Sci-Fi Revoltech
Iron Man Mark VI
Revoltech’s track record seems to being heading down. From awesome toys like Danboard, Yoko, and Pocco, we’re now seeing crap like the Revoltech Predator. The main problem of the line as I see it, is also it’s unique selling point; the Revolver joint.
For those of you who don’t collect this line of Kaiyodo figures from Japan, the Revolver joint is basically a removable, racheted swivel joint with two pegs at either end that plug into holes in the figures extremeties. The construction of the proprietary joint allows for some pretty fine articulation, but by nature, it easily falls apart.
From Kaiyodo’s Revoltech packaging
Even more than the odd proportions of these Japanese interpretations of science fiction properties, the fact that the designers need to engineer the toys AROUND this existing joint template severely limits the way they can model a figure. It worked fine when there were only a few joints to worry about and the characters were relatively simple anime heroes, but these new figures have a points of articulation count to make a Marvel Legend blush.
Such is the case with the recent Revoltech Iron Man Mark VI, number 24 in Kaiyodo’s Sci-Fi line.
Above is what you get when you buy the figure. As I said, Revoltech toys are put together with the Revolver joint, which means they can be disassembled. Though the system affords great range to the joints, it makes them astonishingly fiddly. Every time you move a knee, his leg falls off. If you like to pose and re-pose toys as much as I do, this is all kinds of aggravating.
In addition, a warning; Don’t try what I did above. The figure sports some lilliputian Revolver joints that don’t take kindly to being removed from their holes. I broke one just trying to disassemble the thing.
Like most toys of this kind, the box is a hopeless space hog. The figure and accessories only takes up some 50% of the volume inside the paperboard. The rest of it is wasted space. It’s not perticulary sturdy either, though the plastic trays and sheets seperating the various painted parts of the figure do alot towards keeping the figure mint.
Kaiyodo’s photography really leaves the American toy companies in the dust. The Japanese really seem to know how posing an action figure can really sell it to an audience. Like the graphics on the box for Takara’s Animated Ironhide, there are several different photos with a unique pose to give you an idea of the range. There’s still that crowded look to the layout, but it’s a toy meant for the Japanese market, so I won’t gripe aobut it.
Inside, you’ll also find a small gatefold catalog with all the other Sci-fi Revoltech releases, including the Alien Queen, Jason Voorhees, Jack Sparrow, Buzz Lightyear, Skeleton Warriors, Godzilla, and other Tokusatsu monsters and robots. I was initially tempted to get more of these, but after the Revoltech Predator and Iron Man, my enthusiasm is gone.
Comparisons with the Walmart Iron Man are inevitable, and warranted. Though it stands slightly smaller, and has a slimmer build appropriate to Japanese aesthetics, the figure is still 1/12th scale at about 6″ tall.
The contest is a toss up however, as the Walmart version wins on faithfulness to the movie model and on playability, but the Revoltech version has the leg up on articulation. The joint system really does shine here, allowing the figure to approximate some of the more familiar poses from the movie posters.
Essentially, the figure has a double swivel/hinge joint at the following points: base of the skull, base of the neck, shoulder, elbow, wrist, mid torso, hip, knee (this joint is somewhat extended to allow a bend of more than 90 degrees), and ankles.
It also surpasses its Hasbro counterpart in the accessories department. In addition to having a selection of alternate hands like the Walmart version, the Kaiyodo figure also has a stand that looks like exhaust from his boot jets, and two Repulsor blasts that fit into either his palms or his boots, so that he can be posed in flying positions.
Sweet.
So why the thumbsdown? Oh, it’s a great display piece. It’s just not a good toy.
The word “toy” implies that there’s a level of playability to the figure. That you can pick it up and while away the time with it, pounding Titanium Man into pulp, without having to worry about losing parts or breakage. Unfortunately, Kaiyodo’s foray into the Marvel Universe is something that is more trouble that it’s worth.
If this thing had been about Php 500.00 cheaper, things might have swung it’s way, but at a pre-order price of Php 1,800.00 (about $40 US) and retail at Php 2,400.00 or so, this is a rip off.
