June 10, 2009
Comics, Haiku, and a T-600 review!

Indeed! So this is probably the largest update we’ve had in quite a while, though two out of three of today’s features aren’t insanely substantial (though hopefully they are a tiny bit amusing). First up, Dusty Plastic HELL: Hot Flash #108 — which actually features three one-panel comics rather than the usual one. Does anybody remember the Wuzzles, or is it really just me? And thanks again to TAO of Articulated Discussion for the Captain Cold figure, which I won in his contest for April! w00t!

One of these days I’m gonna have a contest over here, though I doubt I’ll give away anything half as cool as a Legion of Doom member. As seen in today’s installment of A Crayon Haiku — which covers #132-135 — that brings me just two members away from completing the team! I’ll probably end up eBaying a DC Direct Cheetah, but I’m kinda torn about what to do for Giganta. I’m not really serious about keeping Ginormica on the team for the long haul… at least not without some customization. And speaking of customization, you can see my mostly complete Foot ninja custom in ACH #132! The base figure was obviously a Spectacular Spider-Man figure, but I also did some sculpting on him. I’ll give a full rundown of the process once I’ve truly finished him. Oh, and Shockwave. SHOCKWAVE. I initially disliked the toy, but now I kinda like him. Perhaps that $20 refund had something to do with it!

And then we’ve got our more substantial offering for today — a review of Playmates Toys’s Terminator Salvation T-600 figure! I actually kinda like the guy, but if I were giving out numerical scores I’d probably have to give him a 6/10 on the collector scale. If you’re at all interested in getting him, though, he’s probably worth picking up.

And now, other site plugs! First, in the process of grabbing tangential links to pepper the text, I came across Kristen Lawrence, a musician who does some really cool Halloween-themed songs. You can listen to some of her work on the YouTube link there, or you can visit her site to learn more about her and grab a free mp3 of her rendition of “The Ghost of John.” It’s really great.

Next, Paul’s Toy Bender is pretty cool — I won a contest over there and sent over a comic with my prize, so you can see and read about that… as well as enter his latest contest. I actually have that Snarf pencil topper, so I can attest that it’s pretty fun! You know, if you like Snarf. I think I found him annoying as hell.

Then there’s BattleGrip, which has a bunch of toy news, reviews, and so forth. I particularly like the designer toy reviews, since it gives me a good look at some pretty cool toys that I would never have seen otherwise since I’ll never be able to afford them. Alas!

Lots of cool reviews and discussion spanning toys and pop culture over at Infinite Hollywood, oodles of toy-related stuff over at Poe Ghostal’s Points of Articulation, and RawToys has fun toy reviews as well. And since there are plenty more fun toy links out there than I can hope to list, Fanmode has roundups all too frequently.

Can you tell that I’m really digging the toy scene lately? That said, next time will have no toy reviews — look for (hopefully) a movie review, the next installment of Mickey Glitter’s Sarah Jane Smith Fashionista Fever! series, and perhaps another piece as well. Until then!

Also? STOMPY. :mrgreen:

-posted by Wes | 9:28 pm | Comments (8)
8 Comments »
  • the Jax says:

    Nice to see new haiku, articles & sundry, Wes! I’m interested to know your quibbles with Terminator Salvation. I had low expectations, especially considering how silly T3 was (portion I saw, anyway). I ended up really enjoying it.

    • Wes says:

      Well, now you can read them! I had really high hopes for the film after watching TSCC, so my biggest problem with the movie was that it was markedly inferior to the television show. Even without that, though, it was still an average video game minus the joy of playing.

  • Ragey says:

    I’m sad to say I haven’t seen a single Terminator movie. I caught, like, five minutes of the first movie on TV recently, but that’s it, and I’m reluctant to see the new movie without seeing the previous ones. Regardless of that, that figure looks pretty good! Considering how ‘meh’ Playmates Star Trek stuff looks, I’m impressed they went all-out with that kinda paint job.
    How recent are these DC figures you’re looking for, might I enquire? Here in Northern Ireland we’re lagging way behind on Transformers waves. We _still_ haven’t got the Universe wave the US got back in December 2008, and it’s only now that some figures from the toyline of the _first movie_ have arrived in stores! It’s pretty rough.

    • Wes says:

      Okay, Ragey, here’s what you do:

      Step 1. Watch the first two movies.

      Step 2. STOP watching the movies and watch both seasons of “Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles.”

      Step 3. Unless you want to watch TSCC again, you’re done. 🙂

      And yeah, I actually like the figure, but I’d like it even more if it actually looked like the movie T-600s. I could deal with less paint, too, but not if the figures kept the same price point… which is unfortunately what happened with the Star Trek figures. Not that there’s a whole lot of detail on those that could be highlighted by a more involved paint job, but still.

      The DC figures I’m looking for are fairly recent — most of them came out within the last two or three months, I think. That said, Harley Quinn came out over a year ago (she was in the Grodd wave from when I made my custom Grodd) and I have never seen her to this day. I curse Mattel!

      Regarding the 2007 movie Transformers, it doesn’t so much matter since many of the new ones are just repaints anyway. And don’t worry about Universe 2.0, since most of those figures kinda suck. You’d be better off buying more Cybertron figures (assuming those are just hanging around the way they did here in 2007).

  • Philip Reed says:

    Thanks for the link! And I have to say that the more I see of the T-600 toys — in any scale — the more I dislike them. They look cheap compared to the T-700 and T-RIP figures.

    Oh yeah. And Playmates, where’s my 3.75-inch scale Moto-Terminator?

    • Wes says:

      Well, the T-600 is supposed to look kinda cheap — it’s oversized and falling apart and poorly-made by comparison — so I actually think that the figures are fairly accurate! The T-700 and TRIP figures look better in part because the models themselves look better. Even so, I’d have a hard time telling someone to grab one of the 6″ Playmates versions when the NECA ones are out there. The 3.75″ figures have no competition in that respect.

      A 3.75″ scale Moto-Terminator would indeed be cool… if I hadn’t hated the heck out of those things in the movie. 😉

  • Monte says:

    That T-600 figure is quite possibly the least aesthetically appealing toy I’ve seen this decade.

    You mentioned that the clothes look like sheets of rubber that were deliberately cut or bitten, but that bears repeating: the clothes look like sheets of rubber that were deliberately cut or bitten!

    The placement of the belt doesn’t just mean that his ugly waist break isn’t obscured; it also means that he looks like he’s wearing a big, green diaper.

    His whole body (but mostly each leg) looks soft and fat and dumpy.

    The skin is so misshapen and eerie that he appears to be a robotic skeleton pretending to be a freaky alien, rather than a human. Except that the robot parts are so thick that he doesn’t appear to be a skeleton at all, but rather a chunky robot that someone spilled liquid skin onto.

    He’s got a big, thick, I’m-A-Toy! T-crotch.

    Ghastly, ghastly business.

    • Wes says:

      Ha! See, I don’t have any problem with a toy looking like a toy… I mean, it is a toy! And these Playmates figures are really toys. I really do wish they’d been given simpler paint jobs that highlighted that fact, since at least then folks would stop picking on them so much. I mean, nobody hates on Power Rangers and Ben 10 figures, and even his poorly-sculpted details are kinda preferable to the complete absence of them. Well… maybe. I’d have to see it to be sure. 😉

      Anyway, the skin on the actual film T-600 (at least before the digital remodeling) was pretty misshapen, so I’d argue that that was something Playmates got right. It’s also a big chunky robot (or at least it was), so I’d cut it some slack there too. But yes, the clothes are appalling and he does kind of look like he’s wearing a green diaper. I really should try my hand at painting that belt.

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