Hulk-out!

I finally saw The Avengers yesterday, and, as expected, it blew my shorts off. Seriously great film... if you haven't seen it, do it now! If you have seen it, go see it again!

I saw a while back that Hasbro was going to be putting out a series of Walmart Exclusive Marvel Legends (1:12 scale or 6 inch scale) figures to coincide with the release of the film. Knowing that the toys would be hard to find and cost an arm and a leg, I tried to narrow it down to just one figure I wanted from the line... and naturally that one figure was the Hulk. With me, it's always the Hulk.

I knew these would be beast to find, but I was fortunate to have one of the luckiest toy spotters I have ever met as a friend, and he picked one up for me the other day. Thanks, Eric!!!

Toys have been going up and up on prices-- just in case you hadn't noticed (I bet you have!). I can remember just a few years ago when a Marvel Legends figure was around 10 bucks and was so sturdy and heavy you could beat an elephant to death with one. Times have changed. These Avengers figures cost $15.99. I can understand why things are going up... but my issues are with the fact that it seems Hasbro is skimping on quality at that heightened price. I'll get into that in a bit. Here are some pics and my thoughts about the Incredible Hulk figure from this line. Click any of the thumbnails to see bigger pics:


First of all, let me say it right up front: this is a gorgeous toy. It looks fantastic and is quite poseable. The colors they used are nice... not as dark as the smaller scaled figures that have been popping up for a while. Hulk has a nice olive green color, and the few paint apps that are here are done really well. It's pretty obvious that this isn't an "on model" depiction of the movie Hulk. I'd go so far as to say that the body style on this figure is closer to the Ed Norton Hulk than the Mark Ruffalo version. It's very lean and wiry in comparison to the thick, ape-like Hulk in The Avengers. With a little work he can be posed in the hunched over stance that the Hulk in The Avengers usually held, but it's pretty obvious that it's just not quite accurate. I don't really care, because the figure looks so darn good.



The poseability is great! They used a little bit better hip joints than some other recent Hasbro figures in this scale, but they're still a little bit of a pain in the rump to work with. The good thing is that the joints are ratcheted, so they'll hold a pose quite well. One really nice thing is the addition of rocker joints in the heels that allow the foot to tilt to the sides. This allows for a lot of really dynamic wide-legged stances.

The Hulk has around 30 points of articulation, which is very welcome! Some of the joints don't have a great range because of the bulk of the figure, but they work well enough.


The head sculpt is really impressive... it doesn't look 100% like the face of the Hulk in the film, but it's a nice Hulk sculpt nonetheless. You can see a bit of Mark Ruffalo in there if you turn it just right.


So how does the Hulk stack up to other figures size-wise? He's really freaking tall, for starters. Although he's a lot leaner than the Toybiz Face-Offs Hulk and a bit more muscular than the Toy Biz First Appearance Hulk, he seems to fit right in with figures in this scale. This new Hulk is the tallest Marvel Legends scale Hulk I own right now just edging out the Face-Offs Hulk by a smidge.


As you can see, this Hulk towers over smaller scaled figures. This 3 inch Glyos figure barely makes it past Hulk's knee!


Might want to be careful about your next few words, Thor.


And here's the Hulk with the older movie Hulk figure that was scaled to fit with 1:18th scale figures. Kinda neat how different and yet similar the two movie figures are.

So there you have some thoughts-- the pros mostly. So what's my beef with the figure?

Quality. The figure looks great-- no arguments there-- but the problem is that the figure just feels cheap. It's made with an extremely lightweight plastic, and seems a lot lighter than it should be. That's not really a huge deal, but I do kind of worry that the hollow parts will be more prone to breakage. Again, not a big deal, because I treat my toys extremely well, but it's kinda crappy when a toy company raises prices and skimps on quality. Along with that issue is the issue of the flimsy joints. The elbow and knee joints are made of really rubbery, flexible plastic. It's so flimsy feeling that you can shake the figure and watch the limbs wobble. Again.. not a huge issue, as I don't really play with my figures anymore, but it is an issue when we're paying more for something that is less than top quality.

So... overall: I really like this figure. It suits my purposes quite well; he makes a fine addition to my growing Hulk collection! He's excellently sculpted and satisfyingly poseable. I'm not sure if the other figures in this line have the same wimpy joints or not, but it's a bit of an issue with this figure, so I think it's only fair to warn you folks who play with your figures a lot. I don't think they'll fall apart in your hands or anything, but I wonder how prone they are to stretching.

Was the figure worth buying? Yes, indeedy! It's not a 100% faithful interpretation of the movie Hulk, but it's VERY faithful to the spirit of the character.

So if you see one, grab it... and Hulk-out!!!!!

Combat Critters!