Not to mention the quality issues of this figure. I hadn’t had the thing for a day, and the right hip completly split apart, falling right off the white peg. I had to glue the thing back together and because it’s such a sensitive area, it’s now just loose as hell.
Still good for Hulk to pound on, though.
Shameless Plug! Toys for Sale!
It’s funny how you hear from old friends and you find out you’re not the only one who is a total geek.
I got a message from someone last year and it turned out to be one of my high school classmates who had started reading my blog. Found out he was into toy collecting, too. He recently imported some Dark of the Moon Transformers and has a little sideline going on selling them on the cheap. Checkout his store on Sulit.com.ph
Buy Megatron, Shockwave, or Skyhammer below SRP!
I also got a note from an old college classmate a few months ago asking what kind of toys were worth importing. Turns out her boyfriend was also into toys and was bringing stuff in to sell.
Tonight, I got a note from her that the stuff arrived. It’s a start, but already there’s some stuff I want to get from the batch.
You can see more at www.facebook.com/toystash
If you do buy from either of them, tell ‘em slangards sent you. Maybe they give me discounts, yes?
Pursuit of Cobra
“Desert Battle” Storm Shadow
If you still haven’t got yourself one of the Pursuit of Cobra figures, get off you lazy ass and do it now, soldier!
G.I. Joe has never been better than it was with the first 4 waves of this sub-line. Sure we all have a soft spot for the bright colors and the insanely silly characters of the old TV show (if you don’t know what I mean, read this article at Toplessrobot.com), but Pursuit of CObra turned things around and gave us more “realistic” takes on the formula.
I’ve done the Desert Battle Snake Eyes from Wave 3 and the Cobra Shock Troopers from Wave 3 so let’s go back to the start and look at Wave 1 with the Desert Battle Storm Shadow.
If you’ve never heard of Storm Shadow, educate yourself:
“Storm Shadow is a ninja mercenary who works for COBRA. As the desert battle rages, he hunts for Snake Eyes, the G.I. JOE ninja and his sworn enemy. The COBRA martial arts master is prepared for battle in samurai desert armor and armed with connectible katana swords and a manrikigusari chain weapon.”
So there. You can’t have Snake Eyes without Storm Shadow, good without evil, light without dark, Transformers without Michael Bay. I’ve got several pairs of the two ninjas, including the Sigma 6 versions, and a few from the movie line.
This figure in fact, is partly a re-tooling/ re-accessorized version of one of the movie figures. The pants are clearly a holdover from the Rise of Cobra line, and if I’m not mistaken, the body is entirely the same as the Artic Assualt Storm Shadow (which has the same kind of white pants and sneakers as the previous Rise of Cobra figures) and also bare chested. However, the head and forearms are new.
Like the Arctic Assault figure, this Storm Shadow also has a collar that rings his neck. The old one was supposed to be the remains of his shirt I imagine. This one is more like the veil that Tuareg males wear than a the mask and hood of the shinobi shozoku. It’s in keeping with the armor that they’ve given him, which has more of a Prince of Persia theme than a ninja’s traditional clothing. The collar is removable (if you take off his head first), but the wrap around his stomach is rather permanent, unless you’re willing to disassemble him.
Like the other Pursuit of Cobra figures, the beautiful thing about this figure is the gear. He has got something like 13-16 pieces depending on what you want to count as an accessory. Here’s the list:
What’s even better is that if you’re a bit creative, you can store all this gear on the figure! There are slots on the back of his skirt that can accomodate the kodachi swords, the shuriken fit on small pegs on his armor, and the ninjato swords and manrikigusari are modular, so you can just fit that sucker right onto the ends. That kind of forethought put into a figure is always a treat for collectors.
Though he wasn’t my first priority when I started with the Pursuit of Cobra line, Storm Shadow quickly became one of my favorites. The Arabian aesthetic is a nice counterpoint to the Japanese root of the character and it’s definitely nicer than some of the simple repaints. The armor skirt he has is much better than what the first Rise of Cobra Storm Shadow had to deal with and it doesn’t affect his articulation all that much.
