capcom game appearances, since he’s rather beefy and stylized. The overall look isn’t too bad, though it does seem like Gambit’s been juicing just a bit, since he’s usually more slender than he’s depicted here. He’s about to burst out of his sleeves for Pete’s sake! Also, his hands are absolutely huge, and if I’m honest the right one barely even looks like a hand at this point. The head exhibits the best sculpted work, and does quite a nice job of capturing Gambit’s smarmy personality. Gambit’s paint is fairly decent, if not fantastic. There’s a bit of slop here and there, especially on the fingers, and the pink lines on the sides of his pants are way more subtle than they should be. The color scheme they picked is once again pretty game-inspired, but it has a nice degree of pop, so no complaints here. Gambit included his usual staff, as well as a piece showing a fan of playing cards being kinetically charged, as if Gambit has just thrown them. The latter piece is the source of the light up feature. When plugged into Gambit’s right hand, the cards would light up at the push of the button on Gambit’s back.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

This is another ‘90s X-Men figure that I’ve owned two of. The first was bought for me by my grandparents on my Mom’s side, I believe as a reward for finishing kindergarten. I got him and Juggernaut, but I think I mostly got Gambit because my grandparents felt I needed to get a “good guy” figure to go with the villain. Somewhere along the way, I lost that figure, so I picked up this replacement from a dealer at Balticon this year. He’s not a terrible figure, but he definitely shows his age.

#0945: Weapon X

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

WEAPON X – BURNED

MARVEL LEGENDS (TOY BIZ)

WeaponXAoA1

The ‘90s had a lot of big comics “events,” especially compared to prior decades, which had virtually none. I think a lot of it had to do with the success of the likes of Crisis and Secret Wars in the ‘80s, prompting the Big Two to do whatever they could to recapture some of that glory. Marvel’s efforts were primarily focused on their cash cow of the time, the X-Men, who found themselves dealing with all sorts of events of epic proportions. At one point, Marvel deemed that it wasn’t enough to make life hell for our own merry mutants, so they showed us how much worse things could have been by launching the alternate reality-based Age of Apocalypse, which examined what the X-Men ‘verse would have been like without Professor Charles Xavier. The storyline took over all of the X-Men-related books, and was generally pretty successful for Marvel. There’s been a smattering of different figures from it all over the years and today I’ll be looking at one of the four Marvel Legends to be based on the event, Weapon X! Apparently, one of the things that changed in the AoA reality was that the title “Wolverine” went to a different character, so poor Logan had to stick with his Weapon X title. Thrilling! Let’s look at the figure!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

WeaponXAoA2Weapon X was part of the Giant-Man Series of Toy Biz’s Marvel Legends. It was exclusive to Walmart and was one of the last series to be produced under Toy Biz’s tenure. There were two versions of Weapon X offered: normal and burned. The difference between the two versions is the head and the stump on the left arm. The figure here is the burned version (the only one of the two I still have). Though this figure was technically a variant, he was packed in equal numbers to his regular counterpart and also featured a different Giant-Man piece, which was quite frustrating for a lot of collectors at the time. The figure is about 6 inches tall and he has 35 points of articulation. Weapon X made use of a lot of pieces from the Series 6 brown costume Wolverine. It was one of Toy Biz’s best Wolverines, and one of the best parts about it was that they really got down Logan’s short, stocky physique. The re-use here was definitely warranted. He got a new head, lower arms, and lower legs, all of which fit pretty well with the rest of the parts, and make for an overall pretty cohesive looking figure. The head is actually really cool. I’m not sure if it’s based on a specific instance of Logan getting burned, since it happens a few times, but the level of detail is pretty awesome, and it’s a nice, refreshing take on the usual Wolverine look. The other unique piece here is the stump, which has claws on this version. In the story, it was revealed that Logan’s claws had been retracted when he lost his hand, so he could still pop them out of his wrist. That’s cool, I guess. The claws suffer from a bit of warping, but are otherwise pretty cool. Weapon X’s paint isn’t bad, provided you ignore his rather doofy looking outfit. Most of the work is pretty clean, and there’s some rather nice accent work in several places. There’s a few instances of scratches or slop, but that’s relatively minor. Also, the painted on arm hair’s a bit silly in some places, but it’s overall an okay attempt. The best part is once again the head, which looks convincingly burned, while still managing to not look too out of place next to the unburned skin of the neck and arms. The only accessory included with Weapon X was the left hand of Giant-Man. Honestly, it feels like the burned head and clawed stump would have made for decent accessories to the regular Weapon X, rather than being a separate figure, but I guess Toy Biz really wanted to sell that extra Logan.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Weapon X was given to me as a birthday present by my friend Cindy Woods. I was super into Marvel Legends at the time, and this particular series was fairly difficult to get. She was so excited to find this guy for me that she didn’t notice that some jerk had stolen the Giant-Man piece right out of the side of the box (in her defense, the piece was hidden by the figure’s name tag. Also, who steals just the piece? The figures were like $8!). Fortunately, my dad was able to find another Weapon X online with the piece, so it worked out alright. On the face, this feels like an extraneous Wolverine variant that nobody really asked for. However, this guy’s fun and different enough that he ended up being my one of my favorite Legends Wolverines produced. Definitely a winner!

