September 3, 2023 • 53 mins
Every so often, Taylor comes up with a toy line that Jeff has never heard of. This is one of those times. When that happens, Jeff's assumption is that Taylor really likes the line, because Taylor likes EVERY line. Sometimes, Jeff is wrong. Listen and find out if this is one of those times!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
It back in the day one ofmy favorite things to do as I was
kind of exiting out of high schooland about to move up to adulthood,
but still had this kind of engineeringmind of wanting to get all these different
toys here and there. There wasa place that I liked to go to
in the mall that was called KBToys. It's those who remember KB Toys.
(00:25):
It's a wonderful place. But duringthat time when KB Toys was still
around. During this portion of time, everything was kind of on clearance because
you know, they were pretty muchgoing out of business, and I would
like to go through and shop andfind things that I wouldn't normally get that
(00:46):
was on clearance. So I couldreally like get in check out and see
how that toy works, and maybeexperience something new within the plastic realm that
I had never done before. Andone time I happened to pick up these
figures. Now, the crazy thingwas, I went in with about fifty
bucks and I came out with fortybucks in my pocket and four brand new
(01:12):
Playmates Action figures. I was like, I can't believe this. Go home,
check them out, play with them, let them, you know,
snap back hit me in the nose, all sorts of things, and then
I started to realize why maybe theseweren't picked up quite as much as you
know they should have been, butalso why people might have had problems with
(01:34):
them. The toy line is actuallycalled Ronan Warriors by Playmates Toys, and
that's why I'm here Talking toys.Welcome to Talking Toys with Taylor and Jeff,
(02:00):
where we go back in time todiscuss our favorite toys, one toy
line at a time. Hello,and welcome to Talking Toys with Taylor and
Jeff. I'm Taylor and I'm Jeff. And that's a that's a great story
(02:24):
time. Taylor sort of foreboding ofwhat we're going to talk about here,
is this finally going to be I'mthe Taylor. This is a toy.
You know, it's weird because Iam very much the toy apologists and I
love toys, and this is oneof those that you know, if you're
(02:45):
listening to this, you're on Facebook, you're commenting back and everything, like
sometimes like I like getting toys justto get the toys, just to feel
the plastic, to see the engineering, to marvel at it. And this
was one of those that with everythingabout it. It definitely brought me in.
But then when I got to thetoy engineering night there were some areas
(03:06):
and things, I was like,hmm, this could have been better possible.
Okay, interesting, I'll be interestedto hear your thoughts on that.
I know nothing about these guys.So, folks, we have a Google
doc that we we both edit inbetween us, and this is one of
the toy lines that Taylor put onthere. So I said, well,
why don't we do Ronan Warriors thistime out, because I, you know,
(03:28):
just to get it off the list, and I'm not that familiar with
it, and thinking that Taylor wasa fan, and it sounds like he's
a fan, but not a fan, right right, So since I know
nothing about it, I'll assume ourlisteners know next to nothing about it.
I'll give you some background. Thisis courtesy or Virtual Toy Chest, So
thank you for that virtual toy chest. You're Roid and Samurai Troopers first aired
(03:52):
in Japan in nineteen eighty eight.It was finally brought to the United States
and ninety five as Ronan Warriors,so this is nineteen ninety five. It
was shown both in locals indication aswell as on the cartoon Networking Sci Fi
Channel. A total thirty nine episodesand three movies were produced. The Ronan
Warriors toys were released by Playmates inninety five, and they were re released
by Replay in two thousand and one. The replay versions were of lower quality,
(04:15):
Nearly all the figures had Ryo's headunder their helmets, and fewer figures
were actually released. The Rerelays linedid include redecos of both Ryo and Taalpa,
packaged with horse toys, and thehorse molds having originally been Zoro molds.
So that's the history of the line. Now let me give you guys
some backs ground on the story ofit, and this I'm going to try
to reach it dramatically as I canon very little sleep. Enter a dark
(04:40):
time in which all of mankind isin the clutches of the evil forces of
the Dynasty. The once great cityof Megapolis. I almost said Megalopolis,
but it's Megapolis. The once greatCity of Megapolis has already been conquered by
the wicked showgun masters, leaders ofthe Dynasty. Fighting this dark tide,
or a band of five war orshrouded by the circle of light, anxious
(05:01):
Samurai masters imbue them with the virtuesof light, life, force, trust,
justice, and wisdom. Can thesemighty warriors defeat the dynasty and save
mankind? Let's find out? Ihad to. Let's find out. This
strikes me as very much a cashin on the Mighty morphin Power Rangers success.
(05:25):
Would that be a fair assessment somewhat? Oh, yeah, definitely when
you go back and so I lookedup the cart tim and I did watch
a few episodes because I've never seenthe cartoon before growing up. Like I
just found these toys as like,oh that's interesting, that's kind of cool,
(05:46):
you know, and decided to buythem, but you know, never
saw the cartoon or anything. Andcome to find out, I think they
were part of like a Saturday morninglineup where like one episode to play per
month or something with a bunch ofother episodes. And I went and I
found it on tub to watch,and it is it's kind of hard to
(06:10):
watch because it's it's like one ofthose shows that goes really fast. They
kind of go into the story expectingyou to know already what's going on,
and you don't, and there's nota lot of like backstory fill in now
There have been cartoons I've watched beforewhere they kind of put you into the
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action and then you get to learnabout the characters as you go, and
that's fine, but never on thisline where I felt like they were thrusting
me into the story with all thesecharacters. But then they never really took
any time to develop or set upthese characters within this episode so we could
learn a little bit about each one, because it's not like there's one main
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character. There's five, and thenyou have the showgun masters that are taking
over that also have backstory aspects filmtwo, and nothing ever seemed to be
It seemed to be all action,but nothing story wise that drew you in
or made you want to be apart of the universe. And so it
(07:15):
was kind of strange. And it'sone of those that if I had seen
the cartoon when I was a kid, I probably wouldn't have bought these because
I would have been like, I, yeah, no, I don't really
like that show. But I gotthem because you know, they're Samurais and
I look really cool. Okay,so and they do look cool. I
will say this, the design,if you've not seen these before, the
(07:36):
design reminds me of a cross betweenMighty More from Power Rangers and Robotech.
Yeah, oh that's very much.That's what it reminds me of. Yeah,
I could definitely see the Robotech aspectof it. So the toy line,
according to Figure Round, there werefourteen toys released. We had the
(07:57):
Basic series, which consisted of aNubis Kale si Am I saying that correctly,
c Y e Yes, Dice,Harril Kinto, Rowan, Ryo,
Sage Secment, and Talpa. Andthen we had the Horse and Ride.
(08:18):
There were three horse and rider setsthat came with Dark Rider, Talpa,
Lightning Rider, Ryo, and RowanHashiba. And as far as I can
tell, they use the exact samehorse for each other, and they just
gave it a slight like it lookslike one of them may have a slightly
different paint job or they all justblack. Let's see, they're all just
black. The only paint application that'sdifferent are the harnesses. The horses are
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all black, the eyes are painteddifferent, and the harnesses are painted different.
It looks like here, I'd neverso when when I had been out
looking and getting these, I didn'tnot ever see the horse sets. Only
ones I ever saw where they cardedhardback figures. Okay, and you said
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you had four of these, whichfour do you have? Well? Okay,
so I no longer have them,okay, but I had kill,
I had let's see Kento, Ihad Sage Talpa, and looking for that
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last one. And this is allbased on memory of what I had.
I think it might have been DiasOkay, Yeah, I think it was
Dias Okay. And you got thoseall with KB at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, And they werethey were like two bucks. They were
they were on clearance for like adollar seventy five or like a dollar sixty
(09:43):
five, and then with tax andeverything, like I really I spent under
ten bucks to get five figures.It was kind of it was like one
of those that was odd, Likeif they hadn't been on clearance, I
might have just passed it up.But I was like, hey, this
is kind of this is interesting,and I like samurais and hey, i'd
(10:07):
like sci fi looking tech too,Let's check it out, right, And
it's really what reminds me of alot of robotech are the face sculpts.
The head and face sculpts. Itlooks very much like robotech. And then
the rest of them. They looklike they're wearing Mex suits, which kind
of reminds me of the Mighty morefrom Power Rangers because of the you know,
the the Asian influence in it all. What is the scale on these
(10:28):
How tall were these figures? Theywere about five five and a half six
inches, so they they weren't likeoverly size, but they were probably probably
close to the size of like theFortnite legendary figure, so about six inches
a little bit under. But thefigures, like the the the actual humans
themselves were not supposed to be inthat six in scale. It looks like
(10:50):
the heads are a little smaller,like they're in a larger suit. Is
that right or is it just theway this figure looks? Okay? So,
and this is where some of thecritiques starts coming in. So they
one of the weirdest things about thisline is when you first go to get
your figure, it doesn't have themask on, and you get some of
(11:13):
the armor, not all the armor, but some of the armor onto the
figure, and you know, theyusually make the shoulders chest like a little
bit bigger, which makes the headlook a little small, which is kind
of odd. But you're like oh, okay, but the legs look usually
fine. The problem is is thatthe figure itself underneath is kind of it's
almost elongated in a way, sothe legs and arms and torso feel and
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look longer than the actual head sculpt. The head sculpt is a little bit
smaller to accommodate the mask, andonce you get the armor and everything on,
it looks to scale, except fornormally the feet, which look oversize,
which I guess works in this kindof anime style. Yeah, that's
why it lends itself to that sortof anime or a mex suit, is
(12:01):
what it kind of what it lookslike. Yeah, But the weird thing
is is that when you're playing andyou know, there are times in the
cartoon, there were times of thestory on the back of these where it's
like they don't have their armor on, and you want to suit them up,
because that's kind of the gimmick.Hey, I want to suit them
up and give them there, youknow, like you kind of smash the
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you know, with the power ofSamurai Ronan or whatever. You want to
take the armor off and snap itback on, And that's the gimmick.
That's the kind of the fun thing. But they look so odd without all
their stuff because they're barrel chested.But then when you put the armor on,
they're even more barrel chested. Butif you put shoulder pieces on,
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they feel more in scale. Butnow their head looks like a tiny little
diamond on the end of this body, you know. And it's just the
size proportions are just so weird.The hands are bigger than the heads,
the feet are bigger than the hands, the shoulders are narrow, but like
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the shoulders and hips light lined upperfectly. There's some odd choices as far
as like the proportions of these figuresthat makes them odd, very very odd.
