Grossery Gang: Crusty Chocolate Bar

Company: Moose Toys

Year: 2016

Moose Toys have been around since 1985, producing all manner of novelties and kid’s toys. When I was a kid in the mid-90s, they were probably best known for their wide variety of Yo-Yos (which came in a whole array of shapes, sizes and scents) and the Amazing Live Sea Monkeys.

To be honest, they weren’t a huge brand when I was a kid. They pumped out a lot of product, but while it sold respectably, very little of it seemed to capture the childhood zeitgeist. Until a few years ago, when they hit it REALLY big with a couple of blind-bagged toylines – Trash Pack and Shopkins, which helped take the company to a whole new level of success.  

The Trash Pack brand has been off the market for a year or so, but it’s now returned with a sequel/reboot series in the form of Grossery Gang. Taking the concept of cutesy, anthropomorphic garbage and applying it to food instead, Grossery Gang’s key conceit isn’t departing radically from the original theme, but I think this is a good case of releasing a new product that still maintains a good understanding of what made the original so popular.  

Grossery Gang are sold in a whole variety of different blind-boxed formats (the cereal box is especially cool) but I suppose you would call the Crusty Chocolate Bar this the entry level or booster pack format. Each Crusty Chocolate Bar sells for 3 or 4 bucks, and features two Grossery Gang characters. It’s a good pricepoint in comparison to other blind-boxed/bagged formats like Lego Minifigures, and the packaging itself is great.

After opening the wrapper -- which looks better than most real chocolate bars -- you’ll be treated to a moulded plastic chocolate bar that features the Grossery Gang logo, and some insects crawling over the surface. Viewed from a distance, it also looks a lot like a poo, which I’m sure at least partially intentional. There’s also a checklist, which is designed to look like a supermarket receipt. There are tons of different designs, each of which appears to be made in two different colourways. Rarity is ranked as Common, Rare, Ultra-Rare, Special Edition and Limited Edition. Some of them look similar to previous Trash pack designs, but I don’t think they’re straight reuse – more like reinventions of prior concepts.

Inside, the two characters ("Grosserys") are individually wrapped – I got a Rot Hot Chili (ultra-rare) and Fungus Fries (common). You’ll see that Rot Hot looks kind of fuzzy in the pic below, but it’s not out of focus; he’s got a fuzzy finish to appear mouldy. He’s also cast in a harder plastic than Fungus Fries, who is very soft and squishy like a pencil topper. I assume that most other Grosserys are cast in the softer plastic, but will have to update once I've picked up some more. 

Trash Pack kind of passed me by, but it always looked like great fun – I’m sure I would have bought an obscene amount of them if they’d been round when I was a little kid. Grossery Gang serves as a nice reboot to the line, and a great jumping on point for those new to the brand. Highly recommended for kid and adult collectors alike.     

Autobot Prowl (Transformers X Loyal Subjects Series 2)

In the last couple of years, The Loyal Subjects have created vinyl toys based on a few 1980s properties, including G.I. Joe, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and the subject of today’s review, TRANSFORMERS!

The Loyal Subjects have now released two series of blind-boxed Transformers, all of them styled with a super-deformed, chibi-esque experience. As is pretty much always the case with these things, it’s yielded mixed results – some of the characters look awesome rendered in this style, while others just look a bit rubbish.

Prowl is somewhere in-between. I don’t have any great love for the character (being more of a Decepticons guy) and generally tend to prefer TFs with faceplates or inhuman heads. So Shockwave or one of the planes would have been great; Prowl is certainly not the worst in the series, but he wouldn’t have been in my top 3 choices. 

When it comes to vinyl toys, my paint expectations tend to be quite low – I mostly buy Funko stuff – but after buying the Kidrobot Raphael, I’ve come to have substantially higher expectations. Unfortunately, they weren't quite met in this case. The tampographs are pretty cleanly executed, but there’s some sloppy paint work that detracts from the overall look – it’s not clean and clearly defined, the way (I think) it should be. One of the red prongs on his head was also slightly bent out of the box, but it seems to have straightened out since. 

Prowl is surprisingly articulated. I knew he moved at the arms and the neck, but there’s actually a bit more – his wrists and shoulders are balljointed, as are his legs. His neck technically moves too, but his chin restricts it from moving much.

NB: When you open one of these guys, they’re split in half at the waist. You need to screw the lower half of the body into the torso – though it looks like a balljoint, it won’t actually pop in.

The articulation is nice in theory, but to be quite honest, articulation is not my main concern when it comes to these designer toys. For me, they need to look cool first and foremost, and be functional as a secondary concern. If they can do both, that’s great! But on this occasion I think they would have been better off cutting out a few joints and doing it Funko Pop or Kidrobot style – one, or just a couple of points of articulation, but not so much that it would make the end result kind of on the fragile side.   

Prowl comes with one accessory – his gun. It’s kind of nice, and in theory I would pass it to one of my “regular” Transformers, if the peg fit their hands (it's too thin).  

Overall, I’m disappointed with the figure. He’s far from horrible, but I think the articulation could be better incorporated. Couple this with the fact that I think $15-20AUD for one of these is far too much to be paying for a blind packaged figure, and I don’t think I’ll be buying from this particular line in the foreseeable future.