His articulation, by the way, is just as good as any other G.I. Joe figure in recent years. He doesn’t share the awesome wrist articulation that the later waves have, but what they gave him is perfect since he doesn’t need to shoulder any rifles. His one bad joint is his ankle; he suffers the same limited range as all the other figures that share his pants do.
Overall, the Desert Battle Storm Shadow is a clear win. Unique sculpt, well crafted and detailed, excellent articulation, no deal breaking quality issues, and accesories up the wazoo.
To give you even more incentive, he isn’t even short packed and was included in most of the later case assortments of waves 2-4. I actually got 3 of him after buying several sets in order to complete my line up (I subsequently sold the extras).
Here in the Philippines, he retailed for about Php 500.00 (just over $11 US) but you could easily find him cheaper from collectors or hobby stores needing to unload extras. Though he’s since sold out at Toy Kingdom, I’m sure it wouldn’t be too hard to find him now.
Go get him.
After watching the new Thor film, I had this irresistable urge to buy something Thor related. This isn’t uncommon. My toy shelf is filled with toys I bought the day after something came out. Case in point: Thinkaway’s InterAction Wall-E and EVE. If I really like a movie or show, I tend to want to get my hands on the merchandise. If they had Sucker Punch action figures, I’d have been all over those.
Having already bought all the good Hasbro Thor toys, I was at a loss as to what else I could buy to feed my craving. Luckily, one of the guys on Plurk posted something about Jollibee’s latest Kiddie Meal freebies:
Image from www.jollibee.com.ph
The Thor Battle Gear set is a little different from the Rio Happy Meal toys I bought a while back. Instead of figurines with action features, these are more like role playing toys. Since the official Hasbro and Nerf role playing toys would cost me my left testicle, I felt it would be better to just get a Php 70.00 meal and get one of these for free.
There are 3 different toys to collect (as of this writing, all 3 were still available at the Jollibee on Emerald Avenue, Ortigas Center, Pasig City).
Image from www.jollibee.com.ph
The first one (the one I’m reviewing today) is called the Hammer Disc Shooter and was available when the movie opened two weeks ago, which is why I got it first. The other two, the Smash Propeller and the Blazing Top Spinner have just recently arrived in stores.
It’s odd that they decided to release the Disc Shooter before the others since it kind of caused me to re-think getting the others. I would have probably released the Top Spinner first so that kids would get that while nothing was out, then when they come back the next week, release the Disc Shooter (the second best) and on the third week, release the Smash Propeller. That way, you get more out of them. But then I’m the kind of sucker who forks over Php 70.00 for a tiny hamburger, three gulps of Coke and a cheap Chinese toy.
The Hammer Disc Shooter comes in a plastic baggie with the instructions printed pretty clearly on the front. How I wish Transformer instructions were this clear. There’s an “Also Available” box on the lower right to showcase the other toys that are weren’t actually available at the time. Good going, J-Bee.
Display value is nil, so you MOC men are shit out of luck.
Once you open it, you’re greeted by the sight of a tiny Mjölnir (complete with cloth strap), and three plastic discs about 1″ in diameter. Each of the small, blue discs has a completely different design on it. None of them are particularly appealing. I tossed them in my bits box almost immediatly.
The hammer works like this:
This causes the disc to be flung out the top of Mjölnir to strike down some unfortunate action figure you’ve placed in front of it with the wrath of the God of Thunder. Or at least that’s what’s supposed to happen. Since there’s no real way to aim the thing, you’re lucky if you can hit the Marvel Universe Loki you’ve scheduled for execution.
He’s standing there sneering at me now.
So yeah, the action feature peters out after a few tries, but the thing is, it’s still motherfuckin’ Mjölnir.
Sure it’s not as detailed as the one from Diamond Select or Museum Replicas, but hey. Php 70.00 versus $1,499.95? What do you want?
The toy doesn’t have the iconic “Whosoever holds this hammer…” oath etched into the face, though. Instead it has a big, unabashed “THOR”. It doesn’t look bad, and hey, it looks awesome over a set of 4″ figures.
That’s good enough for me.
Iron Man the Iron Avenger
Hulkbuster
Oh, Iron Man. Why can’t I quit you?
