Funko POP! RoboCop

Company: Funko
Year: 2013
Series: Movies

BACKGROUND

Well, Funko Week comes to a close with RoboCop. I’ve spoken previously about my deep love of RoboCop, and what an amazing film it is. Really, if you’re a regular reader of this blog it probably doesn’t need a whole lot of introduction. So let’s just say that if you haven’t seen it yet, you should definitely do yourself a favour and go check it out ASAP. The second one, not so much. And I’ve not watched the entirety of the third one…but I certainly wasn’t sold on it based on what I’ve seen of it. Which is about 15 minutes.

This particular POP! was presumably released on the back of the hype around the 2014 remake, which was predictably okay, but not spectacular film. Funko doesn’t seem to have done a “new” RoboCop to match, but perhaps they only had the license for the original film.

THE POP

RoboCop’s condition is actually pretty horrible if you think too much about it. The original film is pretty vague about what’s left of his human body, but you get the strong impression there’s not much more than his face and part of his brain. And when he takes off that mask, it’s pretty horrifying. I’ve watched a huge amount of horror films, but one image that has stuck with me more than just about anything from those days is RoboCop’s unmasked face.  

Of course, the Funko POP! version doesn’t really convey the horror of his existence so well – he’s just a cutesy cyborg, rendered in the distinctive POP! style. And I must say, it’s turned out pretty well. All of the main details are intact and present – his chestpiece, the screws on the side of his head and his separate big toe. Held in his left hand is his signature Auto-9, the ridiculously powerful handgun that deals out justice on numerous occasions during the film.   

Now for the paint. Oh Funko…you do so many fun sculpts and then do such an average job on paint!

RoboCop is painted primarily in silver, to match his appearance in the first movie – as opposed to the blue-tinged armour he’d later get. In theory, this shouldn’t be a problem, considering that they did a great job on the Silver Surfer, but in practice it’s little thicker and goopier than it should be.

This is forgivable – but the main thing that bugs me here is that RoboCop’s skin-tone paint is not properly aligned with where it should be on his face. It might be fixable, but it shouldn’t really have to be. Funko isn’t at the same level as Kidrobot when it comes to making this stuff, and to be fair I don’t think they’re trying to be, but it can be extremely frustrating nonetheless. So if you pick one of your own up, check it out closely.    

 

OVERALL

Like many of my Funko POP! figures, the paint is disappointing but the figure is overall great fun. As a big fan of RoboCop, I’m very pleased to have him as part of the collection. Though it seems unlikely, it would be great to see Funko produce figures of Clarence Boddicker, this guy and a variant based on this figure.  Now that would be a line to see!

Spring Loaded Holster RoboCop Review

Spring Loaded Holster RoboCop

Company: NECA

Series: RoboCop

RRP: approx. $29.95 AUD

 

The Background

On one level, RoboCop is a standard sci-fi action film, distinguished from dozens of others primarily by its cool-looking main character and a level of violence which still shocks almost three decades after release. On these merits alone, RoboCop would probably be considered a classic action film of the 1980s. 

But scratch the surface, and it holds up to deeper examination. Like most good sci-fi, it says a great deal about the time it was made, framed within a (mostly) believable future world. It is laden with social commentary, parody and religious symbolism, yet never forgets to entertain.

Last year was the 25th anniversary of the film’s original release, and as a result, a bunch of RoboCop merch began to appear on store shelves – NECA’s figures among them. NECA has released four figures in this series – Robocop, Battle-Damaged Robocop, Night Fighter Robocop, and the subject of today’s review, Spring Loaded Holster Robocop. The series isn't finished yet, either – a fifth is to come early next year, based on his appearance in the RoboCop NES videogame. With the upcoming remake next year, I suspect that there will still be more of Alex Murphy to come.

 

The Packaging

In June this year, I purchased Night Fighter RoboCop. The box art for that was great, an obvious and loving tribute to the Kenner RoboCop toyline, which was in turn based on the 1980s RoboCop cartoon. This packaging is a little plain, by contrast – it’s a standard NECA clamshell case, with the art consisting of some close-up details from RoboCop’s armour panels (chest and right leg, I believe) and helmet. It does the job, but it doesn’t “pop” for me. Still, I open all my figures, so the point becomes moot shortly after purchase.

 

 

 

 

The Sculpt and Articulation

 

The sculpt looks virtually identical to Night Fighter RoboCop, with the exception of the right thigh, which now acts a holster for his gun. This reuse is a good thing, as the sculpting on that toy was excellent. And now I’ve got a “regular” RoboCop in addition to the glow in the dark version, I’m noticing all sorts of little details on his sculpt that I hadn’t realised were present before, such as the Omnicorp logo on his left leg.  

