Wink from Hellboy II
I got Wink way before I actually had a Hellboy for him to fight.
Since A), Wink is monster figure, easily twice as massive as Hellboy, B) is a fantastic sculpt that rivals that of those Four Horseman toys, and C) came only 1 per case, it was only natural that this one would be sold faster than a geek can say “Kristen Bell, OGC!” As soon as I heard that he had reached our shores, I heard that he had disappeared from shelves. Luckily, the local NECA/Mezco distributor, 2Rats, was able to bring in more of them. Even better, they had the movie accurate heads (the first ones apparently had ones based on an earlier design).
Unluckily, the second time around, 2Rats decided to sell them in sets. While I’d normally applaud this kind of a move for a Marvel Legends wave or a DC Universe Classics wave, on this line I think it might have been a mistake. Each Mezco figure costs p1,500.00, and they were in sets of 5 or 6 toys, which is a ton of scratch. These are big 7″ toys that require a lot more room than your average superhero figure. There is no real reason to get the whole set since many of the figures in the Golden Army set were sup-par, and there is no build-a-figure part to collect. Plus, demand for Hellboy toys is low, so you’re not going to unload unwanted ones as easily as I did the ones from the Red Hulk wave. Understandably, the toys were on the shelf a long time after the show had gone from screens.
But finally, things turned around and the retailers realised their mistake, breaking the sets up. I was in Toy Kingdom on one of my regular visits and lo and behold, there he was, sitting next to the Goblin, Princess, Prince, Abe, Liz, and drunk Hellboy toys that he had been packaged with, waiting for me to pick him up. I was estatic and proceeded immediately to check out.
The first thing you’ll notice about this thing is how HEAVY he is. I mean absolutely elephantine. The toy comes in a clamshell which is easily twice as thick as the one for say Abe or Liz.
I’m glad they chose the clamshell package for this line, since normal cardbacks would have been mauled if left for more than a day on toy racks. The sheer weight of Wink or even Hellboy would have ripped the bubble right off the pack and we’d have toys with missing parts all over the place. Sure the clam is a hard to open as (insert obvious, potentially offensive joke here), but it looks great, can withstand a lot of abuse, and protects the figure. Unfortunately, this isn’t one of those packages that you can store the figure in after opening. You’re really going to have to cut your way into this sucker and forcibly remove the toy.
The back of the card has some pics of the other figures in wave 1. I would like to get the 3 other protagonists, Abe, Liz and Johann, but the quality of this set is significantly worse than the toys released for part 1. I’ll get to that in a minute.
Out of the clam, this guy towers over 3″ and 4″ inch figures. He makes a great cave troll if you’re into mixing GI Joe with Lord of the Rings. Next to 6″ and 7″ers he’s not as overbearing, but he is tall. I’d say he tops out at about 9″ or so. Easily taller than anything else I have except for BAFs, Transformers, or statues.
He’s covered in great textures. From the rusted iron of his glove to the wood grain of his greaves, it’s all there. He’s also got a nice brushing to really bring out the detail of his rhinocerous hide. There are great details all over, like his scarred eye, the crest on his stomach, and the rivets on his armor. The effect of the sculpt is a very pleasing and makes it feel like that he really is worth the p1,500.00.
He’s even got the grotesque back hair, just like in the film.
One of the best things about Wink is the accessories. Or rather one of the accessories. He comes with two; a useless box with a strap (the one he carried with him into the auction house in the film - wtf?) and his hand-mace. It’s as bad-ass as it was in the film. Sculpted as a clenched fist-on-a-chain, you can readily switch it out with the other hand which is sculpted in a gesturing pose. The chain is real, too, not one of those crappy plastic things.
Articulation on him is decent, but very limited. Since he’s a big character, there’s a lot of bulk that there’s just no way around. You can’t really put double joints on guys like this without ruining the look. Many of the earlier Marvel Legends Hulks had that problem. So I can understand the limited range of his elbow and knee hinges. What I really hate are the lack of bicep swivels. On a figure this big, those arm cut joints are as important as thigh cuts. The fact that Wink doesn’t have them really limits the way he can move.
