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Marvel Legends Series Gamora
In all the excitement over Hasbro's 6" scale figures, I forget sometimes that the 3.75" scale actually turns out some pretty banging stuff. Gamora caught my eye as I was surfing the interwebs and she's lovely. I like her white space armour look , the sculpting is really nice and she has a fantastic headsculpt. The downside is that the body is painted white plastic, so the joints conspire to make her look a bit unfinished. The paint hasn't adhered so well to some of the surfaces, but I couldn't do any better (I tried with Warhammer stuff years ago and was rubbish).
Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions
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Tetsuro
- Protoform
- Posts: 2520
- Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:26 pm
- Custom Title: Poe Dameron did nothing wrong
- Location: Suomi Finland Perkele
Oh look, more Power of the Force figures!
Yoda w/Jedi training backpack
R5-D4
Bossk
Lando Calrissian
Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker
Flashback Luke Skywalker
Bespin Han Solo
Luke Skywalker in Ceremonial Outfit
Deluxe Crowd Control Stormtrooper
Commtech Stormtrooper w/ battle damage
Freeze Frame Leia Organa w/ blaster rifle
Freeze Frame Leia Organa in Hoth gear
Freeze Frame C-3PO w/ cargo net & removable limbs
Freeze Frame Ewoks Wicket & Logray
Freeze Frame Boba Fett
Freeze Frame Lando Calrissian in General's gear
I've only opened the Stormtroopers, R5-D4 and Bossk so far. Bossk looks amazing for the era the figure came out in, and I love that ridicilous oversized backpack on the Crowd Control Stormtrooper. It's kind of lame that he has no other weapons - and the Commtech Stormtrooper only has a long rifle and no standard issue blaster, but it's a great way to armybuild the guys because there's so many variants that I can at least put together a small squad of them without buying the exact same figure twice, now the only one I'm missing is the Sandtrooper. R5-D4 is ridicilous because they just completely made up a gimmick for him by having him turn into a friggin' missile launcher. Which is why I wanted one.
I bought dupes of the Flashback Luke and Ceremonial Luke because of discolouration, but in the case of the latter it seems more likely that the plastic colour between his sleeves and jacket which are made of different plastics just never quite matched in the first place, so I'm probably just gonna sell the other one.
Oh yeah, I also got the Freeze Frame Slide Viewer - it's like a crappier Viewmaster you can gawk at the Freeze Frames some of the figures come with. It looks like the Macrobinoculars from ESB and comes with two relevant slides of it's own, which is pretty cool. I say "crappier" because the slides don't really fit into the slot snugly and you have to hold them down with a fingertip to actually turn the light on. Rather amusingly, because of the speckled plastic, any white and thus completely seethrough area of the slides will also have that speckled effect. Also ironically you can get this thing very cheaply these days, I got mine for about 20 bucks shipped - but the slide holders, which are just basic plastic pockets with enough space for about sixteen slides, are much harder to come by and thus more expensive.
Yoda w/Jedi training backpack
R5-D4
Bossk
Lando Calrissian
Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker
Flashback Luke Skywalker
Bespin Han Solo
Luke Skywalker in Ceremonial Outfit
Deluxe Crowd Control Stormtrooper
Commtech Stormtrooper w/ battle damage
Freeze Frame Leia Organa w/ blaster rifle
Freeze Frame Leia Organa in Hoth gear
Freeze Frame C-3PO w/ cargo net & removable limbs
Freeze Frame Ewoks Wicket & Logray
Freeze Frame Boba Fett
Freeze Frame Lando Calrissian in General's gear
I've only opened the Stormtroopers, R5-D4 and Bossk so far. Bossk looks amazing for the era the figure came out in, and I love that ridicilous oversized backpack on the Crowd Control Stormtrooper. It's kind of lame that he has no other weapons - and the Commtech Stormtrooper only has a long rifle and no standard issue blaster, but it's a great way to armybuild the guys because there's so many variants that I can at least put together a small squad of them without buying the exact same figure twice, now the only one I'm missing is the Sandtrooper. R5-D4 is ridicilous because they just completely made up a gimmick for him by having him turn into a friggin' missile launcher. Which is why I wanted one.