The head and upper legs are ball-jointed, the knees and elbows are hinged, and the shoulders are swivel hinges. My favourite articulation feature comes in the form of the pistons on his ankles. Though the ankles are hinges only, the pistons actually move up and down within their casing as the ankles move. Just be gentle – they’re a thin plastic and could break easily in rough hands.

Overall, articulation is solid, but not spectacular. This would be a minus for some figures, but seems okay for RoboCop, given his rigid and…robotic…movements in the film.

 

The Paint

The paint work is quite good, for the most part. The original NECA RoboCop seemed to have the torso as a slightly different colour to the arms, but this looks to have been resolved here.

The armour isn’t actually plain silver either; it’s got some of the highlights that are seen in the movie paint job worked into it as well. I’m not quite sure how they pulled it off – it may be some kind of two-tone paint, I suppose – but it looks good. It’s also pretty smooth, though you’ll never mistake it for real metal.

However, the chinstrap area is another story. Some of the flesh-coloured paint around the mouth has spread to the black jaw. Fortunately, it’s not noticeable at a distance and it’s nothing that a pot of paint and a fine detail brush shouldn’t be able to fix.  

 

Accessories

RoboCop comes with the same two accessories that he uses in the film – the Auto-9 pistol and the dataspike. The Auto-9 is made of a nice hard plastic, not the rubbery stuff that’s often used for toy weapons. Though the sculpt is a good one, I think it would have been better off with either a light metal drybrush or maybe a glossy black finish like his gloves/chinstrap/etc, rather than plain black plastic. Still, no real cause for complaint.

 

The dataspike is on a separate right hand, and looks more or less as it does in the film, with the hand in a clenched pose. Unfortunately there’s no Clarence Boddicker figure with removable throat, so re-enacting that part of the film will be a little tricky.    

Whether it’s an accessory or not may be up for debate, but the main feature of the figure is the right-thigh holster. This is one of his coolest features in the film, and it’s almost a little surprising that the original version of the toy didn’t include it. I like having the holster option, but I don’t think I’ll be using it all that often. It’s a little tricky to get the gun in there at the right angle, and similarly tricky to get out again – though it should be pointed out that I have quite large hands, and this may be part of the problem. As a purely aesthetic point, the inside is quite plain, just bare plastic. There are probably logistical reasons for this, but it was a little disappointing nonetheless.   

A removable helmet would be nice, but its absence was not a deal-breaker for me. In the original film, the mask’s removal acts as an important symbol of Alex Murphy reclaiming his humanity, but I still get a little disconcerted when I see him without it. It was, and remains, an impressively disturbing piece of prosthetics work. So removable helmet or no, mine would be getting displayed with it on. 

 

Issues

The biggest issue I had was with the right arm. The armour at the elbow was a little warped, bending outwards. It’s not particularly noticeable when the arm is bent, or pointed straight ahead, but when he’s got his arm hanging straight by his side, it’s quite obvious. It was one of the first things I noticed in the box, and had I been picking it up in-store instead of online, I would have looked for another one before purchase. Still, these are issues that can occur with softer plastic – one of the small “hooks” on his upper chest was also a little warped.   

The other main issue was the right knee. I’m not sure whether it’s because of the hollow thigh, but the right knee seems particularly stiff – I’ve been a little hesitant to bend it too far, as I don’t want to break it.

Alex Murphy, haunted by the ghosts of his past

Overall

As happy as I was (and am) with Night Fighter RoboCop, I’m pleased to have the “real” version joining Predator and Dutch on the shelves. Though he has a couple of issues, I’m still quite satisfied. I’m not sure if he’s completely identical to the previous versions, but he’s similar enough that I probably wouldn’t buy this one if I already had the original. But it if you’re after a RoboCop and don’t have money for the forthcoming Hot Toys version, this bad boy is ideal.

 

"You and me, Metalhead...we're going to clean up Detroit!"

 

 

 

The Wonders of Glow in the Dark

The Wonders of Glow in the Dark

Ever since I was quite young, I’ve had a fascination with objects that glow in the dark. It is a love affair that has spanned about 2 decades, multiple houses and many an unnecessary purchase.

My earliest memory of glowing items stems from when I was 7 or 8 years old. My parents had bought me a set of glow in the dark stickers in the shape of stars, which were intended to be stuck to your bedroom ceiling. The packaging came with images of constellations, to provide suggestions on how to replicate the night sky within the confines of your bedroom. As I recall, I followed a few of them, then promptly continued with (clumsier) patterns of my own design.

Photo from OnlineToys.com.au

I don’t remember exactly how things went down that evening when the lights went off, but I’ve got little doubt that it was quite spectacular. A starscape on my roof? INCREDIBLE! Close your eyes and imagine it. Isn’t the effect impressive?

Since then, I’ve been quite hooked. I wouldn’t call it an obsession – but there have definitely been a few things that I’ve bought over the years almost solely because it glowed in the dark. One of the main ways this showed up was in my late primary school years, when a fad for “Glo Caps” went through my school. Glo Caps were very similar to POGs – small cardboard circles, stamped with an image of a character or a scene from a TV show or movie.