I do however love the neck joint. It’s made up of two ball joints; both the neck and the head have the receptacle and there’s a third piece, two balls on a stick, that connects the two. It’s very effective in allowing Wink to move his head side to side despite his bulk. It’s light years ahead of the old swivel heads on things like the Marvel Universe Hulk. Hasbro should get a clue.
Sadly, there is bad news. All the Winks I’ve seen share the same bad paint. Sure there are a lot of nice applications on him, but none are without huge areas where the wash or the dry-brushing were forgotten. Or worse, where paint was literally just dropped onto the figure’s foot like on mine. It’s really hard to catch it since the feet are hard to see in the package and even if you could, it’s so hard to find that choosing one that has good paint is impossible.
Still if you have any skill with a brush, a quick touch up should be enough to remedy the situation. I really can’t do anything but recommend this figure, despite the quality issues. He may be expensive and hard to find, but he makes such an excellent display piece on your shelf that the issues become moot.
Hellboy 1 from Mezco
I’m a big Guillermo del Toro fan. Among the patheon of geek gods in my head, he is right up there with Thor or Peter Jackson. His sense of storytelling and composition are exactly what I look for in movies. If you’ve never watched his earlier pictures, I suggest you try and find copies. I still need to find “Devil’s Backbone” but stuff like Kronos and Blade II are some of my favorites.
Naturally when he took on Hellboy, I was intrigued. I didn’t follow the Hellboy comics by Mike Mignola, but I loved the creator’s style, and was interested in seeing how the two artists would work together. Thought the first movie didn’t do as well as say, Spider-man, it was successful enough to spawn a sequel.
These toys have been ones that I’ve wanted to add to my collection for quite sometime, but I never got the chance. When the original movie was out in theatres I wasn’t that big on collecting, worrying about classes and summer jobs and wotnot. When the second one came out, and Mezco released the new line, many of the figures didn’t have the same quality as the originals. So I held out only buying Wink (the cave troll guy from the second film) when I found him on the cheap.
Luckily, I braved Greenhills during one of those power outages that made the days after Ondoy so much fun and saw these loose at one of the consignment shops. 3 figures from the original line, almost complete, for only p3500. That’s a good price considering what was missing was a tiny little baby Sammeal that was supposed to come with Abe. I got an extra “big baby” revolver from the new Hellboy as a trade off. Score!
The first thing you’ll see when you get these in had are how much better the quality is compared to the newer figures that were released last year. The Wink that I have has some atrocious paint mistakes, like slop, dings, unwashed areas, etc. There’s even a big area on his foot where it looks like a drop of gray base paint fell on it and wasn’t washed off. The other figures suffer similarly, with lots of bad paint applications.
Though they’re a little worn and dirty from handling, these figures here look like they are superior in terms of paint. Abe alone has the new one beat since he’s in his skin instead of the boring black BPRD suit. His skin has a glossy finish while his pants are matte. Hows’s that for detail? He’s also got his stripes painted on, though they seem a little more faded here than I remember in the movie.
Sculpt wise, Abe is pretty solid. He looks like a lot like Doug Jones in the suit, and the sculpted hands really allow him to mimic the things that he did in the movie. The general build of the body is much much lankier than Hellboy, as is expected, but height is the same at about 7″. He does have some excellent detail like the fins on his back, the buckles and pockets on his belt, and the great individual toes. He’s even got the suckers on his hand.
His accessories are mostly functional, with the aforementioned baby Sammeal being the exception. He came with two parts of his breathing apparatus (the bellows and the toilet seat), a belt, and two heads (one with, and one without his googles).
I really prefer him as skins vs. shirts. He is supposed to be swimming around after all.