Iron Man is the most expensive part of my collection. Despite there being dozens of X-men or Transformers that I consider myself a fan of, Iron Man with his insane armory sucks up the majority of my money.
I’ve mentioned how Hasbro makes the most of a Transformer toy mold by re-coloring it and selling it off as a new character. It’s a love/hate kind of thing for some fans. Personally, I love the fact that I’ve got the chance to complete, say, the Seekers, but I hate the fact that I, as a collector, cannot resist the urge to do so and that it costs me around Php 4,000.00 ($89 US), local retail.
Iron Man is even worse. He’s a superhero who has a cavernous room filled with hundreds of different suits of armor, each fit for a certain situation. He alone among the pantheon of Marvel Superheroes can support the same kind of mold re-use that Hasbro heaps upon Transformers fans. Sure, Hulk also has had a lot of different variations (Grey, Green, Smart, War, Tanooki, etc.), but each one of those requires a different mold. I’ve got around 20 6″ Hulk toys and they’re isn’t really a straight re-use among them (there may be a few kit bashes and some with new heads, but we’re not counting them).
Other heroes may also have one or two costumes that you can fudge with a simple alternate deco, but nothing on the same scale. With Iron man, it’s not uncommon for a figure to be used 4 or 5 times by simply releasing it with a new color scheme and extra accessories (also re-issued from other figures). This is the case with the recent Iron Man: the Iron Avenger Hulkbuster.
This was included in first wave of the 6″ Iron Man: the Iron Avenger line, which also included a re-issued Movie War Machine and Mark VI, and one new figure, Titanium Man, which is based on the comic appearance of the character.
The Hulkbuster is one of those “Concept” armors, a term used since the first Iron Man movie toys to describe armor suits that are not really from either the movie or comic continuity. For the most part, these are all re-colors of previously released figures and the rules haven’t changed since then. This figure is a re-colored version of the Heavy Artillery suit from the first movie:
Image mirrored from http://gofigureactionfigures.com
The new colors stick pretty closely to the standard Iron Man hues of red and gold. It’s a good distribution of tones, but it’s not as visually interesting as any of the the other three versions we’ve seen (the aforementioned Heavy Artillery, the Arctic Crusader, and Subterranean armors). Or it could be that I’m just jaded from seeing these same colors on everything since that first wave of movie figures back in 2008.
From that early 2008 movie line to last year’s Iron Man 2 line, the biggest problem with these red and gold figures is the paint. Not only are the colors applied like they were finger painted by an epileptic 3-year old on crack, the red paint itself is often tacky, which means that it coverage isn’t always even beneath the final top coat, and the gold paint fades in a matter of months.
It comes with a few accessories; a new helmet that fits over the smaller helmet and attaches to the collar of his super suit. It’s held on by friction, but it locks in like a bastard, so you ought to be ok. He also comes with a re-colored backpack like the one that came with the Heavy Artillery armor. It’s a happily half-assed piece of work that has 4 appendages, 3 that don’t really look like guns at all. The last of the 4 legs on the backpack is another one of those silly rocket launcers that pops another of those blue fireballs you always see with Hasbro figures.
The sculpt of the figure itself is sweet, looking like a huge, hulking robot. Since he’s so much bigger than the other 6″ Iron Man, he doesnt’ suffer from the Frankensteinian assembly that Hasbro tends foist on us with the rest of the line (e.g. the new Iniative War Machine). The result is a toy that looks cohesive. Solid.
His articulation is fairly good for something this size. The bulk of the body does tend to hinder movement, but you can get some fairly wide stances out of him, and his upper arm movement is pretty good. I do hate that he has no usefull ankle movement. A rocker joint there would have allowed the figure to remain much more stable when.
He is MUCH smaller than the old Marvel Legends Hulkbuster from Toy Biz. That one had a much nicer design, with a flatter helmet. The one that this one sports is tall and narrow. It really looks odd at first, but it began to grow on me as soon as I got it open.
Really, this thing isn’t a must have (if I had to give it a pass/fail grade, I’d thumb it down), but the awesomeness of the original design, the fact that it’s another Iron Man armor in a scale I thought dead, and the hot rod color scheme all combine to make me happy that I picked it up.
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.
