May, 2019:

Studio Series – Scrapmetal

So, for the most part, the Michael Bay Transformers movies are pretty trash. Mostly for the shitty plots, but Revenge of the Fallen is particularly bad. One thing it did have that was pretty cool though was Devastator. In general, I do like the Bayverse/Movieveerse designs, and the take on Devastator was pretty interesting. Though the Revenge of the Fallen toy line was full of some of the most complex Transformers ever produced, the only full on Devastator is produced was Legends scaled. There were individual figures of most of the components that had robots and vehicles, and there was a large combined figure that only had parts that turned into vehicles, no robots.

Hasbro has decided to remedy that with Studio Series, by putting out a new Devastator, across eight figures, that all have robot modes and vehicle modes. There were 6 components to the previous version with vehicles only and Seven in the Legends sized one, which added a vehicle to create the pelvis and back. This new iteration is taking things a bit farther, following the pattern from the Legends sized version, but splitting one of the arms into two separate toys.

Scrapmetal is one of those two arm characters. He’s technically the only “new” character of the set, since Hightower (the crane) has almost made up the arm on the previous toys. This figure more or less forms the hand.

Scapmetal turns into a small excavator. The primary driver in Studio Series is robot mode scale so the excavator is pretty small, but there are some small er versions of this particular vehicle out there. The vehicle is a little small compared to old style Deluxes but looks alright next to other Studio Series. The transformation doesn’t allow the top to rotate independently of the treads unfortunately.

Transformation is pretty straight forward but has a few neat little tricks. There’s some fun asymmetry to the way the arms fold in together to form the top part of the vehicle mode. The legs pretty much just collapse and fold up underneath. He has a little removable shield thing that mostly exists to cover a few gaps in the vehicle mode, which is a little cheaty.

The robot is pretty normal as well, at least for Movie Constructicon standards. The other initial release is Rampage who stands on a single Pogo Leg, but other highlights of the Constructicons include Hightower, who turns into a sort of Velociraptor, and Demolishor who is a pair of arms on giant wheels.

One neat little bit if you want to fancy him up a bit, his legs have the option of working as “normal knees” or can knock back and become Digigrade legs. Probably the main disappointment is that there isn’t really anything fun his crane arm can do in robot mode. You can swing it up between his legs like a huge phallus but that’s not super useful really. He also has a lot of neat little extra detail. The biggest stand out is the treading detail inside his back, that doesn’t serve any purpose in either mode. I imagine in the combined form it will be more visible for some added detailing.

Scrapmetal really has me excited for the test of this team. He looks like he’ll probably be comparably sized to the old Revenge of the Fallen Devastator, but with a lot more detail and more functional articulation. I also kind of like that these are being released over time, since it gives me a chance to spread out what is essentially a $200 purchase over a couple of years.

Overwatch Ultimates – Sombra

May 8th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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I had a lot of worry about Hasbro’s announcement of an Overwatch line. While getting more affordable versions of these characters is a nice prospect, I was very worried they would seriously screw things up. So far, it does seem to be a bit of a hit and miss line, but the hits outnumber the misses, and the misses are pretty obvious from the start.

The initial wave of single packed figures consists of Lucio, Sombra, Reyes (Reaper) and Tracer. I already have the Figma Tracer, though the Hasbro one looked a lot better in person than previous photos. Reyes still looks kind of funky and I have Reaper. So I opted for Lucio and Sombra. Both are in my top Five played heroes (Along with Tracer, Mei and D.Va) and neither have Figma figures coming yet. I wanted to start off with Sombra, who actually is my most played hero in the game.

So, right off, she looks way better in person than photos suggest. One thing I have noticed in photos is there is a weird graininess texture to her that shows up that isn’t really visible on the figure itself. The colors overall look really great and the head sculpt and paint are both really nice. There are a few places she could use a bit more paint but hey, Hasbro price point. Mostly her hand details could use a quick hit of coloring. I may add that later myself.

Articulation wise, she is, alright. It’s pretty much what you would expect from any Marvel Legends female figure. Her hips are severely limited by the long coat. The coat collar also feels a smidge too tall, since it sort of hinders her head side to side. Also in traditional Hasbro BS fashion, she only has single jointed elbows. Because Hasbro pretty much never gives female figs double elbows. On a side note, the coat looks like it might be removable, with little rubber pegs the way a lot of Hasbro’s coats are, but I am not going to test that theory myself and end up ruining the coat. She looks like she is just wearing a black body suit under anyway.

She also has weird feet. Not weird as in non functional, just weird. Her ankles are pretty wide and the feet themselves seem to be some of those rubber toe shoes, and not regular shoes. I honestly have not really looked at Sombra’s feet enough to tell you if this is accurate.

For accessories she has an extra set of hands, a Translocator pod, her Uzi, and a hacking effect that can attach to one of the hands. The accessories are all pretty nice, though the hacking effect is a little cheezy looking. It’s all solid pink plastic and it’s a little short. It’s wholey understandable in it’s design though, since Hasbro probably has a lot of breakage safety rules it has to follow for it’s figures. Anything less and it would break too easily. The effect from the Sombra Nendoroid is really nice, but I also worry that I am going to snap it to pieces anytime I look at it.

