Dave's Toy Rant: Avengers Animated

     Ultron
     Vision
     Wasp

     The other day, much to my surprise, a local Toys R Us got all ten of the
Avengers figures in stock.  After pawing through them all, I decided to get
three of the eight I didn't already own.

CAPSULES:

     Ultron: Looks nice, pretty poseable, but overbalanced by his gimmick,
and he's got Twisted Kenner Batman Syndrome despite his large number of
joints.  Mildly recommended.  $5.99 at TRU.
     Vision: Looks pretty good, if pin-headed and with overly large bizarre
hands.  Gimmick is pretty nice, but the plug-in point is pretty large and
ugly, plus the drone is floppy plastic and comes in the package seriously
deformed.  Mildly recommended.  $5.99 at TRU.
     Wasp: Despite some weird women-don't-look-like-that proportions, a
pretty good toy.  Magnetic drone gimmick I can take or leave, and her two
swappable heads are rather different in size, but still a pretty good toy.
Recommended.  $5.99 at TRU.

RANTS

ULTRON:

     Stands almost exactly 6" (15cm) tall if you count his floppy antennae.
Extensive use of ink wash makes it look more like a McFarlane toy than
something that's supposed to be from a very iconic-looking animation, but
that's not necessarily a bad thing.  One interesting thing is that his floppy
plastic shoulderpads are connected to his chestplate as a single piece,
giving him non-brittle armor over his battery compartment.
     Ultron has ten points of articulation, but the sculptors seemed to go
out of their way to make many of them weird or insufficient.  Both hands are
posed in ways that only look good with the arms in specific positions (left
arm all the way bent, right arm all the way straight).  Wrists would have
been a REALLY good idea here...with his left arm straight, it looks like he's
trying to grab someone's butt.  Another bad joint is his neck.  Not only is
it covered in cables that only match up in one position, not only is it hard
to turn more than a few degrees, but the "preferred" direction he looks is
nowhere near the only directions his cannon can be pointed!  His left
shoulder is a universal joint, but his right shoulder is only a swivel,
because of the electrical connections in it.  His hips are both restricted
ball joints, while his elbows, knees and ankles are hinges.  His knees are
kinda weird.  Normally when a figure has kneepads of some sort, they remain
attached to the shin when the knee bends.  In Ultron's case, the kneepads
stay with the thigh, which looks kinda odd.
     Finally, there's his gimmick.  If you push a trapezoidal button on his
belly, his eyes and mouth light up, much like the Lockdown Ultron.  However,
he also has a 5.5" (14cm) long cannon that can plug into his right shoulder
and which also lights up when you press the bellybutton.  Given the size of
the gun and the fact that his legs only spread apart about 30 degrees total
(15 degrees sideways motion per leg), it can be hard to keep him standing
while the gun is attached.
     Overall pretty good, but the worst flaws are not the ones imposed by
price or materials, they're imposed by the designers intentionally.

VISION:

     Figure stands 5.5" (14cm) tall with fairly show-accurate colors and
details, and a nice cloth cape.  There's a hole in his right side for
plugging in his drone sidekick, and it's a much bigger and uglier plug than
shown in the instructions.  His proportions are a bit odd, with a too-small
head and hands that are larger than even a proper-sized head would have
been.  His light-up abdomen makes him look kinda chunky.
     Vision has 13 points of articulation.  Universal joint shoulders are
restricted a bit by his shoulderpads (so far, Ultron's the only one with the
right idea on his shoulderpads...they're floppy enough to not get in the
way).  Hips are restricted ball joints, and his legs actually can't come all
the way together...at closest approach, his feet are almost two inches (5cm)
apart!  Elbows and knees are standard hinges, and ankles are hinges with a
good range of motion.  What weirds me out is that his wrists are also hinges,
with his hands in a wide grasping pose.  What exactly was the designer
smoking when he did this?  Unless he's supposed to grapple with his drone
buddy or something...or do push-ups.
     If you push his belt buckle "A" his yellow abdomen and green skullcap
light up red, and his eyes...don't light up.  The package says this glow is
supposed to represent his immaterial state, but it makes him look like he has
heartburn and a headache.  Also, couldn't they have sprung for yellow and
green diodes?  Green doesn't transmit red light very well, after all.
     Then there's his drone buddy.  It's one of those buzzsaw cockroaches
seen in the first two episodes of the cartoon...you know, the ones flying
around as if they were paper cutouts thanks to the cruddy computer
animation-assist Saban's using.  It has six positionable legs, and each
buzzsaw arm has three points of articulation.  Unfortunately, several parts
of it are made of floppy plastic, and its antennae and fins are severely
warped in the package...a day after being removed from the package, they
still haven't relaxed, so the warping is probably permanent.  Finally, when
he's plugged into Vision, a red LED lights up under a green dome when you
push Vision's beltbuckle.  Again, a red dome or a green LED would have vastly
improved the effect.  Oh, almost forgot, it also has two underwing cannons
that can swivel.
     All in all, you get a lot for $6.  But a lot of corners have been cut,
and there's some plain weird choices in the design.  If you're being really
selective about your Avengers purchases, give this one a pass.

