Originally posted at
http://www.zedsjoesite.com/review/mix/mix.html
Been a bit since I reviewed anything in the stores, mostly because most of the stuff coming out is doing very, very little for me but there are a few things getting me to raise my eyebrows a bit. This is why this review is sort of all over the place, because that is how I am buying lately. There is just nothing getting my full attention and tons of stuff here and there that I feel need to be in my collection and thus I can review. The hobby seems to be in a downturn or phase where there are not an abundance or new ideas being explored. I'm not saying everything has run it's course but there is defiantly a pause going on right now.
What you see above is what I have bought over the last month and a half. Actually make that from Zam over cause my wife grabbed Thor and the Doom Cycle for me on her own, but is beside the point. Not a whole lot but then again I kept saying I was going to take it easy. Considering until the last Thor figs I bought were the only things I have bought this year until now it's a pretty amazing thing.
Winter to Spring is a different sort of time, what usually happens is some new figures come out for the summer movies and there is some slow releases from the regular lines. Right now I think (don't know) the problem is many are trying to ride things out but instead they are just re-releasing same old again. Then again I do admit the horizon is looking better so maybe this lull is temporary.
Even in a lull, some cool things can come out, and some gems make their way to retail plus you generally get a chance to catch up with everything missed in the previous year.
Now on with the figures.
Well I knew I would pick this figure up eventually just because it apparently appears in the film. My understanding (and I admit I am not positive on this) is that this is Thor's costume later in the film where the previous one I reviewed here was what he wears at the beginning. Anyway you slice it, we already know this and the previous Thor molds are going to get major mileage over the next year. There are Helmeted versions, versions with alternate accessories, and repainted versions already on announced in upcoming waves. Were the lessons of Indiana Jones lost on Hasbro?
Still this specific figure appears to be in abundance in the next two waves so I was in no rush to get him, but my wife decided to get him for me. It is nice to have a wife that supports your habit.
At first glance it would appear that this figure is exactly like the previous Thor. There are some difference specifically in the upper torso. He also doesn't have the hole in the back for the cape. A comparison does show the figure is different even though the legs are similar in design this Thor appears a bit skinnier which implies new mold although I don't see why Hasbro would have done that. Still at least he isn't mostly a remold of the previously released one.
But the truth is this Thor really doesn't bring anything new into this line. Honestly he is just another Thor figure. The only real reason to grab it is if someone (like me) wants Thor's movie appearances.
End of the day it works down two how people feel about Marvel movies and Thor himself. I like trying to get all the Marvel Movie appearances but it is easy to see how that would not appeal to some people.
Moving on we jump into the world of Video Games.
I will say up front I am not the biggest gamer in the world. I rarely feel compelled to spend $60+ on the latest games the day they come out, especially when they are around $20 within 6-8 months. As such I know very little about Crysis 2. I know it centers around an alien invasion and that it is in New York and this guy wears a Nanosuit, but I got most of that from the back of the box. I really only grabbed him cause I thought he looked kind of cool and had been kind of wanting him for a while now. I don't know if there is any real differences between this and the other one that pretty much looks exactly like him, but I ended up picking up the one that had the more interesting weapons IMO.
I can't help but get a really big Gyver vibe from this guy. I think its the texture and bulkiness of the figure. The bulkiness does give the gut a bit of an obese look, not sure if that is the same in the game. Still he isn't bad but I think he is a bit generic which some people might love I guess but weakness him a bit to me. Another knock is the odd way the articulation is handled. The legs especially look like the joint is below where it goes normally, really weird. Not a terrible thing but keeps me from buying up any more of the humans. Also for the price the figure sells I expected some tighter joints and better plastics. These cost as much as a Thor or Star Wars figure. Give me some quality.
Scale-wise he works well. A bit bulky in the torso but not so much it is a factor, but should be noted.
