October 28, 2026

S.H.Figuarts Dragon Ball Z Super Saiyan Vegeta – Dangerous Pride

By Joe
Oh! Look! Another Vegeta!

It was over seven years ago when I gave in and spent what I thought was an absurd sum of money on an action figure. I rationalized it by telling myself that the figure was so good that I’d never need to buy another like it again. Well, that figure was the S.H.Figuarts Super Saiyan Vegeta and I have now repurchased that figure three times. And by “that figure” I mean that exact sculpt, at least for the body. Now, we can add a fourth time to it because I’ve bought a brand new S.H.Figuarts Super Saiyan Vegeta that is shockingly less money than what I paid seven years ago, and is also a brand new sculpt.

Bandai has been remaking the popular characters of Dragon Ball Z for the past few years now with the focus being on the Android Saga and The Cell Games. Goku had his turn early this year with The Game Begin and that mold is being utilized heavily with other versions of Goku. Now, we’re onto Vegeta and the first one up is of the Super Saiyan variety. Dubbed “Dangerous Pride,” this version of Vegeta is basically him during the Android Saga. It’s a slim Vegeta in his new model Saiyan battle clothes designed by Bulma with the blue bodysuit and white, armored, vest. This is also a Vegeta that should stand-in for the movies Return of Cooler and Super Android 13. What it is not is the Vegeta I really want which would be a post training Vegeta in the Room of Spirit and Time where he’s jacked. That’s the Vegeta that trampled Imperfect Cell, but fell to Perfect Cell – a Super Saiyan 1.5, if you will. This is still a pretty good take on Vegeta though so it was something I wanted and it was made easier by the fact that it’s a general release item for $38. This isn’t some $65 Premium Bandai release, though maybe that would have improved it? It is a figure made in Vietnam and that factory has not had a great 2026. Goku was pretty janky, though the Premium Bandai Super Saiyan Goku – Fighter of Rage turned out well. Maybe they put more effort into those releases, or maybe they used the same plans for that figure and were able to tweak them. Whatever the case, this is the first pass at Vegeta so I’m not expecting perfection and that was apparent right from the start.

This Vegeta is intended to scale with this era’s Goku and Trunks.

Vegeta stands at a shade under 5″ to the exposed part of his forehead. To the tip of his hair he’s about 5.75″ which is a good size for this era of the character. In the box, he features that trademarked Vegeta smirk. That cocky grin many a foe (and ally) have had to endure. This figure has been out for months, but finding one where that smirk looked good in the box proved a challenge. I’ve probably gone through 25 figures in-store before finally finding one I deemed appropriate. The problem? A big, old, beaver tooth. Vegeta looks like he’s out of a 70s anime or Rankin Bass special. The “tooth” reminds me of the characters from the Christmas special ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas. I think the issue is that the black outline on the mouth is squaring off the exposed teeth for the grin so instead of it having more of a rhombus shape it’s a rectangle. It looks like it’s protruding over the bottom of the black outline for almost all of the figures I saw in-store. The one I have looks just a little better, but not perfect. You can see how it’s supposed to look on the box so something just went wrong. It’s a shame because if one expression had to get messed up that’s a bad one for Vegeta.

This Vegeta is noticeably smaller than the old one (pictured with the repainted version Awakening Saiyan Blood).
From a sculpting standpoint, the biggest improvement is with the shape of the face.

When this figure was first announced, my assumption was that Bandai was taking the Dragon Ball Daima Vegeta and repurposing it for a DBZ one. I was wrong. The proportions are similar with that slender profile, but this is an all new sculpt. The sculpt is finer with the lines for the muscles deeper set into the limbs. His arms and thighs are bulkier and the torso is completely different. The hands are really similar, but even they appear to be new. The approach as far as construction and engineering is very much the same, but all of the parts are new. That tells me that Bandai intends to get some use out of this one and we already know they have a base form Vegeta planned. I could also see them repurposing this for a battle damaged one and maybe a Super Saiyan God, since that’s not as bulky as other Super Saiyan forms. And as it compares with the old figure (which many call the 2.0 body), it’s a more streamlined take. That old figure had really large shoulders, which for more bulked up versions of Vegeta wasn’t a bad way to go. The crotch area is less busy and the shape of the torso is more rounded. Mostly, the portraits just look better. I think Bandai struggled for years adapting these designs for 3D and would prioritize that head-on look. Since then, we’ve had more takes on these characters in 3D in things like video games and even the movie Super Hero. It’s a lot easier to translate those designs to plastic and it shows. Especially when viewing the figures from the side. The older figure is also a little taller which isn’t entirely inaccurate as there was a height creep with the character in the series, but I think this height works better.

I was expecting these two to share parts, but that is not the case.
Whether it’s Daima or Z, Vegeta continues to have a long ass day.

The figure itself is what one expects of Bandai and the SHF line. There’s very little paint involved as most of the figure is molded plastic. The gold on the front and back of the armor is painted on as are all the facial details. The hair is a pale yellow with some darker yellow shading in the front which is my favorite take on Super Saiyan hair that Bandai utilizes. There is paint along the neck line which is pretty clean this time around and is often a frequent pain point with past Vegeta releases. The straps at the top of the vest are colored plastic and the factory did a solid job matching them with the painted parts which is also true of the blue paint on the neck when compared with the body. It’s a nice royal blue which I like and the finish is not quite matte, but it’s also not super glossy. There’s just a hint of shine on some of the curves of the muscles which is appropriate for what I imagine this material to actually be. The whites do have a touch of off-white to them which a lot of past Vegeta figures also went with. I wish they went with a more pure white as I think that would have more pop to it. Especially for the Super Saiyan look. In terms of matching to the source I do think he looks good and is definitely an improvement over other Super Saiyan Vegeta figures.

The faces are pretty good, with the exception of the “beaver tooth” (left).

The accessories for Vegeta feel pretty much the same when compared with that old one. For portraits, we get four: beaver tooth, grumpy/stoic, teeth-gritting, and yelling. It’s basically the usual assortment for the character. The same is true of the hands as we get a set of fists, clenching, splayed open, flat palm, and Vegeta’s martial arts posed hands where the index and middle finger are separated from the fist. The flat palms are a good inclusion since they’re for his patented Big Bang Attack which he debuted in this look. The clenching ones can serve as a Gallick Gun and Final Flash while no one is debating the utility of traditional, closed, fists. The hands also have a little give to them this time around which is really nice as it makes swapping them much easier. Goku’s and most SHF releases feature hands of rigid plastic and swapping can be a real pain. With Vegeta, that is reserved for the portraits and optional hair. Like Goku, he has his standard hair shape (which always reminded me of the flame on a match) and one that’s slightly windswept to his left. Swapping the hair is a bit of a pain because Bandai utilized the same double peg with ball hinge in the middle setup. The hair port is at an angle so getting it lined up is the first part of the problem, then being able to apply enough force without that peg sliding on the hinge is the other. And there’s contending with the spiky nature of both hair sculpts. And like Goku, the faceplates are an extremely snug fit. The default hair works a little better, but getting a truly seamless fit is troublesome. It’s much harder with the windswept look and while I’m guessing heating the hair first will help, I figured I shouldn’t do so for my pictures as I want them to capture what the experience is truly like. I will likely settle on a display I like most, and then try using heat to get a snug fit.

Vegeta seems to always come with these hands for this particular pose.
It’s too bad we rarely get effect parts, but this is a sub $40 figure.

Those aren’t the only accessories, and while we don’t get an effect part we do get something a little different. What’s not different is the crossed arms piece which is pretty much standard with any Vegeta release. Bandai went back to making it one, solid, piece again which is a bummer. I prefer the one that separates in the middle. It also connects at the bicep swivel. There’s a tiny amount of give to the plastic and I didn’t have a hard time with it so that is certainly a plus. The paint on it is also good and if I didn’t already have a ton of Vegeta figures posed with this look I might use it here. The last optional parts are swappable feet. When Vegeta debuted this look, he had all white boots, but pretty quickly he changes to the white boots with gold toes. I’m not entirely sure when that took place, but the gold toes look is probably the more popular version of the character, but I appreciate having the all white look. They pop off just like the hands, and while they’re a bit more snug, they didn’t give me any real trouble. I’m honestly not sure which look I’ll go with as I tend to prefer the gold toes, but I also don’t have a Vegeta on my shelf with the all white boots in this battle armor so I’m tempted to go with those just to change things up. If I had the Android 19 figure I’d definitely go with the white boot and pose him kicking him in the face.

The wind swept hair is fine, though tougher to work with.
“Here it comes!”

The sculpt for this Vegeta may be all new, but the articulation is very similar to the Daima release. We have joints at the head, neck, shoulders, bicep, elbows, wrist, diaphragm, waist, hips, thighs, knees, ankles, and toes. Knees and elbows are double-jointed while the ankles hinge, swivel, and rock. There is a butterfly joint in the shoulders, but it’s pretty limited. It doesn’t pull-out like the older figure. It has a little less range than the Daima figure as that Vegeta has a softer, upper, torso that’s less bulky. He can still get his hands close enough together in front of his chest for a Final Flash, but he can’t have his hands touch out in front of him and actually stay put. The crotch area is a soft overlay and there’s a lot carved out in the front for range. Vegeta has no trouble kicking a full 90 degrees and even beyond that. The diaphragm joint tilts forward and back with some side-to-side as well and is overall less gappy than the Daima figure. There’s a little crunch at the ball-jointed waist too, but that mostly works for rotation. There’s a little movement at the boot cuff, but I think it’s just the overlay for the boot top so I don’t consider it a true boot swivel. The gloves do the same so if they want to put different gloves on these arms they can. Vegeta can do the splits out to the side easily, but front to back doesn’t really work as the sculpted butt gets in the way. The only thing I don’t like about my figure is the neck joint is pretty loose. His head will mostly stay put, but sometimes it just flops forward. I’ve also seen people have issues with the shoulders getting scuffed up by the armor so do be mindful of that. The toe hinge is also still ugly, but I don’t really care that much for toe hinges anyway.

“You’re not the only Super Saiyan, Kakarot!”
“Stop looking at me, clown!”

Overall, this is a more competent release than Games Begin Goku, but not without some quality control issues. The floppy head is a bummer and I’m tempted to do an exchange to see if I can get a better one. I’d probably buy a second one first and kind of kitbash it into one, superior, release before returning it. The smirking face is also a disappointment as finding one that looks even decent proved to be a massive challenge. I’m really glad I waited to find this in store as opposed to ordering it online and I recommend others do the same. Unless you don’t care about that particular portrait or don’t mind Vegeta looking like he’s part of the cast of The Littl’ Bits. The accessories are solid and the articulation is pretty good so for $38 I don’t think this is a bad release at all. It’s quite good and really if just those details were a little finer it would be a home run. Bottom line, this is an improvement over the old Super Saiyan Vegeta and will enhance any Dragon Ball Z display. I do wish they just gave us the black hair instead of the windswept one rather than make base form Vegeta his own release, but that’s also how they make their money. If this were a $65 release (or $80 like the upcoming Trunks) I’d be pissed, but as it is this is a solid one to grab even if you’ve already bought many Vegetas already.

If you’re looking to expand your S.H.Figuarts Dragon Ball collection then here’s a few you might be interested in:

S.H.Figuarts Dragon Ball Z Super Saiyan Goku – The Games Begin

It was around 8 years ago that Bandai released an update to their Goku body. Dubbed the 2.0 mold, the company has since created many action figures of the legendary hero since then. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the sculpt, but some aspects of it have become dated. When Bandai wanted to do an update…

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by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

October 22, 2026

Mondo The Real Ghostbusters Janine with Desk

By Joe
Come on, Janine, try to act surprised.

When I received Mondo’s Ray Stantz from The Real Ghostbusters I thought my collection was complete. I had all four Ghostbusters, plus Samhain, which made for a tidy display. And best of all, I had it all in place well in advance of Halloween 2026. When Mondo first put Peter Venkman and Samhain up for preorder in October 2024, that was the goal for me: get all four Ghostbusters on the shelf by 2026. And at $101 a pop ($202 if you went in for the two-pack with the ghosts) I wasn’t exactly interested in a hypothetical tuxedo Peter or casual Winston. Just the core four for me and the most memorable ghost – perfect.

Then came Mondo with Janine. Janine was there from the beginning serving as the sarcastic secretary for the Ghostbusters. She would go on to become the fifth buster as she would, at times, dawn a jumpsuit and proton pack and get her hands dirty. She is absolutely deserving of a figure, but at these prices did I really need such a thing? Especially since she wasn’t being bundled with a ghost, but her desk. A hundred dollar desk is fun, but impractical. Then Mondo surprised me with the price of $140. Then my job surprised me with a spring bonus. The stars were seemingly aligned. I tuned into Mondo’s Toy Talk on Janine and came away sold. She looked great, shipping was still free, and really the only downer was that the tariff surcharge was still in effect ($12, in this case). My once mighty resolve faltered and I soon found myself ordering a Janine I had never intended to get. She wasn’t scheduled to ship until December and would miss that Halloween window I had placed so much value on, but that wasn’t a big deal. I’d have the four guys and Janine would just have to wait until 2027 to assume a place of prominence in my home. What I wasn’t counting on was a Halloween miracle.

This works.

