CADTOYS X’mas Toys
& Die Cast SALE
CADTOYS X’mas Toys & Die Cast SALE
Dec. 21 - 23, 2010
stall unit # 81, 82 & 87
Bldg. 1- Ground Floor
E Life Digital Zone ( Eton Cyberpod Corinthians )
Edsa Corner Ortigas Ave.
Lots of free parking spaces
From Pinoytoykolektor.
Steamhammer & the Constructicons
You’d think that my review of Grimstone an the Dinobots would mean that I’d decided to drop the Power Core Combiners from my pull list of Transformer toys, but I’m you’d be wrong. Though I really was disappointed by that first wave 4 set, the second one was enough to keep me on the hook.
Steamhammer and the Constructicons is the second of 2 5-packs in this fourth wave of figures. Unlike the last wave of figures which was entirely made up of re-purposed figures from the first 2 waves, this series is completely new. Both the 5 and 2-packs are molds that we haven’t seen before with new drones and new mini-cons. Sadly, you have to enjoy it while it lasts because wave 5 has only 1 new figure, Undertow with Waterlog.
Yet Steamhammer has a whole lot of awesome to tide you over until that new set comes around.
He comes packaged in his robot form (or the Commander) with the 4 drones surrounding him. It’s a blessedly easy to open pack, with only one paper tie for each toy (or accessory depending on your perception). Once you get through them, it’s easy scheezy. Just pop them out of the plastic bubble.
The Commander form is where we’ll start, because:
Why you ask? Because you can’t really do anything with him. The huge backpack formed by the bulldozer blade and the power-up form’s head make it almost impossible for him to stand. The only way to do it is to move the blue power-up pegs in his feet down and off-set the weight of that monstrosity. It doesn’t change the look at all, but damned if it isn’t annoying.
To make matters worse, you can’t really move his thighs any where. The way it’s constructed means that it has almost no range of motion at all. He can kick sideways, but movement front of back? Not a chance.
[IMG]http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv232/slangardssinned/Toy%20Reviews/TF%20Powercore/6f64047f.jpg[/IMG]
It would have been nice if they had just let the blade detach so he could use it as a riot sheild or something, but since the gestalt head is attached to the back of the thing, I guess that that wasn’t an option.
You’ll also notice those two big, black things sticking out of the blade. Those are the front ends of his tank treads. Don’t know what they’re supposed to be in his robot mode.
[IMG]http://i687.photobucket.com/albums/vv232/slangardssinned/Toy%20Reviews/TF%20Powercore/d626061f.jpg[/IMG]
His arm articulation is much better than that below his waist. He’s got the same balljointed shoulders as most Scout Class robots, plus a bicep swivel and elbow hinge, which allows him to do pretty much whatever you need him to do.
I also like the fact that you can twist his left hand around and pretend the mini-con port on his left elbow is another gun. Pew pew pew! He’s also got those Wolverine claws to fool around with.
Commander Steamhammer converts to a relatively big bulldozer. The transformation is one of the good points about him. Compared to some of the others (Like Sledge below) it feels well thought out and leaves a minimum of kibble (if you don’t count that big ass backpack and those annoying blue pegs). If he didn’t have so much trouble standing…
But we were talking about the bulldozer. It’s an excellent looking example of a bulldozer, though I don’t know if it’s actually based on some real design out there. It feels more like someone’s IDEA of a COOL-LOOKING bulldozer.
It’s got one mini-port on the top of his cab.
The drones are shaped like other heavy construction equipment. There is a drilling rig (right arm), a wedge-plow (right leg), a scoop loader (left arm), and a steamroller (left leg). They’re all smaller than Steamhammer, which is odd, but just go with it.
The sculpt of each looks nice, less cartoony than the previous releases which had proportions that were slightly round and stubby. I kind of felt that the drones with Crankcase felt like the chibi versions of military vehicles, caricatures. There are some interesting paint applications that you’ll see on the wedge-plow’s and Steamhammer’s blades, and the steamrollers roller. Tiny little streaks of silver that make it look like they’ve been scratched right down to the naked metal. I don’t know about you guys, but little touches like that really sell a toy to me and increase my perception of its value.
While I love the vehicle modes, I like the gestalt mode the best.
I said that Steamhammer was the best of the Power Core Combiners so far and I meant it. He’s the one that has limbs that are recognizable as actual hands and feet! Yay Hasbro! You finally came to your senses!