And why do you suppose that happened? Do you think it was just
they didn't want to spend the timecorrecting the sculpt or do you think it
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was just like an artistic like anesthetic choice. You know, it's I
think some of it is is thatthey the cell aspect of it. They
wanted the figures to be really inscale when they had everything on, and
it makes septs. You know,they just started from there and reverse engineered
it. And this reverse engineered iswhat it seems like a lot of these
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figures so getting in the toy techof this, the underbody aspect of all
the toys are pretty much the samebuck from one figure to the other.
The only things that change besides forthe color of the plastic is going to
be possibly the feet maybe For now, I think all the forums are the
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exact same. I believe the onlything that's different is the armor and the
heads. And so it's like you'vegot this one body, okay, different
types of armor, and now you'resculpting heads to accommodate for the helmets,
and the helmets are all different sizes. It's gonna get a little wonky.
(14:30):
It doesn't feel as as prepared.It seems like, you know, they
went for the big model aspect andthen work backwards and it just doesn't completely
work. I mean, there arepeople will defend it to think that's it's
really cool and it's it's interesting.There's a couple of these figures I wouldn't
mind having. Yeah, it's achoice, you know, and when you
have all them, when you havethe important thing is when you have the
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armor on that it all fits.I think it's I think that's to me,
that's better than having the head bein proportion and have the helmet be
completely oversized where it just looks conical, right, because you can then make
the decision to keep the helmet on. Yes, So okay, so let's
talk about them then. So thefigure's head, it looks like one,
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two, three, how many pointsof articulation I can't really tell. Okay,
so this is another kind of weirdone. So articulation on these are
a little odd. Okay. Canlet me talk about how the figure works
so that way we it'll kind ofdefine what happens with the articulation. Okay,
(15:37):
So you've got an influence, You'vegot a swivel head, so that
this part, the swivel head,is the one true jointed piece of articulation
on this. The other points ofI guess articulation would be at the shoulders,
hands, and hips, though thereis a little bit of movement at
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the elbows, knees, and eat. However, the body is made up.
There's a spring that runs through thehands up through the arms, through
the feet down into the body.Because the ideas that you pull the arms
back so that the different portions ofthe arm can open up so you can
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slap, smack, swing, kick, and the spring does all the work.
But as far as like articulation whereyou can pose the figure, there's
really only like five points because eventhe legs, with the articulation of the
legs, it kind of will helpthe legs turn. But there's no hip
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joint, there's no shoulder joint.It's all on a spring. The spring
allows for the arm to move upand out away from the figure, almost
like a swivel, and the headhas a true joint. But then after
that, like if it starts tofaults because the spring has lost its tension
and just there's not a lot ofarticulation at all, but the articulations through
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the spring to make the slashing,kicking fighting things. And that's how they
bupped you in the nose, right, Yes, yeah, because so I've
pulled it back and I was lookingin the armpit at the spring because I
wanted to see inside, and thefist got loose from my thumb and went
spect me writing the notes. Sodoes it work better with all of the
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armor on or does it work betterwith the armor off? So some figures
work really really well with the armoron. It works better with the armor
off, just because there's nothing inthe way but some figures I found,
like, so the armors held onby these little pegs, so you basically
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would kind of slip the armor ontothe pegs that would peg onto the body
and they they're kind of loose,so they can turn just a little bit
to allow for the spring mechanism.But the problem is is that if you
had some that were too loose,or some that you know, the peg
broke or this or that, whenyou go to do the swing, the
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armor would shoot off and or thewasn't supposed to lie out of their hand.
Yeah, and it wasn't supposed towith a lot of the feet.
I found that to be the biggestthing was that they would basically kick off
their shoes. They would sabotage thegame kicking off their sabos. They would
cut foot loose, is what you'resaying. Sure, all right, man,
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it's a fun it's a fun mechanism, but it's but it's dangerous.
It sounds like dangerous. Yeah,okay, so yeah, I'm so far,
I'm not I'm not too not tooterribly impressed. Let's talk about a
couple of these figures I'm looking at. We're looking at figure rom dot com
I'm looking at sigh because he doesn'thave the armor on. He's just in
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his Mex suit for lack of abetter word, and his armor is down
on the ground next to him.And so this is where we get a
good shot. This is the onethat looks he looks a lot like was
it Rand from Robotech? I thinkso? Yeah, yeah, he looks
a lot like Rand from Robotech.He's got the brown hair, the large
like you know, manga anime lookingeyes, and then again his head is
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just a little small for the suit. What I like about his suit is
that his chest plate looks sort oflike an exoskeleton from light for like an
insect. Yeah, you know,it's like that, the joints and everything
where he could bend over. SoI do like that. And so they've
all got like a belt or anyof the belts removable or do they stay
on? If I remember correctly,the belts can snap off too, so
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like the top armor of the belt, the shoulder pads, the feet guards,
the knee pads, and the riskgauntlets and helmet all come off.
Yeah. I was that actually tryingto find a picture of the figure or
the figures without the armor, juststraight up without the armor, and it's
(20:07):
it's kind of it's it's kind ofdifficult. Okay, So in this photo
he is wearing some of his armors. He didn't look like he was wearing
any of it to me. Yeah, he's wearing He's wearing i think the
shoulder bands and then the chest platebecause that's how he came packaged, you
know, on cards, so theyhad it's weird that they have some of
the armor on on the card butnot all of it under the blister well
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and Dias, Like if you lookat Dias, he's the same where he's
got the belt, the chest plate, and the two shoulder bands, and
then the rest of the armor isdisplayed out to the side. It's like
the helmet, the risk guards,the knee, the feet guard, all
of that. Yeah, all tothe side, but everything else is removable.
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They just show some of the armoron in package. Okay, So
that's strange. Yeah. Uh sothis photo, it's kind of hard to
see h Sio's feet because of theway that it's the way the photo is
done. But they did they haveboots that go over like like spats or
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something. They go over the feet. Yeah, so they have little shoes,
so like armored shoes that go overon the top of their armored legs,
so that the legs are sculpted almostlike if it is a plated armor.
So you've got like the knee lookslike a shin guard, and then
you've got the feet right, Butthen they will have foot guards that go
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and snap onto the foot and that'sgot little tabs on the back that's supposed
to go around to the back sideof the foot. And then they have
shin guards that usually will go ontheir shins and cover up their knee on
top of this armored kind of piecethat they already have on. Okay,
got it, Yeah, so byebye. Way of comparison, if we
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look at the figure on page forKale, he's wearing all of his armor
and it looks like he just lookslike a robot. Yes, looks like
a battle droid of some I'm sorting. And if you look at his feet,
he doesn't even look like he's wearingshoes. It looks like he looks
like he's got droid legs, likehe's like Darth Maul, you know,
with the with the prosthetic legs.Is what it looks like to me.
Yes, I called him the robotrobot Rabbit because he reminded me with his
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helmet and the giants oversized feet,he reminded me of a rabbit. Well
that, plus he even his maskthe way there's like a silver or something
thing in the middle of his mask. It kind of looks like buck teeth,
like bugs bunny would have. It'sa it's a it is an ony
smile. It's supposed to be acybernetic one, which is like an ogre.
Okay, yeah, I don't knowany of this. And he's got
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he's got the he's got like aloincloth kind of a sashing that goes around
and looks very you know, samuraiask, but this one he looks like
what were the what were the droids? We we did it. We did
a show about the robots we hadthat you would wind them up star ears.
That's what this guy reminds me ofas a star ear. I could
see that. I could definitely seethat, and uh yeah, it really
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it just looks like a completely differenttoy, which which I actually think is
cool because it's almost like you're gettingtwo toys in one. But it would
be nice if like you could havethe figure in normal clothes and just snap
everything on them and you've basically gottwo figures in one right. And so
based on what you've you've said,it just looks like these things were not
(23:38):
except they kind of did a halfwayjob designing them. It's like they had
they had a concept and they didn'tfine tune it. Had a decent concept,
but they didn't bother to fine tuneit. Is that that's what sounds
like to me, yes or orthey, you know, they're basing off
an older type toy that was alreadyout in Japan. You know, it's
(24:00):
again, the idea of it isreally cool. The look of it is
really cool, but the execution justit doesn't really seem to fit up to
being a playable figure that that isgoing to really rule that toybox, you
(24:22):
know what I mean. Like it'sjust it's it's there. They're cool,
you know, once you get done, you know, battling with the spring
stuff, and then you can't reallypose your figure or do anything else with
them outside of that, you know, and then you've never seen the show.
You can't find it on TV becauseyou know, it's on some weird
(24:44):
time or there's only thirty five episodesand you know, it aired and then
it's gone. And by the timethese come out and get out there for
kids to see, there's nothing forthem to attach it to, right and
you know, power Range has italready been around for about four or five
years at this point as well.So yeah, yeah, and there's you
know, there's story stuff on theback of the card, but it's you
(25:07):
know, they're like file cards andthat's pretty much it. You know,
they give a little bit of abackground and then that's it. Okay.
Yeah, so let's talk about whatthey all come with. So each one
comes with roughly the same components.They've all got the arm or they've got
like, you know, removable shoulderarmor. Up. I'm looking particularly like
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Ryo. It looks like his shoulderarmor will flop, will flip out to
the side to look like wings.They've got leg armor, like we talked
about the foot armor that goes overtheir shoes. They've got a helmet,
and it looks like they've each gotseveral weapons. Like Ryo, for instance,
comes with it looks like two longkatana swords and throwing stars. Maybe.
(25:49):
Yeah. There there's so how theweapons were and Tapa is a perfect
if your arm for your room andyou go to top it a look behind
the figure, you would have alittle baggy and that, yeah, i'd
have a sprew. For those whodo model making, sprus or trees are
(26:11):
the plastic things that would hold allthe weapons, so you'd have to clip
all your weapons out and use thatto battle with. Then the only other
figure line that I knew had thatwas another Playmates that was Ninja Turtles,
but they're outside rack is what youwould use to put all their weapons on
when you were done. This wouldn'thave that. It's just weapons and there's
(26:34):
normally a lot of them. Sofor for collectors of this, and they're
trying to be complete this, soyou're looking for a lot of weapons because
if these things have been clipped andused, then you're missing half of it
if you only have two things,which is normally what you find when you
go and look at them online.So it's there's there's some some weird aspects
(27:00):
of that with the fact that theycame with so much and their weapons they
were different based on the characters,like some had like blue weapons, some
had a yellow tree, a lotof them more in black and gray,
so there wasn't like a specific ruleon who gets white sort of weapon.
