Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

Chat about stuff other than Transformers.
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Warcry
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

Post by Warcry »

Power Rangers Lightning Collection White Ranger

I half-forgot that I'd preordered this until Amazon told me it was shipping.

The early reviews were kinda meh, but I was really unimpressed with the one Bandai PR figure I got, so I was expecting the Hasbro ones to be at least an improvement. And I guess it is? A bit? But it still leaves me pretty unimpressed. It's a Hasbro product, so it basically has the exact same pros and cons as their Marvel or Star Wars figures. So there's lots of articulation and a good (albeit basic, given the source) sculpt. But the paint QC sucks. The unmasked head is horrifying. The grip hand is kinda frustrating when it comes to actually holding the sword, and the wrist is hinged the wrong way for him to actually do sword poses anyway. On a design like this, with a lot more fine detail than your typical superhero outfit, the bad paint really jumps out. And the sword hand being hinged to move side to side instead of up and down really hampers getting him into any cool swordfight poses. The accessory count is okay, I guess...an alternate head and hands plus his sword and a random expodey effect, but considering the lack of BAF parts in this line, it still feels a bit light.

So it's basically exactly what you'd expect from a Power Rangers figure made by Hasbro. But I think the nature of the IP makes the usual Hasbro flaws way more obvious, while their strengths don't play as well here as they do with Marvel or even Star Wars. And while I went through a brief phase as a kid where I was a huge MMPR fan, I don't think I'll buy any more of the line. White and Green are the only Ranger designs I really like anyway, and I'm nowhere near impressed enough to consider replacing my floppy Bandai Green Ranger with a Hasbro one, let alone buying any of the more boring Rangers. I do have a Lord Zedd still on preorder, I think, but I'm kicking around the idea of cancelling that now. The White Ranger is easily my favourite look from the franchise, and if that is leaving me with a big feeling of "meh", well...it's all downhill from there, right?

[EDIT] Amazon.ca must read this site, because seconds after I posted this I got an email saying they've run out of stock on Zedd and needed to cancel my order. I think I'm okay with that! :lol:
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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The Lego Movie 2 70834 MetalBeard's Heavy Metal Motor Trike! - Another set that I bought recently that was 20% off.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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My wife's brother and his family gave me a Toys'R'Us gift card as a belated birthday gift. And the way this year has been, that can mean only one thing: more Star Wars Lego!

75228 Escape Pod vs. Dewback Microfighters: Awwwwww! That dewback is the cutest thing I've ever built out of Lego. Totally adorable. The escape pod is cute too, but it's also got a ton of detail. If the set ever goes on clearance I could definitely see myself buying a few of them, assembling a squad of dewback-riding Sandtroopers and using the escape pod parts to create a starship of some sort. The minifigs are nice. I've got a small pile of R2 units already, but my son loves R2-D2 so having extras for him to grab is always a good thing. I didn't have a C-3PO or a Sandtrooper, though, and they're both cool.

I've said in the past that buying Star Wars stuff for kids is frustrating because it seemed like all the small price point sets were taken up by minifig packs. These Microfighter sets seem to be an attempt to remedy that, giving the chance to build an iconic ship/vehicle/beast at an affordable price. And while this one is a bit pricey for what you get, that bothers me a whole lot less when I'm spending someone else's money. The builds here are small, but not simplified like some "pocket money" sets are. Overall, I'd call it top notch.

75198 Tatooine Battle Pack: This set, on the other hand, definitely falls on the wrong side of the "value for money" equation. You'll always pay a bit of a premium for the battle packs because you're paying for army-buildable minifigures, and the builds are always a bit perfunctory -- I'm sure they'd sell just the figures without any building component if their license let them get away with it.