No as a Fine Arts graduate, I know that asymmetry is graphically interesting. It draws the eye, creates imbalance, makes you queasy. But there’s a reason that nature decided to make most animals symmetrical. Even a race of robots would be subject to the laws of survival of the fittest. All other things being equal, as the Power Core Commander with the most balanced looking body, Steamhammer would most likely kill the competition.
Really, I can’t understand why the rest of the drones can’t look this good.
His articulation as a gestalt is just as limited as the rest though, limited mainly to shoulders, hips, and knees. He’s got a neck, but the construction around the head limits the movement to a tiny angle that might as well not exist. He makes up for it with antennae equipped with swivel joints.
He’s also got the requisite mini-con ports on his person. His are placed more logically then some of the sets, so go nuts.
Really, this set turned me completely around and brought me back to the place I was before Grimstone. I was on the verge of really enjoying this line after getting Crankcase and Bombshock, but now I’m totally sold. I don’t think I’ll be getting the other 5-packs, because I can’t stand the puny and malformed limbs, but if they keep making new ones with the same attributes of this set, I’ll keep buying them.
Grimstone and the Dinobots
“Grimstone and the Dinobots”.
It sounds like one of those cartoons from the 80’s they liked to show on Saturday mornings. Either that or a rock band. It’s neither, however. Grimstone and the Dinobots is a boxset of Transformers availble at toystores now. It’s part the new Transformer subline called the “Power Core combiners”. If you’re old enough to remember the gestalt (a group of 5 or 6 Transformers who could join together to form one big bot), then you already know what you’re in for.
Or you’d think you’d know.
They’ve gone and changed some things around. For one, it’s no longer 5 robots with different personalities. It’s just the one robot, in this case Grimstone. The robot, called the Power Core Commander, can control “drones” which are basically power up items, not individuals. These drones don’t transform into a robot; they go straight from vehicle (or in this case dinosaur) to their respective limb once they’ve connected to the Commander.
It’s an intriguing concept, but it hasn’t been very well executed. Grimstone is part of the 3rd wave of figures in the line. We’ve already gotten several 5-packs (each with a Commander and 4 drones) and 2-packs (a Commander and a mini-con, which is sort of like a target master/power master weapon). I was looking at Grimstone as the one that would provide proof of concept to me, prove that the Power Core Combiners could really be something great.
Sorry, Hasbro, but no cigar.
There are a few things that the Power Core Combiners have against them. The biggest is the fact that calling them “5-packs” is misleading. You’re not getting 5 toys. You’re getting 1 toy with 5 accessories.
The drones really aren’t anything to write home about. They’ve only got the two forms, vehicle (or dinosaur) and limb. You’d think that would mean Hasbro would be able to design some nice looking limbs, not those stick figure gestalts that could only goose step. No such luck. They’ve mostly got knees now, but you’re still stuck with a lack of elbows, and many of the other joints are blocked by various kibble.
Most of the drones transform into misshappen claws, or club feet; forms unrecognizable as a hand or a boot. Sure we could argue that “it’s an alien robot, it doesn’t need to look humanoid”, but do we really mean that? We want our robots to look like us, not like Quasimodo.
I also can’t believe that they thought the fact that these toys are gestalts wasn’t enough of a gimmick. Hasbro (or the designers) decided to make the conversion process of the drones spring-loaded. The blurbs on the box look great to an 8-year old in the toy store, but it’s as annoying as fuck to play with. Because of the spring loaded mechanism, the arms and legs tend to fall off constantly, popping out if you touch the parts wrong. Some of the other limbs are also hard to put on, because the parts connected to the machine don’t want to drop properly. What really kills me is the fact that if they hadn’t been limited to this asinine idea, Hasbro’s designers could have come up with more complicated conversion schemes that would have likely netted us more traditional looking mecha that looked more like the concept art on the box.
The third thing is the size of the toys. The Commanders are really just Scout Class toys, which means they stand about 5″ tall. When combined with the drones, you get a figure about 8″ tall. Original price for the 5-packs was Php 1,500.00; too much for this. Even at the marked down Php 1,000.00, I thought a long time before jumping in.
And have I mentioned those ugly blue nubs that stick out like Superman at a cosplay event?
But wait. Let me start over. The box. It’s big, which is weird, considering I just got done telling you the toys were small.
Let’s start with the Commander mode.
Ugh.
Really, I can’t stand this toy. Its body parts are disproportionate, the dino head doesn’t seem to be integrated at all, its got those annoying feet that won’t hold him up, and the articulation is awful. Just awful. The less time I spend her the better.
