Tag Archives: mondo

June 7, 2023

Mondo X-Men TAS 1/6 Scale Jubilee

By Joe
Let’s welcome young Jubilation Lee to the world of sixth scale action figures!

When one hears the phrase “mall babe” it implies a certain visual. Probably a short, young, girl with intentionally messy, short hair. There’s a certain confidence the phrase exudes so she has to have style. Maybe hot pink, bright blues, and certainly a long yellow coat with gloves to match! There has to be an attitude present in anyone deigning to call themselves such a thing so shades are a must. Boxy, hot pink shades would do best and we might as well toss some bubblegum for added effect. And just what part of the mall does a self-proclaimed mall babe setup shop? The food court – where else?! Any mall babe worth her weight in quarters needs a steady supply of chili fries and soda to wash it down. It’s a staple of the mall babe’s diet.

If what I am describing does not meet your own personal definition of a mall babe then clearly you weren’t watching X-Men in 1992. That paragraph describes Jubilee, the self-proclaimed mall babe of the team who was our gateway to the world of Marvel’s most famous superhero team (well, before The Avengers became a household name). This role as the audience surrogate is perhaps what has made Jubilee so popular, or at least, why both Mondo and Hasbro perceive her as popular enough to introduce her relatively early in their respective action figure lines. Jubilee had the privilege of being the second figure and second member of the X-Men introduced in Hasbro’s line of Marvel Legends based on the animated series and Mondo has essentially bestowed upon her that same honor. The only difference is Mondo went to a villain for its second release where as Hasbro held off on the villains for a little longer. For me personally, I always found the kid characters in shows as more patronizing than anything. Jubilee didn’t offend me though, and it was a great choice to use her as a way to introduce the audience to the X-Men, but she was never a favorite of mine. And with the price of Mondo’s figures being north of $200, I thought Jubilee was going to be one for me to skip. Then I saw the full reveal of her and found myself sucked in, and you know what, I don’t regret it one bit!

In addition to being an expert at blowing stuff up, as she puts it, young Jubilee is also an accomplished bubble blower.

Jubilee arrives in the same style of packaging as Magneto before. Mondo partnered with storyboard artist for X-Men, Dan Veesenmeyer, to adorn the box with actual model sheets production art of Jubilee from the show plus a brand new illustration by Veesenmeyer to shine on the front. It’s a five-panel, window box design though Mondo packages their figures very carefully so opening the Velcro front flap basically just reveals a bunch of tissue paper concealing a figure behind it, but it’s still nice. On the inside of the flap is a profile of Jubilee from X-Men showrunner Eric Lewald and his wife and fellow writer Julia which just adds to the overall atmosphere that this figure is a labor of love by those involved, something the Hasbro releases most certainly don’t possess.

“Wow! You’re so small and sucky!”

Jubilee stands at approximately 9.25″ once removed from the packaging. She’s close to 9.5″ factoring in her hair and if I pull out the handy-dandy reference art from the show, I can see that Jubilee is supposed to be right at 5′ to the top of her hair making this figure a little small if we’re talking true sixth scale. It’s not a big deal on its own, but it is going to compound things a bit when she’s placed beside Wolverine who came out a little tall if we’re talking true sixth scale with him. My assumption is that Mondo isn’t taking a literal approach to the scale and it’s more subjective. It’s one of those things that I think most won’t care about that much, but I do have to point it out as part of a review.

Attitude to spare.

Jubilee is depicted in her traditional show attire: pink shirt, blue shorts, blue boots, yellow gloves, and that big, yellow, trench coat. It’s a style that could only come out of the 90s and I can honestly say I have never in my life, 90s or any other decade, seen a person sporting such a look. It’s always been something that’s amused me about Jubilee. The sculptor for this figure is Alex Brewer and I think he did a great job of nailing Jubilee’s proportions. Her sunglasses are part of the headsculpt which I think is the right call to preserve the look of the character as she appeared in the show. The coat has her sleeves rolled up and the strap on the back. She also has those little rings by the collar which really captures the details present in the show. The coat is all plastic, no soft goods, but it is soft and pliable. She also has her yellow gloves, instead of the blue she had in the comics, and it looks like Brewer took a bit of a creative license with her face as more of her Chinese ancestry is reflected in her eyes. Jubilee, as presented in the show, was mostly white-washed, though I don’t think it was for any nefarious reasons.

I love that Mondo seems committed to spotlighting the opening title of the show as much as possible.

As was the case with Magneto, what really stands out with Jubilee is the paint work. Credited to Tom Rozejowski, the cel-shaded paint job on Jubilee really makes the figure pop. I’ve admired Tom’s work as a customizer for years so it’s great getting to see him show off with an official release. It starts at the hair where streaks of gray-blue are added for shading, a common tactic for cartoons and comics when dealing with black hair. I love the light pink streaks on her glasses and the black linework all throughout the coat and rest of the clothing. Three shades were used for the coat as the primary shading color is orange with a more brownish yellow for the interior of the coat. The direction of the shading is with purpose and follows the curves of her body and the flow of her coat. It looks fantastic and the paintjob is very clean across throughout the figure. About the only nitpick I can offer is that the orange on her coat is perhaps too orange when the show used more of a marigold to shade her coat. It would also often use a very light yellow in places that was almost white. Yellow is a hard color when dealing with paint and I will say this looks much better than that mustard color Hasbro utilized.

All you need is a spark.

In keeping with the other releases in this line, Mondo saw fit to include plenty of extra parts and accessories with Jubilee. For hands, she gets a set of fists, open hands, and clenching hands. She also gets two sets of effect hands and a pointing right hand with a couple of sparks at the end of her index figure, probably a callback to breaking out of her restraints. The effect hands are terrific. The first set has her hands in an open pose with stars shooting out in a nod to her appearance in the show’s opening. The effects are attached to the hands and done with red, translucent, plastic with painted, gold, stars at the end. The other effect hands have her powers coming from her palms in a big, conical, blast with stars shooting off the ends. It has a metallic paint job that does a great job of capturing the color spectrum to mimic Jubilee’s powers as best as can be. These ones are a tad on the heavy side, but I was able to get Jubilee posed with her blasts going forward so they can be worked around.

And now you know why she has the shades.

Jubilee also comes with a variety of heads to choose from. I did get the deluxe version of the figure, so I will have some extra stuff the standard version does not come with. Her default portrait is a neutral expression that very much looks like Jubilee to me. She can swap to an open-mouthed smile that works for a Jubilee getting in a quip type of expression and it would be my guess that this one gets the most use out of those who buy this set. She also has a glasses-down head with teeth-gritting and her hair is a touch more wild, good for use with her blast effects. For something more fun, there’s a bubblegum blowing head where the bubble is sculpted and painted pink with a couple swashes of white.

This one is here if you want it. Only putting it on once resulted in a little scuff on the neck of my figure. Would not recommend.

The “deluxe” edition of Jubilee includes two additional heads and another accessory. The first is a head depicting Jubilee as she looked in the episode “Jubilee’s Fairytale Theater” from the show’s final season. That season featured a redesign for the characters that gave Jubilee long hair and ditched her sunglasses. For this particular episode, Jubilee tells some kids a fairytale where she puts herself and fellow X-Men into the roles of the heroes. Jubilee was some sort of elf Robin Hood, so the head features her with long hair, a headband, and oversized elf ears. It looks fine, but since she featured an entirely different costume during the story, it’s not a particularly useful addition and more like an in-joke. I would have preferred just a normal Season Five head with long hair, though admittedly I would not have been likely to use such for display purposes either so I guess it doesn’t matter.