Because of efficiencies or maybe just good planning on Mondo’s part, Janine did indeed arrive in time for Halloween 2026! I was quite surprised to receive a shipping notification in mid-October. When I got an email for it I just assumed it was the Jean Grey figure scheduled for November and I was quite surprised to see Janine was shipping two months early. Mondo is usually spot-on with their release windows, but this is a nice surprise. She comes in the ghost trap packaging that the solo ‘busters come in and the pack-out is pretty damn good. This is another Alex Brewer sculpt with paint by Mark Bristow and it lives up to the standards this line has set. Janine stands at around 6.5″ putting her in-line with the boys which looks pretty accurate to me (and since it’s October I have been watching some The Real Ghostbusters). She’s sporting her opening title look of purple, sleeveless, blouse with a turquoise mini skirt. She has her purple pumps, two bracelets, and those iconic green glasses with the triangle lenses. Her proportions are great as she’s slim, but not rail thin. Her hair, a bit of a challenge to adapt to 3D, is big and orange just like it should be. From a head-on perspective it looks like a lot, but turn her to a three quarters angle and it’s pretty much a perfect match to how we’re first shown Janine in the opening for the show.

“Does your gizmo always do that, Egon, or are you just happy to see me?”

The paint for Janine is pretty clean, if not pristine. Her clothing and hair has that saturated, matte, look the boys have which is one of the most effective ways to translate cartoons to plastic. There’s some shading to her arms that’s almost pink in appearance and most noticeable around the elbow and bicep area. It may be a touch overdone, but she does have a distinct complexion in the show. There’s some shading in the hair which is more subtle and adds some depth to the curves. What really impressed me though is the paint on the glasses. It’s a tiny piece of plastic to paint green, but the factory Mondo entrusted with this project absolutely nailed it. And there’s even transparent plastic in use for the lenses which looks terrific. No exaggeration, these are the best action figure glasses I’ve ever seen. The only true blemish is a dot of either black or dark red behind the right ear on one portrait. I may be able to scratch it off, though it did not come off with a simple use of a thumb nail. The only real criticism I could levy at this figure is that her necklace is just colored, red, plastic and it kind of shows. A glossy coat of paint may have been the way to go here. The necklace is also technically an accessory as she’s not wearing it in the box. She is wearing her dual bracelets on her left wrist which were heavily wrapped in the box, like almost everything. I had to pop her hand and head off to get it all off of the figure. It means she won’t display well for those who leave her in-box, but that is not a concern of mine.

“Slimer!”
New Slimer is a bit smaller than the old one.

Since there are a ton of accessories to talk about with this set, I’m going to go over the articulation first. Janine surprises in this department as she’s actually more articulated than the Ghostbusters: double ball head, hinged shoulders, single elbows, wrist swivel and hinge, diaphragm joint, waist, ball-socket hips, thigh swivel on the hip socket, double-jointed knees, ankle hinge and rocker. I’m guessing that since she doesn’t have to wear a jumpsuit, Mondo felt more secure in cutting up the sculpt a bit more and it’s for the better. The single-hinged elbows are still an aesthetic choice, but they do bend beyond 90 degrees which is probably enough. The diaphragm joint rotates and tilts in all directions a bit. She’s not going to get deep crunches, but there’s some room for nuance posing. The double-jointed knees are the surprise as I thought they might find a single joint more aesthetically pleasing, but we’ve been living with this style of joint for so long as collectors that I don’t even notice it. The skirt had the potential to be a real impediment, but thankfully she likes her skirts short so it’s not the traffic cone some turn out to be. She doesn’t get a full 90 degree kick forward, nor does she perform splits, but it’s good enough for walking and running poses. The ankles work well, but since she is in high heels the ankle rocker is a little less useful than it would be for other figures, but there isn’t much helping that. Her right ankle on my figure doesn’t want to tilt inward much and I think it’s catching on the side of the ankle. I think the joint is not quite snug. Nothing is loose or overly tight and considering she’s a character mostly known for sitting behind a desk I would say the articulation is plenty good enough.

“Ghostbusters, what do ya want?”
“EGON!”

Ok, so there’s a lot of stuff to go over and we might as well start with portraits. Janine not only outdoes the male Ghostbusters when it comes to articulation, but also with personality. She has three portraits to swap between: neutral, side-eye, and scared or surprised. The side-eye is perhaps my favorite as it has a lot of personality within it. She’s dishing sass to that “doctor” Venkman here. For hands, she has three symmetrical sets: relaxed, splayed, and gripping. She also has a right hand with nail file, a left hand with curled fingers for use with said nail filer, and a more nuanced gripping hand for holding something between two fingers and her thumb. I’m not really sure what that last one is for. I even went through all of Mondo’s pictures on their website to see how it was being utilized, but I don’t see it in any shots. It looks like the type of gesture one might use when picking up something gross. I’m curious if I’ll be able to get her to hold a trap with this hand.

This pinching hand could possibly be for turning the page of her book.
Looks like it can work with the trap too.

And then there’s the desk which is practically a figure all its own. It’s a pretty nice looking representation of the desk from the show and it’s definitely appropriately sized. It has a nice, matte, appearance and contains five drawers which all open and close. For the surface of it there’s a desk mat, PC, desk lamp, phone, and the buzzer she uses to alert the Ghostbusters when a call comes in. Everything looks like it’s pulled right from the show and the PC has a keyboard which looks great to really sell the whole office vibe. Mine, unfortunately, arrived with the keyboard chord not connected to the monitor like it’s supposed to (confirmed with a few others who also got this set), but a little glue should remedy that. There’s also a desk chair which has two seats for it: a standard one and one with a butt print, for lack of a better term. The butt print is for Janine if you want her sitting at the desk as the indent will help to keep her from falling off the chair. To actually sit at the desk, Mondo included a separate lower half featuring Janine’s legs in a seated position and it works well. It even has a magnet in it so she sticks to the seat. The only downer is her legs can’t quite fit underneath the desk which is a bit of a bizarre oversight. It will tuck in under the lip of the desk, but not all the way under it. Lastly there’s an open book titled “Changing Your Job” which is a very Janine-coded thing to read.

Why do I love this so much?
A bit of a bummer that her legs won’t fit all the way under the desk.

Like the boys, Janine doesn’t come alone. Included with her are three ghosts: kissing Slimer and two companion ghosts. Someone more into the cartoon could probably tell you where these companion ghosts are from, but I am not that someone. One is orange and one is a light blue and they’re designed to fit in any of the side drawers like they’re bursting out to scare Janine. They could also stand on their own if you prefer, but they’re slug figures with no articulation. The blue one has a peg hole on the bottom and Mondo did include two, clear, stands. I believe one is for Janine and the other for the ghost. The orange ghost does not feature a peg hole, but seems to stand just fine on his own. The sculpt and paint on both are great and there’s plenty of personality to them. Kissing Slimer is basically what you would expect based on that description as it’s Slimer with his eyes closed and his lips puckered. His arms are outstretched and his fingers locked as this is designed to hang off of the heads of other figures. It works well with Janine’s scared portrait and also Venkman’s salty expression. I wish there was a burst of acrylic “slime” coming from Slimer’s lips to help create the illusion of slime being left on the recipient of the kiss, but then it probably would have to be more specifically molded which would limit the applications. It would be great if Mondo could come up with a way for the characters to appear “slimed” with a later release. Slimer is noticeably smaller than the one that came with Peter, but I assume this was done to make the figure work better for the effect they’re going for. He is a little plain as he’s just all green, but there’s also not really much room for more given that his eyes are closed and we can’t see his teeth or anything. It’s a solid inclusion and he’s probably going to end up with Peter in my display.

“That’s it! I’m going back to retail!”

Janine is a pretty terrific release from Mondo. In many ways, she impresses me more than the actual Ghostbusters. I wish they had as many portraits and hand options as Janine as she just feels so much more substantial. With the Ghostbusters, so many of the accessories are shared so there was a sense of diminishing returns with each release and I really wanted each to have a scared expression and more hands. Janine is more expensive compared to a solo Ghostbuster, but I have to believe that desk and all of the stuff associated with it are a major driver of that. I’m definitely glad I talked myself into this release as now it would be much harder to come by. Janine was a timed release on Mondo’s website and obviously that time has passed. She could end up in a Mondo Vault sale somewhere down the road, but those are impossible to predict and I’m not sure how well Mondo publicizes them in advance. They seem to coincide with conventions, so maybe keep an eye out. Mondo had said on the edition of Toy Talk where Janine was showcased that they have no planes to do another run of her like this. She did sport a look almost identical to this one in the show, but with a yellow blouse and red skirt so that could be an option down the road. I do expect them to also do a jump suit Janine in the future and if the line keeps on selling well then maybe we’ll get a Janine with her second hairstyle? This exact release may not happen again, but I doubt this is the end of Janine.

The gang’s all here.

And it’s definitely not the end of Mondo’s The Real Ghostbusters. Already solicited was Louis Tully with The Grundel and Mondo is planning on soliciting The People Busters before the year is through. I believe those are being released as a set so start saving your money if you think you may want them. They’ve also teased another Halloween release and last year they put out a variant Samhain so expect something similar (confirmed before this went live that it’s a glow-in-the-dark Boogieman). And then, of course, there’s the incredible Ecto-1 Mondo showed at San Diego Comic Con. It was originally scheduled to go up for preorder around Halloween, but Mondo has decided to bump it to 2027 out of a desire to spare the wallets of its customer base. That thing is going to be expensive so the more time the better. In fact, I wish they would just announce pricing now so people could plan for it since ordinarily their pre-order window is a mere two weeks. I don’t know if I’m in for that one as much as I’d want it. I’d consider it around $300, but I’m expecting something double that. For their part, Mondo has said they think people will be pleasantly surprised by the price of the car, but I’ll believe it when I see it. I also have some concern about the guys being able to actually sit in it as their articulation is not the best. Still, whether I get it or not, it’s a pretty exciting time for fans of The Real Ghostbusters and that’s someone no one has been able to say for a long, long, time.

Missed some of the other reviews of The Real Ghostbusters figures from Mondo?:

Mondo The Real Ghostbusters Ray Stantz

And with that, another bucket list item can be crossed off for Mondo has released the fourth action figure in its line of The Real Ghostbusters toys: Ray Stantz. Ray follows Peter, Egon, and Winston and completes the quartet from the 1986 cartoon series which has been sorely underrepresented in the adult collectible market. There…

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by Joe

Mondo The Real Ghostbusters Winston Zeddemore

We are now three deep into Mondo’s line of 1:12 scale action figures based on The Real Ghostbusters. Well, we’re now six deep counting the ghosts, but I personally passed on both Boogie Man and now The Sandman who has been released in tandem with our third Ghostbuster, Winston Zeddemore. At this point, we know…

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by Joe

Mondo The Real Ghostbusters Egon Spengler

It’s a Halloween miracle! The second figure in the Mondo The Real Ghostbusters line of action figures, Egon Spengler, had been bumped to November. Even when I got my shipping notification from Mondo it said a delivery date of November 1st. It felt almost cruel to receive a Ghostbusters toy the day after Halloween, but…

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by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

October 20, 2026

Super7 TMNT ReAction+ Donatello and Raphael

By Joe
Taking a look at something a little retro today.

In the early days of mass market plastic toys, the action figure was all about branding. There wasn’t much aside from that name separating G.I. Joe from Barbie and it’s why a whole generation would come to view action figures as “dolls.” That feeling really started to change with the original Star Wars line from Kenner. Those were true, articulated, plastic men, women, and robots designed to be played with, put into vehicles, and were less reliant upon soft goods. The three and three-quarter inch line of figures was incredibly popular as well as incredibly influential. Other lines would spring up some of which were basically direct copies of what Kenner was doing while others went with a different scale or form factor. When it came time for Hasbro to update G.I. Joe for this new market hungry for action figures, it decided to go with something similar to what Kenner did. The Real American Hero line was a real step-up from what Kenner had done. It retained the same relative scale since it worked so well with vehicles which was a big part of the G.I. Joe line, but upgrades in articulation, sculpting, and paint were needed which gave rise to the O-Ring Joe: a 3.75″ figure that connects the torso to the hips via a small o-ring. The line was popular and G.I. Joe was reborn for the kids of the 1980s which ran into the 90s and even expanded to included popular video games like Street Fighter and Mortal Kombat.

ReAction+ is basically an upgrade over standard ReAction (center) as far as articulation is concerned, but it’s really just about a different source.

Now some forty years later, nostalgia for the o-ring figure is at an all-time high. Hasbro, which now owns Kenner, has kept the 3.75″ figure in rotation, but it’s either intentionally retro in nature like the Star Wars figures from the 70s or it’s a modern take at that smaller scale. Only recently has the company started doing new o-ring style figures and one of the other companies trying to champion it is Super7. Super7 has had its ReAction line, which is essentially styled after the old Kenner figures, for a long time now. Perhaps feeling that they got all they could out of it, they launched the ReAction+ line which is their take on the o-ring figures popularized by Hasbro in the 80s. The issue, as always, with Super7 is the high price. ReAction figures tend to retail for 20 or more dollars a pop so ReAction+ needs to come in higher, from a marketing standpoint (or they could have lowered ReAction, but I’m guessing that was never an option). A Super7 o-ring figure will set you back $25, but for the patient there are deals to be found which is how I ended up with their Raphael and Donatello from the ReAction+ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles line.

Donnie and Raph with the 1:18 JoyToy Donatello and a vintage Playmates Raphael.

Without question, one of the biggest action figure lines, if not the biggest, from the 1980s was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Launched in the summer of 1988, TMNT mania was intense and rivaled pretty much everything that came before it. Created by Playmates Toys, TMNT was its own thing in its own scale that was larger than G.I. Joe and felt more like an evolution on Mattel’s Masters of the Universe, but minus the obvious reuse. It meant for those who collected both lines, it required a pretty considerable sense of disbelief to mix the two brands. Coincidentally, Playmates recently launched a TMNT x G.I. Joe action figure line at the same time Super7 is putting the turtles into the old world of G.I. Joe. These figures from Super7 have appeal for those who were playing with action figures in the 80s. Had the two brands crossed-over then the turtles might have turned out like they have here. And since I already have an extensive assortment of TMNT toys, I felt like o-ring turtles were something close to a requirement for my collection.