I bought dupes of the Flashback Luke and Ceremonial Luke because of discolouration, but in the case of the latter it seems more likely that the plastic colour between his sleeves and jacket which are made of different plastics just never quite matched in the first place, so I'm probably just gonna sell the other one.
Oh yeah, I also got the Freeze Frame Slide Viewer - it's like a crappier Viewmaster you can gawk at the Freeze Frames some of the figures come with. It looks like the Macrobinoculars from ESB and comes with two relevant slides of it's own, which is pretty cool. I say "crappier" because the slides don't really fit into the slot snugly and you have to hold them down with a fingertip to actually turn the light on. Rather amusingly, because of the speckled plastic, any white and thus completely seethrough area of the slides will also have that speckled effect. Also ironically you can get this thing very cheaply these days, I got mine for about 20 bucks shipped - but the slide holders, which are just basic plastic pockets with enough space for about sixteen slides, are much harder to come by and thus more expensive.
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Tantrum
- Posts: 673
- Joined: Thu Apr 26, 2012 1:24 am
- Custom Title: Systems Analyst
- Location: Aquidneck Island, RI, USA
I made my last trips to Toys R Us today; there are two stores somewhat near me, and I hit them both.
iZombie Liv Moore - Season 2 I like the show, but am dissapointed in the figure. The face sculpt doesn't look like Rose McIver. The photo on the back shows a much more accurate face. Everything else matches the photo. The photo was taken from an odd angle, so I thought maybe the actual figure would look better from that same angle. Nope. Maybe the mold degraded quickly. Maybe Rose McIver denied the use of her likeness at the last minute.
She comes with decent accessories, including a pan and brain. But, her hands can't hold anything. Her outfit is street clothes, not a lab coat. Now that I've gotten her out of the box, there's not much to indicate that this is Liv Moore, other than a general paleness. She could be Season 1 Kelly Bundy if she weren't dressed so conservatively. She doesn't look like Christina Applegate, but she doesn't look like Rose McIver, either.
Magnetic Garnet a small bendy figure with magnets at the extremities. They also had Steven, Amythst, and Pearl. But, all the figures have square heads. I bought only Garnet, since that's accurate for her. She looks good stuck to my fridge.
iZombie Liv Moore - Season 2 I like the show, but am dissapointed in the figure. The face sculpt doesn't look like Rose McIver. The photo on the back shows a much more accurate face. Everything else matches the photo. The photo was taken from an odd angle, so I thought maybe the actual figure would look better from that same angle. Nope. Maybe the mold degraded quickly. Maybe Rose McIver denied the use of her likeness at the last minute.
She comes with decent accessories, including a pan and brain. But, her hands can't hold anything. Her outfit is street clothes, not a lab coat. Now that I've gotten her out of the box, there's not much to indicate that this is Liv Moore, other than a general paleness. She could be Season 1 Kelly Bundy if she weren't dressed so conservatively. She doesn't look like Christina Applegate, but she doesn't look like Rose McIver, either.
Magnetic Garnet a small bendy figure with magnets at the extremities. They also had Steven, Amythst, and Pearl. But, all the figures have square heads. I bought only Garnet, since that's accurate for her. She looks good stuck to my fridge.
Alleged "poems"
that don't follow a rhyme scheme
are not poetry
that don't follow a rhyme scheme
are not poetry
My X-Men Legends figures are starting to show up piecemeal.
Gladiator is the oft-reused "big guy" body shared by Venom, Captain Britain, wavemate Sabertooth and countless others. The cape is probably a reuse too, so the only unique part the character has to his name is his head sculpt. But it's a very expressive head sculpt that captures his alien features quite well, and Gladiator really doesn't have much in the way of costume detail that shouldn't just be painted on. I guess maybe his belt could have been done as an overlay? He doesn't have any accessories either, but again, it's not like Gladiator makes a habit of using weapons. The figure's really well done but not particularly exciting, which makes it a good fit for Mohawked Purple Jobber Superman.