A sidewalk surfer.

The other bonus head features Jubilee with her shades down and a skateboarding helmet on. This is from the episode “Red Dawn” where she’s briefly seen skateboarding. To complete the look, she also has a pair of purple kneepads which are made out of a very soft, rubbery, plastic and fasten over her knees pretty easily. A skateboarder obviously needs a skateboard and she has one of those as well. It’s all blue with some shading and it features sculpted wheels. I’ve seen some gripes out there that the skateboard doesn’t have real wheels, but I don’t need my $200 action figure to roll around and potentially fall. It does not have peg holes either so I am hesitant to actually display her standing on this thing without some support. She stands on it fine though, and overall this is a pretty fun look and one that I think will see some use from me.

Jubilee is never far from her chili fries and soda. That’s, like, her thing, right?

Lastly, Jubilee has a couple of “mall babe” accessories. One of her first scenes, and possibly her best, features her accidentally nuking an arcade machine and sarcastically responding with “Yeah, a quarter,” when the manager asks her how much she thinks that machine cost. She gets a cup, and it’s modeled after that scene and it says “SLUR-P” on it and has some bubbles or something. It looks really cool for what it is and there’s even a bubble on the top that’s been pushed in to indicate what flavor she selected. One of Jubilee’s other lines from the show was “Does a mall babe eat chili fries?” which she says in response to her foster parents asking her if she’ll come visit them now that she’s going to live with the X-Men. Jubilee does indeed consume chili fries and she has a tray of them and they too were featured on the arcade cabinet she demolished by accident. It’s a yellow fast food tray and the fries inside have a red-brown sauce slathered over them. It’s not super detailed, but it’s from a cartoon that couldn’t be super detailed itself so I think this works just fine and it’s a really fun inclusion. Between the heads, hands, effect parts, and accessories, it’s going to be a lot of fun switching up Jubilee on the shelf. She also comes with the standard Mondo action figure stand. I consider it pretty useless, but maybe others find some use with these.

“Me and Wolverine can take on anyone!”

Okay, last and maybe least, we should break down Jubilee’s articulation. The articulation for this line has been adequate. It’s not really a homerun, but the designs are also limited and the articulation can’t interfere as much with a sculpt at this scale, plus there’s paint to be considered. Jubilee, for her part, has basically all of the points of articulation one would expect, save perhaps one area. And I think she moves about as well as could be expected. It starts with a double ball peg for the head so she can move around quite well up there. She doesn’t look up really at all, but everything else is fine. She at least doesn’t rub the collar of her coat with most of her heads and it’s really only the elf head that introduces any paint rub concerns, but we already established that few are likely to do much with that accessory.

“Did you say ‘anyone,’ girl?!” “Gulp.”

At the shoulders, we get the standard ball-hinge setup. They’re very tight and getting Jubilee’s arms out to the side takes a little work. Her biceps swivel where the arm meets the cuff of the jacket and that works fine. The elbows are single-hinged and will get pretty close to a 90 degree bend, but it’s basically that one area I mentioned before where some may have been hoping for more via a double joint. The hands are on ball-joints and Jubilee’s work much better than Wolverine and Magneto’s. I had some QC issues with Magneto, but Jubilee’s hands have been free and easy out of the box. The peg goes in and out of the forearm very easily and the hands will spin on the ball to allow you to line her hands up however you wish. Some of the effect hands aren’t as easy to move, but I’ve mostly left them alone as I want them to be on the tight side considering the heft they present.

In the torso, Jubilee has a diaphragm joint that lets her tilt to the side a bit and grants some rotation. You have to work around the coat to do so, but it’s not too difficult. There’s a ball joint at the waist that provides for some forward and back and rotation. At the hips, we get some big ball and socket joints. They’re done at an angle, so it limits her ability to do splits by quite a bit limiting her to about 45 degrees out to the side. Kicking forward is only a little better as she can’t get her leg all the way up into a horizontal position. I’m also backing off as the “diaper” piece gets in the way and those willing to push it could probably scratch out a little more. There’s a little play on the ball joint at the hips in the form of a thigh twist, but it’s minor. I’m surprised they didn’t sneak a cut into the thigh itself where her shorts meet her legs. The knees are double-jointed and are very smooth. She bends past 90 degrees there without effort. There’s no boot cut that I can see, and at the ankles we get a hinge and an ankle rocker. The hinge is pretty tight and seems to only go back one “click” and doesn’t really go forward at all. The ankle rocker is not steep at all and is more for adjustment purposes. Lastly, the little rings coming off of the collar of her jacket do move. They’re pegged in so they can be positioned slightly. I think this was done to prevent them from snapping off accidentally when posing her arms and they’re not really intended for anything else.

This figure is just a lot of fun. I’m even going to make use of this silly look!

Jubilee’s articulation is basically as expected. She’s going to be able to hit plenty of Jubilee poses on your shelf and she has enough range to cooperate well with her accessories. I do wish she could do wider stances a bit better than she can, but even that’s fine and it’s more her feet won’t stay flush on the surface due to the limitations of the ankle rocket. I’m mostly happy that it seems a lot of care was taken to try to prevent paint rub as there’s plenty of clearance at the head for her to look around without fear of rubbing on the collar. The angled hip joints are a bit weird, but they also have the benefit of reducing rub at the joint so I don’t think it’s a bad trade-off. She probably moves as well, if not better, than Wolverine which is impressive considering she has the big coat to work around. Magneto has a similar handicap with his cape, but came out far more limited than Jubilee.

The animated series shelf didn’t even exist a little over a year ago. Now it’s looking mighty crowded and we need to make some room for Gambit!

At the end of the day, the only thing stopping more people from buying this figure of Jubilee is price and scale. Some people just don’t collect sixth scale figures and I get it – they take up a lot of real estate. Even Jubilee, who is small for a sixth scale figure, still takes up more space than a Marvel Legends Build-a-Figure and you do have to be more thoughtful about where to ultimately place her since shelf dives are likely to be far more destructive considering the amount of paint present. Excepting those two hurdles, it’s hard to imagine someone making a better figure of Jubilee from X-Men than what Mondo has produced. She just looks fantastic and has so many useful accessories and optional parts that just adds to the enjoyment. I loved the Magneto release, but even I have to admit I’m likely to never use most of the heads he came with while with Jubilee I’m having a hard time picking one. Which is why I have to remind myself that what she looks like on my shelf today doesn’t have to be what she looks like tomorrow. It goes without saying, this figure absolutely blows the Hasbro one out of the water and it should considering the price difference. At the same time, it’s easier to tell that Mondo set out to make the definitive Jubilee from the cartoon. The attention to detail is present in almost every facet of this release where as the Hasbro one always felt like a cheap cash grab. If you love X-Men and want the characters from that show on your self in the best way possible, then you’ll be pretty content with this Jubilee.

I purchased Jubilee direct from Mondo which included the extra parts. A dedicated retail version is expected to follow at other locations and is supposed to be priced at $195 (you can still preorder that version direct from Mondo right now). It’s pricey no matter what version you get, but in my opinion she’s worth it. And up next is sure to be another fan-favorite as the cajun himself, Gambit, is expected before summer’s end and I cannot wait to see how he turned out.

