Toy Review: The Blue Spirit

08/19/10

The Last Airbender’s Blue Spirit

Let me confess something before we start. I loved several of M. Night Shymalan’s movies. Everyone loved The Sixth Sense, that’s given. However I loved Unbreakable and The Village, and thought that Signs, The Happening and Lady in the Water, while not great, were all worthy efforts and have watched them repeatedly since they were released. Though he has a style that is not mainstream, I felt that it worked well with the material he was using. I was an unrepentant fan.

That changed with The Last Airbender. The film is a complete mess, utterly devoid of any heart, or the warmth and humor that filled the animated series and made it resonate with it’s audience. I wanted to like this movie so bad because of the source material and the fact that Shymalan has been one of the director’s who’s career I’ve followed, but after sitting through just one viewing of this movie I had to admit that the man is delusional.

Sadly, not even the toys could redeem the franchise. They’re manufactured by Spin Master, a fledgling toy company that got it’s start in 1994. Spin Master is best known for it’s Bakugan line, a collectible game that looks like a cross between Magic, Transformers, and marbles, but it’s coming up in the industry, securing the licenses for Airbender, How to Train Your Dragon, and the upcoming Tron 4″ and 7″ figures. Pretty good for a company that was only making things like silly putty knockoffs, Mighty Beanz and Tech Deck skateboard toys a few years ago.

I’ve seen the prototype photos of the Tron toys that Spin Master had on display at the SDCC recently and it looks like they’ve got a handle on what it takes to be competitive in the action figure market, but personally I think it came to late to save The Last Airbender line. They did a pretty good job on the How to Train Your Dragon line, but since that was geared toward a very young demographic, the problems with sculpt and articulation weren’t as topical. In this case, they were working from real life actors and a more serious fictional world. The toys however don’t really reflect that and still have that half cartoon, half trying-too-hard-to-capture-the-actors-likeness look to them.

The package is par for course. It’s an oversized blister pack with the same movie graphics on the posters you see in the theaters. It’s easily 50% too big for the figures inside, with a lot of air inside the bubble. Inside that bubble is a plastic tray that holds the figure in place with the aid of holes in the plastic and clear rubber bands.

There is no diffrentiation in the packaging from figure to figure, all of them having the same backing card with the same photos of the other figures in the 4″ sub line. On the pegs it’s hard to tell what the figures hanging in the back are since they all look the same and are the same size.

You can tell that these were made for international release, the cards being multilingual. They were probably intended for release in Canada as well as our region. All those translations leave little room for any word about the figure itself or the background of the characters inside.

There are 5 characters in the line, 2 Aangs, a Sokka figure, a Zuko one and this toy; the Blue Spirit.

The reason I picked up this one is because it’s the only one that isn’t saddled with the imposible feat of caputuring an actor’s likeness in the 4″ scale. Sure, a competent sculptor could probably do it if he took the time to hand craft a prototype, but as these are mass produced figures, something gets lost in the translation from the prototype to the manufacturing molds at the factory. Figures always end up looking soft and kind of vapid. Since the Blue Spirit is just a dude in a mask, then there’s no need to force it and you can come up with a much more convincing figure.

The toy is based on the movie version of the character so it looks far more demonic than the one in the cartoon. It’s also far more BLUE than the original, which was mostly bordering on black with just a blue mask. It comes with 1 accessorie (or 2 depending on how you look at it); a sword that splits into 2. He can hold both the combined weapon and the split pair fairly well in either hand, which is a plus.

The articulation is fair, but not spectacular. Having come up as a Marvel toy collector, I’m partial to my figures having the same level of articulation as the Marvel Legends (ML) line. While Spin Master gives it a good effort, there are things lacking that a play and display hobbyist will miss.

For instance, his lack of thigh and bicep swivels.

Though he has great shoulder and hip articulation (even if it is a little loose out of the box), he lacks those swivel joints that would allow him to cross his arms in front of his chest or sit indian style. I admit this may be nitpicking, but as someone who poses toys A LOT, these are important for getting more dynamic looks.

His knee and elbow joints are simple 45 degree hinges. Not the best, but better than some of Hasbro’s swivel-hinge combinations that only allow a 20 degree or less range.

He also has hinges at his ankles and swivels at his wrists. His neck is a classic ball and socket joint.

The balljoint at his head is slightly disappointing. I know this is not a Hasbro product and I should not expect compatibility between it and Hasbro’s 4″ toys, but I was hoping I could make this into a Samurai Wolverine or something.

No such luck.

The ball at the neck of the Blue Devil is far to small to allow Marvel Universe (MU) figures’ heads to fit and stay on. You can pose them with the heads swapped, but they’ll fall off if you move it.

Also, the figure is not EXACTLY in scale with the MU figures. It’s body is slightly wide and short compared to the taller, lankier Marvel line. They fit together in a line up, but when you switch parts, it’s easy to see the discrepancy in their proportions.

But enough of that. This is still a good figure to get. The sculpt is good as a standalone toy, with good detail, solid build and it’s close to the movie model. The paint (what there is of it) is also very well done. Since it’s mostly blue anyway, any sloppy applications are hard to spot.

At the lower price point of Php 300.00 at Toy Kingdom, it’s a pretty good deal. Let’s consider the recent A-Team figures from Jazwares. They are similar in scale, style, articulation, and accessory count to The Last Airbender toys yet The A-Team figures were of lower quality, with very noticable paint mistakes. They also cost about 50% MORE.

Really, if you’re open to including a non-essential, but well done figure in your collection, you could do worse than this guy.

I’d skip the rest of the line though.