Overall, Sombra is pretty great. She has a lot of expected limitations, but she is a lot more affordable than an import figure. The whole lime scales really well with the Figma line as well, so having the Hasbro line as a supplement works really well.

Game of Thrones – Jon Snow (McFarlane)

May 7th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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So, now that Game of Thrones is almost over, McFarlane Toys has decided to make some action figures for it. I imagine that part of the last minute feel is that Funko previously held the license, preventing anyone else from making figures. I mean there are a lot of properties that get toys after the fact, but this feels like odd timing.

This is also the first McFarlane toy I have bought in a long time. I’m talking possibly close to like 15 years or more long time. Last time I even thought about McFarlane, they made a lot of Spawn figures, and they made a lot of oddball stuff like, KISS or random Anime figures. Also, “figures” was a very operative term, since most of their stuff were basically “statues with joints”. They tended to be a kind of brittle on the plastic quality.

They apparently caught up over the years though at some point. The plastic on Jon Snow here is comparable to any other mainline US toy line, maybe a little stiffer than your average Marvel Legends, but it doesn’t feel like I’m going to snap apart the joints just by looking at it, the way a lot of older McFarlane toys (and modern NECA) toys feel.

The articulation is also pretty good. He doesn’t have any double joints on elbows or knees but otherwise everything is nice universal joints all around. This is definitely a nice pleasant surprise since it means he can actually make more than 1 pose and one sort of pose.

The sculpt and paint are also pretty good. The head looks like Kit Harrington, albeit a squinty brooding Kit Harrington, but it does look like him. The quilted armor overcoat he is wearing has all sorts of little nicks and dings detailing to it and there are all sorts of nice little silver buckles details on his belt and other parts. He also is a few different shades of black and dark brown in his armor, and not all just one color. The beard also looks pretty good, a point that is often easily screwed up on some figures where it looks too painted on.

This figure, and the other figures in the wave seem to more closely follow the Season 7 look vs the current Season 8 look, though most of the character don’t really change their look a while lot throughout the show. Jon has two accessories, one is Longclaw, his sword, with a little wolf head sculpted on the hilt, and the other is a dragonglass dagger, useful for stabbing white walkers.

One last thing to mention, this figure is definitely better than the previous Funko figures. I only have a few of the older line but I can say these are definitely a better likeness on the heads. That said, the two lines go together pretty well. The style is very similar and mixing them together shouldn’t be a problem, especially if McFarlane doesn’t release more, since the Funko line could help fill in some of the gaps in characters.

Figma – Reaper

May 1st, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

1 comment

I have to admit, I am super behind in talking about these various Overwatch figures, and a lot of figures in general. There’s various factors, but mostly I just, haven’t done it. Instead of catching up on Genji and Widowmaker and various Nendoroids, I’m going to just jump ahead here with Figma Reaper.

Reaper is quite a different toy than the previous Overwatch Figmas. Tracer, Genji and Widowmaker are all considerably more mobile in their overall look and design. Reaper is quite a bit bulkier than the previously released characters. He also has a lot more greebley detail going on on his body. Genji has a fair amount of this but Widowmaker and Tracer are basically wearing body suits.

All of this detailing is nice and crisp. His spikes are pretty sharp, for example. His coat has some articulated segmented parts to it so it can be posed draping or more flowing. His design unfortunately doesn’t lend itself to much posing though. The coat does hinder his hips a bit and his belts and straps hinder things a bit more. His armored lower legs kind of get int he way of his feet articulation as well and his shoulders are kind of bulky as well. Reaper isn’t really a ninja though, so not being able to do a ton of super dynamic poses isn’t really a huge loss and he makes up for it with detail.

Probably the biggest issue with articulation involves his head. The head itself is fine, but the hood piece attaches to the body in the front and back. This limits how much you can have him look side to side a lot. With the hood attached, his face is obscured. Or, you can detach the hood, but it then will just rest on his head, and it will reveal the huge peg holes and pegs. I kind of wish the hood were simply attached to the head itself.

He also feels a little light on accessories, but I think part of this is because both Genji and Widowmaker were pretty good for accessories. I mean, count wise, it probably has just as many extra pieces, and I m not sure what else they could have given him side from maybe some wraith form legs, but that would have probably doubled the price. What he has are an assortment of hands, a transparent effect that can sort of be used for any of his abilities (Wraith form, teleport, or Death Blossom), his two shotguns and some effect parts for his shotguns.

Speaking of his shotguns. They look right, and good, but man, having a physical version of this character kind of makes it obvious how ridiculous his design is. Dual wielding these two HUGE guns is kind of silly looking.

Don’t misunderstand me here, this is a good representation overall of Reaper. It just sort of makes the design flaws of Reaper really obvious when you have a little 3D version of him on a table in front of you.