Dave's Toy Rant:

     Vine Jammin' Tarzan

     Well, while everyone else was devouring Episode One toys (okay, I got
some of the Ep1 Legos), I found that the figures for the upcoming Tarzan
movie from Disney were out.  The Great White Hunter character and the apes
all look gimmick-driven and of dubious poseability, so I just snagged one of
the Tarzans, since it looked pretty poseable.

CAPSULE

     Pretty good poseability (with some notable flaws), sculpt is very
faithful to the character's animated design (take that as you will, I'm less
than enamored with the design), gimmicks are pretty cool, packaging stands
out very well.  Recommended.  $7.49 at Meijer, guess it'll be around $8 most
places.  


RANT

     When standing up straight, this figure is 6.5" (16cm) tall, I'm guessing
a 1/12 scale was intended.  However, he's best posed in a slight squat,
bringing him down to 6" (15cm).
     The figure is a very close match to the animated design, down to
long-pointy nose and armor-piercing chin.  His feet are a bit on the big
side, but they're more basketball player big than clown shoe big.  The large
separation between big toe and the other toes accentuates the size, however.
     Color is okay, but there's a clear difference between the more flexible
body parts and the rigid torso chunk.  When making a mostly-naked character
it's really important to get good flesh color match, since there's no
clothing to stand between the shades.  Another color issue is his eye
painting.  He's looking slightly up, which is okay when he's crouched down,
but otherwise makes it look like he's ready to faint backwards.
     Articulation is good enough that I was disappointed it wasn't better.
Here's the count: Neck and shoulders are swivels, hips are ball joints
(restricted range, legs can spread 30-40 degrees from straight down before
you pop the joints), hinge knees, hinge ankles, semi-universal elbows (built
like a Barbie shoulder).  Because of the way the vine-swinging works, his
elbows bend with palm in the direction of motion, rather than the more
traditional top-of-fist in direction of motion.  Still, it's good poseability
and makes the swivel shoulders REALLY feel restricting (like on the smaller
Mystic Knights toys).  The weirdness of the elbows is really a problem when
you can't swing his arms out at the shoulder.  The knee and ankle joints are
stiff enough that he can hold a good variety of poses while standing.
     His arms, legs and head are made of a moderately soft plastic, that you
can bend a bit and doesn't feel like it'll snap.  The torso is rigid
plastic.  His loincloth is a separate piece of the same hardness as his
limbs.  It's not glued on, but must have been heat-gunned to be put on, since
it won't slide off even when you pop the legs off.  Yes, I checked.  And stop
looking at me like that.  It was in the interests of a complete review.
Finally, his hair is a separate piece of wobbly plastic glued to his scalp.
In about a year, I figure I'll start seeing lots of bald Tarzans at flea
markets and rummage sales.

     On to the gimmicks!  You get five feet of clear yellow plastic cord and
connectors so you can snap it into a pair of "tree branches" made from green
plastic rather than brown.  These branches have two places the cord can be
snapped in, and latch onto ledges or chairs using a vice mechanism like found
in old Hot Wheels sets.
     He has three bits of vine that act as handles so he can zoom down the
"vine" like a zip-line.  I'm guessing they included three because they
figured this is the part most likely to be lost.  The sliding action is
pretty smooth, although Tarzan will usually fall off the line once he hits
the end, since his grip on the vine handle isn't too tight.
     Finally, there's a vine-covered trunk that comes in two pieces that snap
together with an orange snake wrapped around them.  I couldn't tell you what
adaptive value a bright orange coloration would give a snake, especially in a
neon green jungle, but oh well.  The threading on the inside of the snake
goes around the vines on the log, and the snake is positioned so that Tarzan
can grab onto it and then spin around as they travel down the log.  Pretty
neat, although the log snaps apart a bit too easily.  The snake and log alone
make for a pretty nifty toy, though.  }->  There's hooks on the log so it can
be hung from the zip-line vine.  Oh, and the log has a foot's worth (31cm) of
spiraling plus the endcap vine ornamentation.
     Sadly, I have no place in my office or my room I can leave this set up
permanently, it's kinda fun.

     Dave Van Domelen, notes the hunter's package doesn't even mention that
this is a bad guy, and yammers on about photo safaris...how toothless and
Disney-like of them.