Next up is Kroenen, who is let’s face it, one of the most badass villians I’ve ever seen. C’mon, a steampunk ninja zombie with clockwork innards and tonfa swords? How cool is that?
Of the three, Kroenen’s got the best articulation, which isn’t surprising since he does need to be flexible. Undead Nazi Ninjas apparently take pilates, don’t you know? He loses Abe’s extra wrist joint (which allows him to move his hands up and down in addition to swiveling), but gains double jointed knees. It’s an excellent trade off. You can get some very nice action poses with this guy, which makes him a great piece to display with the brutish Hellboy.
Paint wise he’s a step below. I don’t know if it’s from playwear or because the previous owner decided to try some re-painting, but alot of the bronze pieces on my figure look pretty dark, especially the mask’s mouthpiece. The swords also have some kind of a wash on them that makes them look more like corroded cast iron than steel.
Sculpt is probably even better than Abe, which you’ll see once he takes off his mask:
Juicy. That ought to give you some Halloween nightmares.The mask is removable and you can snap it back on anytime you need to. It’s definitely a good touch. He’s also got a lot of fine detail on his chest plate, though the rest of him is pretty plain looking; black Victorian gimp suit and brown leather straps.
Now on to the best one of the set (in my opinion), Hellboy, “Red Gorilla”, Anung Un Rama!
Like I said, you won’t find the Big Baby shotgun on the old figures. It was an accessory that came with the line that was released for the second movie, The Golden Army. However, the newer Hellboy mold includes an ugly new Right Hand of Doom that is sculpted to hold the huge barrel of the shotgun. The arm is bent at the elbow and there isn’t any articulation to un-bend it. This older figure looks much nicer with a straight arm and a fist. You still can’t bend the arm, but it doesn’t look completely ridiculous in repose.
The older figure also has a nicer coat. The finish is much closer to leather than the second one, which looks more like a toy. Another difference is the face. There’s one with a cigar and one without. This old one is just a nice calm grimace.
He’s got the least accessories of the three with only his Samaritan gun, which fits nicely in it’s holster. The Big Baby doesn’t count since it’s not included in the original package. The paint on the guns is top notch, sharing the same kind of weathering as Kroenen’s swords. Big Baby also has a nice painting on the stock. Both however break apart so he can load it. It’s a nice touch, but he can’t really do anything with it since he has no elbow articulation. He also can’t use both guns at once since he can’t open the Right Hand of Doom.
Surprisingly, he still retains a good deal of articulation despite that long trench coat. You’re not going to get him in the same kind of poses as a Marvel Legends figure, but since he’s a brawler, it’s not really necessary. As long as he can bend his knees and point a gun, it’s all good.
These are easily the best toys I’ve gotten in a while. Fully poseble, beautiful sculpts, nice and useful accessories, and at a decent price. The new Hellboy II toys cost about p1,500.00 each and are much lower quality than this first round, so if you can find them at a similar price, you should scoop them up. Now if only I can get a Sammael and a Rasputin figure, I’d be all set.
Astro Boy
I don’t know why I never bothered with Astro Boy. I’ve had a copy of the 2003 animated series for years now, but never bothered to watch. There was always something else to see or read and the clild like character just didn’t have that draw that comes from being completely bad-ass at first glance.
I mean, come on. He’s a prepubescent robot boy in tight underwear and go go boots…
However, after watching the new computer animated movie, I am a convert. As soon as I left the theater, I went over to Toys R’ Us and bought 3 versions of the diminuitive little bugger, and a few of the bigger bad guys for him to fight. He’s currently on my desk fighting my 7″ NECA and Mezco figures and kicking some plastic behind. Later, I’m going home and will dig through my DVD collection for those discs so I can find out where this little nekkid guy has been and what other stuff besides his butt mounted machine guns he has in store for me.
After some quality time with wikipedia, I found out that Astro Boy is actually the first Anime. It was this one that spawned all the big eyes, funky hair, speedlines, and those pans, zooms, closeups, and long-ass panoramic establishing shots, that we all remember so well from Robotech (Macross to you folks). That is way cool.
