Reviews

Review – Marvel Legends – Walgreen’s Punisher

Walgreen’s has quickly become a pretty hot spot for toy collecting. They have continually been getting some really good exclusives for Star Wars and Marvel Legends and more recently Transformers. These often, though not always, aren’t just mild repaints or useless variants of other characters from a mass release, especially on the Marvel Legends side. They also have started having a good track record of getting waves earlier than other retail outlets such as Wal-Mart and Target. The Punisher here is one of those exclusive figures.

This Punisher is such a mixed bag of hit and miss. He’s mostly good, the skill and belt bits work well, Punisher often has the same problem of Venom, where his large chest logo overlaps a waist cut and gets ugly when the waist is turned. He has a decent assortment of accessories, with his two guns and rocket launcher. He even gets two heads.

The heads though could be a little better. He’s The Punisher, he really could use one good grimacing head. Both of these heads seem a bit too… heroic, and almost friendly.

The worse offender though, which pretty much makes this figure a pass unless you are a huge Punisher fan, is the hands. Let me reiterate, in case I have not done so enough yet, this is The Punisher. His “super power” is pretty much 100% “Bad Ass Mother Fucker with Guns”. His hands DO NOT HAVE TRIGGER FINGERS. Of all of the figures who get trigger fingers who don’t use guns or need them (Daredevil), the Punisher absolutely needs trigger finger hands.

You can sort of fake it but cutting the index finger free with a razor blade, but the tension and sculpt just isn’t quite there and it just doesn’t work. It’s such a travesty that a mostly decent figure is pretty much rendered complete garbage by a simple oversight.

So yeah, he’s nice, if you’re clever you can cut the finger or maybe even swap hands with another figure (Maybe Nick Fury who shares a mold I believe), but out of the box, he’s ruined by his inability to properly use is included accessories.

Review – Transformers – Titans Return – Wolfwire (Weirdwolf)

Feb 9th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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The last entry in the line for Titans Returns Decepticon updates for the G1 Headmasters is Wolfwire. In G1, Wolfwire was known as Weirdwolf. There are all sorts of crazy reasons for name changes like this from rights ownership to names being slurs in other languages or even just because Hasbro decided that they don’t like the name Weirdwolf anymore.

Weirdwolf, Wolfwire, whatever you want to call him, he’s definitely the best of the Decepticon ranks here. He’s has nice pose ability in both modes, his weapons are both nice, his transformations is simple yet nicely elegant.

The beast mode has a real Voltron vibe going for it, though he is a wolf and not a lion. There is a small cockpit window for the Titan Master on the back and the canon that attaches to his back certainly feels Voltron-ish. Maybe Zoids is a slightly better comparison. I suppose in the end robotic animals will look like Robotic animals.

The cockpit is also large enough that he can seat two Titan Masters inside instead of just one, though the front Titan Master doesn’t have a way to attach. Also, like Mindwipe and Skullcruncher, Weirdwolf’s beast mouth is articulated as well.

I mentioned his weapons a bit. He includes a sword and a canon. Like all of the Titans Return deluxe toys, the larger weapons are hollow and designed to work as seats/vehicle things for the Titan Masters. Unlike most of the other weapons like this, his doesn’t look weird when used as a gun for the robot. This is mostly likely because it doesn’t really form a part of the beast/vehicle so it’s free to simply look like a big gun.

I don’t have any major complaints about Wolfwire as a toy. He’s a probably the best of the line through Waves 1 and 2. He even has a nice cockpit making him appropriate for use as a wolf mech for the smaller Titan Master figures.

S.H. Figuarts – Sailor Mercury

Feb 8th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Sailor Mercury is the second of the team behind Sailor Moon and the second to get a Figuarts. She serves the brains of the outfit as well as the techie of the group. She also has one of the lamest abilities in the history of people with abilities in any medium which involves throwing bubbles at her enemies. Not even cool bubbles like say, Mega Man’s Bubble Man, but lame bubbles.

She does gain some more powers as the series progresses though, themed around water and ice. Plus her usefulness to the team is more than her ability to be less useful in a fight. Sailor Moon tends to just one shot all of the bad guys anyway with her crown.

Sailor Mercury isn’t a straight repaint of Sailor Moon, though not surprisingly, they do share many parts. The basic design and uniform of the Sailor Senshi is pretty much the same across the board. Ami has a different head of course, but she also has different boots and an entirely different set of hands than Usagi.

