Manure-Covered Toys. I Hate Manure-Covered Toys!

This is actually old news, but I just now found out about it. A few years back, Mattel released a series of Hot Wheels die cast cars based on Back To The Future. As you can see here, they released Marty McFly's 4-Wheel Drive Pickup, Doc Brown's Time-Traveling DeLorean and... some sort of third vehicle...

That third one would be Biff Tannen's Ford Super De Luxe Convertible... covered in a pile of manure.

I honestly thought this was a well-done spoof when I first saw it, but it's 100% real!

Here's a shot of the scene in question, in case you forgot. Seriously? Was there really no other vehicle they could have used to round out the wave? Did they really reach the bottom of the barrel after two cars and have to resort to using a sh*t-covered convertible?

Fortunately Mattel had the presence of mind to make the poop pile removable, so you can pop it off and display the car feces-free.

"Manure-covered toys. I hate manure-covered toys!"

Scraping The Bottom Of The Star Trek Barrel

Each year the San Diego Comic Con features a series of overpriced, limited edition "exclusive" action figures and toys for sale.

This year Mattel's getting in on the act, offering an exclusive Hot Wheels 1964 Buick Riviera. Oddly enough, the toy car comes with a tiny Mr. Spock figure, casually leaning against the hood. It sells for a whopping $20, which is quite a markup from Hot Wheel's usual $1.50.

Apparently this is from that little-seen Star Trek episode in which the Enterprise is captured by a race of alien hot rod enthusiasts, and Spock saves the day by showing off his awesome cherry ride, which shames them into releasing the ship.

Actually the exclusive is based on this publicity photo of actor Leonard Nimoy in full Spock regalia, leaning against the car he purchased during the first season with his Star Trek paycheck.

OK, so it's kind of an amusing photo (in that "Spock faintly smiles while slightly raising one eyebrow" way), but does it really deserve to have a toy based on it? It definitely feels like they're reaching here. 

What's next, an action figure of James Doohan polishing the five hundred piece Craftsman toolset he bought during Season 2?

As unnecessary as the Spock figure is, it's still not as silly as the Ice Cream Guy action figure from the Star Wars line.

I'm A Grown Man And I Bought This: Catwoman Classic Batman Action FIgure

It's been nearly five decades since the Batman TV series premiered on ABC in 1966, and toys based on the show are just now starting to trickle out.

Several companies have begun releasing Batman action figures in various scales. Neca got the rights to make 18" figures and Hot Toys is releasing high end 12" figures later this year (huzzah!). 

Mattel secured the 6" license. Last year they released several Batman TV Series figures, including Batman, The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin and Surf's Up Batman, which I reviewed here. They also made a Robin figure, that you can only get in a special two pack with Batman (a blatant marketing move) and a pretty nice Batmobile scaled to the figures.

And now finally they've released the much anticipated Catwoman figure, to complete the line. Why Catwoman wasn't released with the rest of the figures, I have no idea.

At first I thought maybe they were planning to produce less of her to artificially drive up demand so they could charge more for her (which toy companies do all the time), but she cost the same as the other figures. It's a mystery.

Obviously this is the Julie Newmar version of Catwoman, from the first two seasons of the series. As likenesses go, this is a pretty good one. It's definitely Julie Newmar we're looking at here. They even got her odd trifurcated eyebrows down (Really, spell check? You don't flag "trifurcated?"). 

By the way, Lee Meriwether portrayed Catwoman in the Batman movie, and Earth Kitt played her in the show's third season.

I remember watching the show back in the day and absolutely hating Eartha Kitt. Not because she was black, mind you, but simply because she wasn't Julie Newmar. I was a kid and didn't cotton to change. As an adult I've come to appreciate Kitt's performance though.

Actually the show was pretty progressive and probably quite provocative for the 1960s. There was always a degree of sexual tension between Catwoman and Batman, and I'll bet the sight of a black woman aggressively flirting with a white man-- on a kid's show yet-- raised more than a few eyebrows (trifurcated as well as normal).

