By
Dave
I don’t do as many toy reviews as I used to because,
quite frankly, when you’re creeping up on a decade of doing them it gets a
little old. But from time to time I do still get excited about something and
it’s usually an entirely new line like this one – Disney’s Toybox.
For me, the best thing about Disney Infinity was the character design. It brought Disney’s many
characters and properties together as a single appealing style. When Disney
dropped the series last year (on my birthday), I was relieved that the hole
we’d been throwing money into was closing, but also disappointed that there
were so many characters that we’d never see adapted in the Infinity style.
Little did I know Disney already had plans in place to
deliver what I’d always truly wanted from these excellent designs – an actual
toy line.
On November 4th Disney Stores received the
first waves of an all-new line of action figures under the name of “Toybox”. As
of now there are three lines – Pixar, Star Wars, and Marvel.
I just happened to be out doing some Christmas shopping
on that day. I received a call from my son, who excitedly told me about these
figures that I knew nothing about. The Disney Store was already on my list of
stops, so I made a mental note to keep an eye out for new figures.
I am both proud and slightly annoyed that he’s getting to
the point where he’s more current on things than I am.
The new Toybox line was situated prominently right in the
front of the store, complete with an acrylic display case, peg hooks, and
shelves. I wouldn’t have missed it anyway. There were nine figures available on
release day; three from each line – Buzz, Woody, and Jesse from Pixar; Iron
Man, Thor, and Hulk from Marvel; and Kylo Ren, Rey, and a First Order
Stormtrooper from Star Wars. And they all looked awesome.
I grabbed a couple from each line – I didn’t want to go
crazy and buy everything until I had a chance to check them for quality.
Rey was a no-brainer, as despite my pre-Force Awakens determination to stick
with Finn as my favorite character, after seeing the movie Daisy Ridley’s Rey
is just too awesome.
Does the figure prove worthy? Read on.
THE
PACKAGE
The new line is packaged in my favorite – a blister card.
It’s the kind with one edge glued and the rest folded over the cardback and
taped. I don’t love that, but I guess it’s more secure. I like the design with
the logo sort of cut into the blister on the side. The figure is easy to see. I
like the big, red label denoting who the character is. It’s not hidden like it
is on Hasbro products.
The back features all of the characters from the wave
(also a nice change from Hasbro) and a generic blurb about the toy line.
Each character is numbered within its line. Rey is #2 for
Star Wars.
THE
TOY
The figure is made from a slightly softer plastic that is
almost rubbery, but doesn’t feel cheap. It works very well for the cartoony
aesthetic of the line.
If you’re familiar with Disney Infinity, then you know that this figure is exactly the
design from the 3.0 game.
The sculpt is one of the cleanest I’ve seen – a lot went
into preserving the shapes and forms of the style. It would have been very easy
to leave out some detail or not reproduce it in as sharp a manner, but there’s
a lot to look at on this deceptively simple design.
Obviously Rey is mostly muted, desert tones – this is the
Jakku version, not the newer Last Jedi
design – and they all look good. The various colors all share the same gloss,
creating a uniform look that supports the line style. The applications are all
clean and tight. You’re not going to have to sift through samples to find the
one with the best paint job. Each one I looked at in the store was equally
perfect.
There aren’t many small painted details, but there’s
exactly as much paint as there should be.
In the past I’ve complimented toy companies for
incorporating articulation into specific designs, but the Toybox line makes it
seem easy. Within this faithful reproduction of a character design meant for
animation and to be smooth and rounded are fourteen points of versatile articulation.
The head is on a ball joint and has a great range.
The arms feature shoulders on hinged swivels, hinged
elbows with swivels at the top, and hinged swivels at the wrists. The shoulders
are slightly limited by the design of the figure, but otherwise the arm joints
all work together to create a large degree of poseability.
There’s a swivel at the waist. It would have been great
to have a sort of ball joint like NECA’s Predators, but for the price point I’m
impressed with what I got.
The legs have hinged swivels at the hips, hinged knees
with swivels at the top, and hinged ankles. It all works well together, but I
would’ve loved for the ankles to have been rocker joints. It doesn’t matter too
much, as I can still get the figure to stand pretty much however I want. It’s
worth noting that the Hulk figure – to be reviewed later – does have more
sophisticated ankle joints. Which means there’s room for diversity within the
line style.
THE
ACCESSORIES
Rey comes with Luke’s lightsaber. I’m thrilled we got
this instead of that staff thing from Jakku.
It’s a great-looking lightsaber. The blade is the right
shade of translucent blue and the hilt has all of the sculpted detail required
to indicate Luke’s familiar elegant weapon. The vanes on the bottom are black and
there are two red buttons – another case where the figure is deceptively simple.
For thirteen bucks you might have expected a silver handle with relatively
little detail – sculpt or paint.
The lightsaber fits securely into Rey’s right hand.
THE
VERDICT
For $12.95 this is an excellent action figure. As of this
writing I have played with four different figures from the Toybox line, but
this one alone was enough to convince me that this is an exciting new toy line
that my son and I are both going to enjoy collecting.
It has all of the articulation and style that collectors
would want, combined with the durability and design appeal that kids enjoy. Got
get some. You’ll thank me.
No comments:
Post a Comment