Interested in the rest of what Mondo has to offer for X-Men, or maybe you want to check out a smaller scale? I’ve got you covered:

Mondo X-Men TAS Wolverine 1/6 Scale SDCC Exclusive Action Figure

When San Diego Comic Con was cancelled for 2021, many of the entities that would have sold exclusive merchandise at the event pivoted to web sales. And since the 2020 iteration of the famed event was also canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many seemed to expect the same for 2021, or the massive delays…

Keep reading
by Joe

Mondo X-Men TAS 1/6 Scale Magneto

If you showed a random individual this blog and asked them what my favorite cartoon was as a kid I’m guessing they would go with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And they wouldn’t be wrong as that was my favorite for a time, but come 1992 I was starting to drift away from that show. Batman:…

Keep reading
by Joe

Marvel Legends X-Men Animated Series Jubilee

There’s a belief when it comes to children’s entertainment that the young audience needs a surrogate on screen, someone who they could believably place themselves in the role of. For the animated series X-Men, that character was Jubilee. The role was of such importance to the property that the earlier pilot, not affiliated with the…

Keep reading
by Joe

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

April 3, 2023

Mondo X-Men TAS 1/6 Scale Magneto

By Joe
Behold! The Master of Magnetism!

If you showed a random individual this blog and asked them what my favorite cartoon was as a kid I’m guessing they would go with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. And they wouldn’t be wrong as that was my favorite for a time, but come 1992 I was starting to drift away from that show. Batman: The Animated Series hit the airwaves and with it came a renewed interest in the caped crusader which really was coasting off of the recent success of Batman Returns. I don’t think I would have ever named that show my favorite though, but in looking back on it I can say it probably was the best cartoon series of the 90s. My favorite would soon follow in the form of X-Men, the unlikely hit for the Fox Kids Network that debuted on television sets on Halloween 1992. Because the show ran into some production snags, the show wouldn’t really get off and running until 1993, but before 1992 was over we would be introduced to the signature villain of the series: Magneto.

Magneto debuted on November 27th in the appropriately titled episode “Enter Magneto.” In it, we would be introduced to one of the most nuanced villains in superhero comics. Magneto, a victim of humanity’s most extreme form of cruelty as a Holocaust survivor, wants to exert dominance over all of humanity in the name of mutant supremacy. As his rival, Charles Xavier, described it, Magneto feels a war is brewing between humans and mutants and he intends to be ready. Xavier, for his part, believes there is a path to peace that doesn’t involve violence, but that’s partly because he didn’t have his sense of optimism crushed by the Nazis. When presented in that lens, Magneto may not seem right, but he’s definitely understandable and if he wasn’t opposite our beloved heroes then maybe we could even see ourselves rooting for him. The show was almost too good at making Magneto likable as he really wasn’t much of a villain following the next episode, “Deadly Reunions.” He wouldn’t show up again until the Season One finale where he teamed-up with the X-Men to take down the Sentinels. Season Two would see he and Xavier stranded in the Savage Land for the entirety of the season’s run essentially extending the team-up for another 13 episodes. Following that, he would mostly serve as an unlikely ally of sorts. The two-parter “Sanctuary” saw him try to separate himself and his followers from humanity, only to be undermined by one of his followers. He joined the ranks of the villains for the intended big finale “Beyond Good and Evil” which felt a bit forced. He’d also come back around to the side of the X-Men before the story’s conclusion and it looks like he’s going to be a member of the team when the show returns this fall in the form of X-Men ’97.

Artwork by Dan Veesenmeyer.

Maybe Magneto didn’t turn out to be the biggest villain of the show, but he was still quite memorable and damn likeable. It’s for that reason that I am left to assume that Magneto was given the honor of being the second release in Mondo’s line of X-Men action figures. It was in 2021 that Mondo revealed it had acquired the license for X-Men and did so by showing off Wolverine in its line of sixth scale action figures. I got my mitts on that figure in early 2022 and it was one of my favorite releases of the year. Mondo solicited Magneto in the fall and he has finally arrived. As the second figure in the line, Magneto does feel like a bold choice. Gambit, Cyclops, and other members of the team might have been safer, but this is a line that’s not after massive sales or casual fans. It’s a scale not a lot of folks collect and at a price point that’s certainly prohibitive (around $220). Still, if you want a representation of a character from the show then it’s hard to do better than Mondo. The only comparable is the mini busts released by Diamond which certainly look terrific, but aren’t action figures. Hasbro did its own line of figures last year, but they’re not even comparable given the difference in price, scale, and overall quality and dedication to the source material. And while I am not a sixth scale collector by nature, what Mondo is doing with this property is basically exactly what I want to see from a company tackling X-Men so I had to grab the Master of Magnetism.

And get this, the flap on the window box is secured by…a magnet!

Magneto comes in an impressive box. Perhaps not as flashy as Wolverine’s comic con exclusive packaging, but it is comparable to the non-exclusive version of Wolverine that followed. It’s a mostly white box adorned with production artwork from the show. There’s also a new image of Magneto by storyboard artist Dan Veesenmeyer, the same artist who handled Hasbro’s VHS packaging which is a nice bit of both synergy and authenticity. The art is great, though I do feel inclined to point out that it depicts Magneto from later in the series so the costume doesn’t match the figure in the box. There’s a nice write-up on Magneto inside the flap by showrunner Eric Lewald and contributing writer Julia Lewald. It is a window box and when pulled away you get a nice look at the figure in the plastic tray inside. It’s flashy, but I’m an opener so I felt no guilt when I cut into this to pull Magneto out.

“Better to die on our feet than live on our knees!” Magneto got all of the best lines.

Once removed, Magneto stands at approximately 12″ making him scale to about six feet. This has been a source of criticism for the line in the early going as Wolverine was around 10.75″. In looking at the model sheets for the show, Magneto was intended to be 6.5′ tall so the figure is a little small. Wolverine was a mere 5.3′ so his figure is too tall if we’re talking true sixth scale, but only by a quarter of an inch. Like a lot of action figure lines, my assumption is the scale isn’t true to life and Mondo is trying to bring the short characters up a little while bringing the tall ones down a little in the interest of keeping costs down. True sixth scale would have put Magneto at 13″ while Wolverine would be 10.5″. Does that matter? It’s one of those things that’s going to vary from person to person. I think a little more separation would have been nice, but I don’t care that much and I wouldn’t be surprised if Magneto was drawn closer to 6′ anyway in the show as Cyclops is intended to be right around that mark, but I swear he and Magneto stood around eye-to-eye.

They’re probably not true sixth scale, but at least Magneto is noticeably taller than Wolverine.

Collectors can fuss over the scale all they want, but what I think few would debate is that this figure is gorgeous. Magneto looks like he’s been ripped right from the show. The shade of red for this costume is perfect, the colors used to apply the cel-shading look correct, and the paint job is immaculate. His default head is a stoic one and I love the black shading just above the eyebrows and in between the eyes and brow. The cape is all plastic which is the right move if you want the figure to look like the source material as a soft goods one just won’t match what was painted on the cel. The inside of the cape is a dark purple while the outside is the softer lavender we’re accustomed to seeing. It sits high on the figure, which is also screen accurate for those early appearances as Magneto was often floating rather than standing. Magneto has his red gloves, which was how he was depicted in his first appearance, and the collar area is also filled-in with lavender. His later appearances would have red and sometimes he had purple gloves. The proportioning looks really nice and I like the true-to-the-source-material musculature on his chest and abdomen. About the only thing I’d consider even close to an eyesore on the figure is Mondo’s double-jointed knees. There is a noticeable gap between the end of the thigh and the joining knee piece. It doesn’t bother me, as this is an action figure and action figures have joints, but I’ve seen some express displeasure in how that turned out. I’ll get into it more when we get to articulation.

Both can manage their signature pose from the show’s iconic opening.

