Posts Tagged ‘Toys’
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The first panel of this comic is based on an actual scene from the show and panel 2 is pretty much Applejack asking the question I wanted to ask after said comment. The rest of the comic is a more subtle take on my usual humor, hope you guys enjoy. NOW A TOY REVIEW!
Yes, I broke down and bought some My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic toys, don’t act surprised you knew it was going to happen eventually. Besides this was a set of five completely plastic molded characters and they were on sale, how could I say no? I especially wanted to get full plastic sculpted figures, because I don’t like the typical My Little Pony figures, which have brushable hair that causes them to look almost nothing like the character model in the show. Sculpted plastic with sculpted hair allow the characters to look a lot more like their character designs and thus make them more appealing to me. I have this thing about when I get toys based off a cartoon show or video game I like, I want the toys to look as much like the show’s character designs as possible. This is one of the many reasons I loved the Transformers Animated toyline. With that said, I can’t say these figures follow the character designs all that well either… they just manage to do a better job than the brushable hair pony figures.
Well, where to start, first off the faces on the ponies seem really off to me. In the show their faces are really round, but here they seem more square-ish, this coul be a limitation to the sculpting a 2D character model into a 3D toy, but I still can’t help but think it could’ve been done a little better, a bit nitpicky, especially compared to the rest of the problems.
We’ll start with Princess Celestia, her mold is actually really good in the fact she looks a lot like her in cartoon model, except for one major problem… SHE’S PINK for some reason. Did someone just think there was something wrong with a white princess? Because if Disney has taught me anything, it’s that there’s a lot of white princesses. But yeah, the colors on Celestia are all weird, she’s pink, her mane is off by completely lacking the green tent and replacing it with purple for some reason. She’s also missing the weird neck/harness this she wears in the show. Another weird error is they sculpted the gold shoes she wear, but didn’t bother painting them. So they’re the same color as her fur, which is weird looking. On a cool note you can take her crown off and and on, which can add some unintentional fun.
Twilight Sparkle and Spike are probably the closest to be accurate of the group. Twilight’s hair seems to sculpted fairly accurately, thought it looks like it’s being blown in the wind for some reason and she’s only painted with one of the two color stripes in her hair. Otherwise she looks pretty much like Twilight, so not much to complain about there. Spike also looks incredibly accurate, actually impressively so. Just one issue… he’s standing on all fours for some reason. This is weird because he NEVER does this in the show, he always walks on his hind legs. In fact, being the only character in the show with actual hands has caused him to be useful to the cast in many ways. So seeing him on all fours is a bit odd, otherwise he’s my favorite figure of the bunch.
Applejack and Pinkie Pie are both fairly off, but Applejack is by far the worst of the two. The biggest problem being SHE HAS NO COWBOY HAT! This seems common in most the toys and in the few toys where she does actually have a cowboy hat it’s the absolute wrong color and looks nothing like the one she wears in the show. I imagine having a cowboy hat like the one in the show would probably be difficult since AJ kinda’ wears it on the back of her head. This is what makes her lack of hat on this figure all the more frustrating as having the figure be complete sculpted plastic would’ve made it really easy for them to just sculpt the hat onto the back of her head. It’s just so weird that they wouldn’t have the hat, because she’s RARELY seen without it in the show, so it’s a HUGE part of her character design. To add to the errors, AJ is also missing her freckles and has two ponytails instead of one for some reason. I don’t know this happened and it’s an odd error. Pinkie Pie isn’t quite as errored as AJ, but she’s still pretty off. It’s really only one issue, being that instead of putting her hair all in the middle of her head like in the show, they made it really long and brushed to one side. This kinda’ makes her look like fluttershy with curly hair… and pink. Adding to it, it covers most of the left of her face and kinda’ makes her look like she got an emo haircut. Kinda’ like she’s in between her normal happy self and her rarely seen depressed side. While I’m sure doing it exactly like the show wouldn’t have been possible due to the show’s stylized style, I’m sure it could’ve been done way better than this. This just looks weird.
Overall the figure sets not too bad, especially for the $10 to $20 it goes for, I just wish they could’ve made it more show accurate, but hey, they could’ve been worse and they do make decent and fun little figures to have. I just REALLY wish AJ had her hat and Princess Celestia wasn’t pink. Oh well, what can you do. In the meantime, enjoy the obligatory Blue Grimlock figure.
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I was experimenting a bit with my coloring, I don’t think I’m going to continue with this method though. The colors didn’t come out how I’d like them too and it TOOK WAY TOO LONG TO COLOR. Maybe I’ll go back to my usual cell shading over black lineart for now. What do you think?
In other news, I got a new action figure the other day. Check it out!
