The Transformers Animated line of action figures have been both praised and rejected by fans of the property. On one side, old-school fans of the 80′s original feel that the figures look cheesy and are upset about the choices of weapons such as axe’s and swords over guns and missiles. On the other side, fans of TF Animated find that the great articulation, sculpt and bladed (more kid friendly weapons) are cool and they don’t care about being gung-ho about the originals by liking both versions.

A Toys R Us exclusive, Arcee is the first high quality incarnation of the character. (The other version is a motorcycle from the movie theme, Ive read a lot of negative reviews and she doesn’t look much like the original character.)

The vehicle mode of the figure is built astonishingly well–except for her wings or spoiler which comes off pretty easy. The paint scheme is not pink as it should be, however, the color is fine as it is–making the toy more male friendly!
As a race car, Arcee is pretty solid and has four smooth rolling wheels and a lot of stability for rough play for the young-un’s.

The transformation of Arcee is not all that difficult but I’d still be careful. (This fact makes her not-so kid friendly, I wouldn’t give a kid an aftermarket action figure anyhow).

The details are close to the character in the cartoon and some of the added touches are her 2 translucent blue swords which can be sheathed in two slots in her upper back which is awesome. Her spoiler wings can be set into the back piece also giving her a cooler look.

Almost an impossible figure to find in Toys R Us stores, Arcee is holding at a reasonable price on ebay. I was able to get 2 for $40 after shipping.

Bumblebee Scratching His Head, Lockdown Grabbing Onto Arcee.

As you can see in the pictures, she is quite small, even smaller than Bumblebee. It appears that Lockdown is just towering over her so much that even if she is one of the premiere sword wielding warriors on Cybertron, she doesn’t stand much of a chance against a nasty psycho like Lockdown. Against Megatron–forget it! But, she is a cool character and a great figure which I highly recommend to Transformers Animated fans. I wish they would have released season 3 on DVD–talking about dropping everything for the movies…

Booths featured include: Nintendo, SquareEnix, Privateer Press, Viz, Disney and many more.

Tron Bike

Transformers – Bumble Bee

Bobba Fett

Neytiri of Avatar

He's No Wun-dar...

The club exclusive is Preternia Disguise He-Man; a He-Man in a robe and robbers mask carrying the Cosmic Key that the character Gwildor from the Masters of the Universe live action movie of the 80′s used to transport the heroes onto Earth.  Also included is a map of Etheria.  The figure is pretty lame compared to last years exclusive of Wun-dar, the Wonderbread mail-away figure that actually does exist regardless of what people think.

Great Detail, But Nothing Special...

The January figure is Bow from She-Ra. Bow looks ok, but he is nothing special except to She-Ra fans.

An odd thing…When I first went onto the Mattycollector site there were 4 pictures which included King Hiss as one of next years figures and some Viking-looking guy (called Vikor) that is nothing special, then after a short break I went back and the pictures vanished! O0ps! Looks like the webmaster screwed that up!

King Hiss is pretty much made like the original (although I don’t know from the picture if his body comes apart to reveal the snakes or if it’s a separate thing). Hiss comes with his green snake staff and red shield.
The Viking figure (Vikor: The He-Man of the North???) comes with a sword, shield and axe and has a horned helmet and a loin cloth, no upper armor except for a cape. I’m sure someone knows who the character is, I don’t and frankly, I don’t really care.

2010 offered the best of the figures, from He-Man, Skeletor, Teela, Evil-Lyn; Keldor and Faker and so many others, 2011 looks to be offering the lower tier; however, Battle Armor Skeletor is what I’m looking for and hopefully there will be something else of interest.

I wish I knew about any of this last year when the subscription service was offered, I could have had the best of the best, now I may be buying into the not-so-great figures–with a few good ones here or there. The specialty stores will attempt to sell them for top dollar–I don’t think anyone is going to buy many of them at top dollar in 2011.

Disappointment–maybe, but I’m REALLY hoping that it won’t be…

Rampage vs. Griffin

Besides the funky shorts, this looks good, especially Jackson.  Maybe Griffin should have been doing the roundhouse kicks that got him the win.

Rampage vs. Silva

They’re really milking Rampage in this line.  Besides Brock Lesnar,  everybody in the Versus series has been made before in previous series’.  Round 5 should’ve just chosen either a Rampage vs. Griffin or a Rampage vs. Silva, not both.  Then they could have made another set with GSP vs. Hughes.

Brock Lesnar vs. Frank Mir

Mir looks good but Lesnar doesn’t have the face resemblance.  Both of their fights were dictated on the ground,  so it would have been better if they were grappling.  Maybe in the future, we’ll see grappling positions.

Chuck Liddell vs. Tito Ortiz

This is my favorite.  It captures Tito blocking Liddell’s punches with his head.  The poses is a good reminder of what happened during their two fights.

