Toys for the Green Lantern movie are in stores…

… and surprise, surprise, they SUCK!

Stopped by Toys R Us (saw that they were now also at Target) to take a look , and the shelves were full of GL merchandise. Three scales of figures, role play toys and deluxe/playset figures were nearly falling off the shelves. The only thing that seemed to have sold so far was a role play mask/light up ring combo. It was pretty cool and only about $7.

The rest were a joke. There was a series of “Movie Masters”, which is similar to the line they did for “The Dark Knight”, except these don’t even look as good as that. Sculpts were OK at best, paint was too thick, and the joints looked warped and loose. All for the low price of $17! Yes, $5 bucks more than the Batman ones.  PASS.

Next up is the “4 inch” or so scale.The 3 3/4 inch size was made popular with the vintage 70’s Star Wars and 80’s G. I. Joe figures. As an adult, I prefer the detail that the larger figures provide, but so much progress has been made in the 3 3/4 scale that I have enjoyed collecting them as well. Well Mattel apparently has somebody working for them that has been either frozen in ice, hidden in a bomb shelter, or perhaps living in a cave for the past 20 years. These figures average about 5 points of articulation. That is the same amount of articulation as a lot of happy meal toys. The sculpts are decent, but there is no excuse for not having more articulation. The Thor and Captain America movie toys both just about have more articulation in the figure’s arm, than the GL figures have total.  I guess if you just want an army of GL’s on your shelf with their rings raised up in the air, these would work. But my kids like more articulation than this. I also like more articulation than this.

Another scale they had was a 12-inch or so. They looked nice, but again, the articulation was absolutely worthless. I was expecting something more at this scale. They at least had a nice light up feature that worked well.

The other Role Play stuff was neat-ish. The kids liked pushing the buttons in the store.

I’m just surprised that a major toy company would put out product that is lower in quality and charge more for it.

Oh wait. No I’m not.

Mike Crawford has a nice review of the 4 inch figures up on his site, with much better and detailed pictures: Green Lantern Figures at MWC

 

About Dug (Wugmanmax) 241 Articles
(AKA – Wug, Dug, Foug) Hailing from the Twin Cities, Wugmanmax is an avid toy collector, graphic designer, video producer, firefighter, and podcast co-host.

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