Toy purchase disappointments

Mr_Saver said:
For me it’s Snail Shell Lustia.

She’s a beautiful figure, and has some fun accessories, but she’s so fiddly you don’t barely want to play with her.

The bralet is so thin a light that you can’t get it to stay in place, and it is always getting stuck on her incredibly spiky hair. And feels like it could snap at any moment.

Everything is a really hard brittle feel ing plastic so it just feels like it break or snap really easily
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I finally pulled the trigger on Sleepover Aileen, btw.
 
Xavion2025 said:
The most disappointed I’ve been in myself for purchasing a figure? The HasLab Giant Man. I love my Toy Biz BAF Giant-Man. I did not particularly want, and I certainly did not need, a super-sized “upgrade”. Unfortunately, I let FOMO get the best of me when I knew better, and now I have that big ass box eating up valuable real estate in my closet.
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Speaking of Haslab, for me it'd be Galactus. It totally looked like a 1/12 figure that got scaled up for production, in the costume details departments I mean. All of those seams and textures and lines are just too big for an 80cm action figure.

That and it petting my peeve of useless articulation. Why the f does he have double knees, fully functional legs and arms when none of those limbs can be moved properly due to the suit he's wearing. Like, the figure can't even do the Kirby staple 'one arm raised menacingly' pose. So dumb. And screw those articulated fingers, too.
 
For me, almost anything Syndicate Collectibles had put out.

That Howling figure was a 60 dollar pile of (no pun intended) dogshit. Especially when compared to the NECA version.

Their Double Dragon figures are very outdated in terms of articulation. The paints are subpar at best. Waited my whole life for DD figures, only being forced to accept what we were given.

Their Pumpkinhead figure is decent, if not above average. But that's about all they've got going for them.

I've never had a company appear out of nowhere, swinging for the fences only to completely let me down in such record time.

Between multiple cancellations and releases not being as promised (their Bloodsport figures don't look to be breaking this trend, either)...yeah...tough sell for me to get excited by anything they do anymore.
 
I thought of another and it may be my all-time biggest: DC Direct Batman the Animated Series figures. I got all of these when they first came out under DCD, haven't touched Todd's reissues, but I can't imagine anything he did with them would change my mind on the following.

I consider Batman TAS the final word on the character and his villains. Love it. The figures went pretty deep into the roster, deep enough for my tastes, certainly, and they look exactly how they should. Aesthetically they are incredible. What's the problem? Their articulation is hot garbage, they pose for shit, and many of them have tiny feet which makes them impossible to stand without the poorly-designed display stand they come with. They are absolutely NO fun to handle, dynamic posing is virtually impossible. I'd say their joints have gotten loose over time, but I'm pretty sure there were ALWAYS that way. If you can get them to stand there vanilla, they will look nice. My wife has said these are her favorite Batman figures........that's because she's only looked at them, she hasn't tried playing with them. (I'd probably unload them had she not said that). The really maddening thing is, in their very last wave, the did a Two Face with updated articulation that works well and is fun to pose. The T-joint hips were replaced with modern hip articulation. That ONE figure is GREAT! But by then, that was it! They were all done, over and out.

Todd took all those molds and did straight up reissues of all the hot garbage. Did he update anything to make them more along the lines of the aforementioned Two Face? Did he do anything to improve them except slap on nonsensical cell shading deco that made them worse to look at? Ha. This is Todd......no way.

Yep, that's a frustrating one.
 
RicksNerdLife said:
For me, almost anything Syndicate Collectibles had put out.

That Howling figure was a 60 dollar pile of (no pun intended) dogshit. Especially when compared to the NECA version.

Their Double Dragon figures are very outdated in terms of articulation. The paints are subpar at best. Waited my whole life for DD figures, only being forced to accept what we were given.

Their Pumpkinhead figure is decent, if not above average. But that's about all they've got going for them.

I've never had a company appear out of nowhere, swinging for the fences only to completely let me down in such record time.

Between multiple cancellations and releases not being as promised (their Bloodsport figures don't look to be breaking this trend, either)...yeah...tough sell for me to get excited by anything they do anymore.
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The guy in charge of that company was the warning bell for me to not even get started. I'll get Pumpkinhead someday if I see him on clearance, but otherwise I expected things to fold up pretty quick with the old SOTA and PCS guy running the show.
 
Yeah, that BTAS line is pretty terrible when it comes to posing. I absolutely hate that weird T-joint at the hips with the hinge going out. Quite possibly the ugliest damn joint ever conceived. The late era figures were passable. I have the Gray Ghost and The Adventures Continue Batman which is my favorite Batman figure I own. Articulation is still mediocre, but he has ball-jointed hips and the cel-shading is perfect.

Todd’s reissues are cheap as hell. They feel like junk in-hand so even decent figures like that Two-Face are pretty abysmal. They’re not priced cheaply either and I dropped that line pretty quickly.
 