But the vehicle in this set feels especially half-assed. I guess it's some sort of droid-abduction skiff? It's basically just a brown slab with minimal details...technic bits on the sides pretending to be tank treads, a crane arm that doesn't really work very well, and what I'm guessing are meant to be droid-zapping ion cannons on one end. It's probably going to wind up tossed into the parts bin real quick. The minifigures are good, but don't quite make up for the lazy build. I like the red-headed astromech (R3-T2 apparently), because anything that's not the standard R2-D2 is a nice change of pace. The Tusken Raider and the Jawas are all cute, and they'll make a good addition to any Tatooine scenes I decide to build in the future. I'd imagine some people bought these in bulk to fill out desert scenes. I can't imagine doing that myself when I have so little use for the vehicle they come with, and I don't know what you'd build with three or four sets' worth of those parts.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Warcry wrote: Tue Apr 30, 2019 6:02 pm My wife's brother and his family gave me a Toys'R'Us gift card as a belated birthday gift.
When I first read this, I thought your brother-in-law was being a horrible a-hole. Then, your location field reminded me you're in Canada.


I got Gwenpool on clearance at Walgreen's. I know nothing about the character, but the goofy facial expressions suit Deadpool better than the actual Deadpool figures I've seen. He's wearing a full mask, but you can tell he's scowling underneath.

The purchase took a while because the cahsier hadn't yet learned how to remove the security device, and had to get the manager. There's 2 heads (both smiling, one with the tounge sticking out), 3 pairs of hands (hold weapons, heart hands, bunny ears and hold phone), and 3 accessories (2 katanas, 1 phone).

She actually works really well riding PotP Wreck-Gar. She doesn't have the leg articulation to ride in a sitting up position, but can ride in a leaning forward position. Plugging WG's Prime Armor into the rear of the bike allows the thumbs to work as footrests. The katana holding hands grip the handlebars perfectly. The katanas themselves just barely avoid contact with Wreck-Gar's seat when stored in Gwenpool's penguin backpack.

I also have a BAF lizard tail that I have no idea what to do with.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Lego Marvel Super Heroes 76125 Iron Man Hall of Armor.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Marvel Legends Gambit arrived today.

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I have to say...when I rewatched the 90s show a couple years ago, I was kind of at a loss trying to figure out why Gambit was my second favourite member of the team as a kid (after Logan, of course) in spite of never doing anything. But this toy jogged my memory. You see, I loved Gambit because he looks absolutely awesome. And this figure? Well, it captures that awesome perfectly. They really went all-out with extra sculpting...I'm pretty sure the trenchcoat and arms are the only reused parts here. Everything else is brand new, with appropriate sculpted costume details. Not just the boots and the funny blue ridges on the torso, either. The purple blocks on his pants? Sculpted on. The fingerless gloves? Sculpted on. I was a bit nervous because maybe half of Hasbro's Legends figures get the attention they deserve while the other half are repainted generic bodies with minimal new tooling, and they could have done a half-assed repaint Gambit, but no. This is one that they worked hard to get right.

The head got some scorn when they first showed off the prototype because it had a Bruce Campbell-scale chin, but that's been fixed in the real thing, because this looks exactly, almost perfectly like I'd picture Gambit.

Poseability is really good too, although...

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...sometimes the coat does get in the way.

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He looks perfect with his main squeeze, too.

I'm really looking forward to the other figures I ordered from this wave. Forge should be coming later this week. I have a sneaking suspicion that Beast and Jubilee may be delayed a bit, since they're absolutely going to be the scarcest figures of the wave. Gambit, while popular, was packed two per case so he should be easier to get your hands on.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Lego Marvel Super Heroes 76123 Captain America: Outriders Attack - Was selling out at Big w, which is where I prefer to get these smaller sets, so I decided to knock this one off.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Marvel Legends Forge showed up...late last week, I guess? I was going to take a pic or two before posting about him, but he's so disappointing that I haven't bothered. He's pretty much a straight repaint of that generic male body mold (if you're an ML collector you know precisely the one I mean...they used it for Cyclops, Havok, Multiple Man, Archangel...and probably 50 others in the last few years). And it's not like it's a bad body, but it's been used for probably 1/3 of the male figures they've put out since it came into service, and it's starting to show it's age. The parts just don't fit like they used to, so Forge winds up having one really loose hip and one shoulder that practically doesn't want to move at all, along with the misaligned calf cuts that quite a few of the figures I own based on this body have suffered from.

