I'm A Grown Man And I Bought This: Doctor Who Cybermen And Daleks Micro-Figure Sets

For the past four or five years British toy company Character Options has been producing an excellent line of Doctor Who action figures. They just recently started up a new line of Doctor Who Micro-Figures. These new toys are exactly like Lego mini-figures in look and size (about 1.75" tall) and should be compatible with all Lego systems. I've never really been a Lego fan (we had some kind of knockoff brick toys when I was a kid), but God help me, I just couldn't resist them. Sorry wallet.

Today I'm reviewing the Cybermen and Dalek Army Builder Multi Packs.

First up is the Cybermen pack. The Cybermen have had a lot of different looks over the years; these are based on the current model that debuted in the new series a few seasons back.

The head sculpt is well done and they're a perfect cartoonish representation of the Cybermen from the show. I like them a lot and can't stop fiddling with them while I'm watching TV.

By the way, the big letter "C" in the middle of their chests doesn't stand for "Cybermen," as most people think. The Cybermen from the new series are actually from a parallel Earth. They were created by a human named John Lumic, founder of Cybus Industries. Lumic was dying and was working on a cybernetic body in which to house his brain. Naturally, since he was tampering with the laws of nature and all that, the Cybermen gained sentience and ran amok, eventually spilling over into our world. So the "C" stands for Cybus Industries, not Cybermen.

The Dalek figures are OK, but I'm not as big a fan of them as the Cybermen. First of all these are the new Dalek designs, which I'm not crazy about. Secondly those globes around the bottom half of the Dalek should be gray or silver, not red. Character Options definitely cheaped out on the paint applications here.

My main gripe about the Micro Daleks is the sculpting. Lego (or Lego-like) figures should be cute or cartoon-like in their designs. There's nothing cartoonish about these Dalek figures. They're just regularly proportioned tiny Daleks.

This is a problem I've seen crop up before whenever a company makes cartoony versions of non-human characters. It's easy to make a human character look cartoonish, but when you try to do it with a non-human character (like R2-D2) it's very difficult. I had the same problem when I tried to make a cartoony Dalek for my Doctor Who Enemies Infographic. I'm not sure how to solve this problem, but I'm definitely not as big a fan of the Micro Daleks as I am the Micro Cybermen.

 

Like all Lego-ish figures, their parts are interchangeable, so you can rearrange them and tamper in realms where man wasn't meant to tread.