I'll second/third/whatever the frustration with the BTAS line. Visually, they look great- like the show come to life. Most of them came with a fair amount of accessories that were really cool, and I did think the bases, with the turnaround character models, were a really fun idea. The line went deeper than any other BTAS line, giving us multiple versions of a lot of characters, vehicles, deluxe figures, playsets, etc.

But the line had a ton of QC issues to begin with- they broke easily, sometimes the joints would just disintegrate, etc. And yeah, the articulation isn't great. For a show as dynamic as BTAS, you wanna be able to strike some cool poses, and you really can't. What few poses you can get, you're taking your life into your own hands at that point, hoping the joints won't give out. I think they were a large part of why I was a vanilla poser at the time- I think my nervousness to pose them kinda bled over into other lines. But just standing there, they looked great! I admire the want to get the TNBA character models right, even if it meant being completely unable to stand on those tiny little feet. It sucks, because they really did start to get a bit better towards the end, and while they got most of the heavy hitters and went deeper than any other line, there were still some characters or versions that went undone.

And yeah, Todd's re-releases have left a lot to be desired. Charging even more than they cost back then and putting less in the package. I only picked up a wave or two for the BAF parts, though I haven't even attempted the last couple waves. Only figure I've kept is the trenchcoat Joker, but that's because I missed him when DCC released him the first time. The TNBA Scarecrow re-release felt like a slap in the face- a bunch of interchangeable hands (including 2 pairs of the same kind for some reason), but ZERO accessories. Not even the one he's shown on the box holding. And the character cel he came with has incorrect info on the back- the episode title is from one episode, the episode description is from an entirely different episode- neither of which the character actually appeared in. It felt almost purposely incorrect.

Mondo's been churning out some great figures, but they're obviously much pricier, and while they've more or less fixed a lot of their QC problems, they're still art figures over action figures- meant more for display than play, so you can't really get too dynamic of a pose out of any of them. Same with the Super7 Reaction figures- they look great, but they're basically little statues.

I'd still love a BTAS line that's well articulated and well accessorized. Don't know who would do it at this point- Mattel is the obvious choice, but we gotta wait and see how their figures look. The downside to a line as expansive as BTAS would be is the constant threat of it getting cancelled or Mattel losing the license before they can finish. I don't necessarily see them going as deep as DCC did before, but I'd love to be proven wrong!
 
I think the Mezco 5 POA approach for BTAS is a decent one with the interchangeable limbs. The scale isn’t what I want, though it makes vehicles more manageable. I’d probably have gone in on that line, but their Batman just looks off-model to me. I can’t get into a Batman line where the Batman looks the worst.
 
Back when it was DCD, I bought the TAS Joker and Catwoman, with a plan to get everything they made, or near to. Catwoman couldn't even stand WITH the stand because the stands sucked, and Joker's ankles both snapped almost immediately. Tossed them and never looked back.
 
The DC Direct BTAS line was actually the thing that got me back into action figures. I lost my original kenner Batman inbetween house moves, and it was one of the only toys that I'd kept from childhood. Looked into getting another one (seemed way too expensive) and instead stumbled into the infinite pit of modern action figures.

I brought the BTAS Batman Expressions pack and was blown away by the whole thing, as I had nothing else to compare it to. Was really nervous about moving it though, as it felt quite fragile, but I assumed all figures were like that. Didn't get anything else as the line was ending by that point, but I've always held on to it.

Got into actionfigure photography a bit after that, and really started to appreciate decent articulation. I think 1000toys Hellboy and an Amazing Yamaguchi Iron Man were the bits I got soon afterwards, which kind of altered my perception.

Later got my hopes up with the Mcfarlane reissues but they look kind of cheaper somehow, almost like the paint has been slopped on? They also just used the old molds again so never bothered.

Another thing I've noticed is that the BTAS Batman is usually made with skinnier proportions and absolutely tiny feet, but he didn't always look like that in the show. I don't really expect any company to do it justice at this point as he's either too skinny, or the face/cowl doesn't look right (Mezco for example).
 
Picto Nocturne said:
I lost my original kenner Batman inbetween house moves, and it was one of the only toys that I'd kept from childhood. Looked into getting another one (seemed way too expensive)
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Which Kenner Batman are you talking about? My best guess has to be Combat Belt Batman (?) just because that figure complete goes for a decent price. It's also the most TV-accurate figure from the Kenner TAS line. Love that figure.
 
yojoebro82 said:
My best guess has to be Combat Belt Batman (?) just because that figure complete goes for a decent price. It's also the most TV-accurate figure from the Kenner TAS line.
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One of my greatest childhood toy-related disappointments was the fact that the stupid fucking TAS line did not regularly have a normal Batman available. I literally never owned a Batman figure that looked like he did in the actual cartoon except for that McDonald's kids' meal toy.
 
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