I’ve really cut back on the Black Series of late, but occasionally something comes up that I still like. In this case it’s Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes. This is a figure that’s honestly, not real exciting, a weird looking alien who is part of a Space Smooth Jazz Band. This is also one that kind of warrants needing more than one, because who wants just one band member? I wasn’t too keen on buying 6 of him though, so I opted for 3, especially at like, 60% off. Basically, 3 for the price of one. If the 7th member with the Percussion set comes up on sale I’ll probably pick him up too.
Anyway, like I mentioned, he is part of a band, and they all look the same, so he comes with 3 different instrument options, a sort of Space Sax, a Space Flute and a Space Clarinet. These guys are mostly great for throwing in the background for any sort of scene where a band might be useful. He has pretty standard Black Series articulation, though he really could have used double elbows to help hold some of the instruments. His shins seems oddly short as well, I’m not sure if that’s supposed to be part of his alien design or what.
Here is another from the Big Box of Disappoint. Though I kind of expected it in this case. I am not entirely sure what Mirrorverse is, I think it’s some sort of battling mobile game, which is why all the figures in this line look a little different from their standard incarnations. This Genie is sort of a combo of Genie and Jafar I think. He is kind of cool looking and there aren’t really any articulated Geniue figures that I know of.
Except there still aren’t really any Genie figures. Because this guy is so incredibly limited. It’s basically arms only, and the elbows don’t so much. There is a neck and wist but they both seem to only have a few degrees of motion.
And here I was thinking MacFarlane had gotten over making statues with useless articulation. He’s nice looking at least, but these pictures are basically it for what he does.
A little before Christmas I bought a bunch of “Clearance masquerading as a Christmas Sale from Entertainment Earth stuff. It was all stuff I had been “sort of looking at” for a while, but for super marked down, I decided why not. Slightly annoyingly, a lot of it ended up being slightly disappointing for one reason or another. Maybe I need to start listening to tat little, “you put this off for a reason” voice more.
Anyway, this was one of them. In the last year, I’ve started playing a ton of Fortnite. Though I don’t own a ton of figures from the game. I don’t really want to either. Most of the ones I do have are Bananas or cat people. The Seven seem like they could be an interesting group to have all of as figures though. Mostly because I like Teams.
So far there are only two members of The Seven available though, The Scientist and The Foundation. I figure, even if I don’t bother with any others, this big robot dude would still be cool. And well, he kind of isn’t.
It’s a nice looking figure for sure. Lots of details, but there are a few problems that just drag the figure down. For starters, the face mask gimmick. Without going into a ton of Lore Details, all of the Seven wear air tight suits to protect themselves from The Loop. So they have these expressive digital Facemasks. In the game, you can select from a variety of different styles for each member’s helmet. The figure replicates this with swapable face plates and a neat light up gimmick.These face plates, do not stay on, at all. Just looking at it is enough for it to pop off and go flying who knows where. And it’s two pieces falling off, the plate itself and the clear cover. Neither stays on. I guarantee a lot of these will go missing over time.
As for the light up gimmick, it’s cool, but it also makes him incredibly top heavy. Which is a problem exacerbated by how limited his articulation is. He has plenty of joints as Hasbro 6″ figures do, but his bulk and top heavyness completely limits most of the joints to uselessness. He can’t even two hand hold his gun, and it’s the type of gun you would two hand hold.
There also seems like some plastic tolerance issues going on with his backpack because it also falls off pretty easily as well. All in all, he is just really meh. It feels like they maybe designed a decent figure, then stuck the light up gimmick in later and it ruined things a bit.
Just in time for Christmas, Fresh Monkey Fiction has put out the first wave of their first wave of their holiday themed Naught or Nice Collection. I had the Cyborg Santa on order but cancelled it because I decided I didn’t really need it, but I did keep the “Classic Santa”. Classic Santa, as the name suggests, if generically regular. The whole line has several themed Santas, some straight recolors, some with different heads (like Cyborg Santa having a damaged robot head) as well as some Elves and Nutcrackers.
I pretty much just stuck with the basic Santa. He’s useful for making holiday themed photos with and I can stick him out with the Christmas Decorations like I do every Halloween with my monster themed Marvel Legends.
Speaking of Marvel Legends, the box for this guy looks essentially identical to the standard ML Window Box, which has some distinct curvature to it.
He also has a nice collection of accessories. A plate with a couple of cookies and some milk, a removable hat, a Naughty or Nice list, an alternate Winking head and some hands. My only real issue is that while his articulation is decent, he can’t put his pointing finger on his nose, as Santa Clause does.
So, wow. I feel like I am pretty good at picking out good parts of figures to keep my disappointment levels down, but this figure… I just can’t. And I am not sure how this happened. One of the worst signs that a figure is a mess, is when it breaks, doing basic actions, almost right out of the package. Which happened here. I have gone through tons and tons of figures, and very few just break, right out of the package, with basic operation. Especially on a “Premium” level figure like this, the Disney Ultimates Robin Hood from Super 7.
In this case, it was swapping out the head. Give it a little back and forth and a pull, and as expected, as I have had happen with thousands of figures before, the head comes off. What wasn’t supposed to happen, is the peg sheered off and was stuck inside the head. Just for a contrast, in the same BBTS Box, I got another figure I’ll cover later, the Japanese Spider-man, Marvel Legends, and his joints were super stiff for a Marvel Figure, but they didn’t sheer off upon trying to move them. They just stuck, so I stuck it near the heat vent to warm it up and loosen it a bit.
No luck here, now, not only will the head not stay on, but the other heads can’t be attached. I have sort of “fixed” this by sticking some sticky tack on the neck peg, which I have done sometimes when swapping ill fitting heads. But it’s not the same.
The head isn’t the only problem though, the whole figure feels very cheap on the plastic, particularly the tail and I’m worried about losing hand pegs like the head peg. He also can’t hold his bow at all. None of the hands work, it only can be “held” by letting it sit loosely in his hand and sort of, resting it against his body or the floor. The arrow on the extra head is also severely bent out of the package. His quiver also does not want to stay in place, at all. I get that they don’t want peg holes or anything, but a slight bit of clever sculpting on the shoulders or strap could have created a little nub or catch that would keep it somewhat in place.
The sculpt is nice at least. The stork costume is interesting, and basically replaces 90% of the figure, but I’m worried about more breakage so I’m just, not going to bother. In test fitting the Stork Legs to the Squatting Bottom Legs, I couldn’t get them to even stay on well anyway.
This is such a disappointment. This figure was delayed by almost 2 years and the previously released Prince John figure, is really really nice. Like, “top figure of the year” nice. It’s also extra disappointing because the only halfway decent Robing Hood figure ever is a 25 year old McDonald’s toy, and it seems like this may still be the case.