So how does the new computer animated film stack up to the old school series?
I like it. Though the animation isn’t up to Pixar standards, a lot of the effects and colors are appealing and make up for the lack. The fights are something else. Watching Astroboy in the area, or going toe to toe with the mutated Peacekeeper I felt myself cheering inside like a schoolgirl watching Robert Pattinson save Kristen Stewart from yet another vampire. This little guy could totally kick that wussy bloodsucker’s butt though, with his arm cannons, rocket feet, and the aforementioned butt mounted firearms.
The plot is about what you’d expect; a variation of Pinocchio. Dr. Tenma loses his son in a lab accident and in his grief decides to make a robot copy. blah blah blah. Truthfully, if you’re going in for some witty dialogue and great acting, you’re going to be disappointed. The lines are all kind of forced, with director David Bowers script clunking along. There is maybe one line that actually drew a laugh from me and it wasn’t “a squirty-bottle’s got to do, what a squirty-bottle’s got to do”. Seriously, the screenplay reads like bad B movie.
The voice casting doesn’t help. Again, we see how casting big names can really kill a animated film. Every time Nicolas Cage spoke, I felt physically ill. He is an example of an actor who should be banned from doing voice work. Ever. I felt like he was sitting at a table doing a read through. Many of the other actors share this same failure. Bill Nighy as Dr. Elefun. Donald Sutherland as President Stone. Samuel L. Jackson as Zog. All of them should have been dropped before they were cast. The only one who knew how to have fun with it was Nathan Lane and the voices of the RRF, though the poor script really killed their work.
But if you make it through the exposition, you’ll get to the good parts. They last 40 minutes or so of the movie really kick it into high gear and by the time I got to the end, I felt satisfied enough to forget about the rest of it. I came away hoping that they would be releasing a sequel sometime soon, since this effort seemed much like a dry run, with many of the peices needing some refining.
To recap: If you’re a fan of deep, traditional anime, you probably won’t like this. If you like you’re a summer blockbuster movie goer who’s a kid at heart, then you probably will.
Transporter & Bridge Playsets
I’ve already said that Playmates isn’t my favorite toy company in my previous Terminator Endoskeleton Review. If you’re an 8 year old kid and you happen to be playing with some old school TMNT toys, then you’re probably happy as a turtle full of pizza. But if you’re a discerning trekkie looking for some nice collectible toys to decorate your shelf, you’ll need to look elsewhere.
When the new Star Trek reboot rolled into theaters I was overjoyed. I loved the film and was hoping for some nice things to go along with it. Unfortunately, though Bankee (our local Playmates distributor) brought in all 3 lines of action figures, they were dissappointing. The 12″ Galaxy figures were probably the best bet for collectors, but I found the poor tailoring on their cloth uniforms a turn off. Both the 6″ Warp and 4″ Galaxy series suffered from pathetic articulation, particularly in the legs. What’s worse, the 4 inchers, who were supposed to include parts that you could use to complete two playsets that were sold seperately, where suspiciously light. If you look on any of these packages in the toystore, you’ll see a huge empty space on the bottom of the bubble where various chairs, consoles and other things were supposed to go. Apparently, the Galaxy figures distributed to Asia are missing these goodies. What a gyp I tell you.
Luckily, you can still buy one half of the Bridge and Transporter playsets in Toy Kingdom and Toys R’ Us here. Even better, Bankee, realizing what a crap line they had on their hands decided to include the entire line in the recent 50% off sales. At p200, I still wouldn’t buy the figures due to their overall poor quality, but the playsets are another matter. I got the Transporter set for p1,250.00 and the Bridge for p700.00. Score!