Next up, we’ve go the dinosaur forms which, quite frankly, is where I’ll keep them from now on. The 4 drones scale nicely with the Styracosaurus (Grimstone) and with the Classics Grimlock if you have him. The color scheme also mirrors the old Dinobot silver, gold and red, which is a nice nod to G1.
The other dinos, the drones, have less articulation than Grimstone, mostly just a hinged jaw here, a tail wag there, maybe a bit of a wiggle in the arms. There’s the Ankylosaurus (left leg), the Dimetrodon (left arm - it’s a Dimetrodon, even if the guys at Hasbro want to name it a “Spinosaurus”), the Pachycephalosaurus (right leg), and the Parasaurolophus (right arm). The Pachycephalosaurus has the best articulation; it’s head goes down as his tail goes up, making it look like it’s ready to ram it’s bonedome into something, which is what it does in real life, so… cool.
The dinosaur modes are really the reason I can’t completely hate this set. Having new Dinobots is just so awesome, it somewhat negates the suck that is the rest of the set.
Speaking of which, the big suck. The gestalt.
This isn’t my first Power Core Combiner. When the discounts hit, I went out and bought several of them and I got to say that my initial fanboy impressions of them were well on the way to turning when this monstrosity came out. Both Crankcase with the Destrons and Bombshock with Combaticons were pretty great. I also got the 2-packs Huffer and Caliburst, Icepick and Chainclaw, Leadfoot and Pinpoint, and Sledge with Throttle, all of which were fun.
That perception dropped considerably when I got this thing home.
SOOOO MUCH KIBBLE…
It’s like the designers didn’t even try to change the dinos into robot parts. The Pachycephalosaurus is just squatting, the Ankylosaurus looks as if someone just kicked it in the ass. Don’t get me started on the Parasaurolophus claw. I can live with the Dimetrodon jaw hand, but they didn’t even bother to do something with the sail or the tail.
And did I mention that none of the guns actually pivot? Ankylosaurus’ cannons point at the ground, and Parasaurolophus ‘ weapons fire right over Grimstones head.
Really, what is this?
Or this?
Hasbro, please!
Now there are bound to be people who like this toy that are going to try and convince me that it is the shit. That since Hasbro is taking a chance on a new property that isn’t supported by a cartoon or a comic or a movie, I should cut them some slack. That it’s the greatest thing since comic book superhero movie porn parodies.
However, after seeing all the things that Hasbro IS capable of, this set is just a dissappointment to me. I’ll keep it because I do love dinosaurs, but it is by no means a must own Transformer.
Deadpool & Warpath
Ah, Mr. Liefeld.
Although he is generally the target of scorn because of his douche bag behavior and his blatant disregard for proportion and anatomy, you have to hand it to the man. Rob Liefeld took some third rate characters (the cast of The New Mutants) of the Marvel Universe turned their book into an undeniable success. He created many characters in that book that went on to create lasting impacts on the 616 timeline. Later, his X-Force #1 became the best selling debut issue in history (if quickly overthrown by Lee’s X-men #1). In the pages of that book, he came up with two characters who became icons of the 90’s comics. One of them was Deadpool.
You know Deadpool, right? The merc with a mouth? The guy in the red tights who can’t stop talking? The disfigured, mentally unstable, unkillable, killing machine?
Ryan Reynolds in X-Men Origins: Wolverine?
Yeah, there you go! That guy. He’s known to have wittier banter than Spider-man, a faster healing factor than Wolverine, and more guns than the Punisher. He’s the irreverent bad-ass that never stopped being the kid on the bus who keeps fidgeting and talking about how his dog likes to lick its own butt. Which is probably why readers love him so much.
It’s no wonder that he was chosen as one of the Marvel Legends Fan’s Choice figures during the poll Hasbro had last year. Despite so many of the senior collectors of various toy sites calling for some sanity, begging others not to vote for good old Wade Wilson because, duh, there was NO WAY that Hasbro wasn’t going to inlcude him in the assortment, and despite him having a decent version in the same scale, he won out in the end.
While I’ll admit that I’d have loved it if we could have gotten a 6″ Constrictor, or a Bi-Beast, or even a Fantomex, I really can’t fault the people for voting this guy in. Yes the old version was good, but the proportions were always a little weird, the articulation a little funky, and what the hell was up with the Doop include? Not to mention that Marvel Legends Wave 6 was one of the hardest to find, and Deadpool being as popular as he is, getting a complete figure now can cost you as much as Php 4,000.00. Who wants to pay that much for a 6″ piece of plastic?