The add-on costume bits don't fit very well either...his belt is two sizes too big, his upper body harness is so tight that it digs into his shoulders, and the boot cuffs kept falling off of his legs. That last one might be a misassembly issue, because I was able to work them up above the fat part of his calves and they sit nicely after that (as well as hiding the misaligned articulation).

There were also some paint issues on his head, with both the flesh tone from his skin and the black of his hair bleeding onto his red bandana. And speaking of his head...Hasbro really seem to struggle with capturing any ethnicities beyond "generic European" and "generic African" in plastic form. When someone like Forge (who is Cherokee if I remember right) or last year's Psylocke come along they really seem to have a hard time getting the look quite right.

Just generally meh all around, and that's an extra large disappointment for me because Forge is one of my favourite X-Men characters.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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DC Icons Harley Quinn
One of the odd tics of UK toy retail is seeing Forbidden Planet fodder like this pop up randomly on toy shelves here. I don't know if the line is, like Harley, based on the artwork of Ivan Reis, but she's been keeping the shelves warm for about 3 months, along with Blue Beetle, Superman, Firestorm and Green Lantern. They went on sale last week for £9.99, so I picked up Harley. She's in her classic Batman:TAS outfit, something I never thought worked well for her in comics (I prefer her current look, which sits somewhere between the classic costume, her Suicide Squad fetish gear and the look she had in the film of the same name). This figure is based on her 'proper' comics debut in No Man's Land. It's a really nice figure. She's well sculpted and has some nice paint apps. I particularly like the subtle rosy cheeks she has. Comes with her mallet, oversized revolver thing and some interchangeable hands.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Lego Marvel Super Heroes 76127 Captain Marvel and The Skrull Attack &
76124 War Machine Buster - It was becoming a bit hap-hazard finding these sets , so I pulled the trigger.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Funny you mention that - my local Entertainer toy shop has huge window display with the Lego Avengers Endgame sets ... but none of the sets for sale inside. Not even on the end cap that's promoting just general Avengers toys. Very strange.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Now that you two mention it, I've seen the Avengers sets on random drop pallets in the middle of aisles at Walmart, but I don't think I've seen any in an actual toy department yet. Weird.

More Star Wars stuff for me!

75203 Hoth Medical Chamber: Hideously overpriced, really, at $40 Canadian for 255 pieces. I think it's a Walmart exclusive here, so that's probably part of why. But the box was also pretty absurdly big for what came in it, which tells me they'd always aimed for a high price point. I couldn't even begin to justify buying it until I saw it on sale for $6 or $7 off of the regular price. Even that is a bit much for what you're getting, but I enjoyed building it.

There's a lot of detail packed into the finished model, too. Lots of neat bits of medical equipment and small accessories. And since it hinges open, it makes for both a nice, compact set to display on a shelf, and a nice, open playset for kids to fiddle with (and my son does, in fact, keep wandering over to play with it). The minifigures are a bit of a mixed bag. Leia is nice, but Luke is basically just a prop...no one's going to want to play with "medical harness and cables outfit" Luke outside of having him float in the bacta tank. At least the hair and unmasked head on a spare fight suit body does make for a good normal Luke, if you've got the parts around? Two-Onebee is a droid I hadn't had a copy of before, but he's not especially exciting. The brick-built FX-7 is pretty neat, though.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Lego Marvel Super Heroes 76131 Avengers Compound Battle - It was on 20% discount when I put it on lay-by and I had just this week finalized it.

Lego Star Wars Bacta Tank Finn - It was packaged in a Lego Star Wars Visual Dictionary.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Marvel Legends Beast:

A really well put-together figure. Very well-articulated, with good range of motion in all the joints (something that "big guy" Legends figures usually lack). Also very well-balanced (though not quite as well as the "handstand" pose would suggest...that takes some work to get right). I usually don't like toe hinges on action figures, but Beast's feet are big enough that they actually help with posing instead of hindering it. He's great fun to pose around, but there's one pretty major flaw -- the head! It's sculpted with a Beast Wars-tier ANGRY ALL THE TIME expression that doesn't suit the character at all, and that really detracts from the number of poses he looks good in. It's pretty tough to make him look scholarly or jokey when he looks like he wants to tear your spleen out and eat it.