(27:26):
Most of the time, the weaponswere supposed to be kind of the color
of their armor, but that's notalways the case. So like Cal had
blue weapons even though he there's noblue on him at all. Kinto has
orange. His armor's orange. Thatmakes sense. But then you'll get down
to Rowan. Rowan has light likea small bit of light blue, so
(27:51):
his weapons are light blue. Butthen you get to Sage, who is
predominantly green and teal. He hasone splotch of yellow on his belt,
so he comes with the whole weaponscrew of yellow weapons. And Shamet has
navy blue weapons when there's nothing abouthis armor that is even remotely maybe blue.
(28:12):
So it's kind of weird, howlike what they chose to go with
the characters, right, It's it'ssort of haphazard. Again. It feels
like there just was not a lotof thought put into It's like they had
the concept and they said, Okay, we're gonna go with this. I
thought, when looking at Sage andstuff, I thought, maybe all of
(28:32):
the yellow one here is the brightyellow. I thought maybe it glowed in
the dark No, it doesn't.Okay, and all of their does.
The shoulder armor on all of them, it looks like it all like turns
out, like flips up and goesout to the side. Is that right?
Yes, they do so the waythat they're snapped on so you can't
snap them off, but the waythey're sped one you probably shouldn't. Well,
(28:56):
it was probably one of those youprobably weren't too, but I was
doing it anyways. Actually, youknow what, I'm going to save myself
some grace here. Yeah, lookat on Kento. There it has him
in full form without any armor.There you go, full armor. So
(29:17):
yes, all the armor was meantto go off. So I did not
break my toys on purpose. Well, you never break them on purpose.
Well, someone's gonna say that soundspretty fishy. No, I'm gonna tell
them. I promise I didn't tryto break it on porpoise. On Porpoise,
oh dear, okay, And ifI did, that would be very
shellfish of me. Okay, Okay, We've gotta make this stop. Let's
(29:40):
talk about the horses. The figuresthat came with the horses looked to be
they're not the Are they the same? Sculpts and everything we get with.
Yeah, they look like the sameexact sculpts, And I say, I
say that it's the same one becauselooking at it was at Tapa's. Here
(30:02):
he's got the horse that's got thered and silver on it, obviously for
him. Behind his there's a packagehorse that of Ryu, also black,
but it's silver and blue with redeyes. But it's the same exact mold
and actually looks like even the sametype of plastic we'll see. But Rowan
(30:22):
though, if you look at Rowan'sfigure, he's got a light blue line
like a piping going around that thefigure with the horse doesn't seem to have
on Rowan. Yeah, so actuallyi'm looking at there's no piping. His
(30:44):
armor looks pretty hold on, No, I'm talking about the package figure,
not the one that comes with thehorse. Oh yes, yeah, so
the yeah, Rowan has the lightblue piping on it. His figure below
is actually, I believe a littlebit different sculpt as well, For the
armor is just a tad bit different, and it is almost void of any
(31:11):
paint application except for on the faceand some of the paint on the horse.
But if we remember, the horsesweren't they made by a different company
other than Playmates. But you're you'reasking me, is if I were going
to know that. No, inthe in the beginning when we were talking
about the story, I thought thatthey said they were the horse. Yeah,
(31:37):
they do, they do. They'rejust you know, they're we get
typical of these. They're just it'sit's a figurine. It's not a figure.
There's no articulation on the horse.They're all the same. They just
have different colored bridles and different coloredaccents to match their figure. They look
cool, you know, they getthe red eyes, so I like that
they painted the eyes where they actuallylook really cool. But it would be
(31:59):
nice if you got different horses,or at least in different poses with each
figure, right, Yeah. Yeah, And honestly, like looking at the
Lightning Rider Ryu and then going downlooking at the Lightning Rider Rowan, Rowan
has a different helmet. Lightning RiderRowan has a different helmet than the regular
(32:19):
Rowin he does. But color schemeand everything they look so alike that it's
it's very similar. Yeah, there'ssomething different. It is very similar.
Yeah, because their horses are evenpainted, it looks like the same.
Yeah. No, the horses are. Yeah, there they are. There
are two of the horses are paintedthe same. Rowans and Ryos look like
(32:43):
they have the same the same paintand everything, but Talpa's is different.
It's got the red on it tomatch, to match what he's got going
on, and and again he's he'sgot a different color scheme on him as
well. He's got yeah, he'sgot all the red, but still has
(33:06):
the same you know, design onhis chest. So it looks like they
may have used No, I don'teven think it's the same the same armor.
No it is, it's the samearmor. Yeah, but I don't
know that. I don't know.I can't tell. I don't see the
helmet here, so I can't tellthe helmet's the same. But yeah,
everything else is the same. It'sjust just a repaint. Let's say I'm
(33:29):
looking on that can't find the helmetin the photo that we have on figure
OLM. Yeah, I don't thinkhe has the helmet on this one.
But it looks like it looks likeeverything else is the same, exact pieces
that's the other Yeah. Yeah,so yeah, this one, like he
said, it's just kind of Idon't there's not all Let's say about it
(33:50):
because we we've talked about the articulation, it's pretty much the same on all
of them. We've talked about theaction features. So are there any is
there anything or any any particular figuresyou want to talk about before we move
on to our top five. Notreally, because I mean, at this
point with the figure is the onlything that draws them out as unique from
each other. It comes down tothe armor and the heads. The armor
(34:14):
which is a heads under helmet.Yeah, but you think about that,
like, you know, there's there'sa lot of work that's been put into
the armor of these to really differentiatethem and make them look, you know,
different from one another, and theylook, like I said, incredible
once you get everything on. Somehelmets seem a little oversize for their characters,
(34:36):
but for the most part, they'rereally really cool. But you know,
when that is your main selling point, where it's just the armor is
what makes it cool. But thenwe're not going to put as much stock
into the figure, it seems kindof got cheap. It really does,
it really does. So we're gonnatake a short break. We'll be back
(34:58):
to discuss our top five. WeI did come up with five on the
line that I do like, Sowe'll be back in just a couple of
seconds to discuss that. Okay,So since you had some of these,
(35:19):
I will go first and I'll letyou finish this out. Okay, My
number five is going to be Kale, and that's Kale with the C not
Kale with a k not, theinedible lettuce thing. Just based on the
picture here, he looks dangerous.He'd be higher on the list if he
didn't just look like a Power Rangersvillain with his arm around, but I'm
(35:40):
assuming they all kind of look thatway, right, So he's here because
I kind of like his color scheme. He looks a little demonic, even
though he does have the rabbit ears. He looks like a demonic rabbit is
what he looks like. And Ido like that. So Kale is my
number five. Again, I don'thave a whole lot to say about these
because again, they all seem tohave the same action features and everything.
(36:00):
So I'm going basically, I'm goingon color scheme. In me, this
is how I'm choosing my top five. So his color scheme is my fifth
favorite of this line. Nice,Okay, well that'll work. It'll definitely
work. What about you? Mynumber five, and believe it or not,
I'm starting with a good guy.My number five is Harrial. You
(36:21):
know, I just got done doinga gun dumb figure review for the Channel,
and this thing with his helmet andthe color scheme reminds me a lot
of the gun dumps. So forme, because it makes me smile,
it makes me think, you know, this is this is what you think
it was pure, especially like sixtiesJapanese sci fi. I dig it a
(36:45):
lot. I can see that.Yeah, I kind of reminds you of
something you might see like if somebodywho was trying to fight Godzilla, something
that would put together to fight Godzilla. Oh yeah, like old school super
say and stuff. Oh yeah,definitely, okay, cool, definitely.
All right. Well, my numbernumber four is going to be SI and
I'm again I'm assuming I'm pronouncing thatcorrectly, and again it's it's I liked
(37:07):
this color scheme, and I alreadytalked to the chess plate. Looks like
he has the ex exoskeleton of aninsect that he's got because you you can
tell like how the layers are builtso that he can actually bend over to
pick something up. So I dolike that. They did put a little
bit of thought into it, soI do like that, and I like
the head sculpt on this one.Again he reminds me of a Robotech figure.
But mostly I just like the colorscheme, a sort of tealish color,
(37:30):
which we'll talk about again in abit, I'm sure, but I
just yeah, this figure looks cool. So's he's my number four, you
know, to pair against that onewith some of that till color scheme.
I My number four is Dais.I like him. He's obviously a bad
guy, but I love the kindof like almost like dark forced green with
(37:55):
touches of metallic till gold and thatkind of Robin's egg primer gray against everything.
And the fact he has, ofcourse, also an eyepatch. I
think this one's really cool. II dig the look at me he's got.
His helmet almost reminds me of abig, bad beetle borg with the
(38:15):
way that it's made, with thealmost like insects style horns coming off of
it. And I'm sorry, sayagain the name of the when you're talking
about Dais, Dais, Okay,it doesn't sound like a character. So
when you you said it, itdidn't register to me. Oh sorry,
so no, that's that's that's thecharacter's fault. But I'm with you now.
(38:37):
And he reminds me of the ipatchguy from Robotech. Oh yeah,
I can see that. Yeah,same color air too, yep. Yeah,
So what about your number three?So my number three is my number
(38:57):
three is Ryo U. And Ilike Ryo because again we're again, I'm
just going by color scheme. Ilike the red he The thing I like
about Ryo is the red he lookslike it looks like Gary Oldman's armor from
the opening of Bram Stoker's Dracula.Oh yeah, yeah, it's really cool.
(39:21):
I like this guy. And heagain looks a little like a robotic
character, looks a little like,uh, what's the main character of Rick
Hunter? Looks a little like aRick Hunter. And and I like the
way that the his his helmet isreally cool. It looks like his helmet
looks like the robot Devil from Futurama. Okay, yeah, which I'm always
(39:43):
a huge fan of. So Ilike that. And I like that he
comes with the you know, thetwo big swords and everything. So I
really like this guy. He's he'ssort of menacing looking, even though I'm
not sure if he's a good guyor a bad guy. That's why I
can't really tell with these characters.But yeah, the fact that he looks
like Gary Oldman's armor is what putsputs him umber three on my list.
