Tag Archives: todd mcfarlane

November 10, 2023

McFarlane Toys Gold Label Batman Santa (Blue Suit)

By Joe
He only has a naughty list.

Ho! Ho! Ho! It’s the jolly one – Santa Claus! Oh, wait, no, it’s the somber, moody, one: Batman Santa! Yes, it’s our first Christmas themed post of 2023 and it’s an action figure review – shocking, I know. McFarlane Toys has held the DC license for several years now, but this is my first experience with the line. I’ve never been a big DC guy, though I do enjoy the Batman. McFarlane’s DC Multiverse line is a 1:10 scale action figure line that seems fine, but it has its own aesthetic and it’s not one that I’m particularly drawn to. It’s not very comic-like, and more of a grittier, militaristic, interpretation. It’s like a toyline based on the aesthetic found in Rocksteady’s Arkham series of Batman video games. If you like it – great, and if you don’t that’s fine too. I thought that by now I would have bought at least something from the line, but even the animated characters didn’t do much for me so I never had reason to dip my toe into the McFarlane waters. That is, until Todd decided to pair Batman with Santa.

He’s Batman in a Santa hat and robe with beard. Also, he can’t lower his arms past this pose.

The Batman Santa figure is a case of what you see is what you get. It’s Batman, and he’s dressed as Santa. I’m not aware of any story to pair with this one and there’s some artwork that goes along with it which is fine, but I’m always down for Christmas variants of characters I love. This figure is part of the Gold Label series which, as far as I can tell, is more of an excuse to tack on five bucks to the usual price as I don’t see anything all that special in the box. It comes in a clamshell package and was sold exclusively on McFarlane’s webstore in two versions: red and blue. The red is undoubtedly a more traditional take on Santa, but I like blue and blue feels more appropriate for Batman. The figure was 30 bucks, though there was a bundle to get bother versions for $50. It sold out by the time I made my purchase (even though both versions were still available as singles) so I didn’t even get a chance to consider double-dipping here, but I don’t think I would have. I only need one Santa Batman, or Batman Santa, for my holiday decorating this year.

Lot of texture on this guy. He just might be bullet proof because, you know, Santa always has to worry about getting shot at.

Batman comes in at right around 7.375″ to the top of his hat. If this Batman is reusing any parts from a past release in the main line I’m not aware, because I don’t regularly purchase figures in this line. The Bat suit he’s wearing seems pretty modern to me and very much in that style I described going in. It’s textured like Kevlar and is armor-plated on the chest and lower legs. It’s almost all done in blue plastic without any shading or much in the way of paint. He has a silver Bat logo on the chest as well as silver shoulder pads and gauntlets. The gauntlets are held on by “straps” which are sculpted into the forearms. The same is true of the kneepads, but McFarlane didn’t paint the straps. Some white might have looked nice, but oh well. There’s a lot of paneling on the boots, but it’s all black plastic. It makes me wonder why they didn’t go with a less-detailed sculpt. Come to think of it, this getup would have been pretty appropriate for a Batman ’66 release.

I do like how they chose to paint the face.

Where paint is used is on the trim of the hat, robe, beard, face, and the cuffs of the sleeves. In almost all cases, the paint is white. I can’t quite tell what’s going on with the hands. It almost looks like they painted white over blue, even if it would have made more sense to just cast them in white. Then again, maybe it wouldn’t if nothing else on the figure is molded in white. The paint is mostly fine though and is cleanly applied. I wish the white was a bit more white, but it has a dingy quality to it. I suppose that fits the line’s aesthetic better than a pure white would, though I also can’t tell if it’s intentional or just the result of painting white over a very bright blue. The masked portion of the face is painted black which I love. It looks like a classic, 70s, Batman. It helps sell this blue color scheme, which honestly makes Batman look more like a Hannukah character than a Santa one.

“Thank you for assisting with the decorating today, Mr. Freeze.” “I was…what? Decorating?!”

And that Santa element is captured in really just three features of the figure. The head features a Santa hat which is part of the sculpt as well as a beard. To go along with that is the long overcoat with a utility belt holding it in place. The belt is black with a series of pouches painted white that make up about 2/3rds of the belt itself. It’s not a lot, but it’s certainly enough to get the point across. I think just some more color would have helped, but otherwise this is a Batman Santa and it’s what I wanted. The bladed forearms and shoulder pads are the only things I’m not that sold on. While I like that they do provide for a splash of color, they also make Batman look more like the Shredder than Batman. Is this what the character looks like in the comics now? It’s bizarre to me, someone who hasn’t opened a Batman comic in 20 years.

Here is your accessory for your 30 dollar action figure.