There was also an associated game you could play; there were a number of variant ways to play the game, but most of them involved stacking a pile of the things together, then hurling a large plastic “slammer” at them to win them from other people. As with most playground games, cheating was rife and playing “for keeps” was quickly shut down by teachers, just as it had been a number of years before when marbles were all the rage.

Nonetheless, illicit "for keeps" games would still take place, usually among close friends who wouldn’t dob each other in – or sometimes older kids who wanted to take advantage of a younger kid with an impressive collection of the things. In hindsight, it was somewhat similar to an underground gambling ring.

One of the most interesting things that the Glo-Caps exposed to me was the existence of a red glow. Red glowing (and blue, for that matter) items are reasonably common now, but in the mid-90s most of us were only familiar with the traditional yellow-green glow. They glowed a colour that was somewhere between pink and orange, and it was an experience that I treasure even years after the original Glo-Caps have long since been lost to history. They certainly didn’t hold their charge or glow nearly as brightly, but they were impressive nonetheless.

There was a particularly cool TV ad which depicted a kid with an entire room full of the things; I had hoped to find it and post it here, but YouTube seems lacking. If anyone knows of it, please feel free to post it in the comments. 

Strangely enough, I don’t think “real” POGs caught on around the Central Coast; I knew a handful of people who had them, but most of my childhood friends preferred Glo-Caps and their chip-distributed companions, Tazos. Possibly it was connected to the extensive amount of licensed characters featured on them – Glo-Caps not only had the lure of glow in the dark, but featured large Simpsons and Disney sets. Among other designs, Tazos featured Looney Tunes and when the 1997 re-release of the original trilogy took place (much to my excitement), Star Wars.

For a more comprehensive overview of POGs, Glo Caps and Tazos, check this link out. http://wayninginterests.wordpress.com/tag/glo-cap/

When I was eighteen or nineteen, I decided that it was time to make my roof glow again. The reasons behind this are fairly unclear to me, but I was super-keen on the early-noughties remakes of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers at the time, so I suspect that it may have had something to do with wanting to relive my childhood. A year or so before, I had also bought a glow in the dark wolf t-shirt (which was as awesome as it sounds. Sadly, it has also been lost to the sands of time), and that may have also played a part.

As I remember, stickering the ceiling followed a fairly similar pattern to the one it had more than a decade earlier. Follow a few of the constellations on the box, and simply wing the rest. When I was finished, it certainly wasn’t the Sistine Chapel, but I was happy with it. Sadly, no photos are known to exist of this particular phase of my bedroom.

For a number of years, things went pretty quiet on the glow in the dark front. Between late ’05 and early ’09 I lived in a number of different sharehouses, and putting stickers on the ceiling of a rental property is usually frowned upon. After a year back with my parents, it was off to Sydney to live in a number of different rentals again. During my phase of heavy comic collecting (’06-’08) I had Flash and Green Lantern shirts that glowed, but the glow was secondary to the character logos.

But the interest was revived in a small way after my then-girlfriend (and now wife) returned from a trip to America in early 2012. She had brought me back a model dinosaur skeleton – a T-Rex, easily my favourite of these extinct but magnificent creatures. This was pretty cool in and of itself, but its coolness factor was instantly quadrupled when I saw those four magic words on the box – “Glow in the Dark.”

Image from Amazon.com

 

It certainly hasn’t been an onslaught of silly novelty purchases since then, but I do get a little thrill whenever I see that something glows in the dark. A few months ago, I found myself searching for Robocop merchandise, and discovered that NECA had released a “Night Fighter Robocop” to coincide with last year’s 25^th anniversary of the film. It’s totally unnecessary, and would probably be looked at all of twice before it went into the cupboard…but I sure did give some serious thought to clicking the “Buy” button. Examine the picture and decide for yourself.  

Photo from Figures.com

One item that did make it to purchase stage was a Super Mario baseball cap. It’s noticeably too small for my head, but that hasn’t stopped me from wearing it numerous occasions – and of course, pointing out that it glows in the dark to all and sundry.  

(Really, I should give it to someone who will be able to fit their head into it properly, and let them enjoy its magnificent glow.)

 

Exactly why I enjoy glow in the dark stuff remains something of a mystery to me. It’s got a vaguely sci-fi feel to it, I suppose, but I don’t think that quite covers it. Readers are welcome to provide their own hypotheses.  

And T-Rex? Well, he sits on our mantelpiece, doing battle with a model ship that a friend gave me when I moved to Sydney in 2010. It doesn’t look quite as awesome as you probably just imagined – a glowing skeleton Tyrannosaurus Rex fighting against a Dutch trading ship from the 16^th-19^th century is quite the mental image, after all. But I still like to think it’s something of a centrepiece in our loungeroom.