Nice, okay, okay, mynumber three is going to be a dark
(40:07):
lord. It's a Schmeck secment,I believe segment. Yeah, that's a
tough one for me. I lovethe look of them. The green hair
is fun, but the till withthe kind of the crimson red on top
against that that really dark kind ofDavy's gray. Like, I love the
(40:30):
look of this and the stark whiteface. It almost looks like a ghost
in a way, like I.I dig the look of this, and
also with the spikes and the hornslike I it's one of those that you
know, back when I was akid looking at the cross l art,
I've never seen this one. Youknow, I didn't pay it a lot
(40:52):
of attention, But now I seeit's like, Yeah, that would have
been a really cool one to have, and probably I might have tried to
keep that one. Honestly. Oh, it's pretty cool. It's you know,
like I said, I've never paidit much attention until now, and
I really dig it. Okay,that's fair. I may have more to
(41:15):
say about him and just a littlebit. Okay, that brings us to
my number two, and my numbertwo is Sage and he probably looks the
most like a robotech figure of anyof these to me. I'm not sure
what it is about him that thatmakes him seem like a robotech figure.
I think it's a color scheme.Again. I'm going with the color scheme
(41:36):
here. We've got the dark kindof dark green with the lighter kind of
teal, almost turquoise, and Ilike the splash of yellow. Even though
it does it you you you sayit looks it's a little haphazard. I
think it all works well together.And he reminds me of a Poco ball,
if you remember the Poco balls fromthe mid eighties. Two. Our
(41:59):
school had pogo balls. Wow,I had to I had I had to
buy my own. Uh mine wasmine, was mine was green and purple,
so you would have loved it.This was way actually, the fact
I think we had like a bluewith the yellow ball, and then like
a pink with a yellow ball.So we we had just like a few,
and everyone fought for him, right, So so yeah, he's like
(42:23):
I said, that's I'm just goingstrictly by color scheme. I really like
this guy. I like the trioof colors. I think actually it's four
colors because the underside is sort ofthis awful site a grayish white that we
got with it, so it allworks well together. I'm not the biggest
fan of his head sculp because hishair is falling down in his eyes,
so it looks a little like JustinBieber, which is never a good look.
(42:44):
You don't have Bieber fever. Iam not a believer, but but
that does That's not enough to counteracteverything else that I do love about this
figure, which is, you knowagain, the color scheme, his helmet.
His helmet reminds me of I justrewatched Transformers, the movie, the
(43:04):
animated one, and I think it'snot Unicron who did Leonard Nimoy voice in
that ultra magnus I think, soyeah, yeah, reminds me of that,
and and I like that. Sothat's so Sage is my number two.
(43:25):
Nice, Nice, my number two. And because I really like orange,
and especially this burnt orange variety iskento. I Remember this is one
of the figures that the boots wouldfly off often every time I would to
the kick, and I couldn't actuallykeep the helmet on his head. But
(43:50):
I always loved the look of everythingtogether, the offset horn that kind of
came into the moon shape, thethe bracer that felt more like wrapped like
I knew it wasn't would, butit felt more like, you know,
like wood panels that were placed onone another and hammered together like this one
had a very classic Samurai looked toit. And I really really dug this
(44:15):
one a lot. And they hadthat orange with the brown offsetting the white
just it. I thought it wasa really cool character. Plus I also
dig to his sideburns and the bluehair. Yeah, no, that's a
cool look. Yeah that's really coolsideburns that came all the way down to
light to the bottom of my jaw. So I did too, Yeah,
(44:37):
I did too. I had theyhad had to kind of almost porch chaps
for a while. Yeah, yep, because that was the only facial hair
I could grow for a while.I never cut it into starburns. So
no, I never did either.I never would, all right, So
that brings us to all my numberone, and my number one is is
segment. Uh and you know wewe talked to Everything you said about him
is absolutely true. If we're goingby color scheme, this is my favorite
(44:59):
of all the color schemes. We'vegot that that deep red, like a
rusty red, the kind of tealish halfway between teal and turquoise. I
love the green hair. And he'sgot that sort of seventies hairstyle going on,
which is cool. And uh andagain you put all this stuff on
(45:20):
him and he looks the face thatthey've got on his mask looks almost like
a ghost, which is kind ofspooky. Yeah, and uh, and
he is a he's a bad guy, right he is. Yeah, So
I've got a bad guys my numberone. How about that, everybody?
But yeah, everything you said aboutthis guy is is the truth. I
love it. I love the spikeson his shoulders. He just looks gnarly
(45:43):
and and I'm a big fan ofit. If we're gonna talk about the
one that got away in a bit, But if I was going to pick
a basic figure, I might whichI'm kind of revealing my hand there,
but I would probably pick this oneif I was gonna just have one figure.
This is the one that I wouldpick nice, Okay, so what
(46:04):
about your number one? My numberone is Kale. I remember having this
figure, and you know, therewere some issues that I didn't quite like
so much about it, But allin all, I felt like his armor
fit the best. I love thatkind of black red and Davy's gray sort
(46:25):
of primer look. One of thethings I really liked about this figure.
On his sprew, he had thislong like sword that kind of curved out.
He also had it was a typeof like piece that was snap onto
his armor that was blue that youcould slide the sword in so he could
(46:46):
wear the sword on his back becausethere was like a little hole in the
back of the armor that will allowyou to stick that in. And you
had, you know, just adagger and throwing ninja star that you put
in his hand. I liked himbecause he didn't come with like too much
extra. It was like he hadthe right amount. But he also had
(47:07):
some failings and like he had twochest spikes that came up out of his
chest that tend to get in theway of things that would make it kind
of hard to play. But Iloved his design. It was just sleek.
He reminded me of a rabbit,like a cybernetic rabbit. But that
always reminded me of this one toyof Battle Beast that absolutely loved. It.
(47:29):
Was like, this would be hisevil brother, because that little rabbit
was like turquoise and like a lightblue like robotic rabbit. This would be
his evil brother. And this wasthe color scheme I wanted for that rabbit.
So, okay, I really dugthis one a lot. Yeah,
I can get behind that. That'scool, right, Yeah, So those
(47:50):
are our top five, So Iwas time to talk about the one that
got away? Which one of these? Now you actually had four that got
away from you, so I'll beinterested to see if it's one of those.
But mine is obviously not one thatI had. My one that got
away is going to be Lightning rightor Ryo. And for a couple of
reasons, I love this color scheme, the silver and blue. That dark
(48:14):
blue these got with the black andthe red eyes on his helmet is really
cool. And with the horse andthat color scheme, he reminds me of
war Duke from the Advanced Dungeons andDragons line from ljn Oh yeah, yeah,
and the blue with the silver andthe red eyes on the horse really
really works. So I can Ilike the idea of having him on a
(48:36):
horse up on my shelf. Wouldthey actually sit on the horses? I
assume you'd have to spring their legsup and they would probably kind of sit
on a horse. Yet, Okay, it looks like they are instructions for
how to do that on the box. But I could see this being on
the shelf and you know, ata glance, it would look just like
a showgun Warrior from you know,ancient like feudal Japan. Then upon closer
inspection people would realize, wait,is that like a robot or something on
(49:00):
top of there? And I'll say, I'm glad you asked. This is
Ronan Warriors, this lack luster toyline from the mid nineties. And then
I could not extol the virtues ofthe line. I know, this one
is just really cool and if Ihad to, if I had to just
have one, it would be thisone because I think this sort of exemplifies
the line both good and bad.Right right, What about you? So
(49:22):
my number one was one that Ihad. It was my second favorite out
of the line, but as Igo back and review them, my favorite
design wise out of the line,and the reason why is because for the
most part, he looks the mostninja out of all of them, and
(49:45):
then you put the samurai stuff andhe does look like like a showgun.
Like the way everything is built,he looks pretty crazy and it's Tapa okay.
I love like the color scheme ofthe black with the silver and and
the dark bluish gray, the silveredeyes. Everything's kind of almost robotic in
(50:07):
a way. But then there's acertain level of organic look about him with
the way the armor is curved inparts, and even the fact that he
has like the giant claws on hisfeet pads, but then the feet pads
themselves have like almost heat sink ventson top. Like it's just it's a
(50:30):
very modernized, like like samurai robotlook that I absolutely just dig. And
this would be one that I thinkwould be the perfect conversation starter, like
what's that, Oh, well,that's a showgun warrior. It's like,
well, it's like a samurai.Ah, it kind of is. It's
both. It's both. It's it'slike a robot, a dark samurai warrior.
(50:52):
Mecca armor and everything else I'll throwntogether. I love the look of
this thing. No, it isvery cool, very cool. Like I
said, you know, at aglance, these these all look really really
neat, but upon closer inspection yourealize they're really not that well thought out
or that well put together. No, No, the only I did have
a runner up and there was abattle between which two. So let's let's
(51:15):
recap, folks. There are fourteentoys. Taylor will now have talked about
seven of them, and this isa line he doesn't really care for.
I know, would you want toout the runner epics? Can you guess?
I'm not gonna guess. Just tellme it was dark ryder Tapa.
Okay, so it's kind of aone and a one A yeah, one
(51:35):
and one. Ah, but Ithink that the red was just too much
on. Oh, the helmet isthe same, it's just done in red.
I think between the two, thecolor scheme of the Cardiff figure on
like better. I would just wantthe horse. Okay, so you want
the cardiffigure in the horse, ormaybe the Cardiff figure and the horse and
(51:59):
figure so that I can just pairup the armor however I want. You
can have your cake and eat ittoo. That's Taylor and on a show.
All right. Well, I'm surethat we've probably angered some of our
listeners. Are it's probably a fewthat are there are big fans of the
line, so we'd love to hearyour thoughts on it. So I did
to the Facebook page and let usknow where we aired, where we were
wrong on this one, and letus know why we were wrong. And
(52:20):
we can't wait to hear about it. If you have some of these in
your collection, we want to seephotos postos as well. Until next time
for talking toys with Taylor and Jeff. I'm Taylor and I'm Jeff. I
remember they're not dolls. They're actionfigures, action figures with spring power legs
and arms, and they'll pop youin the face if you're not careful.
I will definitely don't look down hisarm. To folks, thank you for
(52:51):
listening. For more episodes of thisshow or other Marvin Dog Media productions,
go to Marvin Dog Media dot comto stream or download the shows, or
to subscribe iTunes. Email us atMarvindog Media at gmail dot com. Follow
us on Twitter at Marvindog Media.Follow us on Pinterest at pinterest dot com.
Forward slash marvindog Media. This podcasthas been a production of marvindog Media.