 

#0940: Cyclops

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

CYCLOPS

MARVEL ELECTRONIC TALKING SUPER HEROES

CyclopsTalks1

Today is, amongst other things, the day I graduate from college. It’s been a long road, but it looks like I’m finally done with this whole school thing (for now, anyway…). Graduating is kind of an interesting experience: it’s sort of an all new thing, but at the same time it makes me rather nostalgic of all the time I’ve spent in school. So, I’m going to acknowledge my college graduation the way I acknowledge everything else in my life: with action figures.

Fitting the theme of nostalgia, I’m taking a step back to one of the earliest lines I ever collected: Toy Biz’s X-Men line from the ‘90s. The line was no stranger to gimmicks, and one of the more popular gimmicks of the early ‘90s was action figures that talked. For some reason, that was an area lots of toy makers saw a need to fill, Toy Biz included. They put together a line-up of seven of Marvel’s more popular characters, all making use of this particular feature. There were three X-Men characters represented, including today’s focus figure, Cyclops.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

CyclopsTalks2Cyclops was released in the first (and only) series of Marvel Electronic Talking Super Heroes and X-Men. Yes, the “and X-Men” is actually on the card. Guess they don’t count as Super Heroes. The assortment was released in 1991, alongside the first series of the X-Men line and Series 1 and 2 of the Marvel Super Heroes line. As such, the talking figures have a fair bit in common with their non-talking variations from those lines. In fact, the prototypes on the packaging are just the regular release figures with the talking boxes attached. Cyclops has a lot in common with the X-Men Series 1 Cyclops, but he actually has a few notable differences. The figure stands 5 inches tall and has 7 points of articulation. While he loses the elbow movement from the X-Men Cyclops, he also loses the light-up feature, meaning he gets neck articulation. That would be a feature unique to this figure for several years. Aside from the slight changes in articulation, the sculpt is more or less the same. There’s no denying that this is a slightly dated sculpt, but it’s a step up from what Mattel offered 7 years before. Honestly, I think the neck movement does a lot to help make the sculpt look a little less unnatural, since the head looks far less stiff. The paint is, in theory, the same as that of the X-Factor version of the Series 1 Cyclops. In theory. In practice it’s noticeably sloppier. Like, a lot sloppier. From afar, he’s not atrocious, and I don’t think the figure’s ruined, but there’s no denying that this guy isn’t Toy Biz’s finest work. The talking portion of this figure is handled via a giant red backpack, which plugs right into his back (and stays there really securely. I almost thought it wasn’t coming back off). The figure has three different sounds: “Let’s Go, X-Men,” “Optic Blast Fire,” and a laser blast sound effect. The sound quality is a little muffled, but otherwise not bad. In addition to the talking box, he also includes a gun because… reasons? Maybe it’s because he’s the father of Cable? Yeah, I don’t know, but there it is.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Despite having grown up in the ‘90s, when these things were all over the place, Cyclops is actually a very recent addition to my collection. Two weekends ago, I was in Rehoboth, and one of my favorite stores, Gidgets Gadgets, had just gotten in a large collection of ‘90s figures. They had just about every figure from this set. I was fairly drawn to this guy, for whatever reason. My dad told me he was buying it for me because “How often is it that I get to buy you a Cyclops action figure anymore?” Yes, the figure’s super goofy. There’s no denying that. But he’s also pretty nifty, and plays into my nostalgia pretty hardcore.

