Toys

Overwatch Ultimates – Sombra

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.

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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.

Nendoroid – Junkrat

Mar 13th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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I have, so far, picked up every one of the Overwatch Nendoroid figures released so far. They all have some ups and downs, but on the whole they are pretty good. Today, I want to talk a bit about Nendoroid Junkrat.

Of all of the figures released in this series so far, Junkrat is definitely one of the most unique. Honestly he seems fairly unique compared to all Nendos, not just the Overwatch releases. Maybe there is some vague hope that there might be some Tank characters released in this line after all, with how much Junkrat has going on that’s special. First off, he is a fair amount larger than the previous releases. I honestly never really realized it in game since Junkrat is always hunched over, but if you look at a pure size chart, he’s one of the taller characters in the game. His Nendo, even with its goofy short proportions, is taller than the previous releases.

Part of this comes from his huge head and hair. These are also a bit unique in design, though Sombra who came out at the same time shares the uniqueness. On the previous figures, generally the bangs of the hair are removable, and the face plates swap out underneath the hair. The face plates are pretty interchangeable, that is, you can easily put Tracer’s face on Mercy, if you want. Junkrat’s entire front half of his head makes up his face plates, instead of just the bottom half like other Nendoroids. The hair bits also have to be removed and reattached in chunks, to make the swap. It’s a little clunky to do quickly, but the end result looks better. with his partially bald head, a plate styled like other Nendos would have left a visible seam across his forehead.

Speaking of the face plates, he also has a swapable mouth piece to give him a “tongue hanging out” look. As a side note, the eyes and mouth on the second head LOOK like they could be removable/swapable, but I didn’t really want to test the limits of the plastic and couldn’t get mine to come out. There isn’t really any noticeable difference in the base face anyway, so swapping the eyes around wouldn’t really do anything useful.

Additionally, he has his peg leg. This is also fairly unique to Junkrat. Between the peg leg and his huge head unfortunately, it also means he’s not going to be standing without a stand anytime ever. Though most Nendos have small enough feet that you’re going to have a hard time getting them to stand up independently anyway.

All these unique bits though help give him a lot of neat character to his design. He definitely comes off as “Junkrat,” goofy and crazy looking.

He doesn’t stop at his basic design though. He has a slew of really neat accessories. All of the weapons he wields in the game are represented here, he has his sticky bomb, his grenade launcher, his trap, and his Rip-Tire. The launcher and sticky bomb are fairly boring, the sticky bomb isn’t even painted, but the trap and tire are both great.

The trap can be laid out open or closed, and had a hand designed to hold it up to emulate his in game emote where he uses it like a puppet. The Tire is nicely detailed and can be mounted to his back, or to a extra articulated arm piece as if it’s being launched and rolling away.

You can add in on top of this that MSRP for Junkrat isn’t more than the previous releases, it makes him feel like a pretty good bang for your buck figure. All in all, I think he’s definitely one of the cooler Overwatch Nendoroids so far.

LEGO – Dorado Showdown (75972)

Jan 30th, 2019

by Ramen Junkie.

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I don’t really review LEGO much, though I actually have quite a lot of LEGO in my collection. I’m making an exception here for this Overwatch themed set, Dorado Showdown, Set #75972. In case you aren’t familiar with Overwatch, it’s a fairly popular team based FPS game for PC and consoles. Blizzard seems to be really trying to push Overwatch into more of a media franchise for 2019. There have already been several figures put out by Goodsmile Company. There is now a line of LEGO sets. Hasbro teased an upcoming line of domestic figures. There have also been several food tie ins from Pop Tarts, Pringles and a cereal Lucio Ohs.

I wonder if it’s a little too little too late though a bit, the game is still popular, but it doesn’t seem quite as popular as it was a year ago. Time will tell on that one. Most of the LEGO sets look pretty decent though a couple seem to be pretty off in terms of scale. I look forward to picking up some others in the future. I decided to start out with the Dorado Showdown set. It felt like a good sort of total package set with mini figs and a vehicle and a little set piece.

So a little history on the set. Dorado is a map type in game called “Payload”. One team escorts the payload to the other end of the map while the other tries to stop them. The payload only moves when someone is standing near it. Dorado is a very Mexican/Spanish architecture themed map, as the name suggests. This set includes the payload, which is the truck, a very small part of the map in the archway, though this archway is in the game near the starting area, and 3 character mini figures, Soldier 76, Reaper, and McCree.

Each of the mini figures is a pretty decent likeness in the small mini fig format. McCree and Reaper have little clothy capes to help fill out their look, I really like McCree’s sideways poncho, though the stiffness of the material makes it lay a little funny. McCree also has an optional air piece to swap for his hat. Reaper and Soldier both have buildable weapon parts, which is nice, but also makes the weapons huge compared to the mini figs. Neither can really stand without being pegged onto something or without a stand. There aren’t any stands included with the set, I just used some I had for photos.

The payload looks good as well, and definitely resembles the Payload from the game. All of the cars in Overwatch are hover cars with little repulsor things in place of the wheels, but the truck has some wheels hidden on the underside so it can still roll easily. The little power generator that sits on the truck bed is removable and can be attached to part of the set piece to “power” the lights. You can open the cab and sit a mini figure inside to drive it as well, though no one actually drives the Payload in game.

The set piece is a little archway and a small fruit stand. The archway shows up just after the starting area in game, before a large open courtyard. It’s a simple design but has some neat tricks in the windows to make the window frames and movable shutter pieces. The LEGO studs on the roof bit also do a decent job of simulating Spanish Tiles for the roof, a feature present all over the map. The truck can easily roll through the archway as well, which is a nice touch.

Overall, it’s a nice little set. The vehicle works as a vehicle or a prop, the archway makes a good backdrop but can still interact with the figures and payload. The hero selection is good as well. The characters gives some variety for attack or defenders, in the game, no one has any real set “sides”. Though if you want to stick with the loose story, Reaper can be a sort of bad guy sand in since he’s been a member of Talon, one of the bad guy groups of Overwatch.