Both the sets come with 1 figure and a “playmat”. The playmat is a roll of plastic that has a pattern printed on it. The included consoles and machinery are placed on the mat (the placement is made obvious by the pieces shape). The drawback to this of course is that you don’t have all the pieces to complete the diorama, and you even if you did, you need a buttload of space to display the whole thing. I’ve basically just thrown both into my box of freebie posters.
The figures are about what I expected. Kirk comes with the Bridge, Good old Scotty with the Transporter. “Beam me up…”, Nevermind. They both come with a belt that constantly falls off and a phaser pistol that fits into the holster. There’s a tricorder on the belt as well, but it’s not removable. They have precious little articulation: a swivel neck, ball/peg shoulders, ball/peg elbows, swivel wrists, swivel hips, swivel knees, and swivel ankles. The whole system is useless, and they can’t do anything but stand really. And sit. whoo. hoo.
The real fun of these sets though is the pieces themselves. I’ll start with the bridge. You get the main command island with the captain’s chair, weps and helm control, two data screens, and a viewscreen. They’re all separate pieces so you can arrage them any way you want. The chairs on the main island swivel so that you can put 4″ figures in easily. I’m a little dissappointed that the details on the consoles aren’t sculpted. Most are just decals that don’t even fit their little wells perfectly.
The consoles look pretty good as the generic flight controls for any kind of ship. If I had a Marvel Universe Nick Fury and some SHIELD agents, this is where I’d display him. The data screens are nice, and they’re generic enough that you can use them in anything. Iron Man’s armory. Teletran 1. Avengers Mansion, Forge’s Lab. Whatever.
But the saving grace is that big ass view screen. This thing is just amazing for something so simple. It’s really just a curved frame with a printed piece of transluscent plastic on the back, but it works so well that I can’t stop playing with it. If you place it in front of a light, the image lights up as if it was backlit. Perfect. I only wish they had included a few more scenes from the movie so it didn’t always show the spiny Romulan ship on it.
The Transporter is a little different. It’s not as versatile as the Bridge set as it’s quite obviously something from Trek. It’s half of the transporter pad with a detachable transporter “pod” and a console with the chair. And of course, Scotty. Trusty Scotty. I think the Transporter set suffers more than the Bridge with the lack of the other pieces because it’s not modular. The Bridge is made up of many little consoles and stations that can stand alone. The Transporter looks more cramped without the missing pieces.
Again, the console that Scotty sits in just has decals to give it some detail. The console is more complex than the Bridge seats. It houses some electronics that connect to the Transporter itself and has two buttons that activate the features. The reason this set costs more is because it has lights and sounds that imitate the transport effect. The two bottons on the panel activate the whooshing.
If you press the first button, the “pod” lights up. The second button, the sound effects kick in and the lights slowly go up inside the pod, revealing the figure. Press button 1 again and they fade out, simulating the beam out. It’s really quite fun and less annoying than most sound gimmicks. I tend to press it when I’m bored at work. The whooshing relaxes me, though I might be pissing off my boss.
You can also remove the pod and transport the figure inside to another planet. The pod has a button on the top that activates the beam in lights. Then you press the two buttons on the side to release the figure and PRESTO! one planetside trekkie.
At 50% off, I feel that both these playsets are a good buy. Even if you don’t have a Star Trek collection, there are a lot of lines that benefit from the kind of high tech props that the franchise has. I’m thinking of displaying Iron Man Armor in the Transporter. While I wouldn’t recommend the figures at any price, try and find these if you can. Both are great additions to any collection.
Here’s some more pics:
The Gathering Storm
If you love books, then you’re probably familiar with that curious feeling of depression one gets when he gets to the end of a beloved story. Halfway through the book you realize that there are more pages behind than there are ahead and that sinking feeling starts to creep up. You get to the second to the last chapter and you realize you only have about 100 pages more with these characters you love so much. You slow down, savoring each page, every scene. You don’t want to leave this facinating world you’ve been visiting.
