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Game of Thrones – The Night King (McFarlane)

After being satisfied with Jon Snow, I decided I’d add another figure to my little Game of Thrones collection with the Night King. Mostly because Dany and Arya weren’t available, but having a villain, however lame his ending ended up being, is always fun.

The Night King continues the bar set by Jon Snow, he has a lot of nice detailing going on across his armor and in this case his face. Being a White Walker, which is essentially zombie, his skin is a bit decayed and creepy looking. This is also where his blue coloring comes from. He is a lot more clean looking than your average zombie however, but I guess that’s part of what makes him the leader of the undead army.

The articulation is pretty nice as well, the long coat is designed in a way that it doesn’t really hinder his leg movement much, which is a nice plus. Rubber skirts on figures tends to completely kill any hip articulation, which makes everything else below that useless as well.

He also includes two weapons. One is a sort of Ice Sword, though it has a long handle and is curved making it more of a sharpened Ice club really. He also has his “iconic” Ice Spear, that he used to down Viserion. He can mostly make the throwing pose but he only has “grippy hands” so he can’t pose with a fingers out “javelin pose” like he does in the show. Not a huge loss, but kind of annoying. The weapons look nice, though they also feel a little fragile.

The Night King is pretty nice on display. He can pose pretty well, though the character in the show never really did a lot of cool poses aside from stand around looking menacing before dying.

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.

Classic Ghostbusters (Mattel) (Ray Stantz, Egon Spengler, Peter Venkman, Winston Zeddemore)

Jul 12th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Mattel has released these same Ghostbusters molds a few times over the years. this particular release was from the sequel/reboot/remake Ghostbusters movie that came out recently, though for the most part these 4 figures are all the same. The most interesting contrast is how much better these 4 figures are compared to the 4 “new” ghostbusters they were released along side. This isn’t a knock against the whole “all female cast”, this is a knock against the sloppy looking paint and sculpts that the new Ghostbusters figures received.

There are 4 figures here but they are essentially all exactly the same aside from their heads. Some height variance might have been a nice touch but they all use the exact same body, with one minor variance, Peter Venkman has his pant legs untucked from his boots. It’s not a bad body or sculpt though, which is nice. There is enough articulation to recreate most poses you might want from 4 scientists in overalls. The hands are pretty basic but have some surprising bonus features due to the sculp. The right hand is sculpted to hold the Proton Pack gun, which it does well, it also looks fine for a neutral, free hand, at the sides poses, due to the trigger placement on the guns, the figures can also make a nice thumbs up (or down if you prefer) pose as well.

The articulation is also functional enough that the proton packs can easily be removed from each figure. The packs themselves are all identical to each other. There are no other accessories, which is kind of a bummer because they could have easily made a bit of variation by adding obvious accessories like a Ghost Trap, PKE Meter, and maybe one of those little slime grabber dealies they used a few times.

The main variation comes from the head sculpts, which are all nicely done and certainly resemble each of the 4 Ghostbusters. It is the source of my main gripe with these figures, the head sculpts are all nice individually, but there is an odd inconsistency in style. Ray looks considerably more “realistic” than Peter, who looks more like a Bill Murray cartoon.

Head sculpt style inconsistency aside, these are good figures. The body reuse and lack of accessories can certainly be a turn off at the full $20+ price however. Especially considering I believe the previous releases were considerably cheaper. It’s not related to these figures directly, but the apparently lack of quality int he new lady Ghostbusters line up is also disappointing.