The colors between the two seem a little different.

The turtles come packaged like other ReAction figures with a flashy card back and a bubble. A lot of folks who collect ReAction leave them on card, but I’m an opener and I need the tactile experience of o-ring turtles. The actual figures are styled after the 87 cartoon series. They have a deep green colored skin tone and colored bandanas. It might just be my imagination, but Raphael seems slightly darker than Donatello where the belt and shell are concerned, but I don’t know if it’s intentional. The belts are simple and the shells brown as opposed to the green found with the licensing art. They’re also sporting aggressive expressions instead of big, dopey, smiles. The only liberties taken by Super7 here is with the included weapons which are done in colored plastic according to the turtle: red for Raph and purple for Donnie. Most of the figure is colored plastic, but paint was needed for the bandanas, pads, belts, and so on. Most of it is clean, but there are areas of slop or missing paint. The inner elbow lacks the paint of the elbow pad on both while the top of Donatello’s belt was left unpainted. The sculpts are simple and retain some of that ReAction flatness to them. The big bolts, or pins, are still visible in the shoulders which is probably by design. The elbows are a little odd looking as the cut for the joint goes right through the elbow pad. A lot of modern figures use overlays for the elbow pads which looks better, but usually interferes with articulation. This obviously won’t, but I’m left wishing they just put the elbow pad above the joint instead. Since the joint is so big it might have looked worse so this may have been the best they could do. They also stand shorter than the 3.75″ of standard ReAction figures as I have them at about 3.5″. Super7 refers to them as 4″ “scale” which makes me interested in acquiring other figures in the line to see if there is some actual scaling at play.

The paint could be better. Both feature missed spots on the elbows and the top of Donatello’s belt was left green.

Where this design deviates from a line like Real American Hero is in the sculpt and texture. It’s probably due to the character designs, but I always associated those old G.I. Joe figures with a busy presentation. There would be lots of stuff sculpted onto the body which is not unlike what Playmates would do with a lot of its figures too. These turtles are boring by comparison. I suppose they could have upped the texture a bit or maybe sculpted ninja stars on the belt or something. Had Super7 gone that route there’s an equally good chance people like me would have complained so I don’t think of this as so much a criticism, as just an observation. I don’t have any old G.I. Joe figures on-hand, but I assume these would fit in with those figures as well as giant turtles do fit-in with somewhat realistic looking humans. The sculpt is a bit soft. The feet are not well defined and the fingers are fused together. The heads also appear to be shinier than the rest of the figure, but they’re also rounded so it could just be they throw light back in a more dramatic fashion. The plastron is painted and thus matte in comparison which is also likely contributing to the shiny appearance of the head. There’s no paint on the shell so it does look a bit cheap compared with the rest of the figure. The belt buckle does not feature a sculpted-in initial so the bodies are essentially 100% reuse. The only difference rests with the head. The weapons are well-sculpted, but the monochrome presentation is pretty lackluster. I suppose one could paint them, but I probably won’t. The hands are really tight and I had to heat Raph’s to get the sai into them. Since the fingers are fused together, he also can’t do his more stylized sai grip with the center prong going through the fingers. There’s also no weapon storage sculpted onto the body which I’m torn on if I like or not. They’re going to always hold their weapons, most likely, so I suppose it doesn’t bother me. The option would have been nice to have though.

I was able to just barely get two hands onto Donatello’s bo. Raph, for some reason, is harder to stand.

Since these figures are modeled after ones from the 1980s, it’s probably no surprise that the articulation with these turtles is pretty basic. The listing states that they have nine points of articulation, but I think Super7 is selling itself a little short. I note head, shoulders, bicep, elbow, hip, and knees. Not listed is the classic o-ring waist which does provide a little bit of crunch forward, but it’s minimal. Since it’s a rubber o-ring, twisting the figure at that spot just causes it to snap back into place. The shell is also pegged into the back so it swivels a little, but doesn’t provide any real utility. Head range is really limited as they can’t rotate very far or look up, but there is a slight tilt down to them. These are an obvious improvement over standard ReAction figures, but the actual posing is still pretty limited. Largely, that’s a result of no ankle joints so it’s hard to manipulate the legs into anything other than a closed, straight up and down pose to get the figure to stand. The hips are pretty restricted too. The legs kick forward maybe 70 degrees while they don’t come close to being able to do splits in either direction. The arms are the best part, but no wrist or forearm articulation means Donatello can’t really hold his bo staff with two hands naturally which kind of sucks. This is all mostly intentional as Super7 looks to emulate an old, flawed, design for action figures. It’s still hard not to wonder how much better they could be with some modern tweaks. The Hasbro Vintage Collection for Star Wars mostly does that and they’re quite fun to handle while these are just fun to look at, not handle.

“Gee Donatello, this guy really makes us look like a piece of crap.” (with a Vintage Collection Boba Fett)

Super7 is looking to be retro with these ReAction+ Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. These are the figures you may have wanted in the 80s if you were into both G.I. Joe and TMNT, but never had. Either to keep costs down or as a way to remain rigid with the retro approach, they’re very limited as action figures by modern standards. I do wish the sculpting was sharper and that’s not something that really reflects the old figures. The standard ReAction turtles have more pronounced toes than these do. And for $25, I wish the paint was a little better. I also, personally, would prefer painted weapons, but I’m assuming these are more in-line with what a hypothetical Real American Hero turtle would have come with. These are basically novelty figures. If you like how they look then you can probably overlook the obvious shortcomings. I just think an intentionally limited figure should cost less and at $25 these really aren’t worth it. Super7, like every company not named Mattel, is losing the TMNT license at year-end so these particular figures could go either way when it comes to pricing. I got mine at a modest discount, but there could just as easily be a little run on them that keeps the price at MSRP and at some point could rise above that. We’re not there yet though so waiting may pay off. Michelangelo and Leonardo also have yet to be released, but they’re coming along with Bebop and Rocksteady. Shredder and the Foot Soldier round out this first wave and I may grab them if they get cheap enough. I’m in for the turtles though and hopefully the last two can also dip below 20 bucks to get me to bite.

More turtles, more retro, more 1:18 scale:

Star Wars: The Vintage Collection Boba Fett (Vintage Comic Art)

I’ve been collecting action figures in some capacity for my whole life, and it occurred to me now that I’ve never owned the Fett man. That’s Boba Fett, who is one of the most iconic characters from Star Wars and also pretty noteworthy in the world of action figures. I am not the place for…

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by Joe

JoyToy TMNT Turtle Van

The Batmobile. The Time Machine. Ecto-1. The Turtle Van! Yes, I am placing the iconic vehicle of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in the same category as those unforgettable franchise vehicles. And the crazy thing is that of those four, only one of them has never existed in live-action and it’s, of course, the Turtle…

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by Joe

Super7 The Misfits Vintage Style Action Figures

A few months ago, we took a look at a pair of Glenn Danzig action figures made by Super7. The figures depicted Glenn in his Samhain era and his early Danzig era. The figures were in the style of old Masters of the Universe action figures with only the smallest of revisions. Now, we’re back…

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by Joe

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October 13, 2026

NECA TMNT Toon Creepy Eddie and Shibano-Sama

By Joe
Hey! It’s your favorite characters from the old TMNT cartoon!

October has arrived which means we have officially entered “Spooky Season.” Why not mark the occasion with a look at a set of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figures from NECA Toys? After all, NECA made its name with horror before becoming something close to a household name when it acquired the TMNT license almost ten years ago. Now, that time with the license is coming to an end with only one outstanding release to go. As a result, it has caused me to survey my own NECA collection – what I have, and what I passed on. There really isn’t a whole lot that I decided not to get. I passed on both versions of the licensing colors turtles because it just wasn’t something I needed. I also passed on two of the Pizza Club releases (Leonardo and Michelangelo) because they’re just re-releases of stuff I already have with a few new accessories. One of the only “big” sets I had passed on was Creepy Eddie and Shibano-Sama. Part of my reason for passing on the set was I just didn’t really remember either. Sure, hearing the names or seeing an image stirs something in the back of my mind, but these two hailed from episodes I probably didn’t really care for (and that was true upon a rewatch). The pair also arrived at a time when NECA upped the price of its two-packs from $55 to $65 and that’s a steep price to pay for two characters I have no attachment to. Well, obviously I went back on that so let’s see if I should have let this set continue to rot on Target’s shelf or if I stumbled upon a diamond in the rough.

“Muahahahaha I’m free!”

Creepy Eddie comes from the episode “Nightmare in the Lair” from the show’s sixth season. By then, the episode orders were up and the show was featured on Saturday mornings as well as in syndication. I’ve had the entire series for a long time so I went back to rewatch the episode Eddie is featured in and the funny thing is I barely remember it, but all of the episodes around it? Yup, saw them. Probably more than once. This one didn’t stick and probably because the episode is pretty bad. There’s no Shredder, a terrible Channel 6 B plot, and the resolution is kind of a joke. Oh well. Eddie is an obvious parody of Freddy Krueger from The Nightmare on Elm Street film series. He has the striped shirt, hook nose, and wears a hat though his is more of a bowler derby vs Krueger’s fedora. He also doesn’t have a burn victim texture to his skin (probably would be too complicated for animation) nor does he have Freddy’s famous claws. That last part is kind of a bummer, but this was season six when the presence of weapons had been turned way down so maybe a villain with big knives for fingers was a nonstarter? Creepy Eddie dwells in something called the Nightmare World and the turtles access it via some new gizmo Donatello invented. It’s a helmet that’s like a really good VR, only it drags others along with the wearer into another world even though it’s all supposed to take place in the wearer’s mind. When Michelangelo uses it against Donatello’s wishes, Eddie attacks and traps Michelangelo there and when Leonardo goes to check on him he gets sucked in too allowing Eddie to escape into the real world.

“Whoa! This thing is totally radical!”
“You’re stuck with me now, turtle!”

Action figure Eddie looks a lot like the show version. This is a sculpt from Richard Force with paint by Geoff Trapp and Mike Puzzo (they are also responsible for Shibano-Sama). He has all of his features in place, though he comes as a bipedal individual with a pair of stylish suspenders. In the cartoon, Eddie spends most of his time without legs instead featuring this more ghost-like bottom half. The suspenders also come and go, but mostly are not present. To capture that, Eddie has a swappable lower half as well with his ghost bottom a separate part. It’s basically hollow plastic with some nice paint work. The box shows an image of Eddie in this form without his suspenders and I suspect they can come off, but they’re very thin, soft, plastic and since they don’t just come off nice and easy I decided not to push it. I’ll display him with legs anyway since it’s a lot easier that way, though if you want to have him floating around NECA did include one of its awful flight stands. This one seems worse than usual as I can’t get the claw to come off. Did they glue it or is it just stuck? I don’t know, but it’s clunky and the angle of the claw has always been terrible because it keys in on a hexagon shape and can’t simply be parallel with the ground. It’s also the lesser version of the stand which has no additional elbow in it. Usually, when they bundle a stand with a figure that’s the one they use as opposed to this one which is the standard retail version. It does have an optional suction cup base, but I’ve never been able to get that to work well enough to actually use it.

This stand has always sucked.
He has another head, if you prefer.

In addition to his little tail form and stand, Eddie also comes with extra hands and a portrait. For hands we get a set of fists, gripping, open, and pointing. The pointing fingers are kind of warped out of the box or maybe they were going for something more exaggerated. The extra portrait features a closed mouth and it’s fine, but I’ll probably never swap it out in favor of the default open mouthed look. In fact, I couldn’t get the head to come off. I’m sure if I heated it up that would do the trick, but why bother if I’m not going to use it? All of these figures are getting harder to replace. Eddie also has one additional accessory and it’s his time bomb. It’s a little stack of red dynamite with an alarm clock affixed to it and it’s pretty much taken right from the show. Since he doesn’t do much in his episode, this is about the only accessory for him that makes sense. For the turtles, there’s Donatello’s helmet. It has a peg on the back so it’s designed to plug into a bandana port on the back of a turtle head. It works okay. I was able to get it into a standard Turtles in Disguise head. I wasn’t able to get it into the heads that came with Samurai Michelangelo nor was I able to get it to properly plug into the beach Michelangelo portrait. It looks good, but I don’t know how many people will want to display a turtle with it on. It’s more of a snap a pic and be done with it kind of thing.

“Shredder! What have you done?!”

And that takes us to Eddie’s box-mate: Shibano-Sama. Shibano is from the season three episode “Blast from the Past” where Shredder looks to call upon the ancient founder of the Foot Clan to teach his lackeys in the ways of the ninja. When Splinter and the turtles arrive on the scene, Shredder hits them with knock-out gas which has the unexpected side effect of giving Splinter amnesia. This is a problem because Shibano, who is sort of like a ghost-genie, will only obey the true leader of the Foot which is in fact Splinter, or more accurately, Hamato Yoshi. Splinter would be able to prove himself with the special Curly Technique (yes, it’s a Three Stooges joke, sorry to spoil a 36 year old cartoon) if only he could remember it or anything at all. This is all an elaborate setup for the dreaded clip show episode as the turtles then tell tales of their heroic past to freshen his memory. It seems I only had a faint memory of this character because he’s in possibly the worst episode of the season. It’s funny because Trevor Zammit, the director at NECA who oversees the TMNT line, referenced this character years ago as one he’d love to do. I can only assume he just liked the look or concept of the character because the episode sucks.

