When it came to Terminator in this style I was pretty happy - the Alien figures were good and with Kenner's original Terminator 2 line over 20 years ago, it seemed that a good T800 Endoskeleton (Chrome) would be pretty easy to pull off. Well... it's easy to be wrong I guess.
It's Tom Wilson! He's an actor and a comedian, but to most of the world he's Biff Tannen. He's also the gym teacher on Freaks and Geeks,
a similarly imposing (but nicer) fixture. As a voice-over talent and a pretty
funny dude, he will likely always be known as Biff - so an action figure
for the most famous bully of 1980s cinema is a sensible thing to own. 
There's
something that's emotionally very satisfying - and sinful - about
tearing open a vintage-style figure's packaging. It's not like
preparing an ortolan, but popping open Frankenstein's Monster certainly did delight me.
A
few years ago, back before Comic-Con in San Diego became Nerd Prom and
the Hollywood South Marketing Bonanza, I got to see June Foray in a
panel. She voiced Talky Tina as well as Witch Hazel, Rocket J.
Squirrel, Magica de Spell, Natasha Fatale (of Boris and... fame), plus
Granny and countless others. It was pretty awesome - and we also got to
find out how many other actress' voices she dubbed, uncredited, over
the years. She's got range, so a murderous doll that tried to kill
Telly Sevalas shouldn't have been too much of a stretch. Hey, she does
a nice job!
Toys have a funny way of coloring our perceptions - the old Kenner Star Wars Cantina aliens were wildly off model, but correct to anyone alive in the late 1970s or early 1980s. Similarly, this Predator (Masked)
is a little weird to those of us who grew up with Kenner toys, because
my 2-pack Predator had a brown mask. Silver is, of course, more correct
- which leads you to the big question on if doing a ReAction figure
correctly is, in and of itself, inauthentic. To be right, must you be
wrong?
One
of the stranger things I've seen in my decades of toy collecting is
that facts change. Questions like "What color is Han Solo's jacket?"
have had numerous answers - if you asked Galoob and Kenner in the late
1990s, they said that Lucasfilm told them that Han always wears When I
saw the sculpt for The Bride of Frankenstein I was quite happy
with what I saw - the head was appropriately understated and
exaggerated, and the arms and torso reminded me a lot of the original
1978 Princess Leia figure. However, I noticed that in the packaging the
legs were bent kind of funny. When I tried to fix them, the hip joint
got loose and wobbly - oddly, the same loose leg problem was on Bif Bang
Pow!'s Kanamit, who also had robe legs. Coincidence? I wonder!
One
of the stranger things I've seen in my decades of toy collecting is
that facts change. Questions like "What color is Han Solo's jacket?"
have had numerous answers - if you asked Galoob and Kenner in the late
1990s, they said that Lucasfilm told them that Han always wears black.
However, there were exceptions - which means we saw Bespin Han usually
wear black, but Hoth Han's garment has been black, blue, and a
purple/brown color. It seems that The Wolf Man is not immune, no
doubt in part due to the fact black-and-white movies screw with
perceptions. This figure has a nice 1980s feel with a glossy shirt and
appropriately old-school articulation, plus white teeth and faux Kenner
eyes. It's good. Get one.
The
vinyl cape is back! As a kid, I hated them - my Jawa had a cloth cape
and my Darth Vader's cape started to split at the shoulders pretty
quickly, requiring the fabrication of a felt replacement. It's a
strange trick to add some depth to a figure that was more or less dead
by 1981, so Funko's Phantom of the Opera is one of very few
figures - along with Dracula in this line - to bring it back. It's one
of those things that I can appreciate stylistically, because if this was
a lost late-1970s figure it would have that cape. Since it isn't going
into any vehicles, I've got no problem with it - but as a child, I
can't tell you how much I disliked these.
While the clear repaint was inevitable, The Invisible Man
is one of the top characters under the Universal Monsters banner. The
idea is pretty close to the public domain, but this particular
incarnation of an invisible man as portrayed by Claude Rains has been
pretty influential, culturally speaking. I've even read the book - the
Ralph Ellison one, not the H.G. Wells one, which had no mad science nor
literally invisible people in it. (It's still a pretty good book.)
Oh yes! Star of a movie that actually started life in 3-D, Universal's Creature from the Black Lagoon
is a frequent favorite movie creature design. I daresay of the
classic monsters, the look is the best - a rubber suit provided a high
and a low point as to what you can do with movie monster mayhem, and
it's something embedded into our cultural DNA. Last year we looked at
Monster Ninja Turtles, this year it's the new Kenner-style figures from
Funko. Each figure has 5 joints and in the case of the creature, he has
less deco than the early 1980s Remco figure of the character.