Magneto looks tremendous out of the box, but Mondo also included a bunch of stuff to really add some excitement to your display. Magneto comes with fist hands in the box, but he also has a set of wide open hands and a set of slightly clenched hands. The clenched hands evoke images of X-Men #1 in my mind, the Jim Lee one, and the image of Magneto on the cover with his hand out in front of him. The splayed hands are more in-line with how he demonstrated his powers in the show, and to do that Mondo also included some effect parts. We get two, conical, translucent pieces with yellow rings painted on them. To best show them off, we get another set of splayed hands with magnets at the center. The effect parts attach to those magnets effortlessly and look fantastic. There’s also a second, right, fist with a magnet on the back of it which seems like a direct call-out to Magneto’s pose during the opening credits of the show when the camera zooms in on his face before the good guys and bad guys clash. It’s a terrific idea and given that Wolverine has his sparking effect from the opening credits I wonder if recreating such scenes will be a priority going forward for Mondo?

Don’t piss him off Wolverine.

Magneto has even more stuff to help show off. He also comes with a tangled mess of shrapnel that also features a magnet in it. It’s sculpted really well and painted even better and it also features a little shout-out to the show by containing Xavier’s watch. There’s also a long, bendable, metal pipe, or cable, that I assume is intended to wrap around a foe. The bendable component isn’t quite good enough to pull that off without some finagling. It looks nice though, but isn’t as functional as it could be. We also have a stand and it’s the same stand included with all Mondo figures. For Wolverine, it wasn’t necessary and with Magneto it’s basically useless as it doesn’t fit between his body and cape. You could probably make it fit, but that’s more likely to scratch the paint on the inside of the cape than it is to provide actual stability. It’s also all black and not the least bit flashy so it’s an easy accessory to leave in the box.

Magneto doesn’t just have powers and extra hands to add some shelf presence, but extra heads as well. The stoic head is the one that comes on the figure, but he also has an angry, teeth-gritting, expression that is just fantastic. I love this head as Mondo painted black all around his eyes which is how the character is often drawn. I don’t ever want to see a helmeted Magneto figure not feature some black shading around the eyes and this head is proof of how awesome that can look. If you prefer your Magneto sans helmet, he has an unmasked head as well. It features his long, flowing, locks and the look is much better than the unmasked Wolverine head that came with that figure. The only thing I’m not crazy about is that Mondo used a lot of blue when shading the hair and I think they overdid it. It also would have been nice to get an empty helmet for him to hold when sporting this look, but if you position one of the helmeted heads just right, you can fake it. This first edition of Magneto also comes with two bonus heads that won’t be on the standard retail version currently up for preorder. First up, we have Magneto as The Leader from the episode “One Man’s Worth.” It’s basically Magneto with a beard and even longer hair, though he also looks a bit worse for ware. It’s pretty cool, though The Leader had a different costume so the look isn’t that convincing. Magneto did have a beard at times in the show so I suppose it works just as well for that. Like the unmasked head, there’s a bit too much blue for my liking in the beard and hair, but otherwise it’s pretty cool. Magneto also comes with the Evil Morph head. Wolverine had good guy Morph, and Magneto gets the evil version. It makes some sense since it was Morph who tricked Xavier into going to the Savage Land by impersonating Magneto, though he morphed his entire body to resemble Magneto and at no point was he presented as Magneto, but with his own head. It’s more of a gag inclusion, I suppose. The likeness on the Morph head looks awesome though and I do hope we get a full figure some day. Perhaps it will come with a different, evil, expression so as not to make this accessory redundant. The heads are all easy to swap, but you do have to be careful with the un-helmeted head and The Leader due to its long hair. There’s a tendency to want to pull the head back, but that will cause the hair to scrape against the neck and it will lead to paint rub. It will likely be hidden when another head is put on, but it’s something to be mindful of.

“We have to go help the others take down the Sentinels. Hop in, we’ll take the Blackbird!” “Umm, Logan, that’s…”

The articulation for Wolverine was what I would term basic, and with Magneto it’s more of the same, but less functional. The head is on a double ball peg so you can rotate it and have Magneto look down and he can look up slightly. With the no-helmet look, his ability to look up is further restricted by his hair. The shoulders are just ball hinges and he can raise his arms out to the side and rotate as far as the cape will let him. There’s no biceps swivel as instead there’s a swivel at the elbow which works fine. The single hinge grants just shy of 90 degrees of bend while the wrists swivel and hinge. The hands sit pretty deep on the bracers of his forearms though which restrict the ability to swivel. You will want to pull them out slightly to create more range before working at it (more on that to come). None of the hands seem to want to swivel on the ball hinge in the hands like I think they’re supposed to which would allow you to line the hinge up in whatever direction you want. Maybe I’m wrong though. There’s a ball joint in the diaphragm, but the cape isn’t going to let it do much. It basically just tilts to the side and bobbles forward a bit. It honestly could have been omitted entirely. There’s a waist twist below that which works fine and the hips are on some big old ball pegs. The diaper piece will restrict some motion, but he can kick pretty far, especially if you let the legs go out to the side a bit as they’ll want to do. He can almost do a split and there’s some thigh swivel at that point too. The double-jointed knees will let Magneto bend past 90 degrees and there’s basically a boot swivel at the base of the joint. It’s a bit awkward looking, but functional. Since the cape makes the ability to bend past 90 moot one could argue that Mondo could have simplified the joint and come away with something that looked better. As I said before, I don’t hate the look of the joint, but there’s some merit to that argument. Lastly, we have ankle hinges and rockers which work well. All of the joints are pretty smooth except for the diaphragm which is a bit loose. He holds his pose, but it could be tighter. More importantly, the lower half is plenty tight which creates a strong base which is important for a figure as back-heavy as this one. I haven’t had any shelf dives yet, but I’m definitely placing him near or against the wall on my shelf for peace of mind.

“I said ‘hop in!'”

Now for the part of the review that’s not as rosy, but does have a happy ending. I ran into some QC issues with my Magneto. The first was that I was missing a hand. My figure came with duplicate, splayed, right, hands and I was missing the one with the magnet in it. That was a bummer since I’d have much preferred to be missing the non-magnet hand, but at least I had the right fist with the magnet still so my figure could utilize multiple effect parts. The other issue was with the left fist right out of the box. When I want to rotate it the fist just came right off shearing at the post. The ease with which it happened tells me it was likely damaged before it ever got to me as the posts on all of the hands are cast in a very stiff plastic. I was able to drill the post out of the figure so I could still make use of the other left hands in the box, but I no longer had a left fist. If we were talking about a 20 dollar figure here I might have just let it go, but since this guy is rather pricey I figured I should reach out to Mondo to see if they had any spare parts. If they had suggested an exchange I might have taken that too, though I was so happy with the paint job on my figure it would have been tough. Instead, Mondo just apologized and told me a brand, new, figure was being shipped to me. I didn’t even have to return the other one. While it sucks to run into problems with any item purchased, with customer service like that it’s really of no concern since that’s about as good as it gets when it comes to taking care of the customer. And now my best friend gets a free Magneto that’s just missing a left fist and right, magnet, hand. Or at least, he would, if not for my experiencing the same issues with the second figure. I was able to remove the left fist from it no problem, but the right sheared off at the peg once again and I had to go into that one with a drill. I think part of the issue is that the hands should rotate on the peg inserted into them on the ball joint, with the peg in the forearm just providing stability. I tried heating all of the spare hands and I got some to actually move on the ball joint pretty well, but one of the clenchy hands actually snapped off of the peg in the ball so there’s another hand down. Both pegs, the one in the hand and the one in the forearm, are hexagonal and not smooth and round so they’re just not great at spinning. I’m guess Mondo does it this way to prevent looseness, but the fail right in my experience is too high with this setup. Again, if you buy from Mondo getting a replacement should be no problem so I don’t think it’s enough to scare away potential buyers, but definitely go easy and treat the hands delicately. And maybe be wary about buying this figure from other locations, especially eBay or other reseller places.