A friend of mine commissioned me to customize some of his Battle Beasts. If you don't know what Battle Beasts are then I'm sorry... you missed out on a lot of fun. Here's a crash course. Battle Beasts are still quite popular and kinda hard to find these days, so I've never customized any before. Wow-- what a lot of fun! These little dudes just beg to be reworked into stuff... or in some cases just augmented in their original color schemes, which is what my friend wanted with two of these figures. I figured everyone would like to take a look, so here ya goo:






This is Pirate Lion. I had been asked to just repaint him in his original scheme, only a bit more gritty and battle-worn.





And here he is with the injury that caused him to wear the patch in the first place-- GORY!!!!




I call this one the Magma Lion... he's kinda hot.




And this is the Ice Lion. You get the joke.




And this is Panzer Panda reworked into Samurai Panda!


Hope you enjoyed seeing these as much as I enjoyed making them!

Slice like a ninja

I'm going to ramble a bit, but I promise there's a point to this madness. If you don't feel like reading me gripe about comics, movies, and other things, skip on down to the toy review.

During the Christmas season of 2004 I worked at the Toys R Us on Harbison Boulevard in Columbia, SC. One day after work I drove over to Heroes and Dragons, a pretty awesome comic book and toy shop in the area. They were having a sale on their backissues for $1 a piece. Buck comics rate pretty highly with me. I completed a lot of runs of books and started collections of others that I still haven't finished-- I don't like to spend much money (anyone who knows me will attest to this fact), and finding comics for a buck is rare anymore.

One of the series that I started collecting on a whim was G.I. JOE: Reloaded from Devil's Due Press(DDP).



G.I. JOE: Reloaded was an experiment in gritty military fiction written by a guy who knows about as much about the military as I know about nuclear physics. John Ney Rieber started writing the series, but was clearly... distracted. The individual plot lines were very clouded, his artistic direction to the various artists of dissonant talents was confusing, and the overall direction of the series was just poorly planned. Then... suddenly... in the middle of a story arch... Rieber decided that he was a pacifist and would never write a military comic book again (he's been writing military books ever since then, so go figure). Thanks, John! I read several of the books you wrote for DDP, and I am certainly glad you stopped writing when you did. Transformers/G. I. JOE? EUGH. EEEUUUUUGH! What a miserably confusing clusterpuke of a comic book.

Around issue # 9 of Reloaded it was announced that Chuck Dixon would take over the book. Dixon attempted to pull the book up from the nose dive it had been put into, but it was too late. The title lasted 'til issue 14, which was wrapped up about as quickly and clean as could be managed with the short timeframe. It was really depressing to see the book plummet, head back up, then get cut off just as it was gaining ground.

Now, I say all this to make a point. I started collecting the book from the starting block... I was there for the issue before the first issue that kicked the whole thing off. I collected it past the $1 sales stuff and into the "3 bucks-an-issue" territory and even into the "let's-pay-8 bucks-for-rare-backissues-online" territory. The series was bad. No... BAD. Horrible. Terrible. Gag-inducing. But I kept coming back for more. Why? Well... it's as simple as one character: Snake Eyes. Rieber took an interesting route with the silent ninja/commando: he was freaking nuts. It was never revealed what did it, but something in Snake Eyes' past had driven him quite beyond the point of sanity. He had become a killing machine, pure and simple. Emotionless, cold, deadly. It was suggested (somewhere in the senseless babble that Rieber chose to call a comic book script) that Snake Eyes had worked for Cobra Commander at some point. He had decided, for some unknown reason, to be a good guy, but he sure didn't work like a good guy. He was a shark trapped in a man's body. Rieber has said that his favorite character to write was Snake Eyes, and it shows.

I say all this to make a point. I promise I'll get there in a minute.

When Reloaded was shelved, I was pretty sad, because no other book or cartoon had characterized Snake Eyes quite like that book had.

Then... I saw this:



Whaaaaa? Bloodthirsty, butt-kicking, killing-machine Snake Eyes? How dare they????

G. I. JOE: Resolute was an 11 episode mini-series that aired in 5 minute installments on Cartoon Network. It was written by Warren Ellis, an actually talented (GASP!) comic book writer. It kicked all kinds of butt all night long, Sweet Suzie. I could go on and on about it, but let's just say that Snake Eyes was the main reason almost everyone watched the thing. He did NOT disappoint. He was a brutally efficient killer, and he showed almost no emotions doing the dirty work he did. He had a driving force behind his violence, but there was no super-well-defined origin for it. They showed his youth in training with the Arashikage ninja clan briefly, but never went into anything else.



I then heard there was going to be an action figure line... YEAH-YUH!

Then I heard the Resolute figure line had been cancelled due to Hasbro's promotion of the live action movie. I will not get into the many ways and reasons for my hatred for that movie, but let's just say that killing the Resolute line did NOT help things.

But... BUUUUUUUUT... there was a bright shining star in the field of turds that fell out of that movie (the action figure line from the movie is actually a really, really, REALLY nice toy line-- I just hate the movie): They were going to release the Resolute Snake Eyes in the movie series! Oh yes. OH... YES...!

Well... I found him tonight. I now hold in my hands little Mr. Slashy McStabbington himself!

