And more old video game reviews? Awesome! Speaking of which, I've been meaning to start a video game article for you... if I ever get off my ass end and write the damn thing, I will e-mail you about it, Wes.

Awesome article.

i do think the big boys could do a lot more to tighten up their quality control. but for me, i'd far rather have to exchange a broken fig here and there than go back to unpainted plastic men with five points of articulation.

the thing that concerns me most about lack of quality control isn't paint slop or breakage, it's loose joints and miss-matched pieces. if i get a marvel legends fig and his leg snaps off, i'm bummed but oh well. if i get a figure with two left feet or two of the same bicep piece then i'm really frustrated. because that is something that clearly should be picked up by QA. and if you have an entire run of a figure with floppy legs or shoulder joints, at what point do you halt manufacturing and try to fix the problem? The answer for most companies is never. heck, the big boys will even reuse flawed bodies from previous waves for future releases and not fix the outstanding issues.

stupid toymakers!

I just got a Revoltech figure of Rei Ayanami, the kind with the super-posable bodies. Her left arm snapped right the hell off, like a Crash-Test Dummy figure...it goes back on, but unlike her right arm, it always comes off. ALWAYS!
And that time I got some Macross toys, and Minmei's head popped off while getting her out of the box. Seeing her grinning, severed head staring back at me, I had mixed feelings.

And WHOA, you crazy Americans can find Sailor Moon DVDs? At dollar stores?! The closest thing WE have is crud like "Space Thunder Kids".

As for accessories, I agree with you that they seem like easy choking hazards in themselves.

According to Hasbro Q&A, they really think that the Galactic Heroes line is what the youngest kids are playing with, and those don't have any accessories that aren't molded onto them.

That said, both Mai and Chun-Li in the upcoming review use ball joints to pretty decent effect (and the gaps are covered up by their outfits), though their range of movement isn't quite as good as the swivel-hinge-type ball joints employed on many figures these days. Of course, more on that later.

And it's one thing to be happy with an unexpected, rare, and inexpensive find even if it's broken (I was pretty happy when I got a Dalung Master as a free "bonus" in an eBay auction, even though its tail was broken and its mouth was caked with dried toothpaste...), but it's another thing entirely to have an expected figure for which one paid retail price to end up breaking fresh out of the package. Especially when it's Chun-Li. Broken Chun-Li figures make the baby Jesus cry.

Albert: Lucky you!

Tresob: Ah, the point about softer plastics being less dangerous for the kiddies when broken makes sense... except a) as you note, making toys easier to break seems counterproductive and b) most of the problem toys I've encountered lately have been marketed towards adult collectors rather than the children. The thing about SW figures and easily lost smaller accessories surprises me, though, since Hasbro has been doing a great job of giving Transformers places to stow their weapons these days. The SW universe needs more belts and shoulder straps.

And you mean to tell me that those poor workers paint all of the toys we get by hand?! Here I was thinking that they had some really complicated machinery for the task! Well.

I thought the SW characters in Soul Calibur was kind of cool, actually, but since it was like a bonus thing rather than the entire premise for the game.

Speaking of SW and fighting game crossovers, don't forget the Star Wars Edition Soul Calibur IV featuring Vader and Yoda...

This was because the joints were simple enough to do so: they're just balls that the limbs, which have appropriate depressions for (here's to hoping I got my terminology right--probably didn't), can fit over. If it snaps off, just snap it back on. Same thing happened to a small Racer X Movie Version I'd recently received, and I could pop it back on (and continue to move his arm around) no problem.

Unfortunately, it seems not all manufacturers have caught on to the limited hassles of these types of joints. I can understand if more complicated joints that can't just be popped back on are supposedly "better", but what's "better" about having to break out the screwdriver? Though, I have toys that don't use those "easy" joints and are still fairly durable, so...I dunno what's up with the manufacturers of those toys YOU got. Maybe they got broke during packaging and no one spoke up?

Dunno if I should be complaining--I'm the kind of person who would be happy with a scuffed-up, half-broken toy found at a thrift store (provided I couldn't find it anywhere else), so I guess I'm more lenient about these kinds of things.

On the other hand, that review of Mai/Chun-Li does sound interesting.