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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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The Lego Movie 2 70821 Emmet and Benny's ‘Build and Fix' Workshop!

The Lego Movie 2 70828 Pop-Up Party Bus.

Lego Star Wars 75234 AT-AP Walker.

The latter two are separate lay-bys that I finalized this past week.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Marvel Legends Jubilee: A really nice effort! Like Beast and Gambit, she seems to be mostly (or maybe totally?) new parts. She's got better articulation than the standard female figure, especially in the torso. And since this is a dedicated sculpt there's lots of molded costume detail, so she doesn't look like a naked person with a couple rubber add-ons on top of body paint. She doesn't come with a power effect, but since Hasbro would have just recycled the Havok or Scarlet Witch ones for the 50th time that's not all that disappointing. She does come with an alternate head that shows a lot of personality, though, which was my main gripe with Beast. And unlike Forge or Psylocke, the figure actually looks like the ethnicity it's supposed to! Which is actually kinda funny because I only really care about Jubilee due to the 90s cartoon, where she definitely didn't.

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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Lego Star Wars 75212 Kessel Run Millennium Falcon - It was on clearance when I put it on lay-by and now I've picked it up.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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Marvel Legends Jamboree!
I picked up Black Widow from the Thanos BAF wave from last years' Infinity War line and was very impressed with the likeness of Scarlett Johansson. The figure is excellent too, although the green body armour isn't a good look for the character. It was good enough for me to bother picking up the others to complete Thanos. Captain America or Steve Rogers, as he is here, is a solid figure and looks good overall, but doesn't scream 'must have'. Iron Man Decent design and sculpt let down by some horribly cheap and waxy feeling plastics. He feels like a bootleg next to the figures, who feel nice and dense and solid. Iron Spider Excellent Spidey figure. I really like this look and the gold works well with the muted reds and blues used for this version of Spidey. One of the rare times where I would have liked some alternate hands. He's stuck permanently web slinging. Thor is another highlight. Really great likeness and I like the Stormbreaker axe he comes with. And the silly blue gummy lightning effects he comes with. Ant Man Love the smirking Paul Rudd face this comes with. Comes with a helmeted head, which is cool. Good, fun figure. The Wasp A really beautiful looking figure. The gold armour looks fantastic and I like the wings too. Comes with an unmasked head, which is a decent likeness to Evangeline Lily, if you squint. Thanos My first completed Marvel Legends BAF. I like him. He's big, but not stupid big and scales well with the other figures. Can't quite work out what expression they were gong for though - he looks like he's straining to keep a fart in. All in all, a nice solid bunch of figures with some great sculpting detail. I'm really impressed, especially as I've stayed away from the MCU stuff as the likenesses haven't always been there. Most of all, I love how these feel in hand. They've got some weight to them and feel hefty.
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

Post by Denyer »

Warcry wrote: Wed Jun 12, 2019 4:06 pmsince this is a dedicated sculpt there's lots of molded costume detail, so she doesn't look like a naked person with a couple rubber add-ons on top of body paint.
Quite like the vampire era TBH, although early Gen X Claremont has most nostalgia. Trying to watch the cartoon having seen only bits as a kid didn't go particularly well. It's really neat the classic look is out there now though.

Not done much with figures recently unless you count getting a couple of 40K Funko Pops (the beaky vampire with the jetpack and the nu-marine smurf as they have less of the Funko head effect) and donating a load of miniatures via a local GW to school clubs, but have acquired a third detolf (specifically for non-TF stuff) now, so existing stuff is getting some love for a change.

Very interested in Bandai's 6" scale spess mehreen --

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2019/05 ... splay.html
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Re: Your Latest Non-TF Toy Acquisitions

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The Lego Movie 2 70838 Queen Watevra's ‘So-Not-Evil' Space Palace - This and a few other of the Lego Movie 2 sets have started to go on clearance at K-Mart, so now is probably the best time for me to pick them up.

The Lego Movie 2 70835 Rex's Rexplorer! - A lay-by I picked up.
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