How is the figure? Read on:


Packaging:



One thing I can say about the G I JOE movie line packaging is that it is very pretty. No different here. The figure and accessories are showcased quite well, and there is tha standard JOE filecard on the back. One thing that really made me smile is that they didn't even bother trying to make the character picture on the card look like the movie character. This is a totally different kind of character, and he deserves to be spotlighted as such. It's really weird seeing the Resolute Snake Eyes in the movie line, but I'm happy as a hog in crap to have him.


Sculpt, articulation, and paint:





Simply beautiful. The guy is ripped, but lean enough to look like he's capable of killing ten men in ten seconds. He has some nice gear sculpted on his belts and the cartoon's aesthetics are translated into 3D quite well.

He's articulated out the wazoo, much like all the figures in the 25th Anniversary and movie lines. He has what appears to be 22 points of articulation. Not too shabby for a 3.75 inch tall figure. All of his joints are really well made and durable. His ankles are VERY tight, and I've been having to deal with getting them just right to keep him standing. I'm sure it has more to do with the newness of the figure to me than the actual articulation. I'm still learning how to best pose him for stances. Each figure has its own little quirks, so I'm giving him the benefit of the doubt here.

The paint is just fine as well. Little to no slop and clean lines. Mostly he's molded in plastic that matches the color of the character, so that cuts down on paint wear and excess paint applications. I'm usually not find of gray Snake Eyes figures, but there's something about this one that just works. It matches the look of the character in the cartoon, so I'm very happy.

Accessories


One thing that can be said about the movie line: they come with a LOT of stuff. Each figure I've purchased from the movie line for custom fodder has come with a crapload of accessories-- way more than any of the 25th Anniversary line came with and way more than you get with almost any other figure of similar scale. Snake Eyes here comes with 11 accessories:

1 backpack
1 climbing harness
1 sword
1 sword sheathe
2 assault rifles
1 pistol
1 knife
2 ice boots
1 stand

The climbing harness is kinda junky and unneccesary. However, it is well-sculpted and I'm sure kids will love it.
All of the accessories fit his hands perfectly, and the sword fits nicely in its sheathe. One really nice feature is the fact that the sheathe REALLY attaches to the belt... I mean I had to pry that sucker out after I put it on. I think it's going to stay there from now on-- but it's nice to have an accessory actually stay put on a figure for a change.

One annoying thing about the accessories is that there aren't really any places to store them on the figure. It's not a huge issue, but if a figure is going to come with 5,000 guns and sharp things it helps for him to carry them on his person. It doesn't really matter... his sword is on his back and he can double grip his rifle, so I'm good.




I guess I've talked enough. I'll let the pictures do the talking for me:









City Strike Snake Eyes is a REALLY nice figure with a load of articulation and accessories. Kids should dig him and adults should adore him. He's easily the coolest Snake Eyes figure I've ever owned.

ARF! ARF! ARF!!!!!

This...



...is an ARF Trooper. He is super-rad. I will now tell you why:



These are the standard Clone Trooper action figures from the animated Clone Wars series. Every figure in this series of action figures is stylized to match the look of the CGI cartoon. They are AWESOME. I don't really care too much for the rest of the figures in the series mainly because I'm not fond of the cartoon designs, but the Clone Troopers are so darn close to looking like the actual Clones from the movies that they work for me quite nicely. That, and these are some excellent figures in almost every category.



These guys are articulated out the wazoo. Ball-joints are present at almost every articulation point. They are super expressive and can hold their weapons and look pretty much like real people holding weapons.

There's just one thing that they can't do:



The Splits.

All these super awesome ball-joints everywhere and no ball-jointed hips. These guys can't even sit down worth a darn. The first Star Wars figures came out in 1977. It has been over 30 years, and we're still dealing with action figures with simple cut-articulated hips. GI Joe figured this little hitch out from day one. Hasbro's long-standing defense of this practice was always "Giving these characters ball-jointed hips would damage the aesthetic of the character design." Yeah. Right.

Hasbro just made up for a LOT of sins with the ARF Trooper.



Do I know what an ARF Trooper is? Not really. From the packaging it says that these guys ride some kind of two-legged un armored scout vehicle. Who gives a crap... all I know is...



These guys have all the articulation and design qualities that I value in the standard Clone Troopers and...



BALL-JOINTED HIPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!



Did you ever have a 3.75 inch tall Stormtrooper that could do that? Me neither!!! HEEEEYAH!



He stands much, much more naturally than the regular troopers and you can pose him in some pretty darn awesome stances:



I'm not the biggest fan of the helmet on this monkey, but thankfully...



The heads are interchangeable!

So... if you like Stormtroopers/Clonetroopers, smaller scaled figures, and awesome articulation... go grab an ARF Trooper while they are still on the shelves.

It costs too darn much to buy a 3.75 inch figure these days, but you can't really do anything about that-- the price will never be going down again now that they know dorks like us will buy them for that much. However, this is one of those rare cases where I bought something at retail price and didn't feel a bit let-down.