Tiger Stripe Wolverine stands as a bit of a disappointment, to be honest. It's not a bad figure by any stretch of the imagination, but the problem is that the brown costume Wolvy from the Juggernaut wave was pretty close to perfect and I don't think any of the changes they made for this version of the character actually make it any better. The new head sculpt has more emotion to it than the previous one, but the silhouette of the mask doesn't look quite right. The shoulder pads are articulated, I guess so they don't get in the way of shoulder movement, but they almost never look right either. I think it would have worked out better if the pads had just been molded as part of his shoulder balls, even if that meant 5% less range of motion in some directions. And the molded arm hair is meant to address the complaints that the previous Wolvie didn't have any hair on his arms, but it's completely unpainted and winds up looking more like scar tissue that his healing factor hasn't quite caught up with yet. There's also issues with the deco, with both the yellow and the blue being a few shades darker than they really should be.
Accessory-wise, he comes with the same clawed and unclawed hands as the previous figure, but nothing unique to him. Though as with Gladiator, Wolverine doesn't really need much in the way of accessories.
I don't want to leave the impression that I think that this is a bad toy -- if the previous figure was a 9/10 then this one is still a solid 8. It's just that Hasbro set the bar really, really high with the brown outfit, and it's too bad that the tiger stripe suit doesn't quite reach the same mark. And that makes to way too easy to find nits to pick.
Gladiator is the oft-reused "big guy" body shared by Venom, Captain Britain, wavemate Sabertooth and countless others. The cape is probably a reuse too, so the only unique part the character has to his name is his head sculpt. But it's a very expressive head sculpt that captures his alien features quite well, and Gladiator really doesn't have much in the way of costume detail that shouldn't just be painted on. I guess maybe his belt could have been done as an overlay? He doesn't have any accessories either, but again, it's not like Gladiator makes a habit of using weapons. The figure's really well done but not particularly exciting, which makes it a good fit for Mohawked Purple Jobber Superman.
Tiger Stripe Wolverine stands as a bit of a disappointment, to be honest. It's not a bad figure by any stretch of the imagination, but the problem is that the brown costume Wolvy from the Juggernaut wave was pretty close to perfect and I don't think any of the changes they made for this version of the character actually make it any better. The new head sculpt has more emotion to it than the previous one, but the silhouette of the mask doesn't look quite right. The shoulder pads are articulated, I guess so they don't get in the way of shoulder movement, but they almost never look right either. I think it would have worked out better if the pads had just been molded as part of his shoulder balls, even if that meant 5% less range of motion in some directions. And the molded arm hair is meant to address the complaints that the previous Wolvie didn't have any hair on his arms, but it's completely unpainted and winds up looking more like scar tissue that his healing factor hasn't quite caught up with yet. There's also issues with the deco, with both the yellow and the blue being a few shades darker than they really should be.
Accessory-wise, he comes with the same clawed and unclawed hands as the previous figure, but nothing unique to him. Though as with Gladiator, Wolverine doesn't really need much in the way of accessories.
I don't want to leave the impression that I think that this is a bad toy -- if the previous figure was a 9/10 then this one is still a solid 8. It's just that Hasbro set the bar really, really high with the brown outfit, and it's too bad that the tiger stripe suit doesn't quite reach the same mark. And that makes to way too easy to find nits to pick.
More Legends!
80s Storm is fantastic. I know that everyone else wants either the TAS outfit or the 70s swimsuit look, but not me! Storm is one of my favourite X-Men because of the stories that happened while she was wearing the mohawked punk outfit, so this is how I think of her even though it's not the outfit she wore for the longest or the one that's necessarily the most iconic (basically how I feel about Brown Wolverine too). I had high hopes for this figure and it didn't disappoint at all. The lightning effects are great (though a bit superfluous since the character was depowered for most of this run), the head sculpt is great and they captured the look of the costume really well.
Modern Magneto isn't a look that I'm very familiar with, and I really don't know why the comic artists would veer so far away from his traditional palette. It kind of looks like a "player 2" colour swap from a video game. But as an action figure, I think this is an amazing look! Now obviously the reason why Hasbro made a toy of it is so they can sell us the same toy (with a different cape) in classic colours in 2019 or 2020. But as with last year's Colossus, it's hard to get too upset with these obvious "placeholder" figures when they're really quite good on their own merits. I can see why the people who only want designs straight out of the Jim Lee/90s cartoon era might be annoyed by figures like this. But as someone who likes a good chunk of the designs starting from the 70s reboot until the modern day, I'm glad the design team is willing to explore more than just the "iconic" costumes of the main cast.
