Fury of Combat Boxset
It seems like I’ve been doing a lot of reviews for box sets featuring Iron Man lately. There are the Marvel Universe (MU) box sets (the 2-pack with Punisher and the 3-pack with Silver Surfer and Daredevil), then there Iron Man 2 (IM2) line’s K Mart exclusives; Proving Ground and Advanced Tactical Armor 3-packs. I’ve also talked about the Target’s Armored Assault boxset, one of 2 sets that include Hammer-tech drones.
This time around, I’m tackling the Toys ‘R’ Us exclusive “Fury of Combat” 4-pack which features 2 Hammer-tech “Ground Assualt” drones, a re-colored Mark VI, and a Sam Jackson Nick Fury figure. Can you say “Honey, where is my supersuit?”
I like the art on the box this time out, but it’s sad that they didn’t work it more into the design of the thing. The art is contained within the two side panels, one with Nick Fury, and the other with the Mark VI suit and the Drones. If you cut them off, they’d make great bookmarks. You know, a piece of cardboard used to save your place in a book?
Nevermind. Kids these days, honestly!
The back has the requisite boring Hasbro photography and the by now familiar HUD (Heads Up Display) motif of the IM2 line. The front is pretty much just one huge window to show off the figures.
It’s all very ho-hum, but then box sets don’t usually have a whole lot of thougth put into them. It does, however, come with a nice backdrop of a ruined cityscape if you’re the sort who likes to pose figures in front of a diorama.
Sadly, Hasbro went and split the inner tray in two, with the Iron Man armor and the drones on one tray with the backdrop, and Nick Fury on the other side in his own little compartment with a plain blue background. Why, Hasbro?
Happily, this time around, Hasbro mitigated some of my rancor by including a 2 “new” figures, as well as providing a duplicate of an obvious “army builder” target.
Army building is a toy collector term for the process of collecting multiple examples of the same toy in order to, well, build an army. You’ll see this a lot for Cobra Vipers, Star Wars Clone Troopers, and other similar groups. Since the Hammeroids are shown in the film to number 32, you know that these figures are going to be a target of collectors.
While it sucks that Hasbro decided to include half of the Hammeroid figures in box sets, making it tougher to complete a set, let alone army build, at least THIS set has 2 of the Ground Assault Drones, making it a more appealing buy than the Armored Assault box set.
If you have one of the Hammeroids, you’ll be familiar with the way they’re all set up. There’s a base figure upon which various accoutrements are attached. The Sea Assault figure had a small backpack and the shoulder mounted missle pods. These Ground Assault Drones have a back mounted artillery cannon and differently equipped forearms.
While they look good at rest, there are some things you’ll need to look out for. First off is the fact that it’s not really movie accurate. The Army drones in the movie had guns that swung upwards and were stored on their backs. The guns on the figures will only point forward and swing down, over the figure’s chest.
Considering that they’re supposed to serve as either artillery or anti-aircraft weapons (from what I saw in the film anyway), it seems ridiculous that you can’t point the barrels UP.
The second thing to worry about is the softness of the plastic that was used here. Like the Sea Assault drone, the material is softer than the plastic used in most of the other figures. It’s heavy and solid, so serves well in the bulk of the figure, but the extremities like the gun barrels of the machine gun and grenade launcher on the forearms are a different story.
Due to the posing in package, they came out of the box deformed; bent and limp like a porn star without his wheaties. While this presents myriad amusing options when it comes to posing, it’s not really what I want.
Articulation is the same as the Sea Assault Drone. We get standard Hasbro balljoints (swivel/hinges) at his shoulders, elbows, and ankles. He’s got a balljointed neck and torso as well, and double hinge joints at the knee. His hips are double swivels with a hinge in the middle hinges; basically what we’re familiar with from our Marvel Legends (ML) days. There’s no wrist swivel, which would have been welcome.
I’m not sure why Hasbro continues to use these swivel/hinge joints on it’s figures elbows and knees. Well, that’s not entirely true. I can understand why they want to keep using it (cuts down on parts they need to run off), but I can’t understand why they can’t see that the figure loses a big chunk of poseability when they do this.
For one, the dual joint limits the range of motion of the elbow. Usually, a well-designed hinge can go a full 45 degrees and a double can allow the arm to almost fold up towards itself just like a real arm. The Hasbro elbow is usually blocked by the bicep, so you’re lucky to get 25 degrees out of it.