I suppose if you are a huge fan of the game, this is a no-brainer. If not I think you can get one and pass on the rest of the humans if you just want another line in your collection.
The human side doesn't fair too well but the aliens appear to come out better.
Again I don't know much about the game and I don't know if this guy is accurate to scale, but he is pretty huge. I like the aliens a great deal. They do have a sort of Zerg from Starcraft feel to them though. I am not sure if that is purposeful or not but it is painfully obvious when you see this guy in person. This is the Heavy version of the aliens but I only had enough money at the time for one of each and I grabbed the two I thought looked the best from each line.
He is a pretty big hunk of plastic. My two knocks on this figure would be the fact I do think he needs some more articulation. Something in the arms to move them around or something. It's not terrible but his articulation could be better. The other knock is, again, quality. Mine's tentacles keep coming out very easily, there is just not a whole lot to hold them in there. I'm not sure if this is across the board but it need to be noted up front.
Overall though the aliens in this line appear to be the drawing point and part of me wishes they had ignored a couple of the humans and brought out more aliens. I am probably going to try to get the rest of the aliens at some point cause they are very cool looking background characters. I suppose if you want a cool, huge alien for something this is a good place to look at.
From big aliens to street thugs we move on to the latest Dreadnok addition.
This is another toy my wife got for me on clearance. I had passed on it primarily because of the price. Cheapest I saw it was $17 which I felt was ironic considering how much the single packed Joes had dropped and yet the vehicles seem to have gone up. Weird.
Still my big beef with this cycle is I felt it looked cheap and my suspicions were confirmed when I got it.
First I have seen many point back to the old Dreadnok cycle from 1987. Truth be told I hated that for nearly the exact same reason I hated this, its a tri-cycle, not a motorcycle. No knocks to the people who might ride those types of bikes but a bad-arsed street gang of thugs would want to be as tough as humanly possible IMO and the tri-kie doesn't quite cut that. Another huge knock is the low quality of the thing, it just feels like it's made of cheap plastic that will break if you touch it a bit much. I keep thinking this would work as a Chap-Mei toy and not a Joe toy.
But a huge issue is the front wheel won't turn, I mean at $17 I would figure you would get that much of a feature, but no. The back "blades" that pop out look more like wings than they are menacing. The front wheels blades are ok but have very limited purposes. The guns are alright but a little too oversized to be believable (Chap-Mei influence again).
But my biggest nock isn't totally the bike but the pilot.
At first glance he seemed ok. I do get a heavy Grifter from Jim Lee's Wildcats vibe from him. But I got to looking and noticed the really odd black in the elbow joint. I guess that means the base of this figure is black which is a hard color to paint over and what really stands out about this figure is the thickness of the paint and how sloppy that makes the paint look. Normally they would use a different color as the base to let the colors blend better. Instead we get some slopped on paint trying to cover a stupid base choice. It makes him look like a bad custom.
The head sculpt is ok but oddly painted with a gray mowhawk on white hair. This makes him look like Steve Martin doing a skit on Saturday Night live as a biker thug rather than an actual biker thug. A few ways could have handled this better, even brown hair would have worked, maybe with a blonde mohawk. All that and I didn't even mention the QC issues on the straps to the holster. In other words this guy is a mess.
Never mind the name: Storm Rider? I realize Buzzer, Ripper and Torch are not the greatest names in history but they were simple, one-syllable names that gave you the idea that those guys were thugs. Storm Rider sounds like something from an old movie, an old bad movie. Maybe they were going for something else this time but I think it failed pretty bad. He also has that crappy hump that plagued the 25th anniversary line, UGGGH. I HATE that hump, its such a bad design flaw that is so easily avoided.
The Pursuit of Cobra line keeps getting hailed as this nice update to the GI Joe mythos, but to me this single figure/vehicle set pushes the line back to a place it was before ARAH started. That isn't to say POC doesn't have any winners, but it does say this is defiantly not one of them.