Round 5 is planning to do Versus for the Pride FC in the future.  Here’s wishful thinking but Fedor vs CroCop would be great!

It’s from the DC Direct Batman: Black and White line, which originally started with Batman statues. The line became so popular that they’re running out of Batman statues to do, so DC decided to make villains including Catwoman, a Jim Lee version of the Joker and Penguin.

The statue will come out March 2, 2011 and will retail for $80.  You can probably get it at your local shop for $65.

Armored Batman – Looks decent. It has enough distinction to tell its from the game such as the long horns and shiny suit.

Zsasz – He wasn’t much of a challenge in the game but I”m glad they’re finally making a figure of Zsasz.  He comes with a knife

Poison Ivy – This figure sucks, she looked so much hotter in the game.  This one looks like a tranny.

Bane – I like the over exaggerated tubes he has.  I wish he had a different color of pants, he looks too colorful.  Will still buy it though.

Arkham Asylum Series 2 will be released around February 2011 and retail for around $15 per figure.  I won’t be getting the whole set but I’ll be picking up a couple of figs for sure.

Superman And He-Man.

Superman and He-Man are unbelievably detailed and articulated for almost an endless array of action poses. Packaged side by side with figure specific box art and posed for displaying sealed in the wrapper, these figures are awesome just the way they are.
Superman seems to come with nothing and He-Man is equipped with his breast plate armor, his battle axe and a repaint of his shield (oddly, no sword included–but, that’s OK).
Also included is a comic book with a reprinted, classic story.

Profiles For He-Man And Superman.

On the back of the package is a profile for each character.

Lex Luthor (Minus An Otis Accessory) And Skeletor.

The Lex Luthor and Skeletor pack is put together the same way with great detail and articulation. A comic book and accessories. Lex comes with his armor and a selection of Kryptonite and Skeletor comes with his armor and a yellow (complete) sword. (No staff? Not even a purple sword?) Odd, however, it’s pretty interesting–the yellow sword is the weapon that came with Thunder Punch He-Man in the 80′s (which I still have)–I like the originality of this item being included with Skeletor.

Profiles For Skeletor And Lex Luthor.

The back of the package includes the character profiles. I love the art used for each character. The classic painted design of both Skeletor and He-Man and the modern comic/Anime style art of both Superman and Lex Luthor.

I was completely surprised that both sets were available on the Toys R Us website for the very reasonable price of $30.00 each. Shipping was free, so after tax I had paid true retail.

I highly recommend these sets for not only collectors, but also for kids–just tell junior not to play so rough.

A nice set of well-detailed action figures.

More photos here.

Check out Loukazu’s site here.

Orko, Prince Adam is laying at the bottom of the box.

So, here’s one of the best. It’s Orko from the Masters of the Universe Classic’s collection. Orko features color-changing plastic that makes him go from translucent red to clear. He comes with a stand and his magic wand, a spell book–and this odd accessory laying at the bottom of the package…Oh damn! It’s Prince Adam! Well, that doesn’t make sense… Orko is the star of the show and Prince Adam is an added bonus? Adam features his maroon sword and his jacket resembling the 80′s figure

Orko was always good for a laugh, now apparently he is more than just court jester, he has trumped over He-Man’s alter ego Prince Adam and became the main figure in the two pack.

Personally, I think it would have been best to have them side by side for collectors who keep their figures packaged.

After the convention, Orko will be available (for 5 minutes) on Mattycollector.com in his classic colors and not change color.

Cool figures–not the best set-up.

Other recent TF 3 pics shows Tyrese with the new female lead, Rosie Huntington-Whitely as well as a sports car sporting some machine guns.

Below is footage of Optimus Prime with the trailer in the streets of Chicago:

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m wondering what the trailer will transform into.  Knowing Michael Bay, it’ll probably be a big ass rocket!  Although Transformers 2 sucked, I have a feeling part 3 will be good.

Transformers 3 will be released July 1, 2011.

From the bitch’in short film G.I. Joe: Resolute comes 2 figure 7 packs featuring a total of 14 great characters!

In the past it was hit or miss with getting quality multi-packs of action figures. Now, Hasbro listened to the fans and presents us with…

The Joes!

The G.I. Joe figure set includes Snake Eyes from the 2009 movie figure pack entitled City Strike. The figure is exactly what the character was represented as in the animated Resolute. Next is Beach Head, the character had a very small role in Resolute, but the detail this figure dons is excellent! From there is another version of Duke. The Duke figure has had a standard incarnation, a rocket pack version and now this one, I give a lot of credit for not simply repacking one of the past figures and coming up with a different figure of Duke for this set.
After Duke is Flint, this figure has a great look and a lot of detail and is worthy of being part of the set. The next figure is Scarlett and it appears that they have out done themselves, the detail is truly from the animated movie and looks well proportioned. Roadblock…and does he look bad-ass or what! Roadblock was always one of my favorite figures and I really love the way this one was put together, it appears to have most elements from the Walmart exclusive Battle Stations that only a select few could get. Either way, the figure looks awesome. Stalker is the last figure in the pack and looks to offer up some great detail from the animated movie. Stalker was one of the original Joes back in 1982 and once again he is back with an updated look.