She also includes her little hand held computer device, in both open and closed models. While it would have been neat to have had one computer with a hinged lid, having the open and closed versions are probably better at this scale for the sake of not losing parts and because the hinge probably would have just ended up being a floppy mess anyway. She also includes an alternative hair bit that includes the visor she sometimes uses. It’s a nice way to help differentiate the design more when standing the Sailor Senshi all in a group.

Otherwise she’s definitely very similar to Sailor Moon. I haven’t had the same problems with loose hands that I had with the Sailor Moon Figuarts however. Also, while the boots are similar in design, I feel like there must have been some minor tweak on Mercury because she also seems like she is easier to stand up without the stand accessory.

Figuarts Sailor Mercury is the logical next step after Sailor Moon and seems to do a good job of improving the little flaws with the design of the first Sailor Senshi.

Review – Marvel Legends – Juggernaut Wave – Phoenix (Jean Grey)

Feb 6th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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This may be a bit of a short one on the text. I honestly have very little to really say about Marvel Legends Phoenix. In fact, the main thing I have to say is something I really don’t say too often about anything. I think I legitimately hate almost everything about this figure.

I’m not even sure it’s an upgrade from my old Toybiz Phoenix figure. Sure that old Phoenix has some issues, and is far from perfect but this update just has so much that I don’t particularly like that makes for the perfect storm of dislike.

For starters, her sculpt is kind of nasty. The head is weirdly skinny and angular and the hair looks unnatural. This isn’t helped by how completely bland her design is. At least the old Phoenix has a few extra flourishes here and there to keep her from being so blandly green.

She also can’t stand for crap, which only really helps to push my dislike of this figure down farther. In fact the only reason I bothered at all was that she was the only figure left that I needed to complete the Juggernaut Build a Figure. There isn’t much else to say, he’s just extremely bland and kind of ugly on the paint and sculpt, which is a shame because several other figures in this wave are excellently done.

Review – Transformers – Titans Return – Highbrow

Feb 2nd, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Like most of the original Headmasters, Highbrow hasn’t gotten a proper update in a while. There was a pretty neat Highbrow back in the Hunt for the Decepticons sub-line of Revenge of the Fallen, though his alt mode for that line was a Lockheed P38-Bomber style plane, and he was mostly green instead of his original blue and white. It’s a neat toy mostly for using a cool alt mode, but it’s not very Highbrow and it wasn’t a headmaster.

Like most of Titans Return, Highbrow is a much more faithful remake of his G1 iteration. He has the same colors and turns into a dual prop Cybertronian helicopter. It’s not a toy without some pretty bad flaws though, mostly due to the helicopter blades. This is one of those areas where the lessened budget of newer toys actually become a bit of a hindrance. The helicopter blades don’t have any way to lock into place in robot mode and don’t fold out of the way in any meaningful way. They just sort of flip around, which wouldn’t be a problem except they tend to get locked up in his massive helicopter cockpit backpack.

He also suffers from a severe case of “wobbly head” syndrome, which seems to plague a few of these Titans Returns figures. Part of the problem seems to be that the hook for his head sticks out from his neck a few millimeters. On the plus side, it means he can sort of look up and down a bit, but it doesn’t make things lose and floppy. Something that was most common in the Wave 1 figure Scourge, which brings up another interesting bit…

Back in my review of Chromedome, I made a comment about how Chromedome looks like he is a remold of the Combiner Wars Breakdown mold, but isn’t, he just shares a transformation. Highbrow here has a similar sort of situation going, because technically, Highbrow IS a remold of Titans Return Scourge. That said, they share almost zero actual parts and their transformations are “reversed.” Where Scourge’s front form by joining his legs together, Highbrow forms the rear of the helicopter. The tell tale bit that these are remolds lies in the pull out section on the hips/legs used during transformation. That, and that they are part of the same lines, it’s actually pretty uncommon to have a remold cross over between lines the way Chromedome and Dead End would have done.

The toys are definitely different enough to warrant owning both of them if you are interested in both. The transformation results in a pretty near little helicopter. The cockpit is functional to allow for the Titan Master to fit inside. The two guns can attach to the underside of the wings to give the chopper some artillery, though they attach via the non round pegs, which is slightly against what you commonly see but it allows for the use of the molded landing wheels. There’s a third flip out landing gear that isn’t super obvious on the under side of the cockpit.

The helicopter mode looks good and holds together very solidly. It’s definitely a good addition to the vehicles for Titan Masters. If your interest in this line lies more with the Titan Masters and their vehicles and bases, Highbrow is definitely a good addition, even if his Robot mode is a little clunky.