Like any good toy dork, I was keenly aware of The Nightmare Before Christmas
months before anyone saw it thanks to Tomart's Action Figure Digest -
arguably the best thing you could read in the pre-internet world, just
because of how much information it threw at you that you didn't realize
you needed to know yet. The movie itself was a wonder, a mix of
old-school holiday TV specials for kids with something that is largely
hard to find elsewhere, notably that it's thematically older-skewing as
it explores themes of failure and one of the worst things that happen to
us as we grow up: being forced to examine and acknowledge our
limitations. Sally was one of the film's leads, and unlike the
film's hero she actually does get to grow more as a person and exceed
her creator's intent by going from a sort of a ragdoll/Frankenstein's
monster hybrid.
As a kid I thought Doc Brown was super-cool. Actor Christopher Lloyd had an amazing run - Taxi's Jim Ignatowski, Star Trek's Commander Kruge, The Addams Family's Uncle Fester, Who Framed Roger Rabbit's
Judge Doom, and dozens more fantastic roles delighted audiences around
the world, and he's probably now best known as the wild-haired old man
of Hill Valley, California. He still acts - a lot - but he never
really got all that many action figures. The Mattel figure was never to
be, so it's nice Funko managed to make this happen.
In addition to a pair of swell NES-themed Freddy and Jason figures, it turns out Funko had a special surprise at New York Comic Con - the first figures from Tomorrowland, specifically Frank! 200 pieces are said to be available, and while I do not yet know if it's an exclusive debut or just a case of you not being able to get something, you can find them on eBay right now.
From another one of The Twilight Zone's iconic (and oft-lampooned) episodes is Kanamit (Work Uniform)
from "To Serve Man." As he was played by the giant Richard Kiel, the
figure is also a smidgen taller at about 4 1/4-inches. He has 5 points
of articulation and is sold in 3 flavors - white outfit, black outfit,
and full-color figure (which wears a white outfit).
When
these lines were announced I was delighted across the board - before I
even had time to ask if he was coming, Funko confirmed George McFly
was on deck. Given the nature of the actor, licensed merchandise, and
so forth I didn't expect that such a thing would ever actually exist -
but here it is! He looks more than a little cartoony, but I think it
works for the affable character. I've had some actual QC issues with
this line, but George is pretty simple and nothing here seems to be out
of place. He basically just works.
If
you think you might like this figure, let me tell you that you will,
and you should buy it. You really don't need to keep reading.
We first got word that there would be three heads on this character, but Funko's Jack Skellington (Early Bird Figure) gave us a fourth - and I suppose technically first
- head on this body. The regular retail heads include a smiling,
surprised, and devilish head while this convention-exclusive edition
sports an open, affable mouth similar to Hasbro's 1993 original.
To say that Marty McFly
was was a long-awaited action figure is a gross understatement. Fans
expected Mattel to make some after announcing that they had the license,
but now that it seemingly lapsed and nothing was announced it seems
that no, this was to be. Funko brought out excellent Pop! Vinyl
figures, while Diamond Select Toys did some bang-up Minimates. This
figure is the culmination of decades of expectations and desires, and as
such cannot possibly please everybody. I can tell you that it's pretty
good, but quality control is a bit of an issue here - if you just want a
Marty, go with the Pop! Vinyl. If you love this format, you simply
must buy this figure.
The debut of the mold for this action figure was, surprisingly, a Comic-Con exclusive! Technically a "prepaint," Funko's Predator (Invisible, Bloody)
was one of the few things that had be drooling at the show - the clear
version of the figure was acceptable, sure, but getting it early with
some nasty green splatters on it? Oh man, sold. The figure is typical
of this kind of toy - 5 joints, and the neck is restricted due to the
figure's design. The long hair and shoulder cannon prevent movement,
but it is a separate piece. This is sensible, given there are a
whopping five Predators coming so far and there are two heads between
them.
The
notion of a retro, Kenner-style action figure has been a gag I've been
talking about for a while - Super7 got to it first with real vintage sculpts first, but I talked to a few companies about this for a while - and Star Wars fans have been asking for it for years. Now Bif Bang Pow! brought out seven characters in 2-3 colorways each, including Henry Bemis.
The colorized version is a convention exclusive, and I was indeed
involved in some discussions surrounding the creation of this figure -
so consider this a biased overview.
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The Legends of Cthulhu Kickstarter ends in 6 days and has already made its goal - so all that's left now are stretch goals. In addition to the original 4, you can score a clear Conjured Cthulhu and a High Priest right now - and if it gets a few more supporters, apparently H.P. Lovecraft himself will round out the set. $111 is the current going rate for the set of 6 (possibly 7).