About a month back when I heard that Tor was finally going to release Brian Sanderson’s first Wheel of Time installment, I wrote a blog post about Robert Jordan. For nearly 20 years, I’ve grown up on the story of the Dragon Reborn and have followed Robert Jordan’s opus since the first book came out in 1990. Yesterday night, I realized that the series is ending.
Sure, I’ve known this since the third book (I thought it was a trilogy), but it was only sinking in as I read the last chapter of The Gathering Storm. I wanted to cry.
According to the announcements on the web, the book was to hit the shelves November 3rd, but apparently, we get some books earlier than our friends in the US (yay for the Philippines!). I picked up my copy at Power Books about two weeks ago. They got only 8 copies and the other 7 were reserved. I found this one on the shelf all by itself. Dark One’s own luck, that. I guess it’ll probably be flooding other stores soon, but frankly I couldn’t wait to read what Jordan and Sanderson had cooked up.
Before I start, there is one thing that I want to get off my chest. I cannot stand Darrell K. Sweet’s cover art. It is absolutely awful. The scene it depicts is not one I feel was really a standout and even if it was I feel Mr. Sweet should be ashamed of the job he did on it. Not only is the composition completely boring, the way he poses his characters and hides Rands stump is awful. It is without a doubt his worst Wheel of Time cover to date and I can’t belive that he went from that beautiful Eye of the World cover to this piece of shit. But then, we were always told not to judge a book by it’s cover, and Jordan’s volumes have always surpassed Sweet’s artwork.
I don’t want to spoil anything for anyone so I’ll keep this review as vague as possible, and focus on my opinions and views of the book. I will tell you that the majority of the plot is dedicated to the split in the White Tower. Fans of Rand will still have quite a few chapters to call their own, and Matt and Perrin have a couple to push their plots ahead, but for the most part it’s about Egwene.
I’d have to agree with Jason Denzel’s advance review on Dragonmount; Sanderson has succeeded in filling in the gaps that Jordan left in his manuscript with words that fit. That doesn’t mean you won’t notice a few pages where the tone or tone might feel a little different from what you remember, but the whole seems to fit in quite nicely with the series. As Sanderson says in his introduction, he is a new director taking over a franchise. The cast and story is the same, but some of the style may differ. I believe the intensive research he did before taking up the project (he reread the entire series while taking notes on the characters) really helped him to give each of them a voice that was true to Jordan’s.
Unlike the last few books, The Gathering Storm doesn’t feel like a filler novel, as Crossroads of Twilight and Knife of Dreams did. Both of those books are padded full of exposition that Jordan needed to get out of the way before he brought everything to the precipice. This book has several chapters that are filled with what Hollywood would term “trailer shots”. All that rising action has finally come to a head and the payoff is just around the corner. When you finally put it down, you get the feeling that after this book everything is coming to a head, Perrin will come to terms with the wolves, Matt will play his game of Snakes & Foxes with the Aelfinn and Eelfinn, Moiraine will be found, Rand will bow to the Daughter of Nine Moons, and the Last Battle will be fought on Shayol Ghul.
That is not to say that it was not a satisfying read. It is. I don’t remember the last book that had such a wonderfully quiet ending as this one, especially considering how fast paced the rest of it was. I’m sure with the last two books in the series all about a much darker battle, the tone will be changing, but I like that the Sanderson judged this an appropriate place to break the 3 volumes.
After all’s said and done, I feel Sanderson aquitted himself well on this first chapter. Though I’ll always wonder which parts Jordan himself wrote and how different this might have unfolded had he survived to finish it, I am eager to get to A Memory of Light and see how it all ends.
Until then, I think I’ll read them all again.
If you're looking for biased, one-sided views of toys and other assorted geekery, then you're in the right place. If you want objective, you'll need a blog written by someone who isn't an obsessive geek.
These are my views on various toys, movies, places, and things, along with assorted pictures and the the occasional link to stuff I find sufficiently geeky.
Enjoy your stay and leave a comment.
Slangards
I may give you a half-way serious answer.
