Year: 2014
RRP: Varies
BACKGROUND
The Trash Pack seems to have been a phenomenal success over
the last couple of years. So I suppose it’s no surprise that we’re now seeing a
few similar products show up in stores – miniature blind-packed figurines,
centred around bizarre themes. The most recent of these is Crashlings – more than 150 figures spread out across five subsets –
Dinosaurs, Insects, Aliens, Monsters and Sea Life.
THE FIGURES
I bought a Crashlings Monsters 4-pack, which had two visible and two
blind-packed figures. The green werewolf (Moon Howler) visible in the packaging
was the strong point for me. Cast in a firm plastic, each character comes with
its own meteor which it can be stored in. The colour of these meteors varies
according to subset; for Monsters, they’re black.
There are also 10-packs and individual meteors available too. These meteor containers can also be used to play a
number of Crashlings-themed games, which are outlined on the back of the
checklist. Some of the meteor halves are also cast in soft rubber, and can be
used as pop caps. Beware though – these ones leave an oily residue in the
packaging.
Moon Howler
Though 150+ characters are advertised on the box, there are actually
only about 50 individual characters to collect, 10 in each subset. The
remaining 110 are made up by recolours of the main figures – some are simple
repaints, others are cast in metallic colours. As might be expected, some are
rarer than others.
Compounding this further is the fact that there seem to be
some colour variants which aren’t listed on the included checklist. My Moon
Howler is a lime green, similar to glow-in-the-dark shade – that’s how he’s
depicted on the packaging, but I can’t find any trace of this variant on the
checklist. There’s just brown, lavender and metallic red. Crashlings are quite
new, and there’s very little information about them online at this stage – so I
can see these toys starting a lot of rumours and urban myths in the playground
about rarity, value and even existence. From memory, it was a similar situation
with Monsters in My Pocket back in the 1990s.
The four characters I got were Moon Howler (a werewolf;
green version), Bigfoot Dipper (brown version), Franken Star (Frankenstein’s
Monster; metallic green version) and Zombie Zoomer (brown version). Yep, pretty
much all the characters have pun names related to the cosmos. Moon Howler is
fantastic, Bigfoot Dipper is pretty ordinary, Zombie Zoomer is okay and Franken
Star would be cool if he wasn’t metallic green. He may be “rare”, but I’ve
never really enjoyed these single colour variants, unless it was glow in the
dark. I may sell him off via eBay.
Franken Star
PAINT
As might be expected, paint apps tend towards being a little
sloppy. That’s okay for this type of toy; they’re tiny and cheap.
OVERALL
Crashlings are a cool idea – I loved blind-bagged stuff and
miniature figures, so it’s always cool to see another variation on this theme. There
are some cool ideas in series 1, but I think they may have stretched themselves
slightly too thin by including so many colour variants and themes within in the
one series. A tighter focus in future will serve them well, I think. I’m
curious to see what series 2 brings. Include some glow in the dark characters
and Wicked Cool Toys could have a real hit on their hands! 
Black Meteor container
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