Over the weekend I got one of the Jazwares Sonic The Hedgehog Super Poser figures of Miles “Tails” Prowers and he’s awesome. When I’m not enjoying posing him or playing around with him, I tend to have him protecting my Genesis game collection like in the above picture.
As you guys may or may not know, Tails is one of my favorite Sonic characters, so it was a matter of time before I got this figure. It’s funny though, because he’s bigger than most of my other Sonic figures, especially all the figures I have of Sonic himself. However Transformers Animated’s toyline go me more than used to figures that weren’t size accurate. Besides it’s funny to have a Tails figure bigger than Sonic. Granted if it ever bothered me too much, I guess I could get the Super Poser Sonic figure as well. He is, afterall, one of my faves too.
This Tails figure is an absolutely lovely sculpt and captures the character really well. The colors are also dead on as well. They seem to have based the figure primarily on his 3D model from the recent games, which works well, even if I prefer the 2D artwork for the Sonic cast more than their 3D models. Also the bigger size of the figure also hides the weird hinge joints that Jazwares likes to use WAY BETTER than their usual figures do. Allowing Tails’ posing and arms to look more natural and not so robotic. A definite bonus in my opinion.
Now let’s talk about his articulation. Tails is amazingly possible and lots of fun to play with. He seems to be well balanced and I found I could stand him in a variety of positions and even can prop him up against his own tails. I’m serious, I spent what had to be an hour straight just posing him in a variety of different poses when I first got him. He also stands extremely with little balance problems, a pleasant surprise since balance issues tend to happen with a lot of the other Jazwares figs I got. I was even able to get him to stand on one foot with little problem, granted this is mainly due to Tails’ big tails working as a prop (they are also articulated BTW) which just adds to the fun.
There’s very few complaints I have with this Tails figure (also surprising because I usually CAN complain a lot about Jazwares’ figures). My only complaints is I wish they didn’t bother with the waist articulation. It looks really funky on the Sonic cast and seems unnecessary. I don’t think I really used the waist articulation when I was posing him, and even when I did it bothered me that his stomach fur gets split in half. It just looks awkward and even when your not using said articulation it still looks weird having the split seem in the middle of his body. I think I would have rather they just not bothered and made his torso just one solid piece of plastic and just made the rest articulated, but maybe that’s just a me thing.
The only other issue I had was that I wish they had painted his mouth black, like in the 3D artwork. Mainly because with out any paint to define the mouth it makes the mouth look nonexistent despite the fact they went to the time to sculpt one. It’s sad because it’s nicely sculpted too, but unfortunately it’s barely noticable. Come on, Jazwares, a simple little splash of black paint would’ve fixed that.
But minor quibbles aside this is an awesome figure, in fact it’s my new favorite Sonic figure I own. He’s just too much damn fun to not enjoy. I highly recommend you get it if your a fan of the Sonic games and like toys. Now if I can just convince Jazwares to make an Amy Rose figure like this. Hrmmm…
Last week Chris informed me that Jazwares had released figures of Vector and Espio from Sonic the Hedgehog. You remember those guys, right? Anyways, as you can guess these guys were an instant purchase for me. Seriously, I went to Toys R Us the next day and grabbed them. Neither Vector or Espio had gotten figures before, and I love these guys. Well, more Vector than Espio, but I honestly can’t have one without the other.
So how good are these guys? Well, they suffer from the same problems all the Jazwares figures tend to have, namely weird hinge arms and legs. These type of joints may look good on most figures, but on the Sonic cast it makes them look… well… kind of robotic. Not to mention if your going to put such obvious joints on them, wouldn’t you better off with at least using ball joints? They allow for five times more mobility in the figure and many more posing options. These hinge joints don’t just look weird, they don’t really allow much posing. This was kind of upsetting because I totally wanted to take of picture of Vector holding up Espio in his arms as if they had just got married, but alas I could not.
Hinge joints aside the actually sculpts on the characters are REALLY good. They look like their respective characters and follow the character designs amazingly well. The paint job on these two are rather nice too, though there seemed to be a few really small areas on Vector’s head that looked a little sloppy, but it’s barely noticeable. I also wish they would have outlined their mouthes in black. Instead their mouths are the same color as their face. This isn’t so bad on Vector since his giant maw makes his mouth kind of obvious (though a little white paint on his teeth would be nice), but on Espio you can’t even see his mouth. Seriously, you have have to look very closely to even see that he has one, which is an accurately sculpted Sonic-style smirk. But since they didn’t color it in it blends in with his face adn you can’t see it. A really pity since the smirk is nicely sculpted in.