But from a loser in POC to a winner.
Up front I will say I think this is a very cool figure, but I am also just not sure of the idea behind it. The Shock Trooper's specialty seems to have been covered by the Alley Vipers already. So where do these guys fit in, well that isn't entirely clear at this point. But when I look at him I do get a vibe that this wasn't his initial design.
First and most important is the fact he looks like a GI Joe. If it weren't for the Cobra signs all over him I would think he was a Joe. He also has stun sticks and tasers which seem way out of place for a Cobra Trooper. I thought about this guy for a while and then it hit me, I think this might have originally been the POC version of Shockwave. Think about it and you might see what I mean. Why have a trooper that fills the same role as the Alley Viper two waves earlier? That alone is very, very odd. They also have some similarities in weapons: a shield, automatic weapons, some close combat non-lethal weapons. The similarities almost make this guy useless. Really it's hard to justify him being in my collection other than he is pretty cool looking.
He was hard to find and I only saw him once and grabbed him. At this point I am glad there was only one because until I had him in hand I was thinking of having these guys be a sort of less specialized version of the Alley Viper. Once I had him in hand that didn't work for me. At this point I am thinking of making him a Cobra Urban Specialist, an individual rather than a troop builder. But I have no name or anything for him but I am thinking he will be the leader of the Alley Vipers.
This helps to make sense of what exactly he is supposed to be doing. Again I have a hard time thinking of Cobra Commander and Destro talking about if the Shock Troopers or the Alley Vipers should take care of an Urban Problem. Another thought I had was making this guy some kind of Military Police for Cobra, but then I started thinking that made no sense. Cobra would just shoot someone who caused a problem.
One of the very few knocks I have to this figure is one of his weapons, The Stun Sticks. I looked online and found no reference to stun sticks that were styled like this. The main thing that struck me odd is they seem a bit dangerous. I saw a review that suggested they might be like nunchucks which is very dangerous to the user, but also the handle is in a position you never want to handle nunchucks at, they should be handled midway on the handle but if you do that you are going to shock yourself. Another review thought they might produce an arch like a Tesla Coil, again kind of dangerous since the arch could go just about anywhere. Generally these things are a single baton for just such a reason. So I am not sure what is up with these, but nothing I could find showed me anything about them. With POC being sold as a more realistic line it was a defiantly odd thing.
Regardless of the one knock and the fact I am still viewing this guy as an individual, I say grab him. He is cool and can beef up the cobra troops very easy.
Now from Urban Assault to Bounty Hunters.
I am not going to claim to understand why Jango Fett hired Zam to kill Padme' To me it was probably one of the hugest plot holes in the prequel trilogy. But the truth is I ended up liking Zam more than I did Jango, which isn't hard when you think about it. She has had a few figures in the past but most of them fell short of being very cool, this figure more than makes up for them.
For some strange reason the veil on mine keeps slipping up, not sure why or if this is a common occurrence. But I do really like the view finder that lowers on her helmet as well as everything on the mold. She has a chest joint rather than a waist joint and I only mention that fact because Storm Rider above had a huge problem with his chest joint but Zam has absolutely nothing that hurts her figure. Maybe Hasbro needs to pay attention to it's own company.
Zam comes with a swappable head to mimic that freaky and senseless moment when she changes her face in the chase scene. Never really understood that since she revealed her greatest weapon to hide before she had a chance to utilize it. I think something like she got hurt and lost concentration on her form would have worked much better, but I guess that is what happens when you are surrounded by "Yes Men."
Flat out, this is a great figure. So much of the Vintage collection has been turning me off lately just because it is more and more old ground, it's nice to see a figure I haven't seen done yet. I wish Hasbro would do more of that and it is possible that might be happening in upcoming waves but for now it's only one or two per wave that even get a bit of attention from me.
Another set of reviews out of the way, hope you enjoyed. Until next time-Insert Catch Phrase here!