#0934: Black Costume Spider-Man

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

SPIDER-MAN – BLACK COSTUME

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (TOY BIZ)

BlackCostumeSpidey1

EDIT: Sorry for the late post everyone!  For some reason, this post had its date set to February 13 instead of May 13. But it’s here now!

As much as it may seem that Hasbro is releasing Marvel’s most prominent characters in every possible format they can think of, the ‘Bro has nothing on their predecessor’s at Toy Biz. Over the course of their 15-year run with the license, Toy Biz offered the Marvel heroes in 12 distinct scales (to say nothing of having a wide variety of styles within those scales). Towards the end of their run making Marvel toys, they spun a few of their more successful 6-inch lines into 12-inch lines. This included their Amazing Spider-Man line. While the larger line was somewhat limited in scope (there were only 6 figures, and 3 of them were Spider-Man), it did manage to produce a few pretty cool figures, such as today’s focus, the Black Costume Spider-Man.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

BlackCostumeSpidey2Black Costume Spider-Man was released as part of the 12-inch Amazing Spider-Man line in 2006. The line didn’t really have any proper series structure; figures were just sort of added as they went. This particular figure was one of the very last figures added to the line, alongside the House of M version of Spider-Man. The figure stands just over 12 inches tall and has 33 points of articulation (a fact his package proudly boasted. Toy Biz was big on that at the time). Marvel Legends Icons, the 12-inch counterpart to Marvel Legends, was constructed exactly like the smaller figures, just at a larger scale, which gave the figures a certain degree of heft. Amazing Spider-Man, on the other hand, made use of rotocast parts (i.e. hollow) to keep the cost of the figures lower. This results in the figure being surprisingly lightweight, and a bit less sturdy than other figures. However, this figure is hardly fragile, and it’s worth noting that only about half of this figure is actually rotocast. The sculpt of this figure was shared with the House of M figure as well. It was a noticeable improvement over the prior Spider-Man from the line in terms of movement and detailing. The whole thing has this kinda cool orange peel-style texturing to it, which is a nice change from all the totally smooth Spideys out there. The proportions are a bit out there, but it’s Spider-Man, so there’s some room for exaggeration, and he’s certainly no more out of whack than any other Toy Biz Spider-Man. His paint work is fairly basic. They’ve foregone any sort of accenting for the black, which is always a good choice in my book. The white’s a bit on the fuzzy side, presumably due to the texturing of the sculpt. It’s not terrible, but it definitely could be better.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I remember seeing just about every figure in this line when they were originally released. However, I never did get around to picking any of them up. This figure ended up being a rather random find: two weeks ago, I was out and about with my family and we stopped at a Goodwill. There was a bag of assorted action figures for $10, and I could make out this guy, so I bought it. Turns out he’s worth quite a bit more. Lucky me! The figure’s actually pretty cool, and it’s a shame he was one of the last in the line.

#0901: Vision

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

VISION

MARVEL UNIVERSE 10-INCH (TOY BIZ)

During Toy Biz’s run producing Marvel toys in the 90s, their standard scale of choice was 5-inch scale. Since most of their prototypes were done as two-ups (sculpted at twice the size and then scaled down during the production process), they also had the ability to produce virtually the same sculpts at twice the size, allowing them to produce a fairly vast line of 10-inch scaled figures. The figures were generally produced on the cheap, which Toy Biz achieved by building as many of the figures as they could out of a bank of common pieces. This led to them producing a number of more (at the time) obscure characters who happened to be easy builds. One such character was the Vision, who ended up getting his very first figure courtesy of this line (though his next three figures would arrive in short succession).