Soon comes the hard part: making room for Jubilee!

Mondo’s second entry in this line is a pretty damn fine one. Magneto looks incredible, and while the articulation isn’t likely to impress many, the number of heads and effect parts included make finding a dynamic pose rather effortless. The only downside is he’s so big and heavy that finding a proper flight stand poses a significant challenge. I’d love to find a way to display him levitating, but the included stand is rather useless when it comes to that task and finding another has yet to yield results. The combination of the large figure and the rigid cape poses quite the challenge there. Thankfully, the figure looks so damn good that it doesn’t take much for it to impress. The sculpt and paint alone mean this guy can’t possibly look boring even when placed in the most vanilla of poses. I think I even prefer him to last year’s Wolverine, which was my personal figure of the year, because Mondo just absolutely nailed the look of Magneto from the show. A special shout out to sculptor Alex Brewer for that and Mark Bristow for the paint. They really did an unbelievable job and I can’t wait to see what’s next for this line.

More from the world of X-Men: The Animated Series:

Mondo X-Men TAS Wolverine 1/6 Scale SDCC Exclusive Action Figure

When San Diego Comic Con was cancelled for 2021, many of the entities that would have sold exclusive merchandise at the event pivoted to web sales. And since the 2020 iteration of the famed event was also canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many seemed to expect the same for 2021, or the massive delays…

Keep reading
by Joe

Previously on X-Men: The Making of an Animated Series

A lot of cartoons made an impact on me as a child. My first love was The Real Ghostbusters. Its goofy cast of characters and excitement were plenty of fun and there were interesting toys to supplement the series with, which was pretty much the goal of all cartoons in the 80s. The Teenage Mutant…

Keep reading
by Joe

X-Men: The Art and Making of the Animated Series

A few years ago, I talked about my love of X-Men, the animated series, via a book review of Previously…on X-Men by Eric Lewald. That book chronicled the development of the 92 animated series that helped propel the Fox Kids Network to the top of the Saturday morning leaderboards through notes from the author and…

Keep reading
by Joe

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

February 9, 2022

Mondo X-Men TAS Wolverine 1/6 Scale SDCC Exclusive Action Figure

By Joe
Look who finally arrived!

When San Diego Comic Con was cancelled for 2021, many of the entities that would have sold exclusive merchandise at the event pivoted to web sales. And since the 2020 iteration of the famed event was also canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many seemed to expect the same for 2021, or the massive delays experienced by many industries just played a large role in delaying product intended for the event to sometime after. I talked about this in my review of the NECA Toys San Diego Comic Con set for Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. The wait for that seemed long, but it wasn’t as long as it was for my most anticipated release related to the event: Mondo’s 1/6 scale Wolverine!

Each box is individually numbered and comes with a slipcase featuring storyboard art for the show’s iconic intro.

Halloween 2022 is going to mark 30 years since the premiere of X-Men on Fox Kids. The animated series was the introduction to the famed superhero team for a generation of fans. It was what helped vault the already popular team of mutants from just a comic book phenomenon to something bigger. Since then, the X-Men have seen their standing relative to other costumed superheroes falter some, largely due to Marvel selling off the film rights to 20th Century Fox leaving them out of the Marvel Cinematic Universe which has turned also-rans, like The Avengers, into some of the hottest properties in the world. Seriously, as a kid if you told me The Avengers would one day dwarf the X-Men in popularity I would have looked at you as-if you had two heads. It was just unheard of at the time that Captain America or Thor would ever have that kind of appeal.

Am I really going to open this?!

Well, 2022 is apparently the year the X-Men will attempt a comeback! In celebration of the animated series turning 30, we can expect a host of new merchandise to mark the occasion including a series of action figures from Hasbro. And it will spill over into 2023 with a new series set to launch on Disney+ continuing the adventures of the animated universe which ended in 1997. The appropriately titled X-Men ’97 is still shrouded in mystery, but we know a lot of the voice cast is returning to reprise their roles and there seems to be an energy about the franchise that hasn’t been there in recent years.

Oh my god, that’s perfect. How can I open this?!

The first of this new wave of merch is now upon us. Mondo’s take on Wolverine from the show was the first such figure I saw announced. I’ve been pounding the drum for a dedicated line of figures based on the show for years now, and seeing Mondo enter the market was a huge development. Mondo is a company I’m not personally familiar with. I certainly know of the company and their wares, I’ve just never owned any as they tend to stick to larger scales. And larger scaled figures come with larger price tags and larger space requirements. Do I necessarily want a sixth scale version of the X-Men? No, but seeing how it’s just the first of what I hope will be more toys based on the property I had to jump in and support it. And to make the package even more special is the SDCC theming which positions Wolverine in his longing pose on a cardboard bed pining over his unrequited love for Jean Grey. It’s a scene, and a meme, brought to life and it certainly put a smile on my face. What didn’t was the hefty price tag of $200 plus $20 to ship it. I wasn’t certain of the price until I got into the website to order it, and by then I was past the point of no return. At least with Mondo charging upfront some of that sting has subsided in the ensuing six months since I ordered this item. Any bruises have been replaced by my own longing to get this thing in-hand and see how it turned out.

I opened it.

First of all, the packaging is quite fetching. It almost feels like a crime to open this guy. It’s an elaborate window box positioning Wolverine on his bed, photo of Scott and Jean in-hand, looking pretty miserable. He’s got himself a nice pillow propping him up, and it’s the type of package that I see many people never opening even though he’s got an assortment of parts for a more traditional display. If the price tag wasn’t so high, I’m sure more would entertain the idea of leaving this figure sealed and buying another for display. This is the SDCC exclusive, while a standard release is expected to follow that omits the packaging and some of the accessories that will cost less. How much less is still unknown as the figure has yet to go up for order anywhere. I am very entertained by this package, but I can’t leave him in place, so out he comes!

He’s out! Though he doesn’t look any happier. Mondo included a stand that is unnecessary, and kind of boring. They couldn’t put a big, red, X, on that base and dress it up a little?

First of all, getting Wolverine out without destroying this box was a challenge, but one I successfully navigated. The ties on his torso aren’t actually twisted, so they can be pulled off once you slide the display out of the window box. Getting at the other stuff was more challenging as it’s under the bed and you need to open it up. I found going at it from the foot of the bed easiest and was able to slide out the inner cardboard box and the bagged accessory piece as well. From there, I found it easiest to just snip at the other ties holding him down to the plastic bubble. Mondo wisely put paper inbetween the ties and the figure so you don’t have to worry about scratching it as you remove them. The hands and picture frames are wrapped in plastic to hold it in place and that has to be just torn off. Once the restraints are removed he lifts out rather easy. The pillow is also tied down and I just left it for now. It’s funny, when the figure is in the box I never noticed that the pillow is basically just suspended in air on top of the plastic bubble, but once the figure is out it’s definitely noticeable.

Wolverine towers over his Fox Kids contemporaries.