(53:14):
All rights reserved. How many timescan we say marvindog Media
It back in the day one ofmy favorite things to do as I was
kind of exiting out of high schooland about to move up to adulthood,
but still had this kind of engineeringmind of wanting to get all these different
toys here and there. There wasa place that I liked to go to
in the mall that was called KBToys. It's those who remember KB Toys.
(00:25):
It's a wonderful place. But duringthat time when KB Toys was still
around. During this portion of time, everything was kind of on clearance because
you know, they were pretty muchgoing out of business, and I would
like to go through and shop andfind things that I wouldn't normally get that
(00:46):
was on clearance. So I couldreally like get in check out and see
how that toy works, and maybeexperience something new within the plastic realm that
I had never done before. Andone time I happened to pick up these
figures. Now, the crazy thingwas, I went in with about fifty
bucks and I came out with fortybucks in my pocket and four brand new
(01:12):
Playmates Action figures. I was like, I can't believe this. Go home,
check them out, play with them, let them, you know,
snap back hit me in the nose, all sorts of things, and then
I started to realize why maybe theseweren't picked up quite as much as you
know they should have been, butalso why people might have had problems with
(01:34):
them. The toy line is actuallycalled Ronan Warriors by Playmates Toys, and
that's why I'm here Talking toys.Welcome to Talking Toys with Taylor and Jeff,
(02:00):
where we go back in time todiscuss our favorite toys, one toy
line at a time. Hello,and welcome to Talking Toys with Taylor and
Jeff. I'm Taylor and I'm Jeff. And that's a that's a great story
(02:24):
time. Taylor sort of foreboding ofwhat we're going to talk about here,
is this finally going to be I'mthe Taylor. This is a toy.
You know, it's weird because Iam very much the toy apologists and I
love toys, and this is oneof those that you know, if you're
(02:45):
listening to this, you're on Facebook, you're commenting back and everything, like
sometimes like I like getting toys justto get the toys, just to feel
the plastic, to see the engineering, to marvel at it. And this
was one of those that with everythingabout it. It definitely brought me in.
But then when I got to thetoy engineering night there were some areas
(03:06):
and things, I was like,hmm, this could have been better possible.
Okay, interesting, I'll be interestedto hear your thoughts on that.
I know nothing about these guys.So, folks, we have a Google
doc that we we both edit inbetween us, and this is one of
the toy lines that Taylor put onthere. So I said, well,
why don't we do Ronan Warriors thistime out, because I, you know,
(03:28):
just to get it off the list, and I'm not that familiar with
it, and thinking that Taylor wasa fan, and it sounds like he's
a fan, but not a fan, right right, So since I know
nothing about it, I'll assume ourlisteners know next to nothing about it.
I'll give you some background. Thisis courtesy or Virtual Toy Chest, So
thank you for that virtual toy chest. You're Roid and Samurai Troopers first aired
(03:52):
in Japan in nineteen eighty eight.It was finally brought to the United States
and ninety five as Ronan Warriors,so this is nineteen ninety five. It
was shown both in locals indication aswell as on the cartoon Networking Sci Fi
Channel. A total thirty nine episodesand three movies were produced. The Ronan
Warriors toys were released by Playmates inninety five, and they were re released
by Replay in two thousand and one. The replay versions were of lower quality,
(04:15):
Nearly all the figures had Ryo's headunder their helmets, and fewer figures
were actually released. The Rerelays linedid include redecos of both Ryo and Taalpa,
packaged with horse toys, and thehorse molds having originally been Zoro molds.
So that's the history of the line. Now let me give you guys
some backs ground on the story ofit, and this I'm going to try
to reach it dramatically as I canon very little sleep. Enter a dark
(04:40):
time in which all of mankind isin the clutches of the evil forces of
the Dynasty. The once great cityof Megapolis. I almost said Megalopolis,
but it's Megapolis. The once greatCity of Megapolis has already been conquered by
the wicked showgun masters, leaders ofthe Dynasty. Fighting this dark tide,
or a band of five war orshrouded by the circle of light, anxious
(05:01):
Samurai masters imbue them with the virtuesof light, life, force, trust,
justice, and wisdom. Can thesemighty warriors defeat the dynasty and save
mankind? Let's find out? Ihad to. Let's find out. This
strikes me as very much a cashin on the Mighty morphin Power Rangers success.
(05:25):
Would that be a fair assessment somewhat? Oh, yeah, definitely when
you go back and so I lookedup the cart tim and I did watch
a few episodes because I've never seenthe cartoon before growing up. Like I
just found these toys as like,oh that's interesting, that's kind of cool,
(05:46):
you know, and decided to buythem, but you know, never
saw the cartoon or anything. Andcome to find out, I think they
were part of like a Saturday morninglineup where like one episode to play per
month or something with a bunch ofother episodes. And I went and I
found it on tub to watch,and it is it's kind of hard to
(06:10):
watch because it's it's like one ofthose shows that goes really fast. They
kind of go into the story expectingyou to know already what's going on,
and you don't, and there's nota lot of like backstory fill in now
There have been cartoons I've watched beforewhere they kind of put you into the
(06:30):
action and then you get to learnabout the characters as you go, and
that's fine, but never on thisline where I felt like they were thrusting
me into the story with all thesecharacters. But then they never really took
any time to develop or set upthese characters within this episode so we could
learn a little bit about each one, because it's not like there's one main
(06:54):
character. There's five, and thenyou have the showgun masters that are taking
over that also have backstory aspects filmtwo, and nothing ever seemed to be
It seemed to be all action,but nothing story wise that drew you in
or made you want to be apart of the universe. And so it
(07:15):
was kind of strange. And it'sone of those that if I had seen
the cartoon when I was a kid, I probably wouldn't have bought these because
I would have been like, I, yeah, no, I don't really
like that show. But I gotthem because you know, they're Samurais and
I look really cool. Okay,so and they do look cool. I
will say this, the design,if you've not seen these before, the
(07:36):
design reminds me of a cross betweenMighty More from Power Rangers and Robotech.
Yeah, oh that's very much.That's what it reminds me of. Yeah,
I could definitely see the Robotech aspectof it. So the toy line,
according to Figure Round, there werefourteen toys released. We had the
(07:57):
Basic series, which consisted of aNubis Kale si Am I saying that correctly,
c Y e Yes, Dice,Harril Kinto, Rowan, Ryo,
Sage Secment, and Talpa. Andthen we had the Horse and Ride.
(08:18):
There were three horse and rider setsthat came with Dark Rider, Talpa,
Lightning Rider, Ryo, and RowanHashiba. And as far as I can
tell, they use the exact samehorse for each other, and they just
gave it a slight like it lookslike one of them may have a slightly
different paint job or they all justblack. Let's see, they're all just
black. The only paint application that'sdifferent are the harnesses. The horses are
(08:41):
all black, the eyes are painteddifferent, and the harnesses are painted different.
It looks like here, I'd neverso when when I had been out
looking and getting these, I didn'tnot ever see the horse sets. Only
ones I ever saw where they cardedhardback figures. Okay, and you said
(09:01):
you had four of these, whichfour do you have? Well? Okay,
so I no longer have them,okay, but I had kill,
I had let's see Kento, Ihad Sage Talpa, and looking for that
(09:22):
last one. And this is allbased on memory of what I had.
I think it might have been DiasOkay, Yeah, I think it was
Dias Okay. And you got thoseall with KB at the same time.
Yeah, yeah, And they werethey were like two bucks. They were
they were on clearance for like adollar seventy five or like a dollar sixty
(09:43):
five, and then with tax andeverything, like I really I spent under
ten bucks to get five figures.It was kind of it was like one
of those that was odd, Likeif they hadn't been on clearance, I
might have just passed it up.But I was like, hey, this
is kind of this is interesting,and I like samurais and hey, i'd
(10:07):
like sci fi looking tech too,Let's check it out, right, And
it's really what reminds me of alot of robotech are the face sculpts.
The head and face sculpts. Itlooks very much like robotech. And then
the rest of them. They looklike they're wearing Mex suits, which kind
of reminds me of the Mighty morefrom Power Rangers because of the you know,
the the Asian influence in it all. What is the scale on these
(10:28):
How tall were these figures? Theywere about five five and a half six
inches, so they they weren't likeoverly size, but they were probably probably
close to the size of like theFortnite legendary figure, so about six inches
a little bit under. But thefigures, like the the the actual humans
themselves were not supposed to be inthat six in scale. It looks like
(10:50):
the heads are a little smaller,like they're in a larger suit. Is
that right or is it just theway this figure looks? Okay? So,
and this is where some of thecritiques starts coming in. So they
one of the weirdest things about thisline is when you first go to get
your figure, it doesn't have themask on, and you get some of
(11:13):
the armor, not all the armor, but some of the armor onto the
figure, and you know, theyusually make the shoulders chest like a little
bit bigger, which makes the headlook a little small, which is kind
of odd. But you're like oh, okay, but the legs look usually
fine. The problem is is thatthe figure itself underneath is kind of it's
almost elongated in a way, sothe legs and arms and torso feel and
(11:39):
look longer than the actual head sculpt. The head sculpt is a little bit
smaller to accommodate the mask, andonce you get the armor and everything on,
it looks to scale, except fornormally the feet, which look oversize,
which I guess works in this kindof anime style. Yeah, that's
why it lends itself to that sortof anime or a mex suit, is
(12:01):
what it kind of what it lookslike. Yeah, But the weird thing
is is that when you're playing andyou know, there are times in the
cartoon, there were times of thestory on the back of these where it's
like they don't have their armor on, and you want to suit them up,
because that's kind of the gimmick.Hey, I want to suit them
up and give them there, youknow, like you kind of smash the
(12:22):
you know, with the power ofSamurai Ronan or whatever. You want to
take the armor off and snap itback on, And that's the gimmick.
That's the kind of the fun thing. But they look so odd without all
their stuff because they're barrel chested.But then when you put the armor on,
they're even more barrel chested. Butif you put shoulder pieces on,
(12:43):
they feel more in scale. Butnow their head looks like a tiny little
diamond on the end of this body, you know. And it's just the
size proportions are just so weird.The hands are bigger than the heads,
the feet are bigger than the hands, the shoulders are narrow, but like
(13:05):
the shoulders and hips light lined upperfectly. There's some odd choices as far
as like the proportions of these figuresthat makes them odd, very very odd.
