Santa Jack
Nightmare Before Christmas (Neca) - Ultimate
Rated 4.60 stars by Toasted Brains
Too early to feel Christmassy? It usually isn't, but it's feeling that way now that temperatures are rising. Since NECA's new Nightmare Before Christmas figures were all ready for release near the holidays, they obviously had to do a Santa Jack Skellington. The more Jack, the merrier! The same crew behind the other figures - Marty Henley, Kyle Windrix, and Andrew Lawson - did Santa Jack, and they didn't reuse any of the expressions the regular Jack had. However, this Jack only has three heads: one happy, one surprised, and one winking. Like before, the work here matches the source material very well, and the clean paint certainly helps. You can use these with the regular Jack… if you don't mind the obvious sockets on the top and sides of the heads. These are for the Santa cap and beard,...[See More]

Necromancer
Spawn (McFarlane Toys) - Series 14 - Dark Ages Spawn 2
Rated 4.50 stars by Henchmen4Hire
Remember when McFarlanes were worth buying? I do, you could get them cheap at discount stores and they came packed with accessories, and the figure was pretty cool to boot! Even the packaging was awesome, lots of graphics, they even came with instructions on where to put all those crazy weapons and items! The 90s were great times for McFarlane, seemed like they were doing lots of cool stuff like Danger Girl and Metal Gear Solid. Here's a great example, I got the Necromancer figure from the Spawn: Dark Ages line for a buck! The accessories alone made this worth the buy, but the figure made me freak, it looks just like my friend Catherine (a little too much eye-shadow, but still!) Don't you just love it when a figure looks like someone you know? Creepy and cool. So here we go, a review!...[See More]

Psylocke vs Thanos
Marvel Legends - Infinite Series (Hasbro) - Gamerverse
Rated 4.50 stars by Toasted Brains
Capcom has had a notable history with Marvel fighting games, first starting off with X-Men, and then a game with various Marvel characters. It soon led to having Marvel's heroes take on the Street Fighter universe, and then more of Capcom's characters, creating one of the most iconic fighting games/crossovers of all time. There have been a handful of Marvel vs. Capcom collectibles over the years, and the most recent are part of Hasbro's "Gamerverse" sub-line for Legends. The first release was a Target exclusive, pitting Psylocke against Thanos. The packaging is a window box, and a very cool one at that. The box has a dark, starry purple motif with pixel art character names on the front. The sides have not only the names and photos of the figures, but portraits similar to the first MvC....[See More]

Duffman
Simpsons (Super7) - Ultimates
Rated 4.50 stars by Toasted Brains
The first wave of Simpsons Ultimates had a guy who serves beer, and now we have a guy who promotes beer. Makes sense, doesn't it? Duffman is said to be played by many different people in the show, but he always looks the same (is there a bunch of guys who look the same in Springfield?). The man has a somewhat cylindrical head shape, wearing a Duff hat and sunglasses. The sunglasses aren't removable, but there are eyes sculpted and painted underneath, though he doesn't seem to have pupils. The default portrait is a grin, but he also has an open mouth head, as well as a head with a Duff sticker slapped onto his face, coming from "Pygmoelian." The sticker can actually be removed, pegging into the mouth, leaving you with an "oh yeah" expression. All three heads look nice, and the clean paint...[See More]

Scumbug
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Super7) - Ultimates!
Rated 4.80 stars by Toasted Brains
Scumbug isn't a TMNT character you see talked about much. He wasn't really present much in past media, being just a one-time character in the original cartoon, and some other versions like the Archie comics barely looked like him, though Mutant Mayhem reintroduced him (or in it's case, her) to today's audiences. NECA already made a great figure of him a while back, but that hasn't stopped Super7 from making their own version. While NECA's Scumbug was a recreation of the toon design which was no different from the original Playmates toy, Super7's more directly updates the toy design. Most of that involves simply making him more colorful, with all those little bugs crawling over him now being painted, along with a few other additional colors. There are some changes to the overall design as...[See More]