Now that Wolverine is out, I can tell you he stands at about 10 3/4″ to the top of his head. The “ears” take him to around the 11 1/2″ inch mark. The sculpt is very neat as there’s not a lot of articulation showing. The cel-shading is also done in a manner where it goes from lighter on the figure’s right side to darker on the left. It’s most noticeable on the gloves as the top of the left hand is almost entirely painted in a dark blue while the right hand has just a bit of that on the left side and palm. The head features shading on just the left side of the yellow portions and it’s very subtle from the front. The exposed flesh on Wolverine’s face has some shading on the left side and above the chin. True to the show, the black ears feature no blue accents. The rest of the figure follows the same pattern with the paint getting progressively darker as you move from one side to the other. There are three shades of red and three shades of blue on the belt and trunks to accomplish the effect while a more saturated, honey-like yellow, is used to outline some of the muscles. It looks pretty damn terrific and accomplishes what it set out to do. One could quibble with the chest area as the shading is least pronounced there. Maybe adding in some white would have accentuated that as that was a common tactic in the show, but sometimes less is more.

Bring in a quarter scale turtle though and he’s dwarfed. He’s still got bragging rights on Venom though.

The overall sculpt for Wolverine is also quite nice. His ears really fan out and are a bit narrow in keeping with the show’s look. It stood out in images to me as being a little odd, but in-hand the likeness seems more realized, or I’m just charmed to finally have it. He’s broad-shouldered and the musculature looks rather true to the show and not overdone. I like how they did the hair on his arms entirely with paint which keeps with the somewhat flat look of animation. The X logo on the belt is sculpted and is rather clean which does a fine job of drawing attention to it. Everything looks well-proportioned too, though it will be interesting to see how much taller future figures are in the line given that Wolverine is among the shortest characters on the show. Mondo pretty much nailed the look of the character and it’s nice to see.

As far as I can tell, the “Come here” hand is best utilized to recreate this legendary cover. Too bad he doesn’t have a smiling, unmasked, head.

And that’s just out of the box with the sad face and no clawed hands. Underneath that bed is the other stuff. For starters, Wolverine has an open right hand and a relaxed, sort of gripping, left hand for the packaging setup. In addition to that he has the following: left open hand, left curled index finger hand (maybe for a “Come here” gesture?), a right gripping hand, clawed fists, and clawed fists with the sparking effect arcing between them. The gripping hand is here for the turkey leg accessory, another frequent meme or gif shared on social media, and it could also hold the picture frame if you really want it to. The clawed hands feature long, hard, grey, claws. I think one could argue they should have been white in keeping with the show, or white with some blue shading, but they look okay. The claws on the arcing piece are perfectly straight and it’s a great looking item. The sparking part is a translucent blue plastic and it’s soft and bendy which helps make it easy to pop the hands in place. I’m surprised they didn’t just make the blue part removable, but maybe they feared people breaking the claws when putting it on. Swapping hands is mostly easy, but those claws are tricky to work as it requires some force to remove the hands and you have to be mindful not to break the claws (or stab yourself). I’ll probably display him with the arcing effect for at least a little while. The picture frame is really well done and you can remove the picture from it via a slit in the top. It’s not probably not going to be easy though as it doesn’t seem to move around at all in there. It might be easier to just continue to use photoshop instead.

Of course, it’s a lot easier to swap the clawed hands if you just take the claws off first! I actually had forgot about the teaser images for this figure which featured Wolverine with un-clawed fists or with just one claw extended to carve the turkey. The claws are in there pretty snug out of the box, or at least they were on one hand for me. Maybe swapping hands around caused the other one to loosen, but either way, I was able to pull them out of one hand easily enough while the other I dipped in hot water first. It’s a great idea for a figure at this scale since the claws can be thick and durable enough to withstand such use and they’re not tiny and likely to get lost. All of the channels on Wolverine’s hands feature holes for the claws, but they definitely do not go in easy. I think if I really wanted Wolverine to have claws in the non-fist hands I’d probably have to insert a paper clip or something into the channels first just to widen them and push some of the paint out of the way, but it’s probably do-able. I don’t particularly think he needs to be able to have claws on his non-fist hands, but I do like the option to have his fists without the claws if I want. It also makes it easier to straighten the claws, as they probably won’t look perfectly straight out of the box. Of course, I took most of my pictures before realizing I could even do this, so if you think his claws aren’t straight enough in my images at least you know that’s something that’s adjustable.

Snikt!

Wolverine also has extra portraits to work with. The default one is the sad face which is mostly good for a laugh, but isn’t one you’re likely to display outside of the pose he came in, but it will probably be something fun to use with photography. He also has a neutral head and a teeth-gritting, angry, head. Both expressions work very well for this version of the character and it’s hard to pick a favorite, or would be under normal circumstances, but I’ll explain that in the next paragraph. Wolverine also has an unmasked head that looks…okay. He’s making an odd shape with his mouth and I don’t know what Mondo was going for. Something more neutral would have likely looked better. I do like the shading on his hair though and his mutton chops are on display. It’s not terrible, but hard to imagine many using it.

The hair looks good, but I don’t know about that expression.

Lastly, we have another odd, but welcomed, head in the form of Morph. He’s depicted with his black hair and a slight smile. His facial structure looks good, but the eyes are a bit off. They painted black lines on the bottom of the eyes and then additional lines below that and it makes them look like they’re upside down. I don’t think they needed the added lines for this particular expression and they probably should have outlined the whole eye. Still, it’s something people are unlikely to make much use of since Morph never changed his body to look like Wolverine in the show while leaving his head unchanged. He did the opposite with Gambit, though. I know Magneto is slated to come with an Evil Morph head, but beyond that I don’t know what the plan for the character is. Seems unlikely they’d go full build-a-figure with him at this scale, but who knows? Maybe they’ll just do Morph eventually and he’ll completely different portraits and these will be bonus extras for those all-in on the line.

This is actually a Morph figure with a bunch of Wolverine heads.
Hey, another use for sad Wolverine and the Morph head!

Where things do come apart at the seems a bit with this figure is with the overall paint job. Bigger figures mean more opportunities for shading, and also more opportunities for things to go off the rails. The main figure is largely good, but there are parts where the paint gets a little iffy. The black teeth, or claws, on the torso aren’t always sharp. The worst spot is on the figure’s right just below the pectoral where the yellow and black meet to form a little green. There’s also a little paint rub on the left thigh where it meets the blue trunks. Yellow is tough to work with as any little instance of rub is going to show, but it’s still disappointing. By far though the worst is with the neutral expression head. That has a bunch of the black paint mixing with the yellow over Wolverine’s left eye. It looks like what happens when you go from using a black watercolor and dip it into yellow without cleaning the brush well enough. It’s terrible looking and renders that head unusable, as far as I’m concerned. I did reach out to Mondo in hopes of getting a replacement because it’s not acceptable for any figure to have that bad a paint app, and certainly not one that cost 200 bucks. All of the other paint imperfections I can live with and find acceptable, even at this price point, but not that head. I haven’t heard back as of this writing, save for an automated response, but I’ll update this post accordingly should I hear from them. UPDATE – not five minutes after this post went live I was contacted by Mondo to say a replacement was on the way and should arrive within five business days. Nice!

UPDATE Part 2 – A week and a day following my initial reach out and I had my replacement. Only, Mondo didn’t replace the one head I had an issue with, they replaced the whole thing! Yes, they sent me a whole other, unopened, still sealed, unit. It’s kind of crazy and I don’t know what I’m going to do with it. I want that head, but do I want it enough to open another one of these or should I just keep it sealed and deal with the initial crummy one? I did take the bad head out of the baggie it came in to find it’s more like a glue that is on the head. I don’t know if I can remove it without damaging the head further. I’m tempted to try and then paint it, or I could just open the new one and see if it has a better neutral expression then ship it off at cost to someone I know would like to have this and might not care about a bad head. Regardless, that’s certainly good customer service, even if I think Mondo is kind of crazy to not just have some spare parts on-hand.