The problem is, that Hasbro went and did it again. Made a deal with a retail outlet for exclusive distribution rights to one of it’s toys. This time Toys R’ Us. In the Philippines, Toys R’ Us has a habit of jacking up the price of their exclusives to obscene levels. I was anticipating that these things might hit the Php 2,500.00 mark. Thankfully, I heard the news that they would be distributed to Toy Kingdom as well as TRU, and would in fact be lauched at another leg of the Hasbro Toy Fair for a “mere” Php 1,800.00.
Too bad I was out of town the day the new figures were to be released. ARGH! I really had resigned myself to not owning these any more, and after I got off the plane on Sunday, I trekked to Megamall thinking to at least pick up the new Powercore Combiners.
Lo and behold, however, there was still stock of all 3 of the boxsets! Valkyrie and Hulk, Black Widow and Winter Soldier, even… dare I believe?… Deadpool and Warpath!!!
Almost 600 words in and I haven’t even talked about the toys. Let’s just say “WORTH IT!”
I can’t say how much I love the Deadpool figure (as if the above gushing wasn’t enough). The thing is a marvel of design that rivals the Nemesis Daredevil. It’s only more amazing that it’s a re-purposed buck, used originally as the body for the Union Jack figure that was included in the Red Hulk wave. It’s a slim, but muscular body that with some slight re-tooling (an new head, new gear, and some new feet) looks perfect for Deadpool.
His articulation is top-notch, with double-hinge joints up the wazoo. The double swivel-hinges at his hips and shoulders give a great range, as does the swivel-hinge at his neck. He’s also got swivel-hinges at his wrists and ankles, a and a torso cruch. That’s about all the flexibility you need!
Paint isn’t really an issue. He’s mostly cast in red with some black apps. I didn’t see any glaring mistakes. There is a tampographed Deadpool face on the side of his AR-M9F assault rifle (yes, THAT weapon again) and some white applications on his eyes. All good.
There’s also the face sculpt to talk about. He loosk as if he’s SMIRKING under that mask. ’nuff said. The feet? Wow. How about the hands? Trigger fingers, bitch!
Accessories are probably the best of all 6 figures in this set. Despite him being the same size as Black Widow and company, he still gets more swag than all of them; web gear, a thigh holster, a .45 pistol, the aforementioned rifle, two removable scabbards, and two swords.
About the only negative things I can say is that his head may be SLIGHTLY bigger than it should me, and he should have MORE guns and more places to keep them. 3 pistols with holsters, some loops in the back for some H&K MP5s, some shotguns strapped on, and a few bowie knives to round out the set. Oh, and grenades. He should have had grenades.
After the geektastic geekgasm I had with Deadpool, Warpath is kind of an afterthought. He’s one of those characters that didn’t really see much page time before the Liefeld revamp of the New Mutants. After Rob included him in the team, he got a lot of action though. His entire tribe was murdered, he had to duke it out with the terribly named “Mutant Liberation Front” (MILF!) and a guy named “Forearm” who had, you guessed it, four arms, kidnapped by a Mad Max reject named Gideon, hooked up with a red-haired Irish chick, and so on. And all this before Liefeld left the series.
As a mutant, Proudstar’s powers are pretty mediocre. Super strength and super speed and super senses. Sound Familiar?
Yeah, I thought so too.
Still technically, Marvel was really just plagiarizing itself since James was just a copy of his brother, John Proudstar who shared the same powers. Meh. He also has the power of flight which was a WTF moment for me when I read about it, as well as some latent Shaman abilities.
Whatever.
The toy is great though, based off the Hulkling body. The figure is highly articulated for one of this size, and even has a few more joints than Deadpool does. They are somewhat limited due to the size of his muscles, but I can live with it.
Sculpt wise there are a few sticking points. Theres the fact that the Hulkling toy had these weird lines or groves etched into the skin, giving it some texture I guess. The new torso that Hasbro’s given him does not. Boo. The new head is a little too stoic if you ask me. I mean the shape is awesome (he’s all chin), but the intensely bored look is tired, Hasbro. Why can’t Superheroes smile?
Paint is more of a problem with James than with Wade. He’s cast in black plastic mostly so it requires quite a coat to get that red skintone on him. Same goes for the silver trim. You’ll need to watch out for messed up lines or smeared paint (though with the limited stocks here, no one had much of a choice really). I’d have preferred to get the old Thunderbird variant costume with the red and blue, but I was too late to get that one. Hopefully I can pick it up later.
