This is without a doubt going to be one of my more rushed Figure Friday columns and I am thanking Past Me for making notes a couple of weeks ago so Future Me would have something to write about. I also cannot believe that American Thanksgiving is next week and that we’re absolutely screaming towards the end of 2022.
As noted above, I do have a couple of things to write about but one of them won’t be NECA’s Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles The Last Ronin figure because I only just got it yesterday and haven’t had a moment to myself to unbox the damn thing. The only thing I can say for certain at this moment is that it looks cool. Updates as warranted.
Super Powers The Flash by McFarlane Toys
I almost included this figure as part of my upcoming Holiday Gift Guide contributions for this year…and I still may!
The McFarlane Super Powers line which apes the aesthetics of the classic Kenner Super Powers line started popping up at Walmart stores a few months back seemingly out of nowhere, which is kind of McFarlane’s main move when I think about it. It seems like nary a week goes by when some hitherto unannounced DC Multiverse figure is randomly spotted in the wild by a toy collector. It’s a weird business strategy but I’ll admit it keeps things interesting.
Initially, the line was comprised of Batman, Superman, Darkseid, and two vehicles with Green Lantern, The Flash, and The Batman Who Laughs following just weeks later. The line is, to the best of my knowledge, exclusive to Walmart in North America and I had no trouble finding most of the line with the exception of the one figure I was interested in…The Flash.
I had begun to fear that the Scarlet Speedster was inhabiting the same rarefied air as the similarly Walmart exclusive Cosmos (which I still have yet to find) but after weeks of searching I was able to catch up with The Flash.
This figure was a nostalgia buy for me pure and simple. The first AND ONLY Kenner Super Powers figure I had as a kid was The Flash, which made this a slam dunk for me .The sculpt is very reminiscent of the Kenner figure with slight updates to make it a more contemporary depiction of the character and before you ask…no action features. Adding in something like that would most likely have caused the price to skyrocket north of the already lean ten American dollars price point.
Still, not bad for something that looks cool on my desk.
Transformers Studio Series Core Class Ratchet
Now this is just a fun li’l guy…with a surprisingly dark back story. Just how I likes it.
Roughly 60 to 70% of Hasbro’s Transformers product line is catering to people in their 40s like me who believe the franchise achieved perfection in 1986 with Transformers: The Movie completely overlooking the fact that the movie scarred an entire generation of kids.
Ratchet, the avuncular Autobot medic who transforms into an ambulance, had less than five minutes of screen time in the movie and no lines (if memory serves) before he was brutally murdered by Megatron and his gang of Decpticons. Those guys are so evil they even shot the medic. This figure essentially captures Ratchet just moment before his death, the cardboard backdrop that’s included is even the bridge of the Autobot shuttle where he was fighting for his life.
All things considered, his death wasn’t as graphic as Prowl’s or Ironside’s (which couldn’t even be shown, even though one kid had an uncle that said the Japanese cut of the movie… etc etc) but still, it’s kind of like an airplane toy packaged with a Buddy Holly figure and a Big Bopper mail-in offer.
The toy itself is surprisingly posable, comes with two pistols (useless against Megatron), and the transformation from robot to vehicle is a lot of fun. I didn’t think I was going to be able to find this at retail but I happened on a couple at Target. The boxes looked like they had been stepped on but the figure inside was a-ok…or at least as okay as a figure of a doomed robot could be.