I suppose I'm missing the point of Multiple Man by only buying one, but Legends are pretty expensive to army-build and they take up a lot of space. Maybe I'll buy a couple more if he winds up on Amazon for less than half retail around Christmas like a lot of fellow D-listers do every year, but for now Jamie Madrox is going to have to settle for just looking cool instead of showing off his powers. And it IS a cool-looking figure, something that's helped by having three different heads to choose from.
A lot of people are convinced that they're going to use the exact same parts to make a new Gambit in the next few years. I suspect they're right. In fact, when Hasbro revealed the wave they'd mentioned that they'd had a different character planned out but had to push him back to the next wave for cost reasons. After handling Madrox, I have to wonder if Gambit originally had this slot, and they wound up replacing him with a cheaper "pretool" because Madrox would require fewer new parts. After all, a proper Remy would require his staff, new hands with two ungloved fingers, a "card throwing" effect similar to Bullseye's knife one, plus belt, collar and shin overlay parts on top of what they used for Madrox. If that's true I'd be pretty excited for that Gambit figure, because Madrox is a pretty damn solid base to build off of.
Sabertooth doesn't quite work for me, though that's more my fault than the toy's. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just that when I think of this costume I see him as the hulking brute from the TV show with the ridiculously broad shoulders, not the more athletic, normal-proportioned dude he was often drawn as in the comics. I'm surprised to see the amount of new tooling that they did give him -- the forearms are new, and I'm pretty sure his "claw" hands are new too (they seem sharper at the tips than Venom's). I was expecting him to be a plain body reuse with a new head and fuzzy collar, so this level of effort surprised me.
Psylocke, however, is exactly the zero-effort retool that I'd expected Sabes to be. No unique costume parts, just paint on a naked figure. And after showing off a prototype that looked really Asian, I was really disappointed to see how little that carried forward to the final figure -- Betsy's skin tone is just as Caucasian as Madrox or Magneto, so even though the head sculpt has somewhat Asian features she still winds up looking like a white girl. On top of that, her hair isn't purple (though I hear there's a variant that corrected that).
All of those are a bit disappointing, but the real problem is that Betsy's bathing suit look just doesn't work with the way that Hasbro builds its action figures. The cut of the suit doesn't align with the cut of the figure, and the hip joints in particular wind up looking really, really bad. There's highly visible gaps between the legs and the torso that just jump out because of how light her skin is.
Hasbro did make some tweaks to her elbows and hips to give the figure more range of motion, and that's great. The accessories are nice too. But the overall package is a major disappointment.
I was prepared to hate the Apocalypse BAF simply because I think the character is a joke, but no, it's fantastic. The colours are great, the sculpting is great and for the most part the poseability is good too. The elbow joints don't get much range of motion, but that's a problem for a lot of BAFs. The biceps and forearms are just so huge there's not much room for them to move. The size of the figure is just about perfect too -- big enough to be intimidating but not crazy like the ToyBiz one was.
I don't have too many completed BAFs but I'd have to say he rivals Juggernaut for my favourite.
All in all, a really solid wave. Even if Wolverine and Sabertooth weren't quite what I was hoping for they're still good figures, and Psylocke is the only one I'd call below average.
80s Storm is fantastic. I know that everyone else wants either the TAS outfit or the 70s swimsuit look, but not me! Storm is one of my favourite X-Men because of the stories that happened while she was wearing the mohawked punk outfit, so this is how I think of her even though it's not the outfit she wore for the longest or the one that's necessarily the most iconic (basically how I feel about Brown Wolverine too). I had high hopes for this figure and it didn't disappoint at all. The lightning effects are great (though a bit superfluous since the character was depowered for most of this run), the head sculpt is great and they captured the look of the costume really well.