The swivel part of the joint is meant to replace the bicep (or thigh) swivel. It does it fairly well, but at the expense of proper looking anatomy. Hold your own arm out in front and bend it at the elbow, turn it toward your other arm. Your bicep muscle follows as you move your forearm across you chest. On a figure equipped with a Hasbro elbow, the bicep remains facing upward.
Kids are dumb enough already. Teaching them erroneous biology isn’t helping.
But enough ranting about tangential topics. The Ground Assault Drone is a pretty solid figure, once you fix the limp weapons (boil and freeze should do the trick here). Like the Sea Assault Drone, it’s place in your display should be to surround Iron Man and War Machine and stand there looking mean.
It doesn’t really matter if they can’t really do much else.
I won’t go too far into the Mark VI included in the pack. Like the Mark V in the Armored Assault box set, the new figure is exactly the same as the Mark VI that was included in the main, single pack releases. The only difference really, is paint.
The new figure is more movie accurate interms of paint, compared to the first release. You can see from the pictures that compared to the original 4″ Mark VI, the new figure is far more detailed. The original Mark VI had only a gold paint layer over the tacky red paint. This one has much cleaner applications, with silver highlights. The changes feel much more significant compared to the Armored Assault Mark V.
However, if you already bought the Walmart Hall of Armore version, your out of luck. This is exactly the same figure, minus the cool display.
Ah, Hasbro, you sneaky bastard.
The last figure in this set is probably the biggest draw. Even if he’s not the real reason I bought the Fury of Combat set (despite everything I pointed out above, I really like the drones), you can tell by the For Sale threads on the toy forums that most people are keeping their Sammy Jacksons and getting rid of the rest.
I can’t blame them. This is one hell of a figure.
First things first. This is NOT a completely original figure. The torso is quite obviously a re-use of the GI Joe Beachhead figure, which is recognizable by the body hugging sweater he’s wearing. I’m not entirely sure which Joe the legs came from, but I’m pretty sure they are not original since they are so generic that Hasbro would be pretty silly if they didn’t reuse something. They’re just legs in pants with army boots.
He comes with a few accessories. The trench coat is the big one of course. While there are a lot of collectors that love the real cloth costumes on figures, I’m not one of them. Especially at this scale. It is just too small to allow the fabric to really fold as it would in real life. What you’re left with is a squarish looking coat that makes him look like he’s wearing 6 inches of padding under it.
It helps if you remove the included shoulder holster and put it OVER the trench coat. The loops hold the shoulders of the garment down so it looks a tad more natural. It doesn’t do anything about the flaps in front, the unnatural draping, or the fact that he has a perpetually popped collar though.
Sadly, you can’t remove the gun that’s in the holster. Ridiculous.
He can use other weapons from your 1/18th scale army though, which is good. The pistol he comes with is kind of dinky, considering he’s up against 2 robots who are easily a head taller than him and out mass him by a ton. You’d think they’d have given him a howitzer or something.
I’d rather just deck him out in other gear and remove the coat. It’s too campy for me. Also, I’ve experienced the type of cloth they used here, too. It’s this thin leatherette stuff. They used it on the old ML Gambit. The jacket of the one in my collection is flaking so badly that it’s mostly white now. Just a matter of time before this goes the same way.
It would have been nicer if they took the ML Logan route and made a rubber coat for him. It would solve the draping issues and make it last a little longer (not forever mind you, but my ML Logan’s jacket is in far better shape than Gambit’s).
The likeness is good, especially considering how small this guy is. You can immediately see Samuel L. Jackson there, staring back at you about to say, “… we’re going to find a way to get out of here. First, we’re going to seal off this.. CHOMP… nomnomnomnomnom…”
If you haven’t watched Deep Blue Sea, go find it now.
Unfortunately, like most GI Joe figures, he isn’t truly in scale with the MU line. The MU line has a superhero aesthetic that means they are actually bigger than 4″. That means that he’s a little on the short side. It’s fine if you put him next to the IM2 figures, but next to the Wrecking Crew, he’s a little shrimpy.
As 4″ figures go though, you can’t really fault it for that. The likeness is just something that amazes me and makes me hope that the Scarlett Johanssen Black Widow will be half as good.
This has been a long review so let’s recap.