And why do you suppose that happened? Do you think it was just
they didn't want to spend the timecorrecting the sculpt or do you think it
(13:26):
was just like an artistic like anesthetic choice. You know, it's I
think some of it is is thatthey the cell aspect of it. They
wanted the figures to be really inscale when they had everything on, and
it makes septs. You know,they just started from there and reverse engineered
it. And this reverse engineered iswhat it seems like a lot of these
(13:48):
figures so getting in the toy techof this, the underbody aspect of all
the toys are pretty much the samebuck from one figure to the other.
The only things that change besides forthe color of the plastic is going to
be possibly the feet maybe For now, I think all the forums are the
(14:09):
exact same. I believe the onlything that's different is the armor and the
heads. And so it's like you'vegot this one body, okay, different
types of armor, and now you'resculpting heads to accommodate for the helmets,
and the helmets are all different sizes. It's gonna get a little wonky.
(14:30):
It doesn't feel as as prepared.It seems like, you know, they
went for the big model aspect andthen work backwards and it just doesn't completely
work. I mean, there arepeople will defend it to think that's it's
really cool and it's it's interesting.There's a couple of these figures I wouldn't
mind having. Yeah, it's achoice, you know, and when you
have all them, when you havethe important thing is when you have the
(14:52):
armor on that it all fits.I think it's I think that's to me,
that's better than having the head bein proportion and have the helmet be
completely oversized where it just looks conical, right, because you can then make
the decision to keep the helmet on. Yes, So okay, so let's
talk about them then. So thefigure's head, it looks like one,
(15:15):
two, three, how many pointsof articulation I can't really tell. Okay,
so this is another kind of weirdone. So articulation on these are
a little odd. Okay. Canlet me talk about how the figure works
so that way we it'll kind ofdefine what happens with the articulation. Okay,
(15:37):
So you've got an influence, You'vegot a swivel head, so that
this part, the swivel head,is the one true jointed piece of articulation
on this. The other points ofI guess articulation would be at the shoulders,
hands, and hips, though thereis a little bit of movement at
(15:58):
the elbows, knees, and eat. However, the body is made up.
There's a spring that runs through thehands up through the arms, through
the feet down into the body.Because the ideas that you pull the arms
back so that the different portions ofthe arm can open up so you can
(16:19):
slap, smack, swing, kick, and the spring does all the work.
But as far as like articulation whereyou can pose the figure, there's
really only like five points because eventhe legs, with the articulation of the
legs, it kind of will helpthe legs turn. But there's no hip
(16:40):
joint, there's no shoulder joint.It's all on a spring. The spring
allows for the arm to move upand out away from the figure, almost
like a swivel, and the headhas a true joint. But then after
that, like if it starts tofaults because the spring has lost its tension
and just there's not a lot ofarticulation at all, but the articulations through
(17:07):
the spring to make the slashing,kicking fighting things. And that's how they
bupped you in the nose, right, Yes, yeah, because so I've
pulled it back and I was lookingin the armpit at the spring because I
wanted to see inside, and thefist got loose from my thumb and went
spect me writing the notes. Sodoes it work better with all of the
(17:32):
armor on or does it work betterwith the armor off? So some figures
work really really well with the armoron. It works better with the armor
off, just because there's nothing inthe way but some figures I found,
like, so the armors held onby these little pegs, so you basically
(17:52):
would kind of slip the armor ontothe pegs that would peg onto the body
and they they're kind of loose,so they can turn just a little bit
to allow for the spring mechanism.But the problem is is that if you
had some that were too loose,or some that you know, the peg
broke or this or that, whenyou go to do the swing, the
(18:15):
armor would shoot off and or thewasn't supposed to lie out of their hand.
Yeah, and it wasn't supposed towith a lot of the feet.
I found that to be the biggestthing was that they would basically kick off
their shoes. They would sabotage thegame kicking off their sabos. They would
cut foot loose, is what you'resaying. Sure, all right, man,
(18:41):
it's a fun it's a fun mechanism, but it's but it's dangerous.
It sounds like dangerous. Yeah,okay, so yeah, I'm so far,
I'm not I'm not too not tooterribly impressed. Let's talk about a
couple of these figures I'm looking at. We're looking at figure rom dot com
I'm looking at sigh because he doesn'thave the armor on. He's just in
(19:02):
his Mex suit for lack of abetter word, and his armor is down
on the ground next to him.And so this is where we get a
good shot. This is the onethat looks he looks a lot like was
it Rand from Robotech? I thinkso? Yeah, yeah, he looks
a lot like Rand from Robotech.He's got the brown hair, the large
like you know, manga anime lookingeyes, and then again his head is
(19:25):
just a little small for the suit. What I like about his suit is
that his chest plate looks sort oflike an exoskeleton from light for like an
insect. Yeah, you know,it's like that, the joints and everything
where he could bend over. SoI do like that. And so they've
all got like a belt or anyof the belts removable or do they stay
on? If I remember correctly,the belts can snap off too, so
(19:45):
like the top armor of the belt, the shoulder pads, the feet guards,
the knee pads, and the riskgauntlets and helmet all come off.
Yeah. I was that actually tryingto find a picture of the figure or
the figures without the armor, juststraight up without the armor, and it's
(20:07):
it's kind of it's it's kind ofdifficult. Okay, So in this photo
he is wearing some of his armors. He didn't look like he was wearing
any of it to me. Yeah, he's wearing He's wearing i think the
shoulder bands and then the chest platebecause that's how he came packaged, you
know, on cards, so theyhad it's weird that they have some of
the armor on on the card butnot all of it under the blister well
(20:30):
and Dias, Like if you lookat Dias, he's the same where he's
got the belt, the chest plate, and the two shoulder bands, and
then the rest of the armor isdisplayed out to the side. It's like
the helmet, the risk guards,the knee, the feet guard, all
of that. Yeah, all tothe side, but everything else is removable.
(20:51):
They just show some of the armoron in package. Okay, So
that's strange. Yeah. Uh sothis photo, it's kind of hard to
see h Sio's feet because of theway that it's the way the photo is
done. But they did they haveboots that go over like like spats or
(21:15):
something. They go over the feet. Yeah, so they have little shoes,
so like armored shoes that go overon the top of their armored legs,
so that the legs are sculpted almostlike if it is a plated armor.
So you've got like the knee lookslike a shin guard, and then
you've got the feet right, Butthen they will have foot guards that go
(21:38):
and snap onto the foot and that'sgot little tabs on the back that's supposed
to go around to the back sideof the foot. And then they have
shin guards that usually will go ontheir shins and cover up their knee on
top of this armored kind of piecethat they already have on. Okay,
got it, Yeah, so byebye. Way of comparison, if we
(22:00):
look at the figure on page forKale, he's wearing all of his armor
and it looks like he just lookslike a robot. Yes, looks like
a battle droid of some I'm sorting. And if you look at his feet,
he doesn't even look like he's wearingshoes. It looks like he looks
like he's got droid legs, likehe's like Darth Maul, you know,
with the with the prosthetic legs.Is what it looks like to me.
Yes, I called him the robotrobot Rabbit because he reminded me with his
(22:26):
helmet and the giants oversized feet,he reminded me of a rabbit. Well
that, plus he even his maskthe way there's like a silver or something
thing in the middle of his mask. It kind of looks like buck teeth,
like bugs bunny would have. It'sa it's a it is an ony
smile. It's supposed to be acybernetic one, which is like an ogre.
Okay, yeah, I don't knowany of this. And he's got
(22:48):
he's got the he's got like aloincloth kind of a sashing that goes around
and looks very you know, samuraiask, but this one he looks like
what were the what were the droids? We we did it. We did
a show about the robots we hadthat you would wind them up star ears.
That's what this guy reminds me ofas a star ear. I could
see that. I could definitely seethat, and uh yeah, it really
(23:14):
it just looks like a completely differenttoy, which which I actually think is
cool because it's almost like you're gettingtwo toys in one. But it would
be nice if like you could havethe figure in normal clothes and just snap
everything on them and you've basically gottwo figures in one right. And so
based on what you've you've said,it just looks like these things were not
(23:38):
except they kind of did a halfwayjob designing them. It's like they had
they had a concept and they didn'tfine tune it. Had a decent concept,
but they didn't bother to fine tuneit. Is that that's what sounds
like to me, yes or orthey, you know, they're basing off
an older type toy that was alreadyout in Japan. You know, it's
(24:00):
again, the idea of it isreally cool. The look of it is
really cool, but the execution justit doesn't really seem to fit up to
being a playable figure that that isgoing to really rule that toybox, you
(24:22):
know what I mean. Like it'sjust it's it's there. They're cool,
you know, once you get done, you know, battling with the spring
stuff, and then you can't reallypose your figure or do anything else with
them outside of that, you know, and then you've never seen the show.
You can't find it on TV becauseyou know, it's on some weird
(24:44):
time or there's only thirty five episodesand you know, it aired and then
it's gone. And by the timethese come out and get out there for
kids to see, there's nothing forthem to attach it to, right and
you know, power Range has italready been around for about four or five
years at this point as well.So yeah, yeah, and there's you
know, there's story stuff on theback of the card, but it's you
(25:07):
know, they're like file cards andthat's pretty much it. You know,
they give a little bit of abackground and then that's it. Okay.
Yeah, so let's talk about whatthey all come with. So each one
comes with roughly the same components.They've all got the arm or they've got
like, you know, removable shoulderarmor. Up. I'm looking particularly like
(25:29):
Ryo. It looks like his shoulderarmor will flop, will flip out to
the side to look like wings.They've got leg armor, like we talked
about the foot armor that goes overtheir shoes. They've got a helmet,
and it looks like they've each gotseveral weapons. Like Ryo, for instance,
comes with it looks like two longkatana swords and throwing stars. Maybe.
(25:49):
Yeah. There there's so how theweapons were and Tapa is a perfect
if your arm for your room andyou go to top it a look behind
the figure, you would have alittle baggy and that, yeah, i'd
have a sprew. For those whodo model making, sprus or trees are
(26:11):
the plastic things that would hold allthe weapons, so you'd have to clip
all your weapons out and use thatto battle with. Then the only other
figure line that I knew had thatwas another Playmates that was Ninja Turtles,
but they're outside rack is what youwould use to put all their weapons on
when you were done. This wouldn'thave that. It's just weapons and there's
(26:34):
normally a lot of them. Sofor for collectors of this, and they're
trying to be complete this, soyou're looking for a lot of weapons because
if these things have been clipped andused, then you're missing half of it
if you only have two things,which is normally what you find when you
go and look at them online.So it's there's there's some some weird aspects
(27:00):
of that with the fact that theycame with so much and their weapons they
were different based on the characters,like some had like blue weapons, some
had a yellow tree, a lotof them more in black and gray,
so there wasn't like a specific ruleon who gets white sort of weapon.