Modern Magneto isn't a look that I'm very familiar with, and I really don't know why the comic artists would veer so far away from his traditional palette. It kind of looks like a "player 2" colour swap from a video game. But as an action figure, I think this is an amazing look! Now obviously the reason why Hasbro made a toy of it is so they can sell us the same toy (with a different cape) in classic colours in 2019 or 2020. But as with last year's Colossus, it's hard to get too upset with these obvious "placeholder" figures when they're really quite good on their own merits. I can see why the people who only want designs straight out of the Jim Lee/90s cartoon era might be annoyed by figures like this. But as someone who likes a good chunk of the designs starting from the 70s reboot until the modern day, I'm glad the design team is willing to explore more than just the "iconic" costumes of the main cast.
I suppose I'm missing the point of Multiple Man by only buying one, but Legends are pretty expensive to army-build and they take up a lot of space. Maybe I'll buy a couple more if he winds up on Amazon for less than half retail around Christmas like a lot of fellow D-listers do every year, but for now Jamie Madrox is going to have to settle for just looking cool instead of showing off his powers. And it IS a cool-looking figure, something that's helped by having three different heads to choose from.
A lot of people are convinced that they're going to use the exact same parts to make a new Gambit in the next few years. I suspect they're right. In fact, when Hasbro revealed the wave they'd mentioned that they'd had a different character planned out but had to push him back to the next wave for cost reasons. After handling Madrox, I have to wonder if Gambit originally had this slot, and they wound up replacing him with a cheaper "pretool" because Madrox would require fewer new parts. After all, a proper Remy would require his staff, new hands with two ungloved fingers, a "card throwing" effect similar to Bullseye's knife one, plus belt, collar and shin overlay parts on top of what they used for Madrox. If that's true I'd be pretty excited for that Gambit figure, because Madrox is a pretty damn solid base to build off of.
Sabertooth doesn't quite work for me, though that's more my fault than the toy's. There's nothing wrong with it, it's just that when I think of this costume I see him as the hulking brute from the TV show with the ridiculously broad shoulders, not the more athletic, normal-proportioned dude he was often drawn as in the comics. I'm surprised to see the amount of new tooling that they did give him -- the forearms are new, and I'm pretty sure his "claw" hands are new too (they seem sharper at the tips than Venom's). I was expecting him to be a plain body reuse with a new head and fuzzy collar, so this level of effort surprised me.
Psylocke, however, is exactly the zero-effort retool that I'd expected Sabes to be. No unique costume parts, just paint on a naked figure. And after showing off a prototype that looked really Asian, I was really disappointed to see how little that carried forward to the final figure -- Betsy's skin tone is just as Caucasian as Madrox or Magneto, so even though the head sculpt has somewhat Asian features she still winds up looking like a white girl. On top of that, her hair isn't purple (though I hear there's a variant that corrected that).
All of those are a bit disappointing, but the real problem is that Betsy's bathing suit look just doesn't work with the way that Hasbro builds its action figures. The cut of the suit doesn't align with the cut of the figure, and the hip joints in particular wind up looking really, really bad. There's highly visible gaps between the legs and the torso that just jump out because of how light her skin is.
Hasbro did make some tweaks to her elbows and hips to give the figure more range of motion, and that's great. The accessories are nice too. But the overall package is a major disappointment.
I was prepared to hate the Apocalypse BAF simply because I think the character is a joke, but no, it's fantastic. The colours are great, the sculpting is great and for the most part the poseability is good too. The elbow joints don't get much range of motion, but that's a problem for a lot of BAFs. The biceps and forearms are just so huge there's not much room for them to move. The size of the figure is just about perfect too -- big enough to be intimidating but not crazy like the ToyBiz one was.
I don't have too many completed BAFs but I'd have to say he rivals Juggernaut for my favourite.
All in all, a really solid wave. Even if Wolverine and Sabertooth weren't quite what I was hoping for they're still good figures, and Psylocke is the only one I'd call below average.
Got some new(ish) Legos in recent history, some from eBay, some from a pretty spiffy new and used (locally owned) Lego shop that just opened near my home. From ebay, the Blacktron II 6851 Tri-wheeled Tyrax that's in pristine condition. Seriously, the cockpit doesn't have a single scuff on it - I'm impressed!
