DSC_6536
In the immortal words of Rocky and Bullwinkle, "and now, time for something different".
Many, many, many months ago, I was at Square One waiting for a transaction meet up (for the Fate prize figure, in case you were wondering) and as I usually am prone to do I wandered into the Disney Store.
Disney merch is kind of a mixed bag. For sure it's a place where they gouge you, but there can be some neat surprises there - exclusive surprises, I might add. I actually do like some of the sculpts on their larger dolls, but they don't quite fit anywhere in my collection.
During this particular trip, I happened across the Avengers line from the new Disney Toybox collection, which are of course kid-ified action figures of various Disney properties, like something out of Kingdom Hearts. It's almost like Disney repurposed the Infinity designed team.
Naturally, I gravitated towards Black Widow.
Opening up the figure, I offer up the following observations.
First off, for whatever reason (I'm guessing budget.. again), Widow does not have her comic style yellow belt, as advertised on the back of the box. Who knows.. maybe yellow paint costs more due to multiple layers.. I dunno. Overall, this figure seems to be inspired by a combination of all her appearances, ranging from the red short hair (Avengers), black body suit (Age of Ultron/Civil War), yellow bracelets (comic), and her weapon (Infinity War).
The actual figure itself has a decent amount of articulation. It's no Figma, but it's much better than what I grew up with. Pretty much the figure is ball joints all around. No waist, ab, or neck post movement, or tilting ankles.
Kind of light on the accessories, basically consisting of the figure and her weapon.
Her quarterstaff can be segmented and dual wielded and for some reason, seem more in scale with this figure than the Figuarts version was. Or maybe I just girls with big sticks.
Yes, interpret that as you must.
The sticks are designed in such a way that I suspect has to do with child safety laws (the staff splits in half, and the handle comes off the sticks as well), which allows for a neat holstered mode on her back. It's just that, as one would suspect, the QC is kind of crap and as a result things tend to fall apart very easily... yet I still managed to not lose this thing.
The sculpting is quite nice - simplistic but still portraying the character quite well and as mentioned above, very reminiscent of the Infinity series figure. The body is functional, though perhaps due to the smaller size the joints aren't as unsightly as its Marvel Legends counterparts. Production didn't leave an unacceptable number of poor finishes on the plastic.
The paint is... not bad. The body paint apps are actually pretty sharp, but it's not like there's a whole lot to actually do on the figure. Face paint apps are a mixture of "pretty good" and "dollar store", so in other words pretty typical for a Disney toy.
So is this something that I'd collect the whole line of? Not personally, but this isn't really my niche, as it were.
I think kids with connections to the various properties will dig these, though Lord have mercy upon the souls of the poor parents, as these are about $19 here in Ontario after taxes. I'm crossing my fingers that my kids don't have a Disney fetish.. so far, so good.
As an adult collector though with a desire to collect North American toys, it's a tough call. The Marvel Legends stuff is definitely larger and comes with more accessories and maybe more articulation, but it seems the final product is cleaner on these toys. Having said that, you're never going to get the full line up from Disney, nor are you going to get the "grown up" look, so at the end of the day, it's probably going to be a supplemental line.
DSC_6536
In the immortal words of Rocky and Bullwinkle, "and now, time for something different".
Many, many, many months ago, I was at Square One waiting for a transaction meet up (for the Fate prize figure, in case you were wondering) and as I usually am prone to do I wandered into the Disney Store.
Disney merch is kind of a mixed bag. For sure it's a place where they gouge you, but there can be some neat surprises there - exclusive surprises, I might add. I actually do like some of the sculpts on their larger dolls, but they don't quite fit anywhere in my collection.
During this particular trip, I happened across the Avengers line from the new Disney Toybox collection, which are of course kid-ified action figures of various Disney properties, like something out of Kingdom Hearts. It's almost like Disney repurposed the Infinity designed team.
Naturally, I gravitated towards Black Widow.
Opening up the figure, I offer up the following observations.
First off, for whatever reason (I'm guessing budget.. again), Widow does not have her comic style yellow belt, as advertised on the back of the box. Who knows.. maybe yellow paint costs more due to multiple layers.. I dunno. Overall, this figure seems to be inspired by a combination of all her appearances, ranging from the red short hair (Avengers), black body suit (Age of Ultron/Civil War), yellow bracelets (comic), and her weapon (Infinity War).
The actual figure itself has a decent amount of articulation. It's no Figma, but it's much better than what I grew up with. Pretty much the figure is ball joints all around. No waist, ab, or neck post movement, or tilting ankles.
Kind of light on the accessories, basically consisting of the figure and her weapon.
Her quarterstaff can be segmented and dual wielded and for some reason, seem more in scale with this figure than the Figuarts version was. Or maybe I just girls with big sticks.
Yes, interpret that as you must.
The sticks are designed in such a way that I suspect has to do with child safety laws (the staff splits in half, and the handle comes off the sticks as well), which allows for a neat holstered mode on her back. It's just that, as one would suspect, the QC is kind of crap and as a result things tend to fall apart very easily... yet I still managed to not lose this thing.
The sculpting is quite nice - simplistic but still portraying the character quite well and as mentioned above, very reminiscent of the Infinity series figure. The body is functional, though perhaps due to the smaller size the joints aren't as unsightly as its Marvel Legends counterparts. Production didn't leave an unacceptable number of poor finishes on the plastic.
The paint is... not bad. The body paint apps are actually pretty sharp, but it's not like there's a whole lot to actually do on the figure. Face paint apps are a mixture of "pretty good" and "dollar store", so in other words pretty typical for a Disney toy.
So is this something that I'd collect the whole line of? Not personally, but this isn't really my niche, as it were.
I think kids with connections to the various properties will dig these, though Lord have mercy upon the souls of the poor parents, as these are about $19 here in Ontario after taxes. I'm crossing my fingers that my kids don't have a Disney fetish.. so far, so good.
As an adult collector though with a desire to collect North American toys, it's a tough call. The Marvel Legends stuff is definitely larger and comes with more accessories and maybe more articulation, but it seems the final product is cleaner on these toys. Having said that, you're never going to get the full line up from Disney, nor are you going to get the "grown up" look, so at the end of the day, it's probably going to be a supplemental line.