Catwoman comes dressed in her traditional slinky, form-hugging suit, which in reality was quite a feat of engineering. Kudos to whoever designed it. I have a feeling the amount of dads who watched the show increased dramatically when Catwoman guest-starred.

Her necklace is sculpted into her body rather than being a separate piece, which is probably a good idea. It won't get lost in the shag carpeting that way.

Note that she's also wearing her cat ears, as is only natural for someone who calls herself "Catwoman." You hear that, Christopher Nolan, and your movie in which your no-fun version of Catwoman doesn't wear cat ears, and you don't even call her "Catwoman" in dialog?

I don't really have anything to say about this photo. Let's just sit quietly and enjoy the view, shall we?

I naturally assumed that since Catwoman's wearing heels that she'd never be able to stand by herself. Imagine my surprise when I found out she not only can stand, but is pretty darned stable. It's like a miracle.

Female action figures are typically shorter than their male counterparts, but Catwoman appears to be the same height as Batman. I don't think that's a mistake on Mattel's part. Adam West is reportedly 6' 2," while Newmar is a whopping 5' 11!" Now that's a big gal!

Catwoman is quite flexible and posable, just like the real thing.

Like all the figures in the line, Catwoman comes with a stand featuring one of the sound effect title screens from the show.

And now we come to the mystery of the cards. Each figure came with a photo card, which when laid out formed an image of the Batcave. 

Unfortunately I couldn't figure out how the cards from the first five figures were supposed to line up.

No matter how I arranged them, they just didn't work.

I finally figured out why. I was missing the Catwoman card. Derp! Once she was finally released, the cards fit together perfectly. Mystery solved!

Here's the other side of the cards, featuring paintings of each of the characters. It was nice of Mattel to include these I supposed, but I have no idea what to do with them and honestly they're probably going to go in a drawer.

I'm very happy Mattel gave us a Catwoman-- many times toy companies skip the female characters, as they think young boys won't want to play with a dumb ol' girl toy. I think they realized that this line was only going to appeal to people "of a certain age" though, and that's no doubt why they included her.

And it only took fifty years to get a line of decent Batman TV toys. Bring on Wave 2!

I'm A Grown Man And I Bought This: Batman Classic TV Series Batman And Robin

It's been nearly five decades since the Batman TV series premiered on ABC in 1966, and toys based on the show are just now starting to trickle out

Several companies have begun releasing Batman action figures in various scales. Mattel's the first out of the gate with their new 6 inch line. Last month they released their first wave of figures, consisting of Batman, The Joker, The Riddler, The Penguin and Surf's Up Batman.

The Julie Newmar version of Catwoman was supposed to be included in the wave, but at the last minute Mattel decided to pull her so they can sell her separately and charge more.

But on to the review at hand, the Batman And Robin Two Pack. Mattel, in their infinite wisdom, decided that Robin would only be available in a special (read expensive) two pack of figures. So if you already bought the Batman figure from the regular line, you've gotta buy another in order to get Robin. Nice of them, eh?

The figures are packaged to resemble the famous "scaling the side of a building" scenes from Batman.

Here's the set out of the box. You could probably display the figures this way, as the inner lining forms a nice backdrop, but that's no fun. Take your figures out of the box! Otherwise you might as just well own a photo of them! 

Here's the Dynamic Duo freed from their packaging prison (which took some doing, let me tell you!).

This is the exact same Batman figure that's sold separately in the regular line, with a couple of exceptions. First of all Mattel finally gave him a Batarang accessory, something the original figure sorely lacked and absolutely should have had.

Right now the Batarang is tied to his hand with a clear rubber band. I'm afraid to untie it for fear he won't be able to hold it on his own. His hands are sculpted to hold something much bigger than the tiny little Batarang.

The second difference is the two wires sewn into each side of his cape, to help pose it. The wires don't work all that well and frankly just get in the way. Robin has the wires in his cape as well.