Magic legs!

When I first saw this set I assumed Eddie and Shibano shared a lot of parts, but now that I have them in-hand I see I was pretty wrong. Shibano comes out of the box in his ghost form with a tail instead of legs. That part is shared with Eddie and so are the hands, but that appears to be it. Well, the elbow is probably the same as it’s that odd style of NECA double joint with a pin and hinge at the top and bottom which is likely shared with many. Unlike Eddie, Shibano is more ghost-like in his appearance on the show so NECA did him in transparent plastic. It has a slight cloudiness to it and some paint in places, most notably the face, but it’s largely see-through. It has a nice feel, but it does make swapping hands difficult. They don’t really like to come out so do be careful. I like the look of this guy though so I see why Trevor wanted to do him even if he likely wasn’t high on the wish lists of many collectors. The look works for an action figure and the paint on the face is really well done.

“Hey! Get out of there!”

To go with the figure, NECA included his sword. It’s pretty basic, but appears to be all new. I don’t have another sword in my collection that looks exactly like it which is a surprise. He also has the same array of hands as Eddie, but no alternate head. To display him with his ghost tail, NECA included the cauldron or urn that his spirit rests in. Shredder summons him with a scroll and he emerges like a genie. Shibano plugs into the top and it supports him just fine. I half-expected him to topple or be a little unstable. It’s also usable with Eddie if you prefer. His only other accessory are his legs. He assembles just like Eddie and his legs are also new sculpt with a translucent appearance. In the show, he’s always floating, but his legs are present and they basically fade into the tail which means this figure is never quite screen accurate, but this is a good approximation. Unlike Eddie, I’ll probably keep him in his floaty form since he has a way to stand without the use of the awful NECA flight stand. I was surprised the legs were new sculpt, but I can’t find a match to anything in my collection. They’re similar to the Foot, but the fit of the pants is looser and the feet are different. They also don’t match Shredder’s legs nor do they match something like Crooked Ninja Turtle gang member. Maybe they’re from something that’s buried in the back of my collection, or maybe they were going to be reused later? There was going to be a ninja Splinter that has now been cancelled. He’s much shorter than Shibano, but maybe they were going to fudge it?

“Don’t worry, dude, I saved you the last slice just like you asked.”

Articulation for both characters is pretty much the same, but the execution is a bit different. They both have: double ball head, hinged shoulders, double-elbows, hinge and swivel wrists, waist twist, ball-socket hips, double knees, hinge and rocker ankles. The knees and elbows work well enough, but the gripping hands feature the horizontal hinge as opposed to the superior vertical one. It doesn’t really matter for Eddie, but for Shibano it sucks since he comes with a sword. The hips are restricted by the soft diaper piece that fits over them and the swivel at that joint is pretty minimal. By far though, the biggest trouble spot are the shoulders. Both characters have these high shoulders that break the silhouette. For Shibano, it goes much higher and since the hinge doesn’t cut through the top he can’t raise his arms to the side farther than a 45 degree angle. For Eddie, it’s even worse as I think his suspenders are getting in the way. I can’t get any movement on that hinge. The look of the character didn’t clearly call out for this need either, but I think it was sculpted this way to help keep the suspenders in place. Regardless, they should have just cut through the top of the shoulder to expose the hinge and force more range because this kind of sucks. I don’t expect much out of NECA when it comes to articulation, but I do expect better than this.

“Heh, smell my finger!”

The Creepy Eddie and Shibano-Sama set is largely what I expected. Both are good representations of a pair of characters likely forgotten by most, but if you want some ghostly characters in your TMNT display they do accomplish that much. I like the creativity on display to make the figures separate at the waist. It’s a nice, big, peg too so the risk of breaking the figures is pretty minimal – just watch out for Eddie’s suspenders. I wish swapping the hands on Shibano-Sama and the head on Eddie was a smoother process and the terrible shoulders are a bummer. Is the set worth $65? No, probably not unless you just have really fond memories of the episodes these two hail from. This stuff rarely hits clearance though so if you want them you may have to suck it up. On the other hand, with NECA losing the license there may be some opportunities for cheaper turtles before the year is up. Or, NECA will recall these from Target stores to sell in their blind boxed bundles in which you’ll also likely end up with some beach turtles, Universal Monsters, and other assorted poor sellers you may already have in your collection or passed on for a reason. This set also came out over a year ago so your luck may vary when it comes to finding it in stores right now. There seems to be plenty available on eBay and other places for around retail so, for now, it should be a hard one to come by if it’s something you desire.

For more from NECA’s TMNT toon line, see below:

NECA TMNT Toon Neighborhood Dudes Incognito Mikey

As I sit here and look upon the latest Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure from NECA I can’t help but wonder if this is the last? Not the last figure from the line for me, but the last actual turtle. NECA has, like everyone not named Mattel, lost the license which allows them to…

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by Joe

NECA TMNT Toon Robo Tokka and Robo Rahzar

The vintage Playmates toy line for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had no shortage of variants. There were beach turtles, police turtles, hockey turtles, and so on. We even had something akin to Operation: Desert Storm turtles. In looking back, it seems like few stones were left unturned unless you want to get into the weeds…

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by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

October 7, 2026

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Apocalypse

By Joe
Come the Apocalypse.

One of the big bads of X-Men: The Animated Series was none other than Apocalypse. He appeared in the opening clash to start almost every episode and when the show was looking to end on a high note it selected Apocalypse as the villain to center that story on. When X-Men ’97 arrived in 2024, Apocalypse was conspicuously absent apart from a throw-away line by Wolverine in the show’s second episode. That is, until the very end when a post credits stinger featured the immortal one amongst the wreckage of Genosha signaling that he was going to have a part to play in season two. We may have had to wait a bit longer than expected for that second season, but perhaps to tide us over we had Hasbro and its Marvel Legends team which unveiled Apocalypse at last year’s New York Comic Con. The made-to-order item would arrive in 2026 and now as we sit on the eve of New York Comic Con 2026, Apocalypse has indeed arrived.

He’s a big boy, but still in the shadow of the Sentinel.

Even with Apocalypse set to play a large role in X-Men ’97 season two, I was skeptical we would get a Marvel Legends figure of the villain. That’s because in 2022 Hasbro released a retro card version of Apocalypse in his animated colors. Apocalypse was rather famously re-colored to purple and blue for the cartoon as opposed to his black and blue look from the comics. It was a curious decision and as a kid one I probably did not like, but overtime it’s become charming and nostalgic. Still, it’s probably not a popular colorway with the majority of Legends collectors so just getting that one figure was a surprise. And it’s a figure I liked then and still like because they did re-sculpt some of the figure to give it more of an animated look, and since the figure was a re-color of a previously released build-a-figure, he was larger than the standard Legends release.

Eternal enemies.
Good luck, Cable.

Whenever Apocalypse is brought to plastic, there’s always a question of how big should he be? Thanks to the original Toy Biz release, my first understanding of Apocalypse was that his mutant power allowed him to increase in size. And it can, but he also possesses a great deal of other powers to use against his foes. Because of his unique abilities, he’s always changing in size. Some of that is probably due to the inconsistent animation of the old series where there’s even shots of Apocalypse at almost eye level with Archangel. For the most part, he’s quite a bit bigger and the official height chart the animators were supposed to go off of put him at over 7′, which interestingly had him as being shorter than Juggernaut. For this made-to-order figure, Hasbro decided to go big.

He’s big on theming.
This setup for the cables works so much better than past figures.

Apocalypse comes in the same style of box as the previously released Sentinel. It has no window, but instead a render of the figure and the accessories inside against a yellow backdrop. Since it’s not something sold in stores, I don’t really care about the omission of a window box. The packaging inside is easy to get through with an absence of annoying tie-downs. Once removed, Apocalypse will tower over the other X-Men ’97 figures (well, except for the Sentinel) at approximately 12″ in height if not a little taller. And he’s not some bean pole as proportionally he’s pretty massive. I don’t know for sure, but it feels like his height was based on the scene inserted into the opening of some episodes of X-Men ’97 showing Apocalypse confronting Cable beneath his temple. Which itself was a recreation of a scene from the original series. This size also likely puts him in proper scale for the scene depicted at the end of the fourth episode of season two and he even seems to come with an accessory that is a reference to that. There’s a nice mass to all of his limbs and his torso which isn’t something Legends is always good about. Even the old retro card figure when viewed from the side has something of a flat chest. This Apocalypse is round and full and really embodies the look of the character in the show.

It doesn’t show on camera, but the retro card figure is a darker purple and the upper body, boots, etc. is blue where as with this new figure they’re a different shade of purple.

And more than any other Legends release I’ve encountered, this guy looks like he stepped right out of my television. The subtle change in the shades of purple in use are captured exquisitely. The old figure was a purple body with blue accents while this Apocalypse is basically just multiple shades of purple. The only color in use that I’d consider blue is found on the figure’s head. There’s a yellow tint to his exposed flesh which matches the show and his eyes are the inferno-like red and yellow. There’s not a ton of paint on him, but the body has been hit with a clear, matte, finish. It makes photographing him slightly challenging for my very amateurish setup. The difference in colors between this new figure and the retro card one are pretty stark in person, but in pictures it looks far more subtle. All of the details are here though like the piping on his arms and subtle changes in textures throughout. The cables, always the bane of any Apocalypse figure, are a metallic silver and they now connect to the rear of the belt and above the elbow which makes them a lot more manageable. I actually have yet to have one pop out by accident and they do seem more pliable than the old figure. That one has them pop out all the time whenever I pose it. The only visual negative is some of the paint around the lips is a little sloppy on mine. There’s also some hot spots with the finish along the side of the figure which I think is the result of the bubble packaging. Neither are noticeable from shelf range, but is apparent in-hand.

Apocalypse has a lot of foes.

Apocalypse comes loaded with stuff and it’s basically all things seen in the early part of the show’s second season. Hasbro almost certainly was able to look at material from the show to create these which is in contrast to how Marvel has been with a lot of the movies of late. For hands, we get a set of fists and a set of asymmetrical open hands. The right hand is a little looser than I’d like, but at least swapping parts is pretty simple. There is one alternate head and it’s a grimacing one which looks great and has a clean paint application. I do wish we got a third, evil smile portrait from the execution scene at the end of episode four. For attachments, Apocalypse has various weapons and even a defensive item. He has his big, snap-on, shield which is emblazoned with his signature “A” and looks incredibly goofy, but it’s well-represented here. It basically slides up the forearm until snug and works well. He also has a blade hand attachment, a spiked ball, and a drill. All of them are entirely plastic with no paint and Hasbro used its semi-metallic plastic for the “metal” parts. There’s some swirling on the morning star that looks bad, but none on the other two. Apocalypse also has his arm canon which first showed up in the original series and was also an accessor with the retro card figure. It comes with two different blast effects. One is similar to the Sentinel blasts as there’s a rear plume and a cone of energy in the center. The second is just the plume with a clip in the middle to plug another figure into it. This is almost certainly in reference to a specific scene, though you won’t be able to accurately pull that off in plastic as the articulation isn’t quite up to snuff there. It’s a neat idea and you can use it with most Legends figures though I wish the impact was larger and more dramatic. He has multiple muzzles on the arm canon and it can accept the Sentinel blast effects so long as you only use the center piece. That’s the only way to get multiple blasts going. Lastly, there’s a diorama piece that’s a blast hitting a rocky ground and it’s pretty damn cool. I’m going to have to figure out a way to work it into my display as a result because it would be a waste not to.

The Sentinel blast works too.
You can fit more into the canon if you omit the muzzle flash.
The clip-on blast works better with non-caped characters.
This is the face my cat makes when I pick her up.

Apocalypse is a pretty chunky boy so articulation isn’t going to be his strong suit. It’s not a total bummer though as he works reasonably well for a man his size. We get: double-ball head, ball-hinge shoulders, bicep, double elbows, wrist swivel and hinge, ball-jointed diaphragm, ball-jointed waist, ball-socket hips, thigh swivel, double knees, boot swivel, ankle hinge and rocker. Where you’re likely to get the best range is at the head and in the torso. He’s too chunky to crunch forward much, but the ball joints in the torso and waist work really well with rotation, tilt, and just general nuance posing. The arms are a bit too chunky to get the elbows to bend past 90 degrees and no butterfly joint does limit things at the shoulder. The big shoulder pads rotate with the arm so they don’t get in the way, at least. He’s not going to do splits or kick forward as far as 90 degrees, but the gait he gets is adequate and the ankles work very well. I also like the included boot swivel so if you want to rotate the feet you can without breaking up the sculpt in the thighs. He can hit walking poses and sell his effect parts well. What he can’t do is reach across his body or convincingly get down on one knee. Again, there’s a certain scene in episode 4 I’m thinking of here that’s just not possible to pull off, unfortunately, but all things considered the articulation is fine.

These are the weapons he turns to when he wants to get medieval.
“Only a coward feels mighty when stepping on ants.”

Do you want a giant Apocalypse from X-Men ’97? One that looks close enough to his appearance in the original animated series as well? Then you should probably get this one. He’s not cheap at $120, but he’s currently listed as in-stock on Hasbro Pulse as of this post going live. This is an impressive chunk of plastic of season two’s signature villain, and while finding space in one’s collection could be a challenge, he will immediately bring some presence to any display. I’ve always liked Apocalypse so I’m predisposed to like this figure. It’s something I never expected, but am happy is here. I hope Hasbro sold a lot of them and that the X-Men ’97 figures are making them money because I’m counting on more getting announced this weekend at New York Comic Con. Apocalypse was a made-to-order item, but if you want to get one just keep your eyes on hasbropulse.com as there are likely more which will go up for sale in due time.

“Crash upon me and be broken!”

For more Apocalypse and X-Men ’97 goodness, check these out:

Marvel Legends X-Men Retro Card Series Apocalypse

It is Halloween and that means it’s time for costumes, candy, and spooky fun. It’s also Halloween 2022, a pretty important date if you grew up loving those mutants who ran around in colorful spandex fighting for a better tomorrow. That’s because 30 years ago on this very night, the animated series X-Men premiered on…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men ’97 Sentinel

When X-Men premiered on Halloween 1992 the big bad guy of the day wasn’t Magneto, it wasn’t Apocalypse, it was the Sentinels. The mutant-hunting robots were chosen because they represented the threat from humanity as it pertained to the protagonists of the show. Any show or comic book can put some scary dude in a…

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by Joe

Marvel Legends Mephisto

It’s now been a couple of years since Hasbro did a light pivot from the HasLab model of action figure delivery to the made-to-order one. That’s not to say the HasLab is dead, but we haven’t seen a Marvel Legends themed one since Giant Man which was solicited in September of 2023 and delivered about…

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by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

September 30, 2026

Mondo Squads Rocko’s Modern Life

By Joe

One of the big television moments of my young life in the 1990s was the premiere of Nickelodeon’s very own cartoons. Dubbed Nicktoons, these were creator-driven shows intended to entertain first and move merch second. And that second component was a pretty distant second. Launched in 1991, the original Nicktoons consisted of Doug, Rugrats, and The Ren & Stimpy Show. All three are pretty much classics at this point and all three brought something different to the table, but the three show format sure felt kind of funny even in the moment. Since all were designed to occupy a half hour block of television it meant that the inaugural Nicktoons block was an hour and a half beginning at 10 AM on Sunday morning and ending at 11:30. That just felt wrong somehow. Even though radio had designated a block of content as 3 songs, for television it felt like a proper block should be four half hour shows. Well, we wouldn’t have to wait long to get out wish as the following year Nickelodeon launched Rocko’s Modern Life to complete the block. The Joe Murray created show had a tremendous team behind it including soon to be household names (well, in animation circles) as Stephen Hillenburg, Tom Kenny, and Doug Lawrence.

It’s a big box.

Over the years, Rocko has seemed to remain popular, but not as popular as some of the other Nicktoons. For my money, it is the best show Nickelodeon has produced. It had the wacky, gross-out comedy that many associate with The Ren & Stimpy Show, but it combined that with something of a coming of age tale. Rocko is a young adult who only recently left home to make a go at living on his own in the 1990’s. He has problems that maybe the target audience didn’t entirely relate with, but could at least empathize with. Some of them are universal issues like how to deliver bad news to a friend or what to do about a crush, but then there were issues with credit cards and holding down a job. The animation always delivered out of the newly minted Games Studios, an in-house production company owned by Nickelodeon, and the show was able to churn out 52 episodes which was a pretty typical order for Nickelodeon. Only the mega successful shows got more episodes as presumably re-upping with Murray and his staff following the initial 52 would be more costly for Nickelodeon than simply launching a new series. By all accounts, Murray was ready to move on as well, but it wouldn’t be the last we’d hear from Rocko as the gang did return in the short movie Static Cling in 2019 carried exclusively by Netflix.

These might be bigger than you would have expected.

Because Rocko is so awesome, and because Mondo seems to have a good working relationship with Nickelodeon, we now have a set of Mondo Squads featuring Rocko, Heffer, Filbert and some choice little buddies. Mondo’s Squads brand is different from typical action figures. They’re somewhat modeled after maquettes, small statues often commissioned for artists working on animated shows and movies to help them visualize a character in 3D, featuring minimal articulation and occupying a scale that is basically their own making. The characters come housed in a pretty substantial box featuring the same artwork that was used on the Rocko’s Modern Life DVD collection several years ago. Jordan Christianson is credited with the package design which resembles a television one might find in O-Town, though I want to say the actual picture of Rocko and the other characters in the background was done by Joe Murray. The figures in the set are based on a concept by Joe Allard and the sculpts were handled by Brandon Gash. Mara Ancheta is credited with the paint while Hector Arce was in charge of the art direction. The figures are well packaged in a large plastic bubble and pretty much everything is wrapped in a plastic bag to protect the paint. There are no tie-downs and the whole thing is quite pleasent to access.

Rocko seems a little off to me. Left is a comparison with a Pop! and right is a still from the movie Static Cling.

We’ll talk about Rocko first who Mondo lists at coming in at 5.75″. As I alluded to above, these figures do not occupy any sort of concrete scale. They’re definitely not 1:12 or even 1:10, but the goal seems to be to just make sure they scale with each other. Rocko is depicted in his traditional blue, collared, shirt with pink triangle pattern and brown shoes. By default, he’s sporting what I’d call a contented expression and his arms are at his sides. Rocko could be a tough character to pull off in 3D, but Gash did an amazing job as he looks to be incredibly on-model. The paint application is simple, but clean, as Mondo did not opt to go for a cel-shaded look. Instead we just have flat, saturated, matte colors that do well to mimic an animation cel. Rocko would be perfect if not for one thing that’s been bothering me. The shade of his fur in the original series was a pale yellow. I have a Funko Pop! that pretty well captures that shade, but for this figure we have more of a dull brown. It’s darker in person than in pictures and I can only assume this is because Mondo based their design off of the updated character models for Static Cling where Rocko was a bit darker. In that though, I’d say his fur has a touch of gray as opposed to brown so it’s not a perfect match for that as well. His shoes are also a little off as they’re a dark brown as opposed to more of a red-brown. It’s a thing I’m trying to ignore and just accept, but it does bother me if I’m being honest.

“Umm, you wouldn’t happen to know the Big Heads, would you?”
“Spunky! No!”

Rocko is pretty much a five points of articulation figure as basically all of the Squad designs are, but he does have a lot of extra parts to change how he’s displayed. His secondary portrait is Rocko’s frequently worn concerned look. He is unsure about something or maybe even a bit embarrassed. To complete the look he has a set of arms that feature his hands coming together at the fingertips. If that is a bit understated, he has a terrific “freak out” expression that’s partly based on his scream during the opening title. His mouth is wide open with his brain literally leaping out of his skull. The brain is held up in air with translucent, red, plastic for the brain stem and it’s quite impressive to behold. The eyes are enlarged as well, though not to the degree they are from the show. To help further sell this scream, Rocko has a second tail that sticks straight out from his body (his default tail has a bit of an “S” shape to it) and a set of arms out wide. The brain leaping from the skull bit is something I identify with the show so this was a great pull for an optional display. All of the limbs just peg in so everything is easy to swap on Rocko as well as the rest of the figures in the set.

The gluttonous steer with a heart of gold.

We now move onto Heffer, Rocko’s gluttonous best friend who is a steer raised by wolves. Mondo has Heffer listed at 9.5″ so he’s considerably taller than Rocko, as he should be. He’s also practically a sphere with limbs and has a very light feel, but still has that high quality, Mondo, appearance. Unlike Rocko, his shading is pretty much spot-on and Gash did a tremendous job translating him to 3D. He even has his asymmetrical eyes and cavernous butt crack. The paint is once again clean and I like the addition of some subtle shading in places, most notably that bulbous ass. There’s also some nice, black, linework on the feet and around the hem of his pants. The only blemish, or mistake, is that Mondo left Heffer’s horns the same shade of yellow as his body and head. In the show, and movie, they were always orange as there was an obvious separation between skull and horn It’s a much smaller issue than Rocko’s general fur color, but a surprising omission considering how detail-oriented Mondo typically is.

“Give me a merit badge NOOOOOOOWWW!!!”

By default, Heffer has a happy expression that captures his personality quite well. His default arms are also just at his side. For a second portrait we get Heffer with a mouthful of who knows what? There’s a right arm holding a blue, foil, bag to go with this look and a left arm holding a TV remote. The presence of the remote makes me wish we had Rocko’s couch and TV, but there’s already a lot in this set and that likely would have really pushed the MSRP higher than the already pretty high $160. Heffer’s third expression is a giant belching one with half-lidded eyes. He has outspread arms to go with this and while Heffer likely burped quite a bit in the show, this set really makes me think of his declaration “Give me a merit badge NOW!” from the short “Belch of Destiny.” It’s a good selection for Heffer, though I’m a little disappointed that the snack bag is just plain blue. Why no Pasture Puffies logo? And I think I’d swap the TV remote hand for one clinging to a handful of the green, spongey looking, snack.

“Hello.”
“I’m nauseous…I’m nauseous…”

Rounding out the trio is good old Filbert, the hypochondriac turtle who is probably a little bipolar since he can get aggressive at a moment’s notice. He stands at about 6″ even and looks every bit as good as Rocko and Heffer. If anything, he is the best of the three as there’s nothing obviously off about the design or the paint. I suppose one could quibble with the placement of his arms, but they kind of moved around in the show, but were almost always shown coming out of the side of his shell at about the same level as his belt. His shoes are also too dark, but it’s not really something that bothers me. Overall, he looks great and his default expression is more or less a happy one. He too has arms that just hang at his side for the default ones and like Rocko his secondary portrait is one that looks concerned or worried. His arms that seem intended for this expression are similar to Rocko’s where he’s bringing his hands together in front of him. His third portrait features oversized, bloodshot, eyes and arms with his palms open pointing forward, elbows bent. This is Filbert’s freak out expression and it’s a good one. He’s such an expressive character in the show that it would be especially easy to come up with more (yelling, angry, one with a heating bag on his head), but I think this selection is pretty damn good and appropriate for old Filbert.

“Please take care of my, Turdy!”
Turdy! Behind you!

And that’s not all, as we have two more characters to talk about. First is Spunky, because you can’t have a Rocko without a Spunky. Spunky is a slug figure with no articulation, but he’s sculpted in a bum scoot pose with a delightful expression upon his face. If you’re going to do just one Spunky, this is the way to go. The other included little buddy is Filbert’s bird, Turdy. Featured in the segment “Bye, Bye, Birdie,” Turdy was entrusted to Rocko while Filbert was away only for Heffer to accidentally sit on him and end his short life. To capture this moment, Turdy has two sets of eyes: one for the living, and one for the dead. His dead eyes, in true cartoon fashion, feature big X’s so you wouldn’t confuse him with a living bird. He does have a swivel in his neck, but is otherwise not articulated. Both Spunky and Turdy are on-model and look great featuring the same quality of paint as the larger figures.

“You think Filbert will notice?”

This set of figures based on Rocko’s Modern Life was sold as a limited edition set on Mondo’s shop earlier this year for $160. It’s a steep price for figures that are essentially statues, but if you’re someone in the market for high end collectibles of Rocko’s Modern Life then this is pretty much the only game in town. It’s also sold out so the only option now is to grab one on the secondary market. I have no idea if this one is going to be so desirable that it will command far more than that $160 price tag (which also included an $18 shipping charge) or not, but it’s also the type of thing that is likely to only go up. Mondo on a live stream awhile back also confirmed that this is the only planned set for Rocko’s Modern Life so if you were holding out for a cheaper one with less stuff it sounds like that isn’t happening. Of course, if demand is there they can always revisit it. I’d personally love a second set featuring the Big Heads or a Christmas variant of these three. Such a set could feature Rocko, Heffer, and Filbert in their winter attire and come with a walking Spunky, the little elf character, and Rocko’s tree with a living expression and a dead one. Perhaps I shouldn’t start giving Mondo ideas since this stuff isn’t cheap, but for now I’m pretty happy to have these characters in my collection as it’s been long overdue. The best Nicktoon deserves the best toys and Mondo’s Squads is pretty much the perfect method of delivery, albeit not the most economical.

For more of my thoughts on the greatness that is Rocko’s Modern Life check these out:

Rocko’s Modern Life: Static Cling

After taking a trip to the past with Rocko’s Modern Life during the spring, it seems only fitting that I also take a look at the Rocko’s Modern Life movie from 2019: Static Cling. To be fair, the term “movie” is definitely used loosely when applied to this piece of media. Static Cling was originally…

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by Joe

Rocko’s Modern Life – Season 3

My rewatch of Rocko’s Modern Life really could not have gone better. I suppose it would be better if it wasn’t during a pandemic, but what can you do? The show has been a delight, and while I felt Season Two was pretty much on par with the first season, I think an argument can…

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by Joe

Dec. 10 – Rocko’s Modern Christmas

Rocko’s Modern Life may be the most 90s cartoon created during that decade. It’s certainly the most 90s of the Nicktoons, Nickelodeon’s very successful foray into original animation after years of airing other studio’s work. Rocko’s Modern Life centered around a wallaby named Rocko, naturally, and his journey into adulthood, which most notably includes self-reliance.…

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by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

September 21, 2026

Mondo X-Men ’97 1/6 Scale Storm

By Joe
Behold! The fury of the Storm!

With the arrival of Storm, Mondo moves one step closet to completing the X-Men team from the original Fox animated series. She follows Jubilee, Gambit, Rogue, Cyclops, Wolverine, and Beast, but since this line got started during the launch of the very successful X-Men ’97, she arrives with that title upon her box. For fans who have been collecting this line, that distinction has been a little irritating at times. No, I can’t say most care about what’s on the box, but some of the figures within have too strongly favored the continuation as opposed to the original series, but with Storm that is not the case.