Cobra!

The Cobra set features the best selection yet! No more packs of vipers–no, you get all the main characters starting with Zartan! Zartan was totally awesome as the insane killer for hire in the animated movie and this figure depicts him well. Alley Viper (more or less) this is the one that got grenades chucked at him in the movie–the figure is cool, but the original orange and blue Alley Viper is cooler.
Destro–the most kick ass version of Destro since the Christopher Eccleston look-alike from the SDCC 2 pack. He looks tough (as always) and is simply cool.
Cobra Commander is just as well the same as the single packaged figure, his accessory seems to be a scepter this time, cool, if anything, there just isn’t another version of him in the movie.
The Baroness is excellent, however the way they packaged her is nothing special–the figure is great though and being a big Baroness fan, it’ll be nice to add this version to the collection.
Storm Shadow is just as well a clone from the animated movie, great detail and should be one of the favorites. Finally, Firefly completes the selection of action figures. He includes the same large rocket launcher from the special recolor Resolute set and has great detail.

All of the figures come with great accessories as do all of the figures in the G.I. Joe line.
As a fan of G.I. Joe, I had put my pre-order in for these figures a few months ago and I’m waiting patiently for them. The release date is currently August.
I highly recommend these sets to anyone who like the G.I. Joe Resolute animated movie or a collector of Joes because they are great figures and don’t have any “filler” figures like a bunch of Vipers or Green Shirts. They are all major characters including the Alley Viper.

Find them at an over-priced Internet specialty store near you!

Vinylmation are little figures designed in a shape of Mickey Mouse. So, in this case, there will be a Buzz Lightyear vinyl painted on a Mickey Mouse shaped figure. Buzz is one of the 12 Toy Story characters that are set to be released in July/August.

There are 11 announced figures, with one mystery character.

Think of it as Baseball Cards, you buy a box not knowing what's inside. It's all a surprise!

Some figures might look unfamiliar, as they have included figures from all Toy Story films.

These are cool looking figures, especially for Toy Story fans. These will be sold at various Disney stores, and Disney Parks Online.

Thanks to DisneyParks for the news.

McFarlane today revealed their Halo Reach figures through various websites.  Just like the other Halo figures, it’s 5″ and features around points of articulation.   Below are the description for the figs along with some pics:

Single Figures

• Noble Six with Assault Rifle and Frag Grenade
• Emile with Shotgun, Kukri knife, and Frag Grenade
  

• Jorge with Turret
  
• Elite Minor with Needler and Plasma Grenade
• Grunt Ultra with Plasma Pistol and Plasma Grenades
• Spartan HAZOP custom (male) (olive/steel) with Assault Rifle and Frag Grenade
  
• Spartan HAZOP custom (male) (gold/steel) with DMR and Frag Grenade — exclusive to Toys “R” Us
  
• Spartan HAZOP custom (male) (steel/steel) with DMR and Frag Grenade — exclusive to GameStop
• Spartan Mark V [B] (male) (brick/steel) with DMR and Frag Grenade — exclusive to Target

Figure 2-Packs
Spartan HAZOP

• Spartan HAZOP custom (male) (brick/steel) with Assault Rifle and Frag Grenade
• Spartan HAZOP custom (male) (blue/steel) with Shotgun and Frag Grenade

UNSC Troopers

• Light Trooper with Assault Rifle and Frag Grenade
• Heavy Trooper with Shotgun and Frag Grenade

Spartan and Elite Ultra

• Spartan Mark V [B] (male) (white/steel) with DMR and Frag Grenade
• Elite Ultra with dual Plasma Rifles and Plasma Grenade

Vehicles

• Ghost Rapid Assault Vehicle
• Warthog with Light Anti-Aircraft Gun

The toys will be released around September just in time for Halo: Reach launch date of September 14, 2010.

Ezio’s infamous blades!

I’m afraid that this type of costume might not translate too well in 12-inch figures. But, all I can say is WOW! Even more impressive is that this is Hot Toys’ first Renaissance Era action figure.

Price hasn’t been set yet, but based on their other figures, I’m guessing at least $175.

Release date: End of Q3, 2010

This figure looks bad ass.  His costume reminds me of the Elves that fought at Helms Deep.

Pre order for this figure starts on September 15 at mattycollector.com and will more than likely retail for $20.