WASP:

     Figure stands 5.5" (14cm) tall, 4" (10cm) of that is below her belt.
Yep, she's inhumanly leggy.  At least her chest isn't also fetishy.  Take an
inch off her legs and she'd be reasonably well-proportioned.  Her wings are
clear rubbery blue plastic and screwed onto her back.  They can't move much
below horizontal because the stingers get in the way (and you can't solve
this problem by removing the springers, its the base they plug into that gets
into the way).  She has stingers stick into her back on a ball joint (one
joint for both stingers, yeah), and two heads.  Yep, rather than try to fit a
helmet over all that hair, you just pull off one head and replace it with
another.  Oddly, the helmeted head is significantly smaller than the bare
head, even ignoring the hair.  The unhelmeted head looks like Sandra Bullock
after a while on Arrakis...the whites of her eyes are blue.  I'm told this is
not a one-off error, either.
     Wasp has 11 points of articulation on the main body, plus two more for
wings and three (possibly more) for the stingers.  Her shoulders are
universal joints, and the shoulderpads are part of the shoulders this time,
so she's only a little restricted.  Her elbows move only about 30 degrees,
and the joints are so well-hidden that I couldn't tell if she even HAD elbow
joints without opening the package.  Her hips are the standard angled swivel
given to female figures, so when she sits down it's with legs splayed apart.
Knees and ankles are hinges, and the toes can point nicely.
     The stinger weapons are connected in an odd way.  There's a single ball
joint plugged into the figure's back, and then a long t-bar across it, with
the stingers at either end of this.  Each side has an "elbow" joint which
almost looks like it's just a sculpted detail until you work it free.
They're made of gummyplas, so the joint is as likely to just bend from
deformation initially as it is to work in the intended manner.  Once you work
it free, though, it bends properly.  There *might* be swivels at the tips of
the stingers, but the plastic is so thin that it might snap before starting
to turn.  Anyway, because the stingers are always on a straight line, you can
lower them to get them comfortably under the figure's arms.  Nor can you fold
them completely away.
     The head's another victim of gummyplas lock.  If I hadn't known for sure
that the head was supposed to come off, I would have stopped trying long
before I managed to break the seal and get it off.  Anyway, as I mentioned,
the unhelmeted head is too big (almost as big as her ribcage!), so I'm going
to leave the helmet on permanently.  Now I have a spare head for kitbashing,
woo.  
     Finally, the magnet gimmick.  There's a big magnet mounted obtrusively
on Wasp's right wrist, and it pulls out the toggle on a missile-launching
drone.  The drone is a 2.5" (6cm) high brown sphere with tripod legs and a
couple of swivel "guns".  Two compartments each hold one of those "Chinese
yo-yo" coilspring missiles, and when the magnet is brought up to the top of
the drone (or when you look at the drone funny) the compartments spring up
and launch their missiles across the room and behind furniture.  Her magnet
is the same polarity as her husband, Ant-Man's, so they can share gimmicks.
Unfortunately, it's not glued in very strongly, and it came right off just
now.  Gah.  Well, I was GOING to leave Wasp hanging from my wall in a nice
flying pose, but I guess I get to drag it home and repair it now.
     Anyway, despite its flaws, the toy really does look nice in a variety of
poses.  The drone's a bit iffy in my mind, but it's just an extra.

     Okay, now time for a quick rundown of the entire line, since I think
I've bought all I'm gonna buy (at least at full price).

Definitely Get: Ant-Man, Wasp (see reviews)

Maybe Get: Falcon, Ultron, Vision (see reviews)

Don't bother unless a fan of the character:
     Captain America - Body is the one from the electric spark Spider-Man
line, with a new, smaller head.  Looks pretty bad.
     Wonder Man - Looks okay, but doesn't have much poseability.  A block
that lights up, basically.
     Kang - BWAHAHAHA.  Ahem.  Sad.  If you buy only nine Avengers figures,
be sure to avoid him.
     Tigra - Spindly figure overshadowed by its own drone gimmick.
     Hawkeye - Poseability too compromised by his arrow-firing gimmick, and
extensive use of gummyplas hurts the appearance.

     Dave Van Domelen, STILL waiting for a decent Captain America toy, they
never seem to be able to get even CLOSE to a good head for him.  He's either
scowling, or his chin is huge, or he has no chin, or he has a pinhead....