Storm comes in the usual, large, box with artwork on the front by former storyboard artist Dan Veesenmeyer. Images from those same storyboards are used to fill out the background and it’s tough to tell what episode. It might be “Slave Island” though it could be “Savage Land, Savage Heart.” Regardless, it’s Storm going off with her powers and it looks pretty neat. The figure inside is another sculpt from the renowned Alex Brewer with paint by Tom Rozejowski and Hilary Arce. Hector Arce is credited with the art direction while Jordan Christianson designed the packaging. It is a box like Beast’s and does not include a window like past releases, but that’s fine considering the contents are heavily wrapped to protect the paint.

Out of the box, Storm stands about 11″ to where the top of her head would likely be under that rather large mass of white hair. Factor that in, and she’s over a foot tall making her one of the tallest in the line. As I alluded to in the opening paragraph, this is very much a Storm based on her appearance in the original animated series. The tell-tale mark in this case are her thigh-high boots and heels. In X-Men ’97, she ditches those for a more traditional boot line halfway up her calf. The sculpt is quite nice as Brewer was pretty generous with the curves. The costume, a bit of a point of contention amongst comic fans (Is it white? Silver? A glossy black?), is a cartoon-accurate white with a lot of black shading. There’s some gray-blue shading mixed in as well which helps make Storm look like she leapt off the screen. All of the yellow accents are where you would expect them to be as are her trademarked lightning bolt earrings. By default, she has her big, poofy, hair which will make her a bit tough to stand, but is animation accurate. The only critique I have for the sculpt is her face is still not quite what I picture for Storm from the show. Her chin comes to more of a pronounced point in plastic where her jaw was a bit more square, but with soft lines, in the show.

The plastic cape looks great, but severely limits posing.

One of the challenges of creating Storm for this line rested with her cape. To preserve the look of the show, a painted cape made out of plastic is ideal, but since her cape connects to her wrists that basically kills any articulation in the arms. Mondo’s solution then was to give the collector options. Storm has an all plastic cape that’s well-painted and looks great. It includes her shoulder pads and plugs into her clavicle area with the yellow cuffs fitting over her wrists. It’s in a neutral position so Storm won’t be able to do much with her hands while wearing it, but if you’re the sort of person that just goes for a pretty vanilla pose on your shelf it will look nice. For those looking for something more poseable, there’s a soft goods cape as well. It’s actually two pieces and also includes the yellow cuffs, but it’s all soft goods. The outside portion is white while the inner part of the cape is gray. It’s not going to fool anyone and does look like a soft goods cape, but it does strike a nice compromise. And if you don’t like the look of the soft goods, yellow, wrist cuffs on it Mondo did include two optional yellow, plastic, ones. I think these are mostly intended for slipping over her wrists for those who don’t want to put the cape on at all, but they can be muscled over the soft goods cuffs too for a stronger, more saturated, look. Based on the pictures on Mondo’s website, it also is possible to remove the cape from the shoulder pads, but it doesn’t look easy so I have opted not to try. I’m also not sure which cape that applies to.

For those who prefer their Storm have more of a punk vibe.

Storm may be wearing her ’92 costume, but she does have some ’97 inspired portraits to approximate her look in that series if it’s your preference. The default one features the big hair and her iris present while there’s an alternate one with the eyes whited-out. This is what happens whenever Storm uses her powers so if you’re posing her with lightning effects make sure you have the right eyes unless you want to look like a fool. The sculpts look to be identical with just the eye paint being different. It makes sense, though I wish her non-powered up look featured a smile. If you want her to look a bit more intimidating, there’s a slightly angrier expression where the wind is pushing her hair up. It’s definitely a cool look and one I’ll be hard pressed to ignore when it comes to my own, personal, display. For the X-Men ’97 enthusiasts, she also has a neutral portrait with mohawk and an angry one with that same mohawk hairstyle. The angry one features the added detail of little holes beside her whited-out eyes that can accommodate two lightning effects. I believe this is based on her grand entrance in the first episode of X-Men ’97. Also included in this timed edition of Storm is another neutral portrait with a ponytail hairstyle. I think this hairstyle made an appearance a couple of times in the original series, but I remember it most from the episode “Orphan’s End.” It’s a good spread, though I’m a little disappointed that none of the heads feature a smiling expression. She’s either stoic or angry and while Storm does tend to be quite serious much of the time, she’s not joyless.

She has a pair of “weapons” as well, including this terrific homage to the Toy Biz Storm.

To go with all of those expressions is an assortment of hands. By default, Storm has these style posed hands. The kind of gesture she would make while reaching out and getting ready to direct her powers at a target, be it lightning, wind, or something else. She also has a similar set with little crackles of lightning affixed to them. They’re soft and pliable, but also do make it a little tough when trying to put her hands on (and swapping is not easy – go for heat). She also has two clenching hands with similar lightning effects on them and a set of gripping hands. For those gripping hands, Storm has the staff weapon featured in her battle with Callisto in the episode “Captive Hearts.” It’s the strange, double lightsaber weapon that has a gray handle in the center and translucent blue plastic for each end. It looks fine, but I’m surprised at the lack of paint in the center handle. The other handheld accessory is a large, translucent, yellow, lightning bolt. This feels like a direct callback to Storm’s original Toy Biz figure right down to the little, squared-off, grip on the side of it. It looks pretty neat and I do love it when Mondo slips callbacks into these packages. The hands that are likely to be among the favorites of anyone with this figure are the ones with lightning shooting from the finger tips in a wide arc. It’s more translucent yellow plastic and it’s an effect similar to what Hasbro attempted with their X-Men Storm, but executed far better because the plastic for the hands is not painted over translucent plastic. The last hand option is a unique piece. It’s a small plant with a right hand affixed to the bottom. Above the plant is a rainstorm and a dark cloud and affixed to that cloud is another lightning bolt connected to a left hand. Unfortunately, mine arrived with the hands basically parallel to each other which made it impossible to get onto Storm as the top needed to be facing the opposite direction. By heating it, I reshaped the little lightning bolt and was able to get it onto my figure, though this stressed where the lightning was glued into the cloud and it snapped when I took it off. Mondo is sending me a new one at no cost to me so it’s not a big deal, but something to watch out for if you get the same. The last accessory, is another mutant power suppressor collar like the ones Gambit came with. You should now have enough to reenact the episode “Slave Island” with Storm, Jubilee, and Gambit if you so desire.

Can’t forget the ponytail look.

For articulation, Storm is pretty typical of the line. We get: double-ball head, ball-hinge shoulders, single hinge elbows with a swivel, ball wrists, diaphragm, waist, hips, thigh cut, double-jointed knees, hinge ankles and rockers, wired cape. The thigh cut is a nice addition since it’s hidden by the line of her boots. The torso works really well with its ability to arche back and forth at the diaphragm and a little at the waist. Plus you get the rotation and tilt you likely would want. The single-hinged elbows are a minor shortcoming, but the shoulders are the weakest point. Because her costume bunches up at the shoulders which is captured by the sculpt, she can’t raise her arms out to the side into a classic “T” pose. The range is about 45 degrees, but she can rotate at the shoulders without issue so it’s something that can be worked around to some degree. Even with the heels and big hair, Storm can be made to stand on her own with a little persistence. I don’t know that I’d leave her on a shelf like that, but the good thing is that I don’t have to. Mondo also included their new flight stand. Unlike the one I received with Nightcrawler, this one fit over the articulated post for me without having to disassemble it. The only problem is that she’s so slight of frame finding a place to use the claw on her is tough. It’s pretty much the bust area or nothing. I wish they had a smaller claw for smaller figures, but on the plus side this will work with pretty much all of the other figures in the line if you want to put Wolverine in a leaping pose or allow Magneto to hover.

Before I “fixed” it, this is how the plant hand arrived.
This is how it’s supposed to look.
From Mondo itself. Image by Raúl Barrero.

Like all of the figures in this line, Storm doesn’t come cheap. The MSRP is $245, but it also required a tariff fee and shipping which brought the total for me to north of $300. Is she worth it? If any of the others are then yes and by the standards of the line she not only features a lot of stuff, but looks great and articulates about as well as can be expected. I love all of the options and I appreciate Mondo giving us two kinds of capes for our display. The only downer for me is how Mondo doesn’t allow for us to swap the hair. If Storm could do so it would really open up the display possibilities. I love the eye lightning, but I don’t know if I’ll ever want to display her with her X-Men ’97 hairstyle when I’m mainly going for a ’92 look for my display. If the hair could be moved around it would solve that problem, Plus, that’s a lot of extra plastic to have to include. The issue with the tree accessory is unfortunate, but not a big deal for me. As of right now, I have not received my replacement part, but I have an “order” created for it by Mondo so I’m not concerned at the moment. I might also just try and repair the one I have since it is a clever little item. My criticisms here feel pretty minor though and at the end of the day I think Storm is one of the best figures in the line so far. It’s getting tough to pick favorites, but I’ve been really impressed by Storm, Beast, and Nightcrawler. Next up is Jean which Mondo is billing as the team completer, but we all know there’s still some pretty important characters still waiting for their own chance. Jean won’t be out until next year though so it’s going to be a little while before we have another figure in the line to talk about, but at least it’s not the last.

EDIT: Jean went up for preorder on September 22 with an expected ship date of November 2026 so apparently we are not done with X-Men this year!

UPDATE: I received my replacement “Storm Plant” from Mondo about two weeks after contacting them. The new part did have the hands in a new orientation, but unfortunately it’s still unusable. When the bottom hand is connected to the figure, the fingertips of the top hand are now pointing at her chest. Previously, they were pointed in the same direction as the bottom hand. I can only conclude the issue must be pretty widespread and I wonder if checking which direction the parts are going is even part of the factory review. It’s too bad they glued everything as not only would that have prevented the issue, it would have made it easier to get onto the figure. I think I’ll explore a permanent fix to the one I broke rather than ask for a third one.

We are so close!

For more from Mondo’s X-Men line, see below:

Mondo X-Men ’97 1/6 Scale Beast – Limited Edition

Back in the old Toy Biz line, it felt like we had to wait a long while for an action figure of Beast, or The Beast as the opening title of X-Men: The Animated Series referred to him as. Perhaps that was due to the character spending the bulk of the first season out of…

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by Joe

Mondo X-Men ’97 1/6 Scale Nightcrawler

Yes, I’m afraid this is another toy review that needs to begin with a word about tariffs. It was the talk of 2025 in the toy collecting community because it caused considerable delays, disruptions, and worst of all, increased prices across the board. One line impacted by the introduction of these new costs more than…

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by Joe

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September 16, 2026

Numskull BurgerTime Quarter Scale Arcade Cabinet

By Joe
It’s time! It’s time! It’s Burger Time!

For a few years now, Numskull has been releasing scaled down versions of arcade classics. It’s a strategy similar to Arcade1Up which managed to worm its way into big box retail with its smaller versions of classic and not so classic arcade games, but with Numskull they’ve gone even smaller. Their quarter scale machines are just that – a classic arcade machine at one fourth the size. At least, I take them at their word in that regard since the game we’re talking about today is one I don’t have access to in its original form so if this is not exactly to scale then that’s for someone else to confirm. These releases though caught my eye when they first showed up and have continued to do so, but the price has always kept me from biting. After all, this is certainly not the ideal way to play an arcade game. Most of these are 40+ years old and available virtually everywhere which makes this type of release more of a gimmick or decorative item than anything. However, I do love a good micro version of a popular item. In that, I’m like Myron Reducto from Harvey Birdman: Attorney At Law who has an obsession with tiny things. I don’t know what it is, but when something I like is available in a tinier version it makes me happy, but only if it doesn’t lose function and Numskull would seem to fit that description.

A size comparison that hopefully suits everyone: (left to right) replica NES cart, Playmates Toys Bebop, Burger Time, Marvel Legends Cyclops

Of course, if someone were to go out and buy one of these things that’s only part of the decision. The other is to decide on just what to get? For Arcade1Up, I have just two releases: The Simpsons and Marvel Super Heroes. The Simpsons is the only “full size” cabinet I own with the Marvel one being a “barcade” which is just a smaller version that sits on a table or bar. The Marvel one I received as a gift and it’s a solid one to have since it contains three 2D fighting games on it and that’s a style of game that works well on repeat plays. The Simpsons, in contrast, does not. It’s a brawler and they’re shallow, but I just love The Simpsons so I wanted to add it to my rec room and I waited for it to go on clearance before finally taking the plunge. With Numskull, a lot of the games are classic, see if you can get the high score, sort of things. They do work well to some degree as a game designed to be replayed and mastered, but they’re also old and it can be hard to justify playing such games when so many other, more modern titles are constantly available in a given household. The thing is though, the $250-300 starting point for a lot of these meant it didn’t really matter. I was not going to spend that kind of dough on a gimmick. If any were to go on steep discount then sure, but I honestly didn’t think that would ever happen.

The marque lights up when turned on.

Enter Woot, Amazon’s discount storefront. It was in the spring that they had the Numskull version of BurgerTime available for $70. This ordinarily would cost $230 so while $70 is still a lot for a gimmick, it’s also a pretty sizeable discount. While it wasn’t the game I had my eye on, it certainly fit the bill as something that would be worthy of replaying. And for the record, the game I was hoping would hit such a price was Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but really just so I could stick it with my quarter scale action figures. I didn’t actually want to play it, I can do that far more easily in other ways, but thus far that has only hit as low as $200 from its MSRP of $300 and it’s unlikely to ever dip below $100 so BurgerTime it is.

It’s a little cramped, but playable.