(27:26):
Most of the time, the weaponswere supposed to be kind of the color
of their armor, but that's notalways the case. So like Cal had
blue weapons even though he there's noblue on him at all. Kinto has
orange. His armor's orange. Thatmakes sense. But then you'll get down
to Rowan. Rowan has light likea small bit of light blue, so
(27:51):
his weapons are light blue. Butthen you get to Sage, who is
predominantly green and teal. He hasone splotch of yellow on his belt,
so he comes with the whole weaponscrew of yellow weapons. And Shamet has
navy blue weapons when there's nothing abouthis armor that is even remotely maybe blue.
(28:12):
So it's kind of weird, howlike what they chose to go with
the characters, right, It's it'ssort of haphazard. Again. It feels
like there just was not a lotof thought put into It's like they had
the concept and they said, Okay, we're gonna go with this. I
thought, when looking at Sage andstuff, I thought, maybe all of
(28:32):
the yellow one here is the brightyellow. I thought maybe it glowed in
the dark No, it doesn't.Okay, and all of their does.
The shoulder armor on all of them, it looks like it all like turns
out, like flips up and goesout to the side. Is that right?
Yes, they do so the waythat they're snapped on so you can't
snap them off, but the waythey're sped one you probably shouldn't. Well,
(28:56):
it was probably one of those youprobably weren't too, but I was
doing it anyways. Actually, youknow what, I'm going to save myself
some grace here. Yeah, lookat on Kento. There it has him
in full form without any armor.There you go, full armor. So
(29:17):
yes, all the armor was meantto go off. So I did not
break my toys on purpose. Well, you never break them on purpose.
Well, someone's gonna say that soundspretty fishy. No, I'm gonna tell
them. I promise I didn't tryto break it on porpoise. On Porpoise,
oh dear, okay, And ifI did, that would be very
shellfish of me. Okay, Okay, We've gotta make this stop. Let's
(29:40):
talk about the horses. The figuresthat came with the horses looked to be
they're not the Are they the same? Sculpts and everything we get with.
Yeah, they look like the sameexact sculpts, And I say, I
say that it's the same one becauselooking at it was at Tapa's. Here
(30:02):
he's got the horse that's got thered and silver on it, obviously for
him. Behind his there's a packagehorse that of Ryu, also black,
but it's silver and blue with redeyes. But it's the same exact mold
and actually looks like even the sametype of plastic we'll see. But Rowan
(30:22):
though, if you look at Rowan'sfigure, he's got a light blue line
like a piping going around that thefigure with the horse doesn't seem to have
on Rowan. Yeah, so actuallyi'm looking at there's no piping. His
(30:44):
armor looks pretty hold on, No, I'm talking about the package figure,
not the one that comes with thehorse. Oh yes, yeah, so
the yeah, Rowan has the lightblue piping on it. His figure below
is actually, I believe a littlebit different sculpt as well, For the
armor is just a tad bit different, and it is almost void of any
(31:11):
paint application except for on the faceand some of the paint on the horse.
But if we remember, the horsesweren't they made by a different company
other than Playmates. But you're you'reasking me, is if I were going
to know that. No, inthe in the beginning when we were talking
about the story, I thought thatthey said they were the horse. Yeah,
(31:37):
they do, they do. They'rejust you know, they're we get
typical of these. They're just it'sit's a figurine. It's not a figure.
There's no articulation on the horse.They're all the same. They just
have different colored bridles and different coloredaccents to match their figure. They look
cool, you know, they getthe red eyes, so I like that
they painted the eyes where they actuallylook really cool. But it would be
(31:59):
nice if you got different horses,or at least in different poses with each
figure, right, Yeah. Yeah, And honestly, like looking at the
Lightning Rider Ryu and then going downlooking at the Lightning Rider Rowan, Rowan
has a different helmet. Lightning RiderRowan has a different helmet than the regular
(32:19):
Rowin he does. But color schemeand everything they look so alike that it's
it's very similar. Yeah, there'ssomething different. It is very similar.
Yeah, because their horses are evenpainted, it looks like the same.
Yeah. No, the horses are. Yeah, there they are. There
are two of the horses are paintedthe same. Rowans and Ryos look like
(32:43):
they have the same the same paintand everything, but Talpa's is different.
It's got the red on it tomatch, to match what he's got going
on, and and again he's he'sgot a different color scheme on him as
well. He's got yeah, he'sgot all the red, but still has
(33:06):
the same you know, design onhis chest. So it looks like they
may have used No, I don'teven think it's the same the same armor.
No it is, it's the samearmor. Yeah, but I don't
know that. I don't know.I can't tell. I don't see the
helmet here, so I can't tellthe helmet's the same. But yeah,
everything else is the same. It'sjust just a repaint. Let's say I'm
(33:29):
looking on that can't find the helmetin the photo that we have on figure
OLM. Yeah, I don't thinkhe has the helmet on this one.
But it looks like it looks likeeverything else is the same, exact pieces
that's the other Yeah. Yeah,so yeah, this one, like he
said, it's just kind of Idon't there's not all Let's say about it
(33:50):
because we we've talked about the articulation, it's pretty much the same on all
of them. We've talked about theaction features. So are there any is
there anything or any any particular figuresyou want to talk about before we move
on to our top five. Notreally, because I mean, at this
point with the figure is the onlything that draws them out as unique from
each other. It comes down tothe armor and the heads. The armor
(34:14):
which is a heads under helmet.Yeah, but you think about that,
like, you know, there's there'sa lot of work that's been put into
the armor of these to really differentiatethem and make them look, you know,
different from one another, and theylook, like I said, incredible
once you get everything on. Somehelmets seem a little oversize for their characters,
(34:36):
but for the most part, they'rereally really cool. But you know,
when that is your main selling point, where it's just the armor is
what makes it cool. But thenwe're not going to put as much stock
into the figure, it seems kindof got cheap. It really does,
it really does. So we're gonnatake a short break. We'll be back
(34:58):
to discuss our top five. WeI did come up with five on the
line that I do like, Sowe'll be back in just a couple of
seconds to discuss that. Okay,So since you had some of these,
(35:19):
I will go first and I'll letyou finish this out. Okay, My
number five is going to be Kale, and that's Kale with the C not
Kale with a k not, theinedible lettuce thing. Just based on the
picture here, he looks dangerous.He'd be higher on the list if he
didn't just look like a Power Rangersvillain with his arm around, but I'm
(35:40):
assuming they all kind of look thatway, right, So he's here because
I kind of like his color scheme. He looks a little demonic, even
though he does have the rabbit ears. He looks like a demonic rabbit is
what he looks like. And Ido like that. So Kale is my
number five. Again, I don'thave a whole lot to say about these
because again, they all seem tohave the same action features and everything.
(36:00):
So I'm going basically, I'm goingon color scheme. In me, this
is how I'm choosing my top five. So his color scheme is my fifth
favorite of this line. Nice,Okay, well that'll work. It'll definitely
work. What about you? Mynumber five, and believe it or not,
I'm starting with a good guy.My number five is Harrial. You
(36:21):
know, I just got done doinga gun dumb figure review for the Channel,
and this thing with his helmet andthe color scheme reminds me a lot
of the gun dumps. So forme, because it makes me smile,
it makes me think, you know, this is this is what you think
it was pure, especially like sixtiesJapanese sci fi. I dig it a
(36:45):
lot. I can see that.Yeah, I kind of reminds you of
something you might see like if somebodywho was trying to fight Godzilla, something
that would put together to fight Godzilla. Oh yeah, like old school super
say and stuff. Oh yeah,definitely, okay, cool, definitely.
All right. Well, my numbernumber four is going to be SI and
I'm again I'm assuming I'm pronouncing thatcorrectly, and again it's it's I liked
(37:07):
this color scheme, and I alreadytalked to the chess plate. Looks like
he has the ex exoskeleton of aninsect that he's got because you you can
tell like how the layers are builtso that he can actually bend over to
pick something up. So I dolike that. They did put a little
bit of thought into it, soI do like that, and I like
the head sculpt on this one.Again he reminds me of a Robotech figure.
But mostly I just like the colorscheme, a sort of tealish color,
(37:30):
which we'll talk about again in abit, I'm sure, but I
just yeah, this figure looks cool. So's he's my number four, you
know, to pair against that onewith some of that till color scheme.
I My number four is Dais.I like him. He's obviously a bad
guy, but I love the kindof like almost like dark forced green with
(37:55):
touches of metallic till gold and thatkind of Robin's egg primer gray against everything.
And the fact he has, ofcourse, also an eyepatch. I
think this one's really cool. II dig the look at me he's got.
His helmet almost reminds me of abig, bad beetle borg with the
(38:15):
way that it's made, with thealmost like insects style horns coming off of
it. And I'm sorry, sayagain the name of the when you're talking
about Dais, Dais, Okay,it doesn't sound like a character. So
when you you said it, itdidn't register to me. Oh sorry,
so no, that's that's that's thecharacter's fault. But I'm with you now.
(38:37):
And he reminds me of the ipatchguy from Robotech. Oh yeah,
I can see that. Yeah,same color air too, yep. Yeah,
So what about your number three?So my number three is my number
(38:57):
three is Ryo U. And Ilike Ryo because again we're again, I'm
just going by color scheme. Ilike the red he The thing I like
about Ryo is the red he lookslike it looks like Gary Oldman's armor from
the opening of Bram Stoker's Dracula.Oh yeah, yeah, it's really cool.
(39:21):
I like this guy. And heagain looks a little like a robotic
character, looks a little like,uh, what's the main character of Rick
Hunter? Looks a little like aRick Hunter. And and I like the
way that the his his helmet isreally cool. It looks like his helmet
looks like the robot Devil from Futurama. Okay, yeah, which I'm always
(39:43):
a huge fan of. So Ilike that. And I like that he
comes with the you know, thetwo big swords and everything. So I
really like this guy. He's he'ssort of menacing looking, even though I'm
not sure if he's a good guyor a bad guy. That's why I
can't really tell with these characters.But yeah, the fact that he looks
like Gary Oldman's armor is what putsputs him umber three on my list.