The Good:
Good choice for a boxset assortment
Sculpt on all 3 figures is good
2 figures that you wouldn’t be able to get otherwise
Articulation is fair all around
Fair paint apps
The Bad
Price is a bit high (Php 2,300.00 Suggested Retail Price, I think)
Mark VI is too similar to the Hall of Armor version
All the figures are re-tools/re-colors to some extent
No stands, and too few accessories
I’d still recommend it, just because if the fun factor of Nick Fury, the nice paint job on the Mark VI, and the fact that the drones are included. However, it’s not really a must have.
4th Toy Kingdom Warehouse Sale!!!
November 5, 2010 - November 7, 2010
SM Megamall, 5th Floor
Megatrade Halls 1 and 2
I’ve noticed that many toy collectors go through a kind of progression when they start in the hobby. Early in, there’s the Mass Aquisition Stage, where you’ve just been introduced to the world of collecting and you want to fill up your shelves as fast as you can. It doesn’t really matter how much money you make (but of course if you have more, you’ll amass more at a faster pace), it’s just the mentality you have at this stage. You’ve just discovered the hobby and you’ve realized, “Shit. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do!”
Many would-be toy collectors drop out at this stage, realizing (in most cases, correctly) that they’ve spent tens of thousands on useless pieces of gummy, semi-synthetic organic amorphous solids. They decide to quit before they get in to deep and start spending their lunch money.
This is the stage when the big events like Toy Con are the most fun. It’s the stage of discovery, where you don’t have a lot of action figures gathering dust in boxes piled 10 deep at home. Every convention means more figures that you haven’t had the pleasure of owning.
Once you do amass that “collection” though, the conventions get less and less fun. You’re working hard, sweating it out in the mosh pit of geekery, fighting to get to the display tables, but there are diminishing returns because you’ve already bought everything that you really want.
I’m around this stage now. I enjoy toy launches more than the main conventions now because I’m gauranteed to find something I don’t already have. Another event I really enjoy is the annual Toy Kingdom Warehouse Sale.
Those kids just starting in the hobby like to rant about this sale on the forum boards, saying how they found nothing, how there are no great deals here, how they wasted their time. In contrast, I’ve gone to this sale 3 years in a row and have always found something great.
You have to approach it from a certain mindset and understand something about the sale; this is a WAREHOUSE SALE.
That means CLEARANCE. It’s a chance for Toy Kingdom to clear it’s warehouse of non-moving stock. There won’t be any new stock here. The fast moving toys won’t show up. You may see some of the same marked down stock you normally see in TK branches, but don’t expect 90% off on stuff like Transformers or Marvel toys.
In 2008 when I went here I got my Polno Dianno statue. During the 2009 Warehouse Sale, I got several new figures at sale price. Sure the DCD Flamebird and Nightwing, as well as the Star Trek figures had been on sale at TK for a while, but it was here that I bought it.
The sale reminds me of the good old days going around neighborhood garage sales looking for loot. You just don’t get that feeling from the big conventions.
Some cautionary words thought; GO EARLY!
If at all possible, go on the first day, when the sale is only open to BDO and SM Advantage (may be changed to TK Amazing) Card holders. If you don’t have one of the above, but know someone who does, drag him or her along so you can get in (they’ll have to stay with you to present the card at checkout). Finish your shopping BEFORE LUNCH if possible. The normal wait in line here is at least an hour. You might also want to go just before closing, around 7pm.
I can’t wait!
Polno Dianno of Bastard!
Vinyl Statue from Kotobukiya
Originally posted at slangards.multiply.com on Dec 18, ‘08 8:28 PM
I don’t collect many statues or vinyl figures. Mainly because they don’t have alot of “play value”, but also due to the fact that they are usually pricey pieces of plastic. If you’re a Mint In Box (MIB) or Mint on Card (MOC) kind of guy who only displays toys, then Slangard’s Law of Escalation of Aqusition will likely lead you to statues. Most of the MOCers I’ve met eventually let go of their action figure collections and start buying “high-end” collectibles. For the “loose” collector, keeping things in boxes kind of defeats the point of buying toys (Don’t get me started on MIB Transformers collectors).
That’s not to say I don’t like statues. I’m tempted by these works of creative consumerism, as much as the next geek. And like the next geek, there are certain pre-requisites that are necessary to draw me away from counting points of articulation. Chief among them is that 1) the sculpture in question be based on a character of the opposite sex, 2) that that sculpture be ridiculously voluptuous, and 3) that it be either in the advance stages of undress or come with removable clothing so that you can display it in advance stages of undress.
I realize this is pervy and borderline anti-social, but geeks tend to go that way with age.
One of the statues that got a rise out of me (pun!) in the early days was Kotobukiya’s Polno Dianno statue from Bastard!. I’m not familiar with the story behind the Bastard! manga or anime and not even sure if it was a comic or a cartoon or both. I’m not sure why she is wearing next to nothing. I’m not sure why she has the silly hat. I just know that this bat-girl is hella sexy!
I saw it first when I was in high school, playing hooky in Robinson’s Metro East mall. They had this toystore on the third floor next to the arcades that sold high end toys and they had alot of them on display behind the glass. Naturally, being a teenager and this being the time before the internet and its countless terrabytes of free porn (yes, I’m that old), I drooled at the window along with all the other penniless perverts at this statue, among others. However, P5000 was way over the budget of a kid who got just enough for fare and food with a little extra for the occasional comic (remember when they were like P50? I do).
That store eventually closed, and took with it it’s stock of packaged pervy perfection. Eventually, I did start collecting again and every once in a while I’d put up a post on the online bulletin boards that I was looking for this particular statue. I never got a nibble. I learned about Greenhills and the other specialty shops that carried these forbidden treasures, but there was never a sighting.
Then after about three years of toy collecting, sucess! I was at the Toy Kingdom Warehouse 2008 Sale and there she was, in all her MIB glory. Apparently, Toy Kingdom couldn’t unload them (big surprise) so they had like pallets of boxes of these jewels stashed away. Since they had to get rid of them to make shelf space for stupid stuff like the new Marvel Universe line (argh! hate! rage!), they were selling Polno Dianno for only P1000! WIN!
Thing was that even though this figure was like now 10 years old now and demand was like virtually nil I’m sure, there were still hoarders/re-sellers going after it in hopes of selling it to some sucker on ebay who’d fall for the “HTF” (hard to find) next to the subject line. I couldn’t believe this guy who was loading up carts (that’s right plural) with boxes of them. Like any good collector, I had already spent my wad on other toys before coming to this area. Rats! I vowed to get cash that night and come back the next day first thing in the morning and get one. Luckily, aside from that one guy I saw the day before, demand proved to be low. Apparently, parents don’t like to buy plastic representations of half-naked women, no matter how artistc; who’d have thunk?! I spent a while looking the remaining boxes over and I scored one with decent paint.
There’s nothing to really “review” with statues like this. It’s a very Rubenesque bat-girl, in a rather R-rated pose, with very little clothing. It doesn’t move, there are no action features, there are no playsets. It’s got one accessory (the hat is removable) and a stand to make sure she doesn’t fall over. If you see it on shelf, you might want to check to see if the paints are passable. That’s it.
Either you like it, or you think guys who collect things like this should be locked away and registered as sex offenders.
One look at it should be all you really need to decide. Happy Hunting!
The Stars My Destination
“Why? Why reach out to the stars and galaxies? What for?
“Because you’re alive, sir.”
- Gully Foyle in The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester
Despite being a sci-fi nut since grade school, I’d never heard of Bester until I spotted this book in the bargin bin at National Bookstore, Morayta. At only P30.00, it was a steal (especially since I saw the same book in Megamall for P395.00). It’s a nice paperback edition from Gollancz SF, an imprint of Orion Books in the UK, and part of the Masterworks of Science Fiction series; 10 titles by authors like Pohl, Dick, and Vonnegut. The three I found look great on my shelf…
The book stayed on my shelf for a few weeks before I finally decided to read it, but When I started, I couldn’t put it down. From the book’s opening lines; “This was a future of fortune and theft, pillage and rapine, culture and vice… but nobody admitted it,” to the end the book speeds along at a frightening pace. The raw charisma of unambitious everyman Gully Foyle sweeps you into the story from the moment he’s introduced as a nobody, a man not worth noticing, until his transcendental end.
In today’s age of planned obsolecense, science fiction can become real in a matter of months. unlike most books from the 50’s though, The Stars My Destination doesn’t feel dated. Bester’s prose encompasses many topics that go beyond gimmicky tech. His future’s economic collapse due to the introduction of “jaunting” (teleportation through the power of the mind) for example, is just as plausible today as it was 60 years ago. The collapse, not the teleporting. The amorality that pervades Foyles world is also familiar; corruption and greed are universal. I feel Bester’s lines are insightful and pertinent in any decade.