And from the local shop, Galaxy Squad 30230 Mini-Mech and a small tub of used parts - mostly all space-y things (wings, antennae, rockets, etc.) and some parts I needed for my older sets that I think were lost somewhere over the years. The Mini-Mech is neat for such a tiny thing of few parts. Not sure if I really dig the newer Space guys with fancy helmets and no oxygen tanks. They're OK, I just prefer the older style Space look. Overall though a big
And from the local shop, Galaxy Squad 30230 Mini-Mech and a small tub of used parts - mostly all space-y things (wings, antennae, rockets, etc.) and some parts I needed for my older sets that I think were lost somewhere over the years. The Mini-Mech is neat for such a tiny thing of few parts. Not sure if I really dig the newer Space guys with fancy helmets and no oxygen tanks. They're OK, I just prefer the older style Space look. Overall though a big
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Tetsuro
- Protoform
- Posts: 2520
- Joined: Mon Jul 24, 2006 1:26 pm
- Custom Title: Poe Dameron did nothing wrong
- Location: Suomi Finland Perkele
Another 90's Star Wars haul.
POTF Commtech Darth Vader w/ Interrogation Droid
POTF Malakili
POTF Captain Piett
POTF Grand Moff Tarkin
POTF C-3PO w/ cargo net
POTF Mara Jade
POTF Grand Admiral Thrawn
POTF Kyle Katarn
POTF Dark Trooper
POTF Sandtrooper
POTF Luke Skywalker in Stormtrooper disguise
POTF Commtech Luke Skywalker
POTF Cinema Scene Mynock Hunt
ROTJ Teebo
POTF Commtech Darth Vader w/ Interrogation Droid
POTF Malakili
POTF Captain Piett
POTF Grand Moff Tarkin
POTF C-3PO w/ cargo net
POTF Mara Jade
POTF Grand Admiral Thrawn
POTF Kyle Katarn
POTF Dark Trooper
POTF Sandtrooper
POTF Luke Skywalker in Stormtrooper disguise
POTF Commtech Luke Skywalker
POTF Cinema Scene Mynock Hunt
ROTJ Teebo
Marvel Legends Doctor Octopus! Until I had the figure in hand I don't think I ever truly appreciated just how much the character actually really does look like Alfred Molina. That was a brilliant casting choice back in the day.
The figure is on an all-new body as far as I can tell, which could best be described as "fat bastard" body type. I suppose there's not much call for bodies like this in a superhero line, so I'm not sure what parts could be reused other than maybe the hands. Some folks think it'll get reused as the Toad, but (aside from the fact that Toad is a skinny-ass guy in almost all the appearances I've seen...I guess he was rounder in the 60s?) the upper torso and gut pieces both have costume-specific details molded in so I'm not sure that would work. So basically they invested in a whole new mold for this one specific toy, which isn't something that you see for single-packed comic book Legends...well, pretty much ever. And the body of the figure is basically perfect. So with all the time and investment they put into it, it's a shame that they cut themselves off at the knees by making the tentacles out of more or less inflexible plastic. You can still get him into fun enough poses for displaying or taking pictures, sure, but if the tentacles were poseable this would have been one of my top five Legends figures ever. As-is, it's nice-looking but not one that I'm ever going to reach for to play with the way I have been with so many of the new X-Men figures.
The figure is on an all-new body as far as I can tell, which could best be described as "fat bastard" body type. I suppose there's not much call for bodies like this in a superhero line, so I'm not sure what parts could be reused other than maybe the hands. Some folks think it'll get reused as the Toad, but (aside from the fact that Toad is a skinny-ass guy in almost all the appearances I've seen...I guess he was rounder in the 60s?) the upper torso and gut pieces both have costume-specific details molded in so I'm not sure that would work. So basically they invested in a whole new mold for this one specific toy, which isn't something that you see for single-packed comic book Legends...well, pretty much ever. And the body of the figure is basically perfect. So with all the time and investment they put into it, it's a shame that they cut themselves off at the knees by making the tentacles out of more or less inflexible plastic. You can still get him into fun enough poses for displaying or taking pictures, sure, but if the tentacles were poseable this would have been one of my top five Legends figures ever. As-is, it's nice-looking but not one that I'm ever going to reach for to play with the way I have been with so many of the new X-Men figures.