And that’s mostly all you’re going to get, a Batman that’s dressed like Santa. For accessories, we get a sack of presents. It’s blue plastic with silver painted gifts oozing out of the top. Batman can’t hold it, it can just sit on a surface beside him. And that’s it as far as action figure accessories go. No extra hands, no extra heads, no additional weapons or toys. How about a Christmas-themed grapnel launcher? Or Batarang? Or little Charlie Brown tree with a bat for a star? The artwork features a sleigh that would have been pretty cool, but admittedly not practical at this price. If this figure is reusing a ton of assets, then I’m a little annoyed at the lack of accessories for the price. If it’s not, then I guess it’s more acceptable, but still not great. You do get a little disc stand with the figure which at least helps to stand it on cotton “snow” as seen in my pictures. There’s also a plastic piece that snaps together and the artwork insert can slot into that to create a backdrop of sorts. It’s not a bad idea and I like the artwork on it, but I wish it had something else on the reverse side. Something like a true backdrop such as the Batcave decorated like Santa’s workshop. Instead, it’s just the same image on both sides. Opportunity wasted.

This is pretty much the extent of his articulation.

This figure is basically designed to just stand there in front of that backdrop with the sack of presents beside it, but it is still an action figure so we should talk about the articulation. It’s not great. The head just swivels side-to-side as the hat and beard prevent any up and down movement. There’s also no tilt to be found. The shoulders are big ball-hinged pegs that can raise out to the side past a horizontal position. The shoulder pads are soft enough to move out of the way and the arms rotate just fine. There’s some slight up and down play, but no real butterfly joint. The biceps swivel is fine and the double-jointed elbows bend well past 90 degrees, but the joint is hideous and strangely he can’t straighten his arms out or place them at his side. They’re always bent slightly. The hands are on a ball hinge or something similar, but the cuffs of the sleeve render the joint pretty useless. There’s no forearm swivel either, which I always hate on figures with gauntlets like this one since you can’t position them and I don’t like the default placement of them either.

He’s a pretty big Batman. Also, notice where the other Batmen position those blades on their gauntlets? This one can’t do that.

In the torso, the figure has a diaphragm joint, but the coat won’t let it do much of anything. The waist twist works fine though and the legs can kick forward all the way and kick back some as well. They go out to the side for full splits, but don’t appear to feature a thigh twist of any kind. The knees are double-jointed, but despite that I can’t get them to go past 90 degrees. There’s no boot cut, and the ankles are pretty restricted by the design of the boot. They bend back pretty far, but not forward. The ankle rocker doesn’t appear to work and there’s a fairly useless toe hinge as well.

No sleigh? No problem!

Despite the coat being fairly flexible and featuring an open design on the front and back, it still makes it hard to do much with this figure when it’s combined with the articulation scheme. Batman Santa can stand there, he can do splits if you want, or assume a walking pose. He has gripping hands, but nothing to grip, which seems like a bad idea as the hands aren’t expressive. Even if he had a grapnel hook or a line to swing from, his arms are really short and he wouldn’t be able to grab something over his head. It’s not a figure you’re going to do a whole lot with, but it didn’t have to be this way.

“All right Batman, I’ll let you handle the deliveries this year, but the milk and cookies are MINE!”

Batman Santa is an action figure that doesn’t articulate well, has some weird proportions, and is a pretty terrible value considering the price tag and the lack of accessories. It’s an online only figure too so you have to pay a shipping charge as well. The cost of this guy was $39.28 for me before taxes and that’s pretty expensive for a McFarlane figure. You really need to be a Christmas weirdo to want this figure, which is what I am. And now that I have it, how do I feel about it? Well, I’m happy to have a Batman as Santa action figure, even if this actual figure barely scratches that itch. It’s a novelty, and one that probably doesn’t justify the price. If you like it, I guess go for it. If you want an action figure that behaves more like an action figure then it will probably let you down.

This Batman Santa isn’t the first Christmas themed action figure we’ve looked at on this blog, how does it stack up with these?

Figura Obscura – Father Christmas

It was just last year that Four Horsemen launched a subline of its popular Mythic Legions brand of action figures called Figura Obscura. Practically speaking, there’s little difference between the two lines as Mythic Legions seeks to serve as a modular line of toys based on myth and legend and that doesn’t feature licensed characters.…

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by Joe

Transformers Generations Holiday Optimus Prime

We interrupt our regularly scheduled holiday posts with something very familiar to this blog: a toy review! Yes, we have ourselves another Christmas toy to talk about and it too comes from Hasbro. We already looked at a Star Wars toy at the end of November, and now we’re turning to what I suppose is…

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by Joe

Naughty or Nice Classic Santa and Cyborg Santa

It was looking like we were in for a photo finish this year. Last year, toymaker Fresh Monkey Fiction partnered with online retailer Big Bad Toy Store to launch the Naughty or Nice collection. Structured similar to a Kickstarter campaign, FMF posted several action figures for preorder with a minimum order quantity needed for the…

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by Joe

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January 22, 2012

Kingdoms of Amalur Demo Impressions

By Joe

Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning (2012)

As a Red Sox fan, I was made aware of future Hall of Fame pitcher Curt Schilling’s video game obsession early on.  Perhaps not as early on as Diamondbacks or Phillies fans, but certainly well before the formation of 38 Studios (at one point, Green Monster Games), the developer behind the latest RPG Kingdoms of Amalur:  Reckoning.