Well, that’s not good.

The articulation for this figure might be the only other area collectors are likely to find fault with. Mondo likely prioritized the overall aesthetic for Wolverine with articulation taking a back seat. Personally, I’m happy with that decision and I think it’s the right choice as the animation was pretty stiff. Wolverine’s head sits on a double ball-peg so you get rotation and the ability to look up and down slightly. There’s also some tilt. Some of the heads seem to have more range than others as I could get sad Wolverine to look up a bit, but angry Wolverine not really at all. The unmasked heads are a pain to get seated properly on the peg and sit quite deep so their range isn’t any better. At the shoulders are standard ball-hinges and you will want to take care not to rub the shoulder pads. They come out to the side a decent amount, but not 90 degrees. There’s no biceps swivel with Mondo instead opting for a swivel just above the elbow hinge. It works okay and I admittedly like the look of his arms so I’m fine with the trade-off. This does mean the elbows are single-jointed so that’s a bummer as you’re not going to do better than 90 there. The hands are on ball joints so they at least move around just fine. Removing the default ones was a little scary and I did dip them in hot water just to air on the side of caution, but I have not had any issues swapping them.

Posing isn’t going to be this figure’s strong suit, but he does balance really well.

In the torso, Wolverine has a diaphragm joint and a waist twist. The diaphragm joint is quite noisy so there’s a lot of rubbing going on so do be careful. It lets Wolverine tilt back a fair amount, but he doesn’t crunch forward hardly at all. You do get some twist too, but again, lots of rubbing and you have that black paint right underneath. The waist twist is just a twist and doesn’t feel like a ball joint. The belt and trunks are also all one piece so, again, be mindful of potential rubbing. At the thigh, it feels like we just have a simple ball and socket joint. Again, and I sound like a broken record, lots of rubbing on that crotch piece so how far forward he can kick is largely dependent upon how far you want to push it. There’s a twist there too which works fine and the knees are double-jointed, but really just present a 90 degree bend. At the ankles we mostly have a pivot, or rocker, joint as there’s very little up and down because of how deep into the foot the joint was set. He stands just fine, though Mondo did include a stand, but doing a running pose or something similar would be a challenge for Wolverine. The joints are all at a good tolerance. Nothing is loose, and none felt scary to move out of the box. It’s just not the most dynamic assortment of articulation, but it is very low profile. And really, the only thing that would have made him more exciting for me would have been butterfly joints so he could really reach out with those claws. Those tend to be ugly though so I understand why they aren’t present. Others may feel differently though.

Ultimately, this just looks like Wolverine from the show and I think that will make a lot of people very happy. Plus, that packaging! They even included the reference art on the back of the box!

Mondo’s first foray into the X-Men animated universe is mostly positive. Objectively speaking, this figure has some problems. The articulation isn’t great and certainly the paint on one of the heads is not acceptable. I also assume the more minor paint issues will vary from figure to figure and there are more subjective things to critique like some of the shading choices or the expression on the non-masked head. For me personally though, this figure is a ton of fun to both look at and handle. He looks like the character from the show I loved as a kid and I couldn’t be happier that this exists. Certainly, I wish he didn’t cost 200 bucks as this line will get very expensive if all of the figures are priced at that level. This is the San Diego version, but also the brown costume variant was priced at 200 so who knows what the going rate is going to be? On the other hand, if they only put out one or two per year then that certainly makes it a lot easier to budget.

Wolverine is lonely though. Imagine Sabretooth at this scale?!

This version of Wolverine was a convention exclusive limited to 3,250 pieces. If you want him, you’ll have to go to the secondary market or hope that Mondo does indeed release a stripped down version in the future. Again, Mondo has been pretty quiet about that release and future ones so I don’t know if that’s still the plan. The secondary market is basically you’re only source for this one now where it will likely cost more than the $200 Mondo charged. How much more remains to be seen. Right now, the listings are pretty high, but I don’t know if they’re actually selling. This is a rather niche item because of its scale and there’s a very real possibility that those hoping to make a buck have to settle for far less than they expected. Over three-thousand units isn’t a small number for this sort of thing so keep your eyes open if you want him. As for me, I can’t wait to have a more robust X-Men collection to display. Between Mondo and Hasbro, it figures to be an eventful 2022 for the almost 30 year old show.

That was a long one, I could really go for something to eat. Who wants turkey?!

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

July 23, 2021

Another Comic Con Season is Over and it was Expensive!

By Joe

San Diego Comic Con has come to be a convention that means a lot of things. It only vaguely has anything to do with comic books and instead is more a celebration of, and I hate to use the term, “geek” culture: video games, movies, comics, toys, etc. It’s also a huge commercial event with many companies exhibiting wares like a trade show and also hawking rare, convention, exclusives to hungry patrons looking to get their hands on something unique. The problem is, these convention exclusives were once novelties, but in the toy industry, they’ve become practical necessities for fans of certain products and it creates a hyper-competitive environment full of broken websites, tapped-out wallets, and frustrated fans.

For the second year in a row, the COVID-19 pandemic forced the event to be done remotely. At least with this year, companies had plenty of time to plan for that and many crafted special videos or hosted live panels to show off to fans what’s expected to come later this year and into next. Unfortunately, a global shipping crisis could not be foreseen so a lot of product that would have been sold at physical booths this year are still in transit. It certainly takes a damper out of things when, as a consumer, you fight scalpers and busted websites only to secure an order for something that won’t even ship for 6 to 8 months. In that case though, at least the consumer can be happy to have secured a coveted item and the waiting is just what it is.

It’s been an interesting season. I was musing on Twitter how this time of year that purports to celebrate the collector, toy, industry instead brings out the worst in the industry. As one would say though, it is what it is. I spent a lot of time, and money, going after the stuff I personally wanted and watched from afar as plenty of other fellow collectors tried to get the things they wanted. Some experiences went better than others, but I can at least say that I did get everything I really wanted, and the things I didn’t I passed on because it just wasn’t worth it to me.

This fall, the mask comes off!

The company always in my sights this time of year is NECA. I have been collecting NECA’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles products ever since they started making the stuff back in 2008. NECA chose to use this time of year to only highlight items expected to arrive in stores between now and October, so while there weren’t a ton of reveals, there was certainly plenty to get excited about. On the film front, they had a new Casey Jones to feature that now comes with an unmasked portrait as NECA was able to get the likeness rights to actor Elias Koteas (with some help from April actress Judith Hoag) around the time the original figure was released. It looks great, though considering it’s basically the same figure I already have just with a new head and elbows means I may pass on it. Complicating the matter is Walmart posting a preorder just last night for a mystery two-pack claiming to be April and Casey from the farm portion of the film. There was no image to go with it, but being a TMNT product, it sold out. It’s dated for November so I suppose it’s not a surprise it was withheld from the show. Also from the movies is Shredder from the sequel, The Secret of the Ooze. He’s largely the same figure as the first film except he’s purple and has a new cape and helmet. Still, he looks pretty awesome and would pair quite well with Tokka and Rahzar.

From the cartoons, NECA had some two-packs that we knew were coming thanks to a Target leak, but had yet to see. Groundchuck and Dirtbag will be arriving together which makes sense since they debuted together in the same episode of the show. Dirtbag even has a nifty feature where he can separate at the torso and be placed in a sculpted pile of rubble like he came up from out of the ground (since he’s a mutated miner or something). The other big two-pack shown was Wingnut and Screwloose who too looked quite impressive. Screwloose in the cartoon was a much larger character than someone like Joe Eyeball so he gets a full figure this time around, which is awesome. He looks to be roughly the same size as Baxter. Those were the only new reveals, but they did show additional shots of some of the figures NECA put up for preorder earlier in the year and also teased a cartoon Tokka and Rahzar two-pack. For the comics, they only had a teaser for Fugitoid and nothing for the video game line was shown or teased which was expected as the comic line is intended to replace it.