Nice, okay, okay, mynumber three is going to be a dark
(40:07):
lord. It's a Schmeck secment,I believe segment. Yeah, that's a
tough one for me. I lovethe look of them. The green hair
is fun, but the till withthe kind of the crimson red on top
against that that really dark kind ofDavy's gray. Like, I love the
(40:30):
look of this and the stark whiteface. It almost looks like a ghost
in a way, like I.I dig the look of this, and
also with the spikes and the hornslike I it's one of those that you
know, back when I was akid looking at the cross l art,
I've never seen this one. Youknow, I didn't pay it a lot
(40:52):
of attention, But now I seeit's like, Yeah, that would have
been a really cool one to have, and probably I might have tried to
keep that one. Honestly. Oh, it's pretty cool. It's you know,
like I said, I've never paidit much attention until now, and
I really dig it. Okay,that's fair. I may have more to
(41:15):
say about him and just a littlebit. Okay, that brings us to
my number two, and my numbertwo is Sage and he probably looks the
most like a robotech figure of anyof these to me. I'm not sure
what it is about him that thatmakes him seem like a robotech figure.
I think it's a color scheme.Again. I'm going with the color scheme
(41:36):
here. We've got the dark kindof dark green with the lighter kind of
teal, almost turquoise, and Ilike the splash of yellow. Even though
it does it you you you sayit looks it's a little haphazard. I
think it all works well together.And he reminds me of a Poco ball,
if you remember the Poco balls fromthe mid eighties. Two. Our
(41:59):
school had pogo balls. Wow,I had to I had I had to
buy my own. Uh mine wasmine, was mine was green and purple,
so you would have loved it.This was way actually, the fact
I think we had like a bluewith the yellow ball, and then like
a pink with a yellow ball.So we we had just like a few,
and everyone fought for him, right, So so yeah, he's like
(42:23):
I said, that's I'm just goingstrictly by color scheme. I really like
this guy. I like the trioof colors. I think actually it's four
colors because the underside is sort ofthis awful site a grayish white that we
got with it, so it allworks well together. I'm not the biggest
fan of his head sculp because hishair is falling down in his eyes,
so it looks a little like JustinBieber, which is never a good look.
(42:44):
You don't have Bieber fever. Iam not a believer, but but
that does That's not enough to counteracteverything else that I do love about this
figure, which is, you knowagain, the color scheme, his helmet.
His helmet reminds me of I justrewatched Transformers, the movie, the
(43:04):
animated one, and I think it'snot Unicron who did Leonard Nimoy voice in
that ultra magnus I think, soyeah, yeah, reminds me of that,
and and I like that. Sothat's so Sage is my number two.
(43:25):
Nice, Nice, my number two. And because I really like orange,
and especially this burnt orange variety iskento. I Remember this is one
of the figures that the boots wouldfly off often every time I would to
the kick, and I couldn't actuallykeep the helmet on his head. But
(43:50):
I always loved the look of everythingtogether, the offset horn that kind of
came into the moon shape, thethe bracer that felt more like wrapped like
I knew it wasn't would, butit felt more like, you know,
like wood panels that were placed onone another and hammered together like this one
had a very classic Samurai looked toit. And I really really dug this
(44:15):
one a lot. And they hadthat orange with the brown offsetting the white
just it. I thought it wasa really cool character. Plus I also
dig to his sideburns and the bluehair. Yeah, no, that's a
cool look. Yeah that's really coolsideburns that came all the way down to
light to the bottom of my jaw. So I did too, Yeah,
(44:37):
I did too. I had theyhad had to kind of almost porch chaps
for a while. Yeah, yep, because that was the only facial hair
I could grow for a while.I never cut it into starburns. So
no, I never did either.I never would, all right, So
that brings us to all my numberone, and my number one is is
segment. Uh and you know wewe talked to Everything you said about him
is absolutely true. If we're goingby color scheme, this is my favorite
(44:59):
of all the color schemes. We'vegot that that deep red, like a
rusty red, the kind of tealish halfway between teal and turquoise. I
love the green hair. And he'sgot that sort of seventies hairstyle going on,
which is cool. And uh andagain you put all this stuff on
(45:20):
him and he looks the face thatthey've got on his mask looks almost like
a ghost, which is kind ofspooky. Yeah, and uh, and
he is a he's a bad guy, right he is. Yeah, So
I've got a bad guys my numberone. How about that, everybody?
But yeah, everything you said aboutthis guy is is the truth. I
love it. I love the spikeson his shoulders. He just looks gnarly
(45:43):
and and I'm a big fan ofit. If we're gonna talk about the
one that got away in a bit, But if I was going to pick
a basic figure, I might whichI'm kind of revealing my hand there,
but I would probably pick this oneif I was gonna just have one figure.
This is the one that I wouldpick nice, Okay, so what
(46:04):
about your number one? My numberone is Kale. I remember having this
figure, and you know, therewere some issues that I didn't quite like
so much about it, But allin all, I felt like his armor
fit the best. I love thatkind of black red and Davy's gray sort
(46:25):
of primer look. One of thethings I really liked about this figure.
On his sprew, he had thislong like sword that kind of curved out.
He also had it was a typeof like piece that was snap onto
his armor that was blue that youcould slide the sword in so he could
(46:46):
wear the sword on his back becausethere was like a little hole in the
back of the armor that will allowyou to stick that in. And you
had, you know, just adagger and throwing ninja star that you put
in his hand. I liked himbecause he didn't come with like too much
extra. It was like he hadthe right amount. But he also had
(47:07):
some failings and like he had twochest spikes that came up out of his
chest that tend to get in theway of things that would make it kind
of hard to play. But Iloved his design. It was just sleek.
He reminded me of a rabbit,like a cybernetic rabbit. But that
always reminded me of this one toyof Battle Beast that absolutely loved. It.
(47:29):
Was like, this would be hisevil brother, because that little rabbit
was like turquoise and like a lightblue like robotic rabbit. This would be
his evil brother. And this wasthe color scheme I wanted for that rabbit.
So, okay, I really dugthis one a lot. Yeah,
I can get behind that. That'scool, right, Yeah, So those
(47:50):
are our top five, So Iwas time to talk about the one that
got away? Which one of these? Now you actually had four that got
away from you, so I'll beinterested to see if it's one of those.
But mine is obviously not one thatI had. My one that got
away is going to be Lightning rightor Ryo. And for a couple of
reasons, I love this color scheme, the silver and blue. That dark
(48:14):
blue these got with the black andthe red eyes on his helmet is really
cool. And with the horse andthat color scheme, he reminds me of
war Duke from the Advanced Dungeons andDragons line from ljn Oh yeah, yeah,
and the blue with the silver andthe red eyes on the horse really
really works. So I can Ilike the idea of having him on a
(48:36):
horse up on my shelf. Wouldthey actually sit on the horses? I
assume you'd have to spring their legsup and they would probably kind of sit
on a horse. Yet, Okay, it looks like they are instructions for
how to do that on the box. But I could see this being on
the shelf and you know, ata glance, it would look just like
a showgun Warrior from you know,ancient like feudal Japan. Then upon closer
inspection people would realize, wait,is that like a robot or something on
(49:00):
top of there? And I'll say, I'm glad you asked. This is
Ronan Warriors, this lack luster toyline from the mid nineties. And then
I could not extol the virtues ofthe line. I know, this one
is just really cool and if Ihad to, if I had to just
have one, it would be thisone because I think this sort of exemplifies
the line both good and bad.Right right, What about you? So
(49:22):
my number one was one that Ihad. It was my second favorite out
of the line, but as Igo back and review them, my favorite
design wise out of the line,and the reason why is because for the
most part, he looks the mostninja out of all of them, and
(49:45):
then you put the samurai stuff andhe does look like like a showgun.
Like the way everything is built,he looks pretty crazy and it's Tapa okay.
I love like the color scheme ofthe black with the silver and and
the dark bluish gray, the silveredeyes. Everything's kind of almost robotic in
(50:07):
a way. But then there's acertain level of organic look about him with
the way the armor is curved inparts, and even the fact that he
has like the giant claws on hisfeet pads, but then the feet pads
themselves have like almost heat sink ventson top. Like it's just it's a
(50:30):
very modernized, like like samurai robotlook that I absolutely just dig. And
this would be one that I thinkwould be the perfect conversation starter, like
what's that, Oh, well,that's a showgun warrior. It's like,
well, it's like a samurai.Ah, it kind of is. It's
both. It's both. It's it'slike a robot, a dark samurai warrior.
(50:52):
Mecca armor and everything else I'll throwntogether. I love the look of
this thing. No, it isvery cool, very cool. Like I
said, you know, at aglance, these these all look really really
neat, but upon closer inspection yourealize they're really not that well thought out
or that well put together. No, No, the only I did have
a runner up and there was abattle between which two. So let's let's
(51:15):
recap, folks. There are fourteentoys. Taylor will now have talked about
seven of them, and this isa line he doesn't really care for.
I know, would you want toout the runner epics? Can you guess?
I'm not gonna guess. Just tellme it was dark ryder Tapa.
Okay, so it's kind of aone and a one A yeah, one
(51:35):
and one. Ah, but Ithink that the red was just too much
on. Oh, the helmet isthe same, it's just done in red.
I think between the two, thecolor scheme of the Cardiff figure on
like better. I would just wantthe horse. Okay, so you want
the cardiffigure in the horse, ormaybe the Cardiff figure and the horse and
(51:59):
figure so that I can just pairup the armor however I want. You
can have your cake and eat ittoo. That's Taylor and on a show.
All right. Well, I'm surethat we've probably angered some of our
listeners. Are it's probably a fewthat are there are big fans of the
line, so we'd love to hearyour thoughts on it. So I did
to the Facebook page and let usknow where we aired, where we were
wrong on this one, and letus know why we were wrong. And
(52:20):
we can't wait to hear about it. If you have some of these in
your collection, we want to seephotos postos as well. Until next time
for talking toys with Taylor and Jeff. I'm Taylor and I'm Jeff. I
remember they're not dolls. They're actionfigures, action figures with spring power legs
and arms, and they'll pop youin the face if you're not careful.
I will definitely don't look down hisarm. To folks, thank you for
(52:51):
listening. For more episodes of thisshow or other Marvin Dog Media productions,
go to Marvin Dog Media dot comto stream or download the shows, or
to subscribe iTunes. Email us atMarvindog Media at gmail dot com. Follow
us on Twitter at Marvindog Media.Follow us on Pinterest at pinterest dot com.
Forward slash marvindog Media. This podcasthas been a production of marvindog Media.
(53:14):
All rights reserved. How many timescan we say marvindog Media
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