Toys

Review – Marvel Legends – Juggernaut Wave – Rogue

I’ve always really liked Rogue as a character. She’s generally fun, she has an interesting power with interesting positives and negatives, her overall design is nice as well. It probably helps that in the old cartoon series she was always paired with Gambit, whom I also really like as far as X-men go. The point is, I am kind of biased towards Rogue, especially this particular design, which in general is one of her more popular designs.

Unfortunately, there has only been one other figure of this design in this size, back in the Toybiz line, and it is god awful. Ok, the basic figure isn’t that bad, the face sculpt is god awful. She looks like a 90 year old woman pretending to be Rogue or something. She has been much overdue for an update.

This update certainly does a good job. I kind of miss the cloth goods jacked of the old figure but the face sculpt this time around is a lot better to be sure.

She even has appropriate accessories to replicate her power, she comes with an ungloved hand. In case you’re not familiar, Rogue absorbs other character’s powers through physical contact, so having an ungloved hand allow her be able to touch other figures, so to speak. Her design even allows for the wrist bit of the glove to be removed, which is a nice touch.

My only real complaint is the usual hit or miss derpy eye look that is a problem across the board on Hasbro’s female figures. I don’t even understand why this tends to lean towards females vs males. Otherwise it’s a welcome update to a popular design for a popular character.

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 – 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.

Review – Transformers – Cybertron – Downshift

Nov 17th, 2006

by Ramen Junkie.

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Transformers have had a pretty low point in their life the last few years. Armada and Energon has some fairly weak toy design in terms of sculpt and articulation. Seriously, what’s up with Armada Hot Shot’s shoulders?

Still, Energon was better than Armada, and Cybertron has been better than Energon. Lately, Cybertron has even been better than itself. The toys are starting to receive joints that make sense again, they have all sorts of neat detailing, they have better alt modes, and better transformations.

One of the latest Transformers released to the market is Downshift. Now, you may remember Energon Downshift who was highly reminiscent of Wheeljack in design and colors. This version of Downshift shows homage only in head design. This 70s style muscle car Transformer more closely resembles Alternators Wheeljack than G1 Wheeljack. And so as far as I’m concerned, this toy can be Downshift, brother of Wheeljack, and Energon Downshift can take the roll of Wheeljack. Confused?

As mentioned, Downshift’s alternate mode is a 70s style muscle car. It’s not styled after any one car but shares elements of the Barracuda, Mustangs, Cameros, and others. It’s colored primarily green with black stripes, hood and soft top. There is some light detailing in the interior of the car as well but they don’t extend below the cut off between the top and body of the car.

The transformation isn’t too complex and the end result is slightly reminiscent of the older styled G1 cars such as Jazz and Prowl. Yet the transformation itself is not all that similar to those old toys. Downshift’s robot mode is pretty solid all around though cut joints in the arms as well as an unhindered neck joint would have helped a bit.

One aspect of the last several lines is gimmicks. Generally, many of the gimmicks involve sticking keys or smaller robots it some orifice on the larger robots to shoot missiles or open claws. Downshift’s cyberkey gimmick causes the grill of his car mode to open up into a sort of claw. It’s effectively neat, especially since it still works when the rear half of the car is folded downwards in robot mode, but it’s not particularly useful for anything cool. The better gimmick is the pair of shoulder mounted missile launchers Downshift includes. They not only give Downshift minicon hardpoints to use but they can be attached to the sides of the car mode for a heavily armed 70s muscle tank look.

Ok, yeah, sticking the launchers on the sides of the car is really dumb and ruins the look of the best vehicle mode ever in the history of Transformers.

Downshift is a really great toy and would make a great addition to any Transformer collection. You might even like it if you’re just big on 70s muscle cars.

Review – Transformers – Energon – Alpha Q

Feb 28th, 2005

by Ramen Junkie.

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Every once in a while we get a Transformer’s toy that doesn’t actually Transform into anything. Alpha Quintesson (Alpha Q) is one such Transformer. We first met the Quintessons back in Transformers the Movie. They led a pack of hungry Sharkticons and liked to toss random bots into pits of doom. As it turns out the Quintessons were more intertwined with the history and origin of the Transformers race then was originally believed.

Of course those Quints also looked like Eggs and had 5 faces (of darkness!). This is Energon. I couldn’t tell you what alpha Q’s role is in Energon since the show is abysmally unwatchable. That doesn’t mean it can’t have halfway decent toys. This Quintesson is quite a bit different from it’s ancestors, though it still shares some traits. Instead of just being a ball with faces plastered to it, this Quint is a sort of giant Snake robot with a face inside the mouth. Which brings us to the first gimmick. When a button on the back of the neck is pressed, the face spins to a different one. There are three available faces to choose from.

There is one other primary gimmick to this toy besides the face spinning. The toy includes three rubber bendy tentacles. The bendyness is great and they hold a verity of positions. Also wheels on the bottom of the base cause the tentacles to twirl menacingly as you roll Alpha Q around. One tentacle features a small yellow pincer, the second features some sort of purple blob, possibly wires or electricity, and the third tentacle features a red chainsaw. The chainsaw arm is great for dispatching the many tree based transformers alpha Q may encounter 9see Botanica).

Other gimmicks include a head mounted missile launcher and ports for at least 9 Energon chips. Alpha Q has articulation at the jaws, universal shoulders, hinged and balled elbows (4 arms), and a hinge at the top of his neck. The articulation isn’t huge but it’s substantial enough for the character design.

Though cool, this figure isn’t without it’ flaws. The waist joint could use a little more range of motion, particularly in the forward direction. It also would be nice if the snake mouth could fold up out of the way a bit more. The face can barely be seen back up in there. I can’t say I really care muck for the spinning tentacles gimmick either. It can be hard to pose the tentacles just right (due to their tentacle nature) and then a slight bump of the wheels could throw everything all right off.

Then there is the part where Alpha Q doesn’t transform. He’s not supposed to, but if you’re looking for a Transformer, don’t bother with Alpha Q. For the most part otherwise, it’s a decent action figure, though one that’s probably not for everyone.