Schilling was a noted EverQuest junkie.  For those unfamiliar, EverQuest was World of Warcraft before WoW.  It wasn’t the first massively multi-player online RPG, but it was certainly the first one to reach a large audience.  Schilling was not at all embarrassed by his nerdy obsession, and why would he be?  He was a multi-millionaire athlete with a hot wife.

It’s been a good, long while since Schilling decided to stop just being a fan and decided to create games for himself.  When that announcement was made I wasn’t sure what to expect.  I thought maybe he’d get into developing on a small scale with iPhone type games, and if he got into the big boy stuff, it would be a MMORPG for the PC, which seemed to be the only game he was into.  Or, as is often the case with this kind of wishful thinking announcement, I figured I’d never hear about 38 Studios again and the company would be dissolved before Schilling lost too much money.  When the first trailer for Kingdoms of Amalur surfaced over a year ago I was both surprised and officially intrigued.

In 2009, 38 Studios made a big acquisition when it acquired small developer Big Huge Games.  Big Huge Games is mostly known for its work with the RTS game Rise of Nations, but it was allocated to Reckoning in an effort to create a single-player experience.  Schilling also brought on board noted fantasy scribe R.A. Salvatore to help design the game world and create a robust history.  Todd McFarlane was also brought in for character designs giving 38 Studios an almost all-star quality.

Suddenly, Reckoning had a lot going for it and the first reveal only made fans more interested getting their paws on a finished product.  Just this past week a playable demo was released for PC, Xbox 360, and PS3 and I gave it a test run.

First of all, Reckoning is a third-person western style RPG.  If you don’t know what that means (you must not read this blog regularly) it just means the game is more like Skyrim than Final Fantasy.  You’re given control of one character and right away you get to customize him to your liking.  You can be as detail oriented as you wish or go with a randomly generated character produced by the game.  There are four base races to choose from that each are more suited towards a particular play style (one makes for an obvious mage, the other warrior, and so on).  The game then lets you pick a deity for your character to follow which incurs some bonuses to certain stats, or you can go atheist if you wish.  The level of customization is pretty much on par with recent entries into this genre such as Dragon Age and Skyrim.

Reckoning places a lot of emphasis on combat, and mostly succeeds in crafting some fun gameplay mechanics.

The demo has you play through an introductory level of sorts.  It gives you some context and, as expected, lets you know that your character is unique and somehow really important to this game’s world.  It’s pretty standard stuff.  From what I gathered from the giant opening cinematic, is that the game is focused on war between mortals and immortals.  These immortals (they have a special name that I forgot) are not immortal in the literal sense, it would be seem.  They die when you fight them, and during the cinematic one gets stabbed through the chest and appears as dead as anything else.  I’m going to assume their immortality comes into play after “death” and that they’re resurrected or something.  Regardless, the story has potential but doesn’t seem all together different from the first Dragon Age when you get right down to it.  It’s good vs evil and the evil guys are way cooler and more ferocious looking.

The introductory dungeon does a good job of giving you a chance to try out seemingly everything.  It encourages you to give melee a try and even throws in some stealth and magic play.  When it comes to an end you select your character class and start customizing it the way you want to play.  The game breaks everything down into three parts where character class is concerned:  warrior, rogue, and mage.  They have their own unique heading instead of that, I know the rogue abilities are called finesse and the warrior ones might be maul or something.  Each one has its own tech tree and at each level up you get 3 points to spend however you wish.  Even if you’re playing a mostly warrior type character you can invest points in the other two schools.  Considering you get 3 points at each level, it seems like it won’t take that long to fill-out a tree but we shall see.  As you spend points in each one the game keeps track which allows you to open up class advancements in each one.  For example, the base finesse class can become a thief or an assassin as more points are invested in it.  You can also dual and triple class if you like variety, which definitely has me intrigued.  I suspect few will play one dimensional characters.  Apparently, as part of the game, you’ll be able to meet characters that (for a fee, I assume) will wipe away all of your point allocations and let you reallocate them from scratch.  This means if you’ve played the game for 30 hours as a warrior but decide you want to switch it up and be a mage/thief, you can!  That seems pretty cool to me and is a good way to let your players experience everything the game has to offer without starting over.