BurgerTime is a game originally released in 1982 by Data East for the DECO Cassette System. That was a series of arcade cabinets designed to be altered and have their game swapped out when things started to get stale. It was one of the early platform titles following in the footsteps of Nintendo’s legendary Donkey Kong. In it, the player takes control of a chef by the name of Peter Pepper tasked with assembling a series of hamburgers. Trying to prevent Peter from doing so are some enemy foot items. What’s the hamburger’s greatest enemy? Why, the hot dog (or sausage) of course! Joining the hot dog is a fried egg and a pickle slice. I’m not sure why the egg and pickle, both solid additions to any burger, are trying to obstruct Peter, but perhaps we shouldn’t pay it any mind. The game tasks the player with navigating a sequence of platforms via ladders to walk over ingredients for the burgers that need to be constructed. Walk over them and they drop a level. Peter must get all of the ingredients to fall through the level and into place in order to clear the level.

The resolution is pretty nice.

BurgerTime has six, looping, levels and the ultimate goal is to collect the highest score. Peter has few maneuvers at his disposal to avoid enemies as he can only walk along platforms and scale ladders. He does have access to pepper and hitting an enemy with pepper both stuns them and makes it possible for Peter to pass through them. Peter only has five doses of pepper to start, but collecting points will cause power-ups to appear on the screen for a short amount of time which can replenish Peter’s pepper reserves. The real skill of the game is in navigating the baddies and using them to your advantage. When Peter walks across a portion of a burger, it drops one level. However, if it has an enemy on it then it will drop multiple levels which can help speed things along and increase your point totals. The game basically turns Peter into a pied piper of sorts as you want to get enemies following you so that you can drop ingredients with them on it. Enemies located below falling ingredients will also get taken out by them, though they can re-enter the fray. As levels advance, the game gets harder by creating more choke points on the map. The first map is pretty basic while the second is shaped like an inverted pyramid. It’s much easier to avoid enemies near the top, but towards the bottom they can more easily box the player in. Contacting an enemy is death and Peter has just three lives, but can accumulate more at certain point total intervals.

“Should have been Pizza Time.”

BurgerTime is a simple game, so it translates pretty well to a tiny arcade cabinet. It requires just two inputs to play: the four-way joystick and the pepper button. The joystick does have a touch more play to it than I’d like as sometimes I feel like it’s not as responsive as it could be, but that could also be the game which requires some precise positioning in order to ascend or descend a ladder. Repeated plays have helped me to largely improve in that respect, but it does make me wish I had access to an actual arcade cabinet to see if it feels the same (I haven’t played BurgerTime prior to this in 30+ years). The screen is nice and bright and the sound comes through cleanly. The cabinet works best when placed on a table, but it’s not too big to just plop on your lap as well. The build quality feels really nice and it’s quite lovely to look at. The marquee lights up when it’s on and there are buttons for player select and the coin returns, though they don’t all actually do anything in the game. The cabinet can be played plugged into a wall outlet, but it also has an internal battery that is advertised to get over 2 hours of playtime. In my experience that seems to be pretty accurate and it comes in at the high end of the estimated time. Since this is an emulated arcade game, Numskull did add some features via the bios so if you just want to see everything the game has to have without the necessary skills needed to get there you can toggle on invincibility or infinite lives to do so. And like the real deal, it will keep track of high scores so it gives you something to shoot for. That’s right, I’m coming for you Ken!

He’s going for my high score.

Numskull’s quarter scale arcade cabinet is about what I expected. It’s a quality machine that is quite fun to look at, but is also surprisingly fun to play as well. Is this the best way to experience BurgerTime (or any of the games available)? Probably not, but it’s also not the worst as there were plenty of ports to home consoles for BurgerTime that came up lacking. This is a 1:1 recreation of the arcade experience just in a smaller package. It’s pretty addicting, though also dated. BurgerTime has never been my favorite game from this era, but it’s one of the better ones. I mentioned that TMNT was the cabinet I was really hoping to land some day, but for superficial reasons and to sate my TMNT fandom. As far as actual games that I’d want to play, it’s pretty much BurgerTime, Ms. Pac-Man, and Bubble Bobble of the available games. I’m not a big shooter fan so I wouldn’t want any of those so I can’t be disappointed with the fact that it was BurgerTime that ended up being the one I got. Will I get more? Probably not. They would have to hit a similar low price point and be one of the few games I have my eye on. And now that I have one, I don’t feel the same level of curiosity that I felt before. If this is something that interests you and you can get it for a similar price then I think it’s worth it. It’s hard to set an actual price on it because it is pretty superfluous. I know I wouldn’t pay the original sticker price, but I might have been willing to go more than the $70 I got it for.

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Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (1989 Arcade)

What began as a joke between aspiring comic book creators, Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird, eventually morphed into a multi-media juggernaut bestowing wealth and status upon the two. Along the way though, few predicted such big things out of a property titled Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The books sold well, but they were independently produced…

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September 14, 2026

X2: Wolverine’s Revenge

By Joe
Original release date April 15, 2003

For much of my childhood, Wolverine and the X-Men had a pretty mediocre track record when it came to video games. The games released for the Nintendo Entertainment System were atrocious with X-Men being borderline unplayable and the solo Wolverine game just a miserable experience. During the 16 bit era, it did get better. While Spider-Man and the X-Men was one of the biggest disappointments of my youth, the outings for the Segan Genesis were at least decent. I would classify the first X-Men game as mediocre, but in the moment it felt special because everything else was so terrible. The sequel was genuinely good and over on the Super Nintendo Capcom was able to give us Mutant Apocalypse – a game no one would confuse for a classic, but it did make the X-Men legitimately fun to play as. Come the PlayStation and Saturn era, things got murky again. The X-Men stayed with Capcom for a series of fighting games that did become classics, though during that era the home ports were hit and miss as the PlayStation wasn’t really built to handle them while the Saturn just wasn’t a console many people owned. Activision still hung onto the license though and put out a pair of 3D fighters where the first was fine and the follow-up less so.

Come the PlayStation 2 era, Activision still retained the rights to the X-Men only now the franchise was on another upswing thanks to the movies released by 20th Century Fox. Licensed games, especially move tie-ins, had never really recovered from the early days where the products were mostly known for being shoved out the door half-baked and often half-finished. For every Golden Eye on Nintendo 64, there were numerous examples of games that were awful like The Crow: City of Angels or The Matrix. And Activision itself didn’t have a sterling reputation, but it did put out a perfectly cromulent Spider-Man game based on the movie. Still, that wasn’t enough to get me or my best friend to lay down our hard-earned money for a copy of X2: Wolverine’s Revenge.

X2: Wolverine’s Revenge should really just be called Wolverine’s Revenge, or just something else with Wolverine in the title. What shouldn’t be featured in the title is X2 and Hugh Jackman should absolutely not be on the cover. This game has nothing to do with the movie released the same year. Sticking Jackman on the cover was just to lure folks in, I guess, even though there was plenty of video games coverage for people to know what was going on. This is a true comic book video game with a script by Larry Hama himself. The only connection beyond the cover is that Patrick Stewart is featured as the voice actor for Professor X in the game. Was Jackman already too big of a star to voice Wolverine? Possibly, but in his place is Mark Hamill who does a pretty nice Wolverine. I’m surprised he didn’t go on to voice the character again, but future games replaced him with Steve Blum who may have come cheaper. Or maybe Hamill just wanted to do Wolverine once to say that he did? Either way, this is a game that has stuck in my brain for years because it’s the last game I can recall where a friend and I rented it and stayed up all night to beat it. We alternated back and forth since it is a solo experience which honestly probably made it a better experience. I’ve always wanted to replay it as a result, and with a brand new Wolverine game that looks to be the best of its kind set to be released (or maybe not since early reviews have been mixed at best), now feels like a good time to go back and check this one out.

The game introduces its gameplay mechanics via flashback to Wolverine’s time in the Weapon X program.

Wolverine’s Revenge is a pretty typical 3D action game of its era. You control Wolverine in a fully 3D environment and are expected to hack and slash your way to the end. It’s a hybrid stealth-action game where it’s undoubtedly easier to go the patient route and take enemies out one by one as opposed to running into the fray claws brandished. Wolverine and the styling of other characters is of the era with him in his attire featured in Grant Morrison’s New X-Men where the characters were designed and illustrated by Frank Quitely, but Activision and Gene Pool Software UK probably knew fans would want something more classic so those costumes are available and not especially well hidden early in the game. In this one, Wolverine has discovered he’s been stricken with a virus implanted in him during his time in the Weapon X program. He has only 48 hours to discover the cure or else he’s toast so it’s back to Winnipeg (or wherever the facility is in Canada) to uncover the secret and probably tangle with some old foes in the process.

The presentation in Wolverine’s Revenge is one of the best things it has going. Hamill is quite good as Logan and the other voice actors are all pros. When it wants to be, the score is of a near theatrical quality though there are many quiet moments since this is a stealth game after all. The graphical presentation is mostly decent. It’s a little early in the life of the PS2 so it does kind of resemble a PlayStation 1 game just in how the models are constructed, but with much better textures. And since this is technically a movie tie-in, I’m guessing there were some time constraints involved. It’s not ugly or anything, but no one would be singing its praises where graphics are concerned. The environments are not especially spacious, but you do spend the majority of the game in underground facilities and the like so it was never going to have an open world feel to it. There are some scenarios that are open, but they’re honestly the more boring portions of the game as there usually isn’t much to do or discover within them. And since the emphasis is on stealth, the tighter confines are welcomed as they provide more opportunities for Wolverine to hide and sneak up on foes.

Stealth is the name of the game for much of this one and it makes sense when guards are too stupid to check the roof of a truck.

Where things start to go off the rails though is just in the general controls and camera. The camera is basically free floating and needs to be constantly fiddled with. When moving along in a stealthy manner, it’s passable as manipulating the camera when Wolverine is stationary or moving slowly is fine. When things get chaotic it can be hard to focus on where danger is coming from or what a boss might be doing. And despite the game putting an emphasis on stealth, there are a lot of times where it forces the player into something else. When engaging in stealth, Wolverine has a simple selection of tools that mostly work. Holding R1 allows him to quickly move in a low, almost on all fours, crouch that counts as stealth. Holding L1 keeps him upright and has him walk slowly and quietly while holding L2 does the same, but with “heightened senses” enabled which is essentially infrared. This makes it easier to see enemies and even displays a scent trail to help locate enemies not in plain sight. Wolverine can also flatten himself against a wall and creep along it. When he reaches the edge of said wall, he can peer out from behind it without penalty which shifts the camera. It can feel a bit cumbersome at first, but it’s relatively easy to get a handle on after a little while and the game does do a good job of getting the player’s feet wet. When an enemy gets within striking distance while in stealth, the word “Strike” flashes across the screen and pressing the circle button will cause Wolverine to go into an animation where the enemy is taken out. While he does brandish and utilize his claws without hesitation, there’s no blood or gore to be found in the game as Activision likely wanted it to retain a Teen rating.

When stealth fails the game also starts to do the same. Wolverine can trade blows using square and triangle with square being punch and triangle kick. Pressing R2 deploys his claws which deals extra damage, but having them deployed negates Wolverine’s healing factor. When enemies get damaged enough to have most of their health depleted, they’ll be stunned. Wolverine can then finish them off with a strike command or pick them up. If they’re picked up he can stab them to death or toss them at another foe. When Wolverine is engaged with multiple enemies, multi-strike maneuvers become available. These are unlocked throughout the game by collecting dog tags which Wolverine receives as reward for stealth kills. When two or more enemies are in range, green arrows flash on the floor indicating a strike command is available. Activating them will allow Wolverine to take out up to three enemies in range. At first, the player will only have the circle attack available, but four levels can be unlocked and these are triggered by alternating circle and triangle. These maneuvers are not to be confused with finishing strike commands though as often it won’t be enough to take them out – especially later in the game which is one of my biggest pet peeves with this game.

Be prepared to spend a lot of time just waiting for that health bar to refill itself.

The enemies are just too damn strong. Basic grunts encountered take awhile to bring down. Wolverine, whether he has claws deployed or not, will need a good thirty seconds to take down a single foe. That may not seem like a lot, but when trapped in a room with six enemies it gets pretty tedious. Big groups of enemies often need to be taken down with running attacks. When running, pressing triangle causes Wolverine to go into a baseball slide which knocks enemies down. This doesn’t do much damage, but it does dislodge firearms which is really important for crowd control because a room full of guys blasting Wolverine with rifles will not end well for him. Despite being the best at what he does, Wolverine can’t take the sort of punishment one might associate with him. Aiding him is a fury meter located above his health. When full, this triggers a rage that allows Wolverine to do damage, but forces his claws to be out until it dissipates. He’ll do more damage and take guys out quicker, but it’s fleeting and works against the stealth approach. And when the game just wants to up the difficulty during the later stages (in particular, the hated Act IV), it just forces the player into taking on a bunch of enemies at once. One of the worst sequences in the game tasks the player with sneaking into a room with a command tower in it. Wolverine needs to enter the tower to unlock a door, but once the terminal is interacted with, two groups of five soldiers enter the room and four turrets in the wall emerge. There’s no way to stealth your way out of this because the enemies know Wolverine is in there. Jumping out and making a run for it won’t work because one of the soldiers is carrying a key needed to advance. You pretty much need to take them out. The only good thing is striking the wall turrets just once with Wolverine’s claws will cause them to deactivate, but doing so is easier said than done with all of the guns trained on Wolverine.

