Halo: Reach, The figures are great!

I don’t have an Xbox, and I have never played Halo, but I am a fan of the McFarlane toy line.   I have quite a few figures from earlier waves, and I thought I would give these figures a once over when they came out in the store.

I was at Toys R Us, and I saw a few hanging on the pegs.   I had seen them being previewed in ToyFare magazine, and thought the one called Jorge looked pretty darn  cool.    Well lucky for me, Jorge was one of the guys hanging there.  After a quick once over, I was hooked.

He is a great looking figure with lots of extra armor, and a great multi-colored scheme.   He comes with a removable backpack, and a BIG gun.  I am a fan of the guys in games that carry around the big guns.  Usually the soft spoken one in the group.

A nice feature is the backpack having the same peg hole as his back does.  This allows his gun to be mounted to the backpack for carrying.   Unfortunately, the pegs don’t fit tight, and both the backpack and the gun easily fall off when being moved or posed.

With the added armor, he does not have quite as good motion in his joints as his Halo predecessors.  He is able to hold some good poses though, and overall feels like a nice strongly built action figure.  He has a good amount of heft to him, and all of the parts move easily.

This is a good figure for action figure fans or Halo fans.  Now I just need to make a friend who will let me play on their XBox.

MiniMates continue to get vehicles with the DeLorean

A trip this afternoon to Toys R Us yielded yet another exclusive vehicle from the Art Asylum folks.  This time, they gave us the DeLorean.

The folks at Art Asylum are creating some pretty cute vehicles.  They are much like their character counterparts, displaying a bit of cartoonish fun.   The DeLorean is a squashed down version of the actual car.  It has the famous gull-wing doors, and has plenty of room to seat two.

The car comes with a number of decal stickers complete with everything from front headlights, to interior lights and of course the flux capacitor.  Oh yeah, cannot forget the famous license plate: OUTATIME.

Thank goodness Marty fits well.

Marty comes in his standard wear.  Thought to be a sailor because of his down vest in the first movie, he always seemed to get back to his regular clothes.   A cowboy with tennis shoes?  Haha!!!

It was not until I uploaded the pictures that I noticed Marty's rolled up sleeve had fallen down. DOH!

This is a very fun little vehicle.  It will be a welcome addition to the rest of my MiniMate BTTF collection.   I know there is an alternate version out there where the DeLorean is frosted from time travel, and I think Marty is in his yellow nuclear suit.  Won’t that be a fun one to get.  🙂

Hunt for the Decepticons: Sea Attack Ravage

Poor little kitty keeps getting beat up.   Maybe that is because he is a Transformer without a disguise.   He is either a giant panther or a flying machine of some alien origin.

I am not a huge fan of the robots without a proper disguise.  Remember after all, that the Transformers were created on the idea that they could transform into something inconspicuous.   In this case, I will make an exception.   I have been a fan of Ravage’s since the 80s.   Of course he would not be able to change into an audio tape as he did in the G1 show.   There was a lot of resizing characters to fit into their disguise mode, ie. Megatron turning into a much smaller scale handgun.  There was a lot of that going around back then.

In his current movie incarnation, Ravage is bristling with spikes, claws, and fangs.  Add to it the twin blast on his hind quarter, and speed, and he is not a force to be taken lightly… although he does keep getting beat up pretty good.

Transformers – Power Core Combiners 2 Packs

These are the BEST!!!  The 5 packs are good, and the three I have so far are nice and all, but the 2 pack “Commanders” are way better.  So far we have three of them, Searchlight, Huffer, and Smolder.

These three guys are better than the offerings of the 5-packs.  I have to assume it is due to their being sold alone, with their little helper.  They transform better, they look better, and they are tougher.

Searchlight:

A twin rotor helicopter in vehicle mode, and a slicer and dicer in robot mode.  He is assisted by Backwind (enter your own joke here).  Backwind has one arm that is a hook, and one that is a gatlin gun.   With the addition of two strong searchlights, he is a good match for his buddy Searchlight.

Searchlight transforms really well.  His arms fold up a-symetrically so the rotors wind up on either end of the helicopter.   His front rotor has four blades while his rear rotor has three blades.  I am not an airplane engineer, but that seems like that might be a little hard to fly.

Huffer:

Huffer makes his return to the front lines.  Still sporting his trademark yellow paint job, he is an updated version of his former Generation 1 glory.   He is now a boss, and come with Caliburst, a mighty looking little guy with a killer gun.

Huffer and Caliburst transform just about as perfectly as they can.  All of Caliburst’s modes are useful and very nice looking.

Smolder:

Apparently a Decepticon with a bad attitude, Smolder is joined by Chopster, a little robot with some big weaponry.

Little Chopster can become an axe, cannon or shield.   Without hands, he instead has two gatlin guns.  Not someone to be messed with.

Smolder is another figure with a great transformation.  Being able to hide most of his robot parts.

I have put pictures of all of the Power Core Combiners in one folder HERE. There you can see all of the transformation modes, plus the three 5 packs.

Power Core Combiners: The Army Grows

There is an ever growing presence in the Power Core Combiner line of the Transformers.  In the 80’s we had something like 15 combiners.  Now we already have 5 in the first two waves.  What makes this even better is any “commander” can use any Drone.  There are virtually thousands of combinations.

Destructicons:

This is a ground based squad of Drones led by Mudslinger.  In their combined mode, Destructicon is a little flat.   Due to the way Mudslinger transforms, the bulk of his vehicle mode is in the wheels.   Those are thrown up on his shoulders and leaves is back pretty empty.

This is an unruly team made up of very menacing looking vehicles.  A tow truck with missiles, a beat-up car with a killer plow on the front, a rocket powered armored truck, and a dune buggy.

While trying to get Mudslinger into his Commander mode, his leg broke at a joint.   The bend is pretty major to get his legs folded.   Watch out for that.

Aerialbots:

The commander of this team, Skyburst is my favorite of the 5 pack Commanders so far.   He transforms in two very different ways to change from his robot mode to his power-up mode.  The drones have some very tricky movements to change them into their body part, and it is hard to figure out just how to hold them so they open up or fold down.

Equal opportunity combiner.  The drones consist of two helicopters and two airplanes.  This is a very good set to have as a fighting team.   A rescue helicopter, a spy plane, a fighting helicopter and a jet fighter.  Add in the big commander, and this makes for a well rounded team.

Skyburst may be the best.  He has landing gear.  Actual landing gear on one of the smaller Transformers is not something we get too often.

These Combiners have peaked my interest.   I now have three of them, and looking forward to the next few.   I have also picked up one of the two packs.   The “Commander” figure is REALLY cool in there.   Come back next time for a look at Searchlight, and his sidekick, Backwind.   Is Backwind not the best name in the Transformer Universe?