The only other complaint I can possibly make is I wish they had made this a three pack and included Charmy. Vector and Espio with no Charmy just feels weird. So while I like having them, I just kind of feel like something is missing every time I look at them. Nonetheless I like these guys a lot despite my complaints, and feel they are definitely figures worth picking up. I hope Jazwares continues to make a lot more of the sideline Sonic cast into figures, because they will definitely get my money if they keep this up. I’d especially like to see a Blaze or Marine, please. Thank you.
Well, I got something cool to tell you guys and something that sucks ass to tell yeah. We’ll go with cool first.
The very awesome Robert Blake from World of Fizz decided to send me a random package, which I received a few days ago. It’s contents contained Anthrax, a cute little Mudkip plush, and an awesome Hot Wheels car designed to look like Ecto-1 from The Ghostbusters. Fortunately the Anthrax was diet Anthrax and had no effect on me. The other gifts were major awesomeness and great additions to my toy collection. Thanks, Robert. I guess u herd i liek mudkips.
Now for the bad news. My friend Aphex who does Alembic Grimoire has gotten in a bit of a scrape and is now in need of help from anyone willing to donate a buck or two. In short, some punks were bullying his friends, and Aphex decided to stand up for his friends, only to have said bullies turn it against him and get him arrested for “supposed assault”. It’s a bunch a bull shit, but you can read about it in more detail here but you can read about it in more detail here. In short, he needs help posting bail, so any donations you guys are willing to throw at him would be much appreciated. Trust me, he’s a great guy, and doesn’t deserve this bullshit. Thanks for your time.
Well… if there’s any advantage out there to having a show I like get cancelled… it’s picking up toys based on the series for cheap in the clearance isle. BEHOLD MY COLLECTION OF CLEARANCE ISLE MR. MEN STUFFS! I wish they had a better Mr. Grumpy figure, though…
What can I say, I’m positively in love with the new Scooby-Doo Mystery Incorporated Show. I honestly think it might be the best take of Scooby-Doo, yet. It definitely seems to get better with every episode, and never ceases to surprise me.
Today’s review is for the new figure I got from Patch Together. It’s an awesome figure of Vaportotem‘s character, Hell, from her Bormals series of artwork. He’s an angry rabbity thing called a Bormal and he hates everything, especially flowers. I tend to have a weakness for angry lagomorphs, don’cha’ think? Eitherway, I’m a big fan of Vap’s work, so getting this figure was a must.
The figure is amazingly well sculpted thanks to Patch Together’s talented artists. This isn’t the first figure I got from them (the first one was Amber from David Willis’ Shortpacked!), but it’s definitely my favorite of the two I’ve gotten. The figure manages to mimic Vap’s design for the figure pretty dead on with amazing detail. The paint job on it is beautifully well done and detailed, and the whole thing is done in a really sturdy resin. I really can’t make any complaints about it as I love the figure. The closest thing I can think of as a complaint is that it comes shipped to you in pieces and you have to have to super glue it together. This is a minor annoyance as the aforementioned Amber statue did not require this. However Patch Together was nice enough to supply you with a free tube of super glue to use, so the complaint is practically null.
Anyways I love this figure more than I can say, and like Blue Grimlock, I want to make it make it my new official Easter decoration. Unfortunately my wife isn’t cool with that idea. She takes holiday decorating very seriously, and doesn’t really dig some of my more warped or silly ideas when it comes to said holiday decorating… unless it’s Halloween. So for now he’s on my desk raging with Blue Grimlock, and to be honest, I have no problem with that.
PS. It’s the 50th Anniversary of my favorite modern stone age family! Dammit, Warner Bros! We need a new Flintstones cartoon!
Dear Lord, people. Look at the lengths I got to make you laugh. I’m a disturbed man… disturbed, disturbed man. Not as disturbed as Pemmy here, who seems to be enjoying this insanity. Seriously, I have nothing else to say. Well, other than I feel sorry for Chris for having to color it, and it’s like The Girl Who Loved Powerglide gone very very wrong… and in reverse. REVERSE KISS PLAYERS! Ugh…
Hopefully the children aren’t watching… THINK OF THE CHILDREN!!! They taste good with chocolate sauce. *slaps self*
Don’t forget everyone, I’ll be at DWEX on Saturday! Check it out if you’re in the area!
Yes, it’s another Cave Story comic. What can I say, I love drawing Mimigas. At least I actually put Quote in this one. He seemed to have learned how to speak from Warpath.
Today I go to court to adopt my stepdaughter as my own daughter. Wish me luck.
Chris has started his own webcomic entitled, CALViN Coonidge. So give it a look, it will be updating on Mondays, for the most part.
Lastly check out this print that Chris and I will be selling at DWEX and AnimeFest. I hope you’ll be there to see us.