Reviews

S.H. Figuarts – Sailor Moon

Someone at Bandai must have realized that there is a lot of easy reuse potential in a highly desired show like Sailor Moon or something, because there has been a slew of releases in the Figuarts line for this popular anime in recent years. Sailor Moon is definitely one of the most well known classic anime properties. It seems to have opened up the gates a bit for other older titles. We’ve been getting figures from Ranma 1/2 as well. It makes me wonder how long until they start doing Figuarts of Tenchi characters, another popular title from that era with a ton of characters.

The Sailor Moon line up started of course, with Sailor Moon herself. Which is of course the obvious choice, Usagi is the title character after all, if there was only one figure, she’d be the one to be made. There have been a few rereleases of the original figure and a few variants such as Super Sailor Moon and Imposter Sailor Moon.

The figure stands around 5.5″ tall and has all of the ball joints and double jointed articulation you’d expect from a Figuarts toy. There are 6 faces included 5 pairs of hands. One of the hands has a disk effect part attached to it to simulate when Usagi removes her crown to throw it for an attack. She also includes 2 Moon wands, one lit up and one not, and a special Sailor Moon themed Figuarts stand.

Usagi also include a little figure of her cat Luna. Luna has a bit of pose ability in her tail and neck, though getting her to stand up is trickier than it really should be.

You’re going to need that stand too. As nice as the figure looks, her long skinny legs and heels don’t give her any stability. It’s possible to get Sailor Moon to stand up on her own, but it’s not always easy.

A few other downsides I’ve come across. First, her hands have a tendency to fall off sometimes. It’s not a constant problem, but it happens. Second, I seriously worry about breaking her hair off. Usagi has her trademark Odango hair with long ponytails. They are made from a very stiff slightly transparent plastic, a type of plastic that, in my experience, tends to easily snap off if pressure is applied in the wrong direction.

Overall it’s a nice figure, but I worry a bit about it’s long term survivability. There isn’t a lot that could be done about the balance issue, the design looks like the character on the show, giving her different shoes wouldn’t match what Sailor Moon is supposed to look like, and that’s about the only solution there is to that. Mostly I kind of wish there was a bit of give to the hair pieces, so I wouldn’t have to worry about them breaking. In the end, it’s just nice to finally have an option for a good figure of an iconic anime character. Most of what has been put out for Sailor Moon in the past were Barbie style dolls with a pretty mediocre likeness, even in the Japanese market.

Review – Marvel Legends – Juggernaut Wave – Cable

Jan 9th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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It’s not every day we get a mother/son combo in a wave of Marvel Legends but here we are with Cable and Jean Grey. Ok, technically Cable’s mother is a clone of Jean Grey but that’s just the way the kooky storylines of the X-men work. I mean Cable really looks like he’s probably older than jean anyway, which he probably is since he comes from the future. The reality is, Cable likely exists in this wave to accompany Deadpool, since Cable and Deadpool are partners from time to time.

It’s kind of a shame he’s not a better Cable, especially with how few X-men waves we get, he’s unlikely to get a better release anytime soon. I mean he’s not awful, but he could be better. For starters, his weird robot vest thing. It’s not really his most iconic look for starters. This wouldn’t be as much of an issue except that it also looks ridiculous, especially in the shoulders. I imagine the idea is to make him look bulked out, but it makes his shoulders just look weird and disproportionate.

His weapons also leave a bit to be desired. Cable was originally created by comic artist Rob Liefeld, who is mostly known for belts and pouches, and making everything very XTREEM huge. Being from the future, Cable uses some funky huge guns, but both of his weapons are a bit finicky and don’t really look very natural when being held. Part of this may be due to the funky armor shoulder effect mentioned above.

Otherwise the sculpt is solid though. The head and armored arm both work well and look nice. Cable is also sufficiently large compared to a lot of Marvel Legends figures, as he should be. His upper torso weight and bulk make him a bit tricky to pose however, which also is part of the issue with his guns.

Like I said, Cable isn’t a bad figure, he just could be better. Particularly in his weird torso area.

Review – Transformers – Titans Return – Skullcruncher (Skullsmasher)

Jan 5th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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For the titans Returns line, Hasbro has opted to revisit the Headmasters gimmick of G1. There are some other nods to the Target Masters and Power Masters, but the actual gimmick is heads that come off and turn into smaller robots that interact with the larger vehicles. In the original run of Headmasters, there were 7 original toys, Skullcruncher, Mindwipe, Weirdwolf, Chromedome, Hardhead, Highbrow and Brainstorm. Thankfully, for the updated designs, they dove right in nd gave us all 7, across the first two haves (one figure being a store exclusive). There are also some other characters who were not originally Headmasters thrown in for filler.

Today I’m going to start off on these original 7 with Skullcruncher. All three of the original Decepticon Headmasters were animals, Skullcruncher being a robotic Crocodile. I wanted to start with Skullcruncher because while he has some neat tricks and a fun design, he’s got a lot of flaws that really make him one of the weaker toys in the line.

I’m going to start with the good points. The crocodile mode is really nicely sized. Granted a chunk of the length is the tail bit which parts forms into a gun, but fully stretched out he is easily 10″ long. There isn’t a ton of leg articulation, though that’s kind of to be expected for a crocodile, his tail and head and flex side to side a bit giving him some expressiveness in beast mode. The mouth of the croc opens up as well.

The Transformation is pretty basic but the neck and shoulders form up in a neat way to form the front croc legs, which earns Skullcruncher a few points for being interesting. Basically the shoulders flip up and land at an angle while the croc head folds over and pegs it all into place.