I tried and failed a bunch at this point. I’d wait in the tower as after a few minutes one of the enemy groups would walk out into another room as if to patrol. I’d run out, slash the two turrets on the left, then retreat back into the tower where the enemies wouldn’t follow. This would take out about half of my health and once in the tower I could let Wolverine’s healing factor bring me back up, which is not something that happens quickly. Once healed, I’d try to repeat that with the other two turrets, but unfortunately they were on the same side as the soldiers who didn’t retreat. That’s where I’d fail, sometimes while climbing the ladder back into the command tower. What allowed me to finally clear this is actually letting a stationary turret in the preceding room detect me before leaving it. It makes no sense as a gameplay mechanic, but instead of sneaking past it if the turret catches sight of Wolverine the turrets in the next room become activated. I then slashed at them to make the turrets retract and when I activated the terminal in the command tower they did not reactivate it. That made it much easier to take out the guards which is still tedious, but much easier.

Some of the other X-Men make cameos including Colossus.

As is common of action games, each act ends with a boss encounter. Some of the parts within an act itself also feature one and they pretty much all have a gameplay mechanic needed to be understood in order to defeat the boss. Wolverine can’t just go in claws slashing. One boss requires you to knock back thrown barrels while another tasks Wolverine with doing his best “So long, gay Bowser,” imitation to toss a boss off a platform several times. Some are more obvious than others while there are some encounters that are borderline archaic. It’s not a boss, per say, but there’s a “vortex” Wolverine needs to quell in one stage before it reaches a power source and the only way to do that is throw enemies at it. There’s really nothing in the game to clue the player in on that though and it’s basically an instant death if Wolverine contacts it so have fun replaying everything up to that moment again and again. Most become easy to figure out though, but actually clearing them can still be a chore. Collision detection is not the game’s strength. In the platform fight, objects rain down on the battlefield and you need to be further away from them than you would probably expect to avoid taking damage. On that same fight, getting knocked off the platform is also an instant death. I’m not one to complain about a game “cheating” me, but twice when I had the boss down to literally no health (you have to throw him one more time post that achievement) I got swiped at by him from the left only for it to knock Wolverine in the same direction. As in, it would be like hitting a golf ball square and it somehow goes backwards. Both times, this attack knocked me off the platform and it looked ludicrous and I have no explanation for why the game would do that. Another fight puts Wolverine in an electrical cage of sorts. In order to win the fight, Wolverine needs to lure the enemy into charging into specific spots on the electric fence, but the camera is brutal. The game wants to keep the full arena in frame which forces it to drawback too far. Wolverine also isn’t particularly nimble or equipped for that type of dodge mechanic and it feels pretty clunky. To make it more annoying, enemies outside the field lob toxic gas grenades which stun Wolverine and negate his healing factor. After the bad guy hits the force field, he gets stunned and Wolverine has to hit him a couple of times to make a “Strike” prompt appear and the window is tiny. I would basically hit the attack button twice and then mash the circle button and just hope he went into the strike animation.

Most of this review is me just complaining about the game and that basically sums up my experience with it. This is a Wolverine game that fails in making the player feel like they’re controlling Wolverine. Sure, the avatar on screen looks enough like Wolverine and has cool claws, but he’s pretty clunky to handle, dies easily, and isn’t the killing machine one would expect of him. The story is decent in that it provides some motivation to see it through and there’s a ton of familiar foes in this one. It does end on a cliffhanger which is amusing now since no sequel followed. The designs are squarely in that 2000s era which isn’t my favorite, but I don’t fault the game any for that. I also do kind of like that it’s of its era. The most important question today is should this game be experienced by someone in 2026? And I’d say only if you’re really curious. You don’t need to play the whole game to get the full experience so shut it off once the frustration kicks in. For those who just want to play a Wolverine game and actually have a good time, Wolverine Origins is much better. It’s not a masterpiece or anything, but is good, mindless, fun and the only true drawback is that it’s tied into a truly awful movie. And as this goes live we’re on the eve of a brand new Wolverine game by Insomniac for the PlayStation 5. While I’m not completely sold based on what I’ve seen, there’s a good chance it will be the best Wolverine game to ever come out even if it too is a far cry from better titles like God of War or even Insomniac’s own Spider-Man.

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September 10, 2026

Boss Fight Studio Garfield & Odie Halloween Adventure Set

By Joe
Best be prepared to turn over your candy!

Retail loves having something to sell you and one of the easiest themes for retail to go in on is a seasonal one. That’s why (at least in the United States) when the Fourth of July passes us by out come the Halloween items! Which is why it isn’t really out of the ordinary for a Halloween post to show up on this humble little blog at this time of year. Halloween is the only holiday that can rival Christmas in terms of television specials. If I had to guess, I’d assume that Christmas is still ahead, but there are certainly a lot of episodes of popular shows as well as stand-alone specials designed to air during the Halloween season, more so if you just count anything that has a horror motif. I’ve never gone into Halloween as heavy as I do Christmas here, but I do enjoy a good Halloween special and one of my all-time favorites is Garfield’s Halloween Adventure. Also known as Garfield in Disguise, the television special first showed up on CBS in 1985 and was the fourth in a long line of Garfield television specials. This one arrived even before the much loved A Garfield Christmas and I’d love to say it was an instant classic upon it’s arrival, but I was still in diapers at the time and couldn’t really say either way. I don’t remember my first viewing, but I probably liked it as did pretty much everyone in the 1980s. The cat was huge, and I’m not just talking about his belly.

This line is a larger scale compared with NECA’s interpretation.

Here to capitalize on Garfield and Halloween nostalgia is Boss Fight Studio. The Massachusetts toy maker acquired the license to produce Garfield action figures a few years ago and the first wave arrived around a year ago. Coincidentally, it was around that time this set of action figures based on Garfield’s Halloween Adventure went up for preorder. In fact, I received my set exactly one year after placing my order. It’s a set that features both Garfield and Odie dressed up as pirates from the famous special as they embarked on a quest for candy. Well, Garfield wanted candy, Odie was basically along for the ride and so that Garfield could get even more candy. It went up alongside another two-pack based on their appearance in the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles magazine, as in, the very same appearance NECA also made a Garfield and Odie set based on. I thought it odd at the time that Nickelodeon, who controls the Garfield license now, would license out the same basic design to two different toy makers, but now that I have this set I can kind of see why.

Garfield can go hat-less if you prefer, but he’s missing the little tufts of hair at his temples. The hat also left behind some purple on my figure’s ears which I’ll have to try and remove.

Garfield stands at roughly 3.375″ to tip of his ears. He also has his pirate hat which makes him a bit taller while the NECA “Garfello” came in at pretty much an inch shorter. If the NECA one is thought to be something close to 1:12 scale (Garfield’s size kind of changes in print and on television to suit the scene) then this interpretation is more like 1:10 scale. There is a difference, albeit a minor one, but hopefully there’s enough enthusiasm for that one-shot to go around. This set though has no such concerns as Boss Fight Studio is the only one making Halloween Garfield. The figure borrows parts from the regular Garfield (which I don’t have) while mixing in some new. He comes out of the box with a mischievous, almost evil, grin of sharp teeth and frowny eyes. The strap across the torso is a separate piece, but is glued down. The shorts are part of the sculpt and I love how they left holes in the ragged ends. Garfield’s right leg is a normal one while the left is a peg leg. He has his little, wooden, sword to wield and there’s a peg hole on his left hip to holster it, though it’s a bit tough to fit in. Garfield also has his sack of candy which can be placed on a surface or slotted into either hand. The paint is clean and matte. Garfield is mostly orange plastic, but it too is matte in appearance. All of his stripes are where you would expect as well as the little freckles on his cheeks. His little, pink, nose has a hit of gloss to it which makes it stand out. The skull and crossbones on the hat is very clean and crisp and, as I alluded to earlier, it is removable. It fits over the ears, though it did leave behind some purple smudges on those ears. I could probably get it off, but honestly I’ll never display him without the hat. My only critique with the presentation is that Boss Fight Studio doesn’t put any stripes on the cheek area of his face. It’s one of those things that’s kind of a cheat with the character as the stripes appear to only be on the back of the body and head, but from the front and side they’re always visible. I’d have liked to see them included here. I also wonder if it would look better with some black outlining on the teeth. NECA outlined everything which really gave their figure a sharp presentation. This one looks good, but also more like a toy. The more orange and overall rounded features do make me think of the CG Nickelodeon show more than the old animation where Garfield was a bit lumpier, but it’s a pretty subtle distinction.

“Stick with me, Odie, and there will be much candy.”

Garfield is not alone in this set as we also have Odie in his pirate garb. For Odie that means a yellow and green polka-dotted bandana, a gold ring in his left ear, and a red and white striped shirt. By default, Odie has his tongue proudly on display and he is about 3.5″ to the top of his head and 4.75″ to the highest point of his ears. The scaling looks great with Garfield and I think Odie might be the overall better looking figure in terms of being on-model. That’s not to say that Garfield looks off-model, just that Odie looks that damn good. Which is funny because he’s such a wild design. His neck is basically his entire lower jaw. No dog looks like Odie, but somehow Jim Davis made this work and Boss Fight Studio was able to reproduce it in 3D. He has his little whiskers on his face and the yellow plastic for his body is matte. The paint on the head is very clean while the shirt has a small blemish or two, but nothing out of the ordinary. Out of the box, Odie has four standard Odie legs, but he also has an optional peg leg to swap out with his front, left, leg. It pops off pretty easy as Boss Fight just utilizes ball joints for all of the connections. They’re tiny, but sturdy, and once I worked up the courage to actually swap them I found there was really nothing to worry about as far as breakage is concerned.

A trick-or-treating we will go!

Both Garfield and Odie have two expressions to take advantage of. Garfield’s secondary expression is more of a scared one. His eyes are wide and his mouth has basically vanished. Swapping between the two expression is very easy and I imagine both work with the regular release of Garfield so if you have that one you’re getting more options for your display. Odie is a little more involved as he basically has a swap-out neck. The top of his head comes off and out of the box mine was pretty snug. If you handed me the figure without telling me it had another display option I would not have suspected it came off. It did with just a little wiggling and elbow grease and then the neck, or jaw, plugs into the body via another ball joint. It too needed a little force and some courage, but it popped out. It’s very sturdy plastic so I don’t think there’s much risk for breakage, but a wiser person than me might have heated him up first (I was worried about warping either the tongue or ears). The secondary expression is all teeth with an opening in it. That opening is for Odie to hold his candy sack which is a different sculpt from Garfield’s. It works, but it’s hard to turn down Odie and his big, happy, tongue expression. The extra piece plugs into the body of the figure pretty effortlessly, but I have a hard time getting the head onto it. It’s extremely snug and required some heating up to get a seamless fit. Even going back to the default, tongue-out expression needed some heat.

“Tough break, kid.”

Both Garfield and Odie are articulated, but don’t expect these to be the most poseable figures in your collection. For Garfield, we have joints at the head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, tail, and ankles. The most range is at the head and Garfield has enough range to look up, down, and all around with some tilt. The elbows and knees are a bit tricky since there just isn’t a lot of plastic to work with, but they do work. The ankles are nice, but the hips are pretty limited. He can brandish his sword and be posed walking or running to a point so I think he’ll do enough. I would like a little more out of the tail just to better sell a running pose, but at least the way that it is allows for it to be a suitable tripod. As for Odie, he has a far simpler spread with far less utility. He has articulation where the legs meet his body and at his ankles which includes a hinge and a rocker. The ball joints are very smooth with the front legs bordering on too smooth. Sometimes his legs slide out when I go to stand him, but I can usually adjust it and he stands just fine. And that’s with or without the peg leg in place. He’s not going to really do anything though. He can stand on his hind legs, but since he doesn’t have knees he can’t really do a walk or running pose. I can’t say I mind all that much because he looks great and what do I really want him to do? He’s just going to stand on my shelf looking like the best little pirate boy that he is.

“Hand over the candy, mummy!”
“On second thought, you hang onto that.”

Garfield and Odie as based on their appearance in Garfield’s Halloween Adventure is a layup. This is an easy set to get behind and Boss Fight Studio did a great job of recreating the looks from this infamous Halloween special. If you’re a Garfield fan or just love decorating your house for the season then this is an easy recommend. It’ll set you back $45, which in this day and age is a pretty fair price for a licensed character. You get two figures and some display options for both. About the only thing I wish was included that is not is just a scared expression for Odie to go with Garfield’s. This is pretty great though and it’s been a hit in my house even if it’s still technically summer. It also makes me wonder what else could be on the horizon for Garfield and Boss Fight Studio? The holy trinity of holiday specials is Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, Garfield’s Thanksgiving, and A Garfield Christmas, but those other two don’t have the iconic looks that the Halloween special contains. There’s Jon in his elf attire from the Christmas one and Grandma in her biker gear, but Garfield and Odie pretty much play it straight. I think for Christmas, just Grandma and her rocking chair with a Garfield for her lap would be amazing, but would probably make me cry every time I look at it since that special always makes me think of my own grandmother. And I probably would buy a Thanksgiving grandma because I have too few Thanksgiving toys.

“You know what, Odie? Thanksgiving isn’t so bad, and it’s a lot less scary.”

For more holiday tales from Garfield and toys look no further:

Dec. 5 – A Garfield Christmas

This year, I’m bringing back a feature from last year where I take another look at, what I consider to be, the greatest Christmas specials ever made. I explained my reasoning for doing this in prior posts, but in short, the first time I looked at some of these specials I did just a short…

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NECA TMNT Garfello

Before they teamed up with the likes of Batman and the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles had an encounter with an orange cat with a love for Italian food. I am speaking of none other than Garfield, the Jim Davis creation who was everywhere in the 1980s. The two franchises came…

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Dec. 20 – The Garfield Show – “Caroling Capers”

Back in the 1980s, Garfield was pretty damn popular. His presence was pervasive in pop culture, so much so that younger people today would probably be surprised. He originated as a comic strip by Jim Davis, but his popularity grew enough to pave the way for some prime time animation specials. These proved popular, and…

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