Review > Monolith Action Figure (Thinkgeek)

June 10, 2011 | Poe

ThinkGeek is famous for its awesome April Fool’s pranks, which typically feature awesome but non-existent products. (They’re a geek-oriented novelty product store, so it makes sense.) Often, if the fake product proves popular enough, they’ll actually produce it. The best known is probably the Tauntaun Sleeping Bag, but in April 2010 they had a product page for an “action figure” of the iconic black monolith from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Given the incredible ease of producing a big block of black plastic, they went ahead and made it anyway.

You can order it off ThinkGeek’s website for $12.99, and it’s also been popping up at pop culture stores like Newbury Comics. (more…)

Review > US Agent (Captain America: The First Avenger, Hasbro)

June 9, 2011 | Poe

Today’s review is a bit unusual for me, as I haven’t reviewed a Marvel Comics toy in ages. I spent about a year loving Marvel when I was 13-14, then my second Transformers era took hold and I didn’t get interested in Marvel again until the era of Marvel Legends.

However, I did always have a certain fondness for the subject of today’s review, US Agent. I’m not sure why–maybe it was because I found the real Captain America a bit dorky. US Agent, to the young teenage Poe, was the “cool” version of Cap; plus he had a more interesting costume. If I’m being honest, I didn’t really know who US Agent was–I just liked the character concept, and the look. In retrospect, of course, the character was kind of Azrael to Captain American’s Batman–a more brutal, less idealistic, and generally darker replacement (though I should note that the Cap-replacement storyline took place in the late ’80s, years before Knightfall).

Anyway, it was that mild nostalgia that led me to make my first Marvel Universe purchase since my last and heretofore only one, brown costume Wolverine. We never got a Marvel Legends US Agent, so when I saw this one I just couldn’t resist. (more…)

Review > Gizmo (Gremlins, LJN)

June 8, 2011 | Poe

Just a quick review today, of an oldie but goodie.

Frequently I find myself reminiscing about my childhood toys and remembering a specific toy. Within five minutes, I’ve searched for it on eBay, found it, and bought it. Such was the case recently with this Gizmo figure. Created by LJN, who created many an awesome 1980s toy, the figure was one of several tie-ins to 1984’s Gremlins. (more…)

Review > Scarecrow (Batman: Arkham Asylum, DC Direct)

June 7, 2011 | Poe

"My head all full of stuffin', my heart all full of pain..."

It took a long, long time for Batman to get a game worthy of his name. But in Batman: Arkham Asylum, fans were finally given the opportunity to truly become the Dark Knight. A well-designed game from top to bottom with a great combat system, good dialogue, an intriguing, original story and a distinctive artistic style, Arkham Asylum was everything I loved about Batman and videogames in one amazing package.

The game’s aesthetic attempts to be both more “realistic” and more grotesque than the comics, and every character was given a redesign with that in mind. Batman’s outfit is the least altered, but he gets some Dark Knight-style armor pieces and, oddly enough, pupils. The Joker is stretched taller and thinner than usual and is given a touch of the disturbing “decayed” appearance of Heath Ledger’s portrayal, but with his trademark Conrad Veidt face from the comics. Harley Quinn is famously tarted up as a naughty nurse, but perhaps the most radical redesign among the game’s central characters is that of Scarecrow. (more…)

Review > Sy-Klone (Masters of the Universe Classics, Mattel)

June 6, 2011 | Poe

I never owned Sy-Klone as a kid, and as such, I don’t have any real attachment to the character. I was also always a bit confused by him–did the “klone” part of his name mean he was some sort of weird clone of He-Man? His face did–and does–look a lot like He-Man. I realize Mattel needed to make the figure’s name trademarkable somehow, but by introducing the “clone” question, it confused some of us kids.

X-Entertainment wrote an exhaustive analysis of Sy-Klone that I highly recommend. I was also quite fond of the Millennium version, which introduced a sort of cyberpunk street samurai look to the character. The new Classics version is of course based on the vintage Sy-Klone, with the small addition of the Millennium-style hula hoop.

(more…)

Reviews > Duke Nukem (Duke Nukem Forever, NECA)

June 3, 2011 | Poe

Around 1993 or so, my dad finally bought a new computer to replace our family’s aging IBM Compatible. While I had played a few computer games on that machine, almost all of them were adventure games like King’s Quest, Police Quest and LucasArts titles like The Secret of Monkey Island, Maniac Mansion and Loom. But with this new PC, my dad brought home a game that absolutely rocked my world: Doom II.

While people often point to Wolfenstein 3D or the original Doom as the first major first-person shooter (FPS), I think Doom II made the bigger impact, mostly because it was the first to be sold in stores. It’s fair to say I was completely, utterly addicted to it for quite some time. I played a lot of the mods, too, particularly Army of Darkness Doom. Many new FPS titles quickly followed, such as Descent, Star Wars: Dark Forces and, of course, Duke Nukem 3D. (more…)

Review > The Tick (Indie Spotlight, Shocker Toys)

April 26, 2011 | Poe

I love the Tick. For one thing, he was invented just a few towns over from where I grew up. In 1986, teenager Ben Edlund created the Tick as a mascot for New England Comics, the chain of comic shops I frequented as a kid (and still patronize today). His appearances expanded into stories in eventually, in 1988, a comic book, which has been published at odd intervals ever since and inspired a number of spin-offs including the Chainsaw Vigilante, Paul the Samurai, and the Man-Eating Cow.

Like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the Tick was an independent comic book character whose black-and-white comics were later turned into a popular cartoon in the mid-1990s. The cartoon was largely faithful to the look and spirit of the comics and would become a cult classic in its own right. Finally, in 2001 there was a short-lived live-action series starring the ubiquitous Patrick Warburton as the title character. Ben Edlund, by the way, would go on to work on such geek-beloved projects as Firefly, Angel, and Supernatural, and had a hand in the creation of The Venture Bros.

As you’d imagine with a Saturday morning cartoon character, there have been plenty of Tick toys. Most of them were created in Bandai in the mid-1990s, and while the toys were fun, they were also fairly under-articulated, even for the time. Years later, N2 toys squandered the success they’d had with their mediocre Matrix line by sinking it into an even-worse line of live-action Tick figures (one of my worst-reviewed toys ever). Legend has it the line bombed so bad, it’s why N2 changed their name to Mirage Toys. (I don’t know what happened to the company after that–is it still around?) (more…)

Review > Granthan Division Rig, Mk II (Glyos)

March 31, 2011 | Poe

[toc title=”Table of Contents” class=”toc-left”] When I first interviewed Matt Doughty of Onell Design, he was hard at work sculpting the Rig (you can even see it under the lamp light in this pic). While I was there, we discussed vintage toys we’d enjoyed, and I mentioned having owned the Macross 4 Part II set of vinyl toys as a kid (I believe my parents bought them at Hobby World Town at the Hanover Mall). I mentioned how fond I’d been of the yellow figure (no idea what his official name is–I’ve never actually seen an episode of Macross), and Matt, being Matt, knew exactly what I was talking about and agreed it was a great piece.

What’s interesting is that the Rig would turn out to be very similar to that Macross figure–a hollow vinyl robot who had the same smooth, chunky feel. The difference, however, is that the Rig, being a product of the Glyos world, would be more than just a bipedal robot. Through a couple of simple twists, it could be two different robots, a spaceship, a tank, or whatever you imagine it to be. (more…)