Unfortunately, he kind of falls apart a bit in robot mode. The basic robot is all right and he has one of the more interesting looking faces on his Titan Master, but his hips are extremely loose. Like, he’s going to just do the splits and fall over loose. I have heard of numerous reports of this issue across the board on this figure so I can’t say my toy is a 1 off problem. The hips have also gotten much looser over time, I can barely keep him standing now where originally it was loose but doable.

Each of these figures has a cockpit for the Titan Master in their vehicle/beast mode as well. Skullcruncher loses out again, for some reason his cockpit uses a flimsy rubbery flap for it’s cover, something none of the other figures (so far) do. The others all have hard plastic. The soft plastic is tricky to get open and is easily, accidentally pushed down into the cavity. I’m not entirely sure why they went with this weird other plastic for the cockpit cover, the location and set up doesn’t have any need for it.

On one last side note, he has a pretty neat Crocodile man mode than can be made halfway through transformation.

All in all, Titans Return Skullcruncher is a nice looking update to an old figure, but it’s a severely flawed toy in a lot of ways that feel like they would have been easily fixable with a bit more design work by Hasbro.

S.H. Figuarts – Mario

Jan 4th, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Nintendo has long been weirdly stingy with the license for their properties. Sure, there has always been merchandise for Super Mario Brothers, but only recently have they really opened it up, at least for more toy style merchandise. They seemed to have opened the flood gates too, between the Amiibo figurines, and the World of Nintendo toy line. There is also a line put out by Bandai under their S.H. Figuarts lineup.

World of Nintendo is alright, but if you want the “Cadillac level” of figure, you’re going to want to spring for the Figuarts Mario.

Figuarts Mario is a bit of a departure from the standard Human figures put out in this line. Sure Mario is human, but he’s considerably shorter and ore stocky than your average anime school girl. The joint system all around also feels a lot more study than the other Figuarts I’ve handled. I’m not saying the others are garbage, just that Mario here definitely seems to have a different mindset in mind on his design choices. It kind of feels like that whole “Nintendo Quality” hand was probably involved in the design of this figure a bit to make sure he looks nice and solid in most poses.

This also is almost a determent however. He can make a lot of “classic Mario poses” but he’s also limited in a lot of ways due to his sculpt. He can’t stick his arms out from his sides, for example, due to how his shoulders work. He doesn’t have any alternate faces either. In fact eh doesn’t have any alternate parts at all, though there are some alternate hands included in one of the accessory packs.

What he does include is a Power Mushroom, one coin with stand, and a ? Block. There isn’t even a stand (That is also in an accessory pack). He’s plenty solid enough to stand without the stand though having one to do jumping poses would have been nice.

There is an upside to the lack of extra parts however, and it kind of makes the whole argument moot. Mario costs considerably less than your average Figuarts toy. In fact Mario plus the two initial “Playset” packs, probably puts him about your average Figuarts price, with an above average number of accessories.

Accessory woes aside, the figure is really nice. It’s build solid, as mentioned and the sculpt and paint are all spot on perfect for a modern Mario. Despite his limited articulation, he can pill off a lot of very Mario-like poses. Mario isn’t exactly a Ninja after all, he’s a fat, squat plumber. SH Figuarts Mario pulls this off nicely.

Review – Marvel Legends – Juggernaut Wave – Kitty Pryde

Jan 2nd, 2017

by Ramen Junkie.

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Spider-man somehow gets a wave every other wave, completed with six out of eight figures being new Spider People. Captain America gets a new figure every wave and Iron Man every other wave. Somehow, the X-men, arguably Marvel’s most popular property, only warrants one wave a year, if they are lucky. The last wave was the Jubilee BAF wave too, which is one of the worst disasters is crummy distribution in the history of the line making it extremely pricey on the secondary market. Fortunately the Juggernaut wave seems to be a little easier to get a hold of. It’s a pretty solid wave all around as far as character choices too, though there are so many well known X-men characters that it would be hard to make a truly awful wave of X-men.

Today I wanted to take a look at Kitty Pryde, who ended up being a nice, unexpectedly nice figure from the wave. Kitty has a lot of potential to be a boring throw away figure for sure. Her costume design isn’t particularly flashy and there isn’t really any way to recreate her power with any interesting accessories. The female figures in the Marvel Legends line are also inexplicably plagued with QC issues, especially when compared to their male counterparts.

Kitty manages to skirt right around almost all of these potential issues. The biggest is just how nice she looks in sculpt and paint apps, particularly in the head. I’m not saying they aren’t out there, but I have seen few reports of the common “derpy eyes” that shows up a LOT on the lady Marvel figures. The flesh tone looks nice and natural, the hair sculpt and paint is nicely crisp.

The yellow and black on her uniform is very nicely done as well, yellow can often be a very problematic color for toys. It definitely matches the look of one of her more well known uniforms overall as well.

Kitty Pryde also comes with an accessory in the form of her little dragon buddy Lockheed. Lockheed is really great in his execution. His overall shape from his wings to his tail added with the rubbery plastic he is made of allow him to easy perch on Kitty’s arms or shoulders easily without the need for any ugly pegs or clips. It makes him look very natural on her and though it’s not a rock solid connection, it’s stable enough for some movement while he is attached to her.

Unfortunately, short of disassembling the figure, there isn’t any way to recreate her power, which involves passing through walls. That’s not really a knock or anything, plenty of X-men have non visual powers like psychic abilities or invulnerability. Kitty Pryde was a figure that I expected to be pretty lame but is probably one of the best figures in the wave.