I don’t know if the kid version of me would be excited for this group, but the adult version certainly is!

As expected, NECA did have an exclusive set to sell this year as they have every year going back several years now. And for TMNT, they actually had two. The first is an exclusive Super Shredder that will be sold at Walmart stores. It’s another paint variant meant to resemble a European version of the old Playmates toy, similar to how the Shadow Master variant was an homage to a mail order exclusive of the same toy. This one is basically hot pink with metallic blue shoulder pads and spikes. It’s fine, though most fans were more interested in the cartoon 4-pack that went on sale at NECA’s webstore yesterday. Titled The Catwoman from Channel 6, the set contains four figures: Mutated Cat April, Irma, Vernon, and Burne as well as a bunch of unique Channel 6 themed accessories like cameras and little mutated versions of Vernon and Burne as turtles. It’s a pretty cool looking set as the box is done up like the deluxe releases with f.h.e. inspired artwork, but mostly it’s the first chance at an Irma and Burne. They may not be heroes or villains, but they were in a lot of episodes of the cartoon and it’s hard to have a display that doesn’t include them. Many were disappointed that the Cat April doesn’t come with a new, non-mutated, April head, but her skin tone is different as a cat and it wouldn’t have made sense. Irma comes with rat parts, like Vernon, while the cowardly cameraman has two new portraits to differentiate him from his prior release: a scared version and a blindfolded one. The set was sold with some “swag” like last year’s Musical Mutagen Tour and set collectors back $175. A version without the swag will arrive at Target in the coming months and retail for $150. I was able to place an order yesterday as the set remained in stock for awhile relative to other NECA exclusives, which means about 15 minutes. International versions are still available, and really the only downer is NECA has not provided a release window so I have no idea when this thing will ship.

She looks perfect!

In non-turtle news, NECA had some horror stuff to show based on Halloween and Gremlins II. I’m not really into that aspect of their business, but I am very interested in one of their newest intellectual properties: Gargoyles. Despite boasting that they have around six or seven sculpts already completed, NECA was content to just show two characters: Demona and Thailog. Demona had been teased already so this was just a chance to get a closer look at her, and predictably, she looks terrific. Thailog, being a clone of Goliath, was a bit underwhelming as he’s basically a Goliath variant. He has a new portrait that’s rather smug looking, and I like it, but I would have preferred to see another new sculpt. Demona was confirmed as the second release, and I believe Thailog was confirmed as the third, but no release window was given. Since Goliath still hasn’t shipped, it would probably be generous to expect both to arrive before October is through, but hopefully Demona can at least make it out before Halloween. Goliath is my most anticipated action figure release this year and I can’t wait to go hands-on with this line!

After the NECA hysteria died down, my focus turned to Bandai. I am a casual collector of Bandai’s S.H.Figuarts line and it’s Dragon Ball figures, but one of their exclusives this year caught my eye. An anime accurate Nappa was going on sale following the manga-inspired version that was released a couple of years ago. I had seen that figure on display several times at a local comic shop and came close to pulling the trigger, but ultimately passed. I decided I would not do the same this time, but Bandai seemed to have other ideas. The sale started at 9 EST last night and it was doomed from the start. The website crashed and no one could check out. Twitter was flooded with complaints while the social media accounts for Bandai and Bluefin Brands tried to push patience. It was a repeat of last year, and despite promises to do better, Bandai came up short. After an hour of constant refreshing and baby steps, I finally got through, but others weren’t as lucky. It helped I was only going after one of the four Dragon Ball exclusives, the others being Goku, Whis, and Beerus. I would have liked to have grabbed Beerus as I enjoy that character, but I just didn’t feel like spending more money. Same for the special stands that were on sale which featured a custom base. At least with Nappa, I have an expected delivery window of August, so the wait for this exclusive should be fairly quick.

I can’t believe this exists.

The longest wait though is reserved for Mondo. I am a first-time buyer of Monda, though I’ve seen their stuff before. They did a line of Mirage-inspired Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that were pretty cool and also have tackled Batman: The Animated Series. Their figures are 1/6th scale, so they’re around 12″ usually and quite expensive. Last November though, the company unveiled a figure in a new line: Wolverine. Not just any Wolverine though, Wolverine from X-Men the animated series. I was immediately interested despite the scale and cost and I only became more interested when the company teased it earlier this week. This thing comes with the photo frame of Scott and Jean that Wolverine broods over and has become a popular meme over the past few years. And to top it off, he comes packaged in a window box that simulates Wolverine laying on his bed pining for Jean. It’s ridiculous, and also ridiculously expensive at $200. A standard version should arrive sometime next year that will certainly be cheaper. How much cheaper I’m unsure of as the world of action figures continues to get hammered by shipping price hikes. This figure comes with a sad Wolverine head and we know that’s exclusive to this set, but is the picture? Or the alternate Morph head? The turkey leg?! Yes, he comes with a turkey leg.

I wish I didn’t have to wait until 2022 to get it!

Mostly, I just felt the need to show my support for anything X-Men animated as that has become my new grail toyline. NECA has crafted the TMNT lines of my dreams and are now going to dip their toes into Gargoyles. X-Men though was my biggest love as a kid and I’ve talked about my desire to see that cartoon get dedicated action figures based on it. Some will wave the retro-carded line by Hasbro in my face and say “This is X-Men animated,” but it’s not. Doing figures based on the designs of Jim Lee is not the same as doing an actual cartoon line. This figure from Mondo appears to get that right based on the paint deco which uses two shades of yellow, two shades of blue, and doesn’t have over-the-top detailing like stubble on Wolverine’s face or individually sculpted teeth. Unfortunately, I’ll have to wait until January (if not longer) to find out just how good this thing is as that’s the current expected ship date. Apparently, this wouldn’t have been ready to sell at a physical booth had the convention happened.

It was quite a week though, and it followed a week of reveals by Super7 the prior week which got G.I. Joe fans talking. The state of the shipping industry makes it hard to say how many of the products shown off this week will actually reach collector hands this year, but it’s fun to know what’s coming. Right now there’s a lot of waiting going on which is rarely fun, but often necessary. And I’m an adult capable of being patient when it comes to my toy hobby. Still, waiting on the chance to try and buy these exclusives was anxiety-inducing when it doesn’t have to be. It’s great companies are creating products people want, but why the artificial scarcity? And with so many of them not even shipping for months, why not just open preorders for most of them? I get it if you’re selling some goofy, expensive, variant that not everyone needs, but a character like Nappa from Dragon Ball Z in his show accurate colors should be something every DBZ collector has a chance at. NECA appeared to meet demand with its set, and they have more shipping to stores as well, so I give them high marks this con season. Plus, I think the exclusive figures in that set, namely Irma and Burne, will see release in the main line at some point too. Even the mutated April might get a re-release and if that happens the only truly exclusive things in that set will be the large cameras and alternate Vernon portraits. And that’s fine! I want to get the toys that I like and I want everyone else to as well. I don’t need these things to be hyper exclusive to have value for me. Some people see things differently, but I’m confident in saying they’re the minority in this day and age. It’s a time of year I both look forward to a lot and also dread. It’s over now though and I’m largely feeling good so…mission accomplished?

1 Comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , , , | posted in toys

%d bloggers like this: