Toy Review: "Armored Assault" 3-Pack

09/17/10

Iron Man 2 “Armored Assault” 3-Pack

If you’re a member of Cybertron Philippines, then you’ve already heard me rant a bit about this Target exclusive 3-pack. You can probably just skip the rest of the text and just look at the pictures.

The rest of you PAY ATTENTION! Reading is good for you.

If you’ve been following the Iron Man 2 line, then you probably don’t have the Air Assault or Weapons Assault Drones either. These sons of bitches were harder to find than the 6″ War Machine and it doesn’t look like they’re going to be included in the next assortments either. It sucks that they are so scarce since I’m sure there are more than a few people who want to recreate that great Sam Rockwell scene in the film:

Scene from Iron Man 2, Paramount Pictures

The rarity of the 2 single packed drones here has made that 8 count for each of the 4 types of drones a far off pipe dream for most. The fact that to get either the Sea Assault or Ground Assault Drone you need to buy a 3 or 4 pack respectively makes that dream seem even farther off.

I’ll be picking up the “Fury of Combat” box set (yet another exclusive, this time for Toys ‘R’ Us) in a few days, but I’m not too bothered by that one. At least that has 2 drones and a Nick Fury to balance the repainted Mark VI.

This one, on the other hand, I can’t help but feel a little taken advantage of.

The “Armored Assault” 3-pack is a set consisting of a Mark V figure with the suitcase and missiles, a Whiplash figure with charged whips, and 1 Sea Assault Drone. The reason for my irritation is that we’ve got both the Mark V and the Whiplash figure in the main, numbered line. The Mark V was number 11 in wave 1 and the Ivan Vanko was number 14 in wave 2.

You might ask, “So? You’ve bought repaints before, Slangards. You’re a repaint junkie!” While that would be somewhat true…

I try buy repaints that are distinctly different from the previous versions. The two above are almost exactly the same as the old ones.

Start with the Ivan Vanko figure.

The figure itself is just like the one I saw and passed up numerous times at the toy store. I still think this thing is ugly. I mean the character is ugly, it’s supposed to look that way, but the design is just very unappealing.

To be fair to Hasbro, I don’t think they could have done any better. The coveralls that Ivan is wearing would block the hip movement no matter what they would have done. The only way around it really would have been to make it out of some kind of cloth and at this scale, that would have looked terrible.

But that doesn’t change the fact that it’s not a very fun toy. If you really want to use the figure, it’s necessary to slide off the shirt portion of the coveralls. It’s fairly easy, and I didn’t have any trouble sliding it down over his legs. You can get it back on the same way.

Once it’s off, you can use his hip joints. He can now pull off some convincing action poses.

He comes with 2 energy whips, which is a change from the first release which just has metal coils, more suitable for Omega Red. They do look better than the old ones, but I’m unconvinced that they are worth having to buy a second Whiplash figure to get. The character just isn’t that interesting in this scale.

The second repaint in the set is the Mark V Armor, which Tony Stark used in the racing scene in the movie. It’s painted red and silver like the Silver Centurion armor in the comics, but the first release was a little off model in the placement of its colors.

This one is a bit closer.

As you can see, the silver on his torso is a little wider, the hands and biceps are also painted silver, and… well that’s about it.

Don’t know about you, but under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t buy another copy of this toy for that.

“But it’s got an accessory!” you say?

Yes it does, but it’s the exact same one I already got with the other one. Come on, Hasbro! I’d liked to have seen a second head maybe, or some rotocast race car parts. SOMETHING to make this seem less than a complete rip off.

I mean those rotocast car parts would have gone well with the race track back drop they come with.

Now the good news. The Sea Assault Drone.

FINALLY, I’ve got one of these things. I’ve been looking all over, but I was always a step behind when they were stocking these. Even at the last event, I went to lunch, I got back and heard they’d restocked while I was gone and I missed out.

Argh argh.

Now that I have one, I’m kind of wondering if I should have bothered.

It looks pretty good, but…

I remain unmoved. I’m not feeling thrilled when I play with it. It took me awhile to put my finger on it (I was thrown off by how cool it looks), but I think I’ve worked out the reasons.

First off, the limited articulation:

The hips are very limited. The legs can’t move forward because there’s a sort of skirt that covers the swivel hinge joints and prevents you from moving them forward or back. The limit is what you see above. They can move towards the sides, and there’s a thigh swivel , double hinge knee, and swivel hinge ankle to help with stability, but like I said… it’s limited.

The arms are the same thing. The shoulders and elbows are both swivel hinge joints but they’re blocked by the loads of formed plastic around it. sigh.

Unlike the single pack Drones, this one doesn’t really get accessories in the strictest sense. What it has are attachments; two shoulder-mounted missile pods and a backpack. The back pack has a peg that fits right into a hole in the back of the figure GI Joe style, but the pods are another story.

These things are basically just big, hollow shoulder pads. They’re made of soft plastic that basically just sits on the shoulder, held in place by two bumps on the bottom edge that fit in groves on the figure’s shoulders. It’s not secure at all. They always fall off. sigh again.

Despite the problems, like I said, it looks very nice. Even if the missile pods have a hard time remaining on, they look very menacing. This was my favorite drone when I saw the movie, so I was very excited to see how the toy turned out. It does do a good job of reproducing the blocky robot.

Another plus here is the heft of the figure. It’s a solid hunk of plastic. It looks and FEELS bigger than the Iron Man figures and much heavier in your hand. I think the plastic they used for this is a little denser than the one used for the rest of the line. It feels similar to the material they used for the 6″ War Machine.

One other thing that dampened the pain of dropping Php 1,500.00 (about $30 - $35 depending on what our exchange rate is at the moment) for these 3 figures is the fact that NONE of them is a must have.

Now you may be going “WHAT?! Slangards, how is that a good thing?”

Well, let me tell you. Retail exclusives are naturally harder to find than regular releases. There are fewer units in stock and if there isn’t a Target, Walmart, Toys ‘R’ Us or Randy’s Donuts near you, chances are you’re shit out of luck. Hence, when Hasbro makes something like 6″ Mark IV (a must have if ever there was one) a retail exclusive, it feels as if someone has just shoved a 12″ dildo, covered in cayenne pepper, up your ass, force-fed you a bottle of laxative, led you at gunpoint into the middle of your old high school auditorium which is filled with all your old classmates and co-workers, and hands you a bucket.

At least this time I can tell you “this isn’t worth the trouble” and you won’t feel like killing yourself.