Mighty Morphin Eye Guy
Power Rangers Lightning Collection (Hasbro) - Mighty Morphin
Rated 3.50 stars by Karl T. Face
Ironically, I eyeballed this extensively when it came out. Finally pulled the trigger on a trade, but there's a reason I waited. As a Kaiju nut and mythology fan, I couldn't turn down another classic Dora Monster in the end. This one's based on Argos, the hundred-eyed giant that guarded one of Zeus' side pieces from his frequent advances, despite her having already been turned into a heifer. Dora Argus, meanwhile, was created to trap a little girl in a nightmare dimension to break her spirit so their pathetic resident vampire could actually drink human blood for a change. Either way, this is some wacky stuff. First, the good. This thing is big, hefty, and very well sculpted. Various eyes are half-closed, and the freaky skin texture looks great. The articulation is the usual Lightning...[See More]

Mighty Morphin Pudgy Pig
Power Rangers Lightning Collection (Hasbro) - Mighty Morphin
Rated 5.00 stars by Karl T. Face
Animal heads where they don't belong have always been creepy. Artists have been milking it since Bosch at least. And that's why I own this. I somehow missed out on Power Rangers as a kid, despite a love of fun Kaiju. I'd never seen tokusatsu before, and it seemed silly and overblown. Which was the point, of course. Anyway, the livestock legionnaire here was created to devour all the world's food in the US version, while the original series had Witch Bandora specifically starving out one family with a bespoke pig head creature. She was cranky on account of her new diet, you see. None of that matters to me, as this thing looks to have crawled right out of a Breugel print. The pig head is exactly a normal one, with good skin texture and slightly overgrown tusks. The arms (which,...[See More]

Batmobile
Batman - Animated Series (Kenner) - Vehicles
Rated 3.00 stars by batman26
I love this batmobile but the toy is pretty dissappointing. It is not a two seater so it can't fit robin in it. it also has no missile launchers. instead, it has a "launching persuit jet." wooooo. the only cool feature is that the wheels extend to disable the jokermobile's tires.(it is too bad that kenner failed to make any normal bad guys or vehicles for batman to beat up or have car chases with) The best part of this toy is that it's appearance is identical to it's tv show counterpart...[See More]

Deadly Grell
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (LJN) - Bendable
Rated 2.50 stars by Karl T. Face
*sigh* This toy, frankly, was a mistake. Like, it shouldn't have been attempted. Gather 'round, and I'll elucidate on what happens to toys when mistakes are made. I will give credit to the paintwork. It's got a bit of airbrushing, some wavy lines to follow, and it all looks good. A little cartoonish, but that's the house style at LJN. It's the construction I take issue with. They went with "bendy" here, probably for a couple reasons: it's the only way a radially-symmetrical being can have any kind of size on a blister card, but still be able to flex the tentacles downward. The only other solution would be a separate "pillar" of tentacles, but even then, the head would have to be either vertically or laterally flattened- the latter would turn out pretty flea-shaped, which would've...[See More]

Super Bebop and Mighty Rocksteady
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles - Classic Cartoon (Neca) - Multi-Packs
Rated 4.85 stars by Toasted Brains
"Stomp toitles! Stomp toitles!" Looks like we've gotten the fourth Bebop and Rocksteady figures by NECA, technically. These aren't Bebop and Rocksteady, but rather their robotic counterparts, Mighty Bebop and Super Rocksteady, both of whom come from a season 3 episode where Shredder and Krang make mechanical clones of their dim-witted henchmen to carry out their latest evil task. These are dropping as part of Target's Haulathon event, but I'd get looking now, these are going faster than you think. The packaging follows the same cues as the rest of the line, but it's worth noting two things. One is that there are no plastic ties holding in the accessories, but there's still a couple to deal with on the figures themselves. The other thing is that they got the names wrong, calling them...[See More]