The Stars My Destination reads like a film noir. I can’t imagine why the studios took so long to optioned it (though last I heard it was still in pre-prod for a 2012 release). Instead of Jumper (actually influenced by Bester’s idea of teleportation) last year, they could have done an adaptation of this book and killed. I can just imagine the opening scene of Foyle curled up in his coffin aboard the Nomad, or the Burning Man blinking through time. Plus you could play up the revenge angle to get a great noir flick where you’re rooting for the bad guy all the way home. Forget Watchmen. I want to see this on screen!
Iron Man Armored Adventures Crimson Dynamo
Toys are for kids.
At least that what everyone keeps telling me. I guess it’s good then that Hasbro likes to run multiple concurrent lines, some geared for them there young ‘uns and some for us craggy, old farts. The Spider-Man Fiercest Foes line and many of the large scale Iron Man toys aren’t really meant for collectors.
The Iron Man Armored Adventures line is one of those Hasbro lines geared towards a younger audience; specifically, the kids that are watching the cartoon of the same name. The line was released in September of 2009 and Wave 1 had 5 figures (3 Iron Man variations and 2 enemies) and 1 vehicle (a 4×4 truck). It ended there, though a second season is supposed to start this month, so hopefully there’ll be more.
Sadly, we probably won’t see them here in the Philippines.
The first wave has stagnated on the shelf since they were put there a while back. The stocks I’ve seen at Megamall (the main Toy Kingdom branch so a fair measure of the market) did not dwindled at all. It could be because the characters have all got that Japanimation look to them. It could be because articulation has been nerfed big time compared to the Marvel Universe or Iron Man 2 lines. It could be because they were Php 50 more than other comparable toys from the same company. It was probably all of the above.
I myself passed on them for the above reasons, only giving in when they were marked down to 50% off.
The package is about what you’d expect from Marvel/Hasbro by now; carded bubbles, with a plain photo of the suspiciously nicer looking prototype in the back, with an assortment line up near the bottom of the card.
The front of the card isn’t much better. It shouts, “EXTRA POWER SMASH!” there in the corner, but I’m not sure if it’s grabbiing anyone’s attention on the shelf.
The blurb in the back talks about how Ivan Vanko was an astronaut, caught in the corona of the sun and left for dead. He got out and comes back for some good, old fashioned vengence.
The figure is pretty bulky, which is why it’s the one I chose to get over the others. I just love the big characters in comics; Hulk, Juggernaut, Abomination, Wink, Venom, etc. Size matters when it comes to toys, even in 1/18th scale.
The heft isn’t really there. Most of the toy is hollow, which I suppose is to allow for the spring assembly inside. It kind of feels like a Happy Meal toy.
It comes with one “accessory”.
It’s nothing of the sort, in my opinion. It’s a weird backpack/propeller/fin thing. It’s triangular in shape and has a post that fits into a hole in his back like a GI joe. The fit isn’t perfect, there are gaps between it and the figure, but it does stay where it’s supposed to and that’s all that really matters to me.
Sculpt is a far cry from the comic version of Crimson Dynamo, the one I’m more familiar with. I like the Astronaut-Out-For-Revenge twist instead of the Russian-Physicist-Out-For-Revenge better,but the old version looks more like a proper arch nemesis. This guy looks more like an arch nemesis flunky.
I do like it though, since it looks like one of those space robots those old scifi movies. The cyclops “eye”, the “headless” torso, the over developed arms and spindly legs. You have to admit it’s a pretty striking design, even if it departs from the Marvel Superhero style.
Paint though is almost non-existant. Aside from the red stripes, there’s nothing here. The rest of the figure is cast plastic. The main figure is made of a sturdy, hard material, while the backpack/propeller/fin thing is of a softer, more pliable plastic.
Articulation leaves something to be desired though. He’s got hinge shoulders, hinge elbows, hinge hips, hinge knees and… that’s it.
To make things worse, his legs are slightly preposed with one in front of the other. Pair that with an obviously top-heavy toy and a small footprint, and you get one that tends to fall over.
Then again, it is made for the kids, who would most likely use their IMAGINATION to fill in the gaps here. I’m sure I wouldn’t have minded the lack of points of articulation back when I was wearing hot pants, knee socks and fitted tees (for those I know personally - there’s a mental picture that will haunt you).
Till next time.
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.
