Toy Review: Marvel Heroes Self-Vending Buildable Figures

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…