Accessories are pretty slim, but that’s understandable since he’s supposed to be a hand to hand combatant. He comes with two bowie knives which are supposed to be made of vibranium, given to him by Storm. The two knives fit loosely into a harness he’s got on the back of his belt, a cool feature, if somewhat so-so in execution. The knives tend to fall out of the sheath and out of his hands if you’re not careful.
While I’m not sure how much of a team these two were in the comics, I got to say the make for an awesome two-pack. Hopefully, we’ll get to see more of them down the line if Toys R’ Us decides to order more of the things.
Marvel Heroes 2-Inch
Self-Vending Buildable Figures
Ah, to be a kid again.
I remember weekends, going to the grocery store with my mom, waiting for her while she was at the check out counter, staring intently at the various vending machines by the door. These magic machinces, with their glorious treasures, dispensing all varieties of sinfully sweet temptation and disposable plastic frivolty, calling to me, asking me to spend my hard earned lawn-mowing money for a few minutes of fun.
Now as an adult, I know that vending machinces with their point of purchase placement aren’t the cheapest way to get your jollies on. If you wanted candy, it was better to go into the supermarket and buy a kilo of them in a bag than to spend a quarter (I don’t know how much those babies cost now, but back then a quarter was a lot) for a single gumball. If it was those little, cheaply-made toys you wanted… well you were better off buying a Happy Meal or a box of cereal than you were feeding coins to one of those metal boxes.
The worst thing was, you never knew what you were getting. It could have been that bannana flavored gumball you wanted, but it just as easily have been that vile, black licorice one. There was no way to control what came out of the box short of feeding it your quarters until it was empty.
Which is probably what the vending machine companies count on.
The “Marvel Heroes 2-Inch Self-Vending Buildable Figures” are a set of licensed vending machine toys made in China. I saw them online about a year ago, and wanted them desperately. They were so unbelievably cute and made such wonderful desktop decorations that I hurriedly clicked the link to see how I might order a few. Sadly, it didn’t look like I’d be able to.
The figures are sold per case. Each case cost about $100.00 and included a random assortment of 250 pieces of the toys (and a free display card!). Even if that came out to only about Php 18 each, there were only 6 Marvel Superhero characters in the assortment. It seemed retarded to buy 244 more pieces than I needed, especially with limited liquidity and no sure way to garuantee sell through if I should decide to unload them. I can’t say I wasn’t tempted. I mean I did the math.
I hate the math.
Anyway. It looks like someone had the same idea that I had. He or she apparently bought a case of them and sold off the excess ones to various stalls in Greenhills, as evidenced by their availability there last weekend. The figures go for around Php 75 to 100, which means whoever imported them must have made a pretty good profit. Me, I’m just glad I was able to get one of each and only pay a total of Php 475.00 versus Php 4,500.00 for the case.
The toys themselves are simple enough affairs, as any vending machine toy should be. They’re more of the US variety, being round, cutesy rotocast affairs, rather than the kind you see in Japanese vending machines which are mostly gashapons (small, usually non-poseable figures) and keychains of anime characters.
The “Self-Vending Buildable” part of their name describes the fact that they don’t require a capsule like the aforementioned gashapons. The heads of the toys act as their own capsule, splitting open to accomadate the body of the character. The body has a small peg where the neck would be which fits into a hole at the bottom of the head. It all works well and makes for a very nice package.
The sculpt for each of the toys is exactly the same, without any extra accessories or various outcroppings like the similar Mighty Muggs line of Hasbro. The only thing that differentiates the characters is the color of the plastic (green for Hulk, blue for Cap, red for Spidey, etc.) and the tampographed paint applications.
The paint is relatively good, though there are some fuzzy lines here and there. You’ll also want to keep an eye out for scratched off paint. The plastic they used for these is very smooth, so the paint has a tendency to peel off if it’s scratched. Be careful! Sadly, the choice in Greenhills isn’t really the best. Each stall I saw had at most 2 sets and only saw one each of Thor and Captain America. Even though Cap has a hole in his white belt in the back, I got him anyway since there were no more to be had.
If I HAD decided to get that case of these figures, I figure it would have been a great excercise to get one set of figures from it, then use the rest as base figures for an entire Marvel Universe of characters. Or make some into the Autobots and Decepticons. Maybe a Manny Pacquiao. A Noy Aquino. A Pedobear!
Maybe I’ll get that case after all…
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.