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Vision10inch2Vision was released as part of the 10-inch scale Marvel Universe line during the late 1997/early 1998 assortment. He predates the line’s move to being KB Toys-exclusive, though not by much. The figure stands 10 inches tall and has 9 points of articulation. Vision is depicted here in his mid-90s costume, which was the look he was porting when the figure was put into production, but he had gone back to his classic look right around this figure’s time of release. As far as structure, he uses an up-scaled version of the second Archangel body as his base, with a head from Silver Surfer. Both were favored pieces by Toy Biz, so they showed up a lot, and the same formula would be employed for the smaller-scale Marvel Gold version of the character. The body seems a little on the large side for Vision, but isn’t a terrible fit. He still has the wrist bands from Archangel, but he’s hardly the first figure to use this body that just acted like those weren’t a part of the sculpt. Re-using head sculpts is generally a bit iffy, but it works okay here, because Surfer’s head was chromed and Vision’s is normally painted, plus Surfer’s head was just a generic bald head to begin with. Unfortunately, the head and body aren’t really meant to go together, so there’s a lot of excess space at the base of the neck, especially in the back. This figure originally had a cloth cape to complete the look, which I recall being slightly ill-fitting, but overall a good piece, and it masked the previously mentioned neck issues (EDIT: I found the cape!  my assessment of it based on memory was correct). Vision’s paint is cool looking, as long as you don’t look too close. The colors are all nicely chose, and the metallic green looks pretty awesome. That said, the application is pretty sloppy, with lots of fuzzy and wavy lines, with the change over from red to green on the head being the worst offender. Vision included no accessories.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I got Vision from Toy Liquidators, back in 1998. Anybody remember Toy Liquidators? They were on their way out, even in 1998. Anyway, I had been to this Toy Liquidators with my grandmother on my mom’s side, and gotten some other figures, but not Vision (because getting her to accept anyone that wasn’t Batman or Spider-Man was already enough of an uphill battle. Explaining why I needed a Vision figure because he was the first ever was not happening). When I mentioned Vision to my Dad, he took me back to the store to get the figure, because Dad gets me (my Grandmother got me too, but it was a different sort of bond). Is he a perfect figure? No, but he was literally the first Vision figure ever made, and that was the best thing ever to 5 year old me (I still think he’s pretty cool).

Vision10inch3

#0828: Spider-Man 2099

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

SPIDERMAN 2099

SPIDER-MAN (TOYBIZ)

Spidey2099a

The 90s was definitely an interesting time for comics. Marvel was pretty much slapping their brands on whatever ideas they could to see what stuck. From this came Marvel 2099, a bunch of books set in the year 2099. Generally speaking, they tended to be 90s insanity at its finest, so most of them have been (thankfully) forgotten. The only one who really stuck was Spider-Man 2099, probably because a) his series didn’t totally suck and b) his costume was super cool. I think that second bit is the lion’s share of what made him last. The design also made him a natural fit for action figures. I’ve looked at his two most recent figures, but let’s look at his first action figure.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Spidey2099bSpider-Man 2099 was released in Series 7 of Toy Biz’s 90s Spider-Man line. The figure is just over 5 inches tall and has 11 points of articulation. Structurally, he uses one of Toy Biz’s favorite 5 inch bodies, which was first introduced with the Octo-Spider-Man from Series 6. It’s a decent enough sculpt, with fairly balanced proportions. My biggest issue with this base body, which was the scrawny forearms, is not an issue with this particular figure, as he has a new set of forearms/hands, specially sculpted to reflect 2099’s clawed hands. These new pieces actually seem a touch on the large side for the body, though not to insane levels. 2099’s cape was handled via a cloth piece, which attached to the figure at the neck and wrists. It’s much more solid than it was in the comics, and it actually looks a bit better if you unhook it from the wrists. There were actually two different color variations available for this figure: dark and light blue. Mine is the lighter one, but the difference is fairly minor. The red detailing is handled via paint, and it’s applied pretty nicely. The red is a touch inconsistent, but it’s not bad. 2099 is packed with a big giant fiery axe (which came in both red and white variations), and a big giant gun thing. He’s never used either of those things, but it was the 90s, so…

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

2099 isn’t one of the figures I had growing up, but he was one who always fascinated me. I ended up finding him at the last Shoreleave, from the same dealer who sold me Punisher, as well as a number of other 5-inch figures at Balticon. They really like me. Anyway, he was a little bit pricey, so I was going to hold off. However, Super Awesome Girlfriend was there, and was having none of that, so she bought him for me. One of these days, she’ll stop doing that. He’s a fun little figure, and definitely worth the purchase.

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