While Bethesda tries to make their creatures seem plausible, Reckoning just wants them to look cool.

Visually, the game is a pretty solid looking title.  It reminds me a lot of EA’s (the publisher for Reckoning) other RPG series Dragon Age.  Both go for a clean look with a rich color palette, which is in contrast to Bethesda’s Skyrim which has a gritty feel with a muted, gray palette.  The character designs also follow a similar philosophy in that they’re straight-up fantasy fare.  Where Skyrim tries to take these creatures and make them seem realistic, Reckoning just throws them in.  This gives some characters, like the gnomes, an almost toon quality to them.  Structurally, the game is also similar to Dragon Age in its approach to the environment.  The map is huge, though in the demo I was obviously restricted to a small piece, but it looks like Reckoning will favor condensed but connected areas as opposed to Skyrim’s wide-open terrain.  This makes sense considering the game’s focus on combat.

How is that combat?  Quite good actually.  At first, it feels like Reckoning may be another button masher like Dragon Age 2 or (gulp) Dynasty Warriors.  Instead, there is importance placed on blocking or parrying and there are time-sensitive special moves you unlock as you advance in levels.  I was concerned when I first started playing that combat would be too simple but the longer I got in the more varied the opponents became.  I could probably approach it like a Diablo and just keep attacking and spamming potions but I found myself dodging and weaving amongst my enemies always trying to avoid being ganged up on.  There’s also a special slow motion type attack that’s triggered by a meter.  When activated, it slows everyone down but your character and you can deal out some serious damage.  It’s player activated so you’ll find yourself saving a fully charged meter for a tough encounter, at least I did.  Main attacks are done with one button, while special abilities and spells are mapped to a trigger.  The game makes liberal use of the radial menu popularised by BioWare for easy access to potions.  There’s also always a secondary weapon mapped to another face button on the controller letting you change things up on the fly.  And like with Skyrim, you can also enter a stealth mode and try to sneak up on enemies to deal massive damage.

Reckoning looks pretty nice, and the combat seems fun, but I’m not sure where I stand on the product as a whole.  I like its ambition, I like pretty much everything I talked about, but there’s stuff I don’t like.  For one, the game’s camera is way too loose.  I liken it to the inFamous series as it has a similar feel.  The camera also feels like it’s too close to my character.  I found myself constantly spinning it around with the right analog stick to get a look at something.  The character also has a floaty feel and landing hits on enemies just lacks something that I can’t quite place my finger on.  The game just doesn’t feel as fun to play as it should, given all that’s gone into it and all that it gets right.

Downloading this demo will also score you some sweet armor in Mass Effect 3.

This game is ultimately going to be compared to Skyrim because both fit into the same genre and will be released relatively close together (Reckoning hits stores February 7th).  The experience of the two is vastly different though.  Skyrim is more an exploration, sandbox kind of title.  Reckoning has a large map, but exploration seems like it will be more tedious than wondrous.  There’s some emphasis placed on free will in Reckoning as well (you can pick pocket, target civilians for attacks and so on) but some of the world’s real feel is dampened by archaic video game conventions like breakable boxes strewn about.  I can run into some guy’s house and just start smashing things for loot and he doesn’t give a shit, which is disappointing.  This game reminds me more of Microsoft’s Fable series than Skyrim, though I think the finished product will be superior.

In the end, I feel like I can’t offer a fair assessment of Kingdoms of Amalur because I’ve just been playing too much Skyrim.  I’m nearing 150 hours with that beast and playing something different just feels too foreign right now.  I have legitimate concerns about Reckoning, enough that I know I won’t be a day 1 purchaser.  That was unlikely anyways as I have too many games I have yet to play as is, but I’m definitely holding out for some full reviews.  And after my experience with Skyrim and its stability (terrible) I’m a little gun-shy to jump right into a new, massive game before knowing how well it runs.  I do recommend that people try this demo out.  It’s quite generous and after the tutorial dungeon you’re given 45 minutes to do whatever you want.  They closed off some areas and I think they removed a lot of the NPC audio to make the download smaller, but you get a good test run.  What will make this game a success or not is how well player’s enjoy the gameplay mechanics and quest variety.  Skyrim offers the same quest over and over but gives it unique context, plus the world is just fun to explore and I’m not sure Reckoning’s will have that same feel.  The story-telling and NPC audio in Skyrim is often times less then stellar but if the quest has me doing something interesting I can overlook it.  If Reckoning just has the player fetching items and clearing dungeons endlessly it may get boring pretty quickly.  We’ll just have to wait and see.  My expectations after playing the demo though are that it probably won’t eclipse Skyrim as the definitive fantasy RPG experience, but should at least top my pick for 2011’s most disappointing release, Dragon Age 2.  And if so, that’s a pretty nice spot to occupy.

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