The wires are so you can pose the capes horizontally as they did on the show. Smart cookie that you are, you no doubt know that whenever Batman and Robin would climb up the side of a building they were very obviously walking horizontally along the floor while the camera was turned 90 degrees. When viewed from the proper angle, it looked (sort of) like they were climbing vertically. To help sell the illusion, Batman and Robin's capes stuck out horizontally with the aid of wires, so they'd appear to be hanging straight down when viewed on TV.

One last thing about the capes-- they both came with an enormous and obnoxious copyright tag sewn into them. Seriously, these tags were an inch wide and a good two and a half inches long. None of the figures in the regular line had these tags, so I'm not sure why they were included in this set. The first thing you'll want to do is cut the ridiculous things off. Be careful though, as you could easily cut into the fabric of the cape if you're not careful.

This is a nicely done Robin figure. His costume is accurate, he has realistic proportions and is actually a bit shorter than the Batman figure, as he should be.

Robin's quite well articulated too. He has a ball jointed head and shoulders, cut bicep, wrist, waist and thigh joints and elbow, knee and ankle joints. Unfortunately he also has that ugly "ab-crunch" joint that plagues the Batman figure.There are better, less obvious ways to include that joint than what they went with here.

Here's a rear view of Robin. Still not a fan of cloth capes, but whaddya gonna do? If you look closely you'll see two small holes in the fabric of his cape. That's where he was lashed down in the package in his climbing pose. They actually punctured his cape to secure him in the box! Stupid, stupid Mattel!

Be very careful when removing the figure from the package or you could very easily rip the cape to shreds.

Sculpting-wise Robin looks pretty good. I can definitely see Burt Ward in there. The paint job's very well done, especially for a figure of this scale. Remember he's blown up quite a bit here, so any imperfections you see in this photo won't be evident in person.

If you look closely you can see that Robin's legs have a definite grayish cast to them, especially when compared to the flesh tone of his forearms. At first I chalked this up to a painting mistake on Mattel's part (like The Riddler's color-mismatched limbs in the regular line).

But the more I think about it the more I;m convinced that this color difference was intentional. On the TV show Burt Ward wore flesh colored tights as part of his costume (can't have a Robin with hairy legs, after all). I think they deliberately painted the figure's legs a slightly different color to simulate the tights! Well done, Mattel!

Here's the climbing wall and rope accessories. Note that the box says "Use Base On Shelf Or Wall!" Whoever wrote that was a lying liar who lies.

You can indeed hang the base from a wall, but there's absolutely no way to use it vertically on a shelf. In fact I had to prop it up with something just to get this shot.

The only way to use it on a shelf is to lay it down horizontally like this. Is that what the box meant when it said "use base on shelf?" Would it have killed them to have included some kind of stand to hold the wall up vertically, so you could pose the figures like they're actually climbing it? 

The rope fits into the figures' hands OK, but tends to plop out if you look at it too hard. It's also impossible to get rid of the copious slack in the rope too. I kind of wish they'd just skipped the whole wall climbing theme and given us a plain two pack of figures. It'd no doubt have been cheaper that way as well.
 

I'm also curious as to why the wall isn't just a simple rectangle. Why all the indentions in both sides? Did cutting out those sections in the sides save money on plastic?

Why didn't they make it a rectangle, put both windows on the right side and then have the figures stick to the left side, just like on the show?

Surprisingly the windows actually open up (with quite a bit of fiddling), which is a nice touch. Now you can have your other action figures stick their heads out the windows to recreate the cameos in the climbing scenes from the TV show!

Speaking of the celebrity window cameos: amazingly there were only fourteen of them over the course of the series. It seemed like there were a lot more than that though. Most of the celebrities are still recognizable today, but a few of them you'd only recognize if you were a child of the 1960s. The cameos in order:

• Jerry Lewis as himself.

• Dick Clark as himself.

• Van Williams and Bruce Lee as the Green Hornet and Kato, from The Green Hornet show of course.

• Sammy Davis Jr. as himself.

• Bill Dana as Jose Jimenez from The Bill Dana Show (definitely a product of the 1960s).

• Howard Duff as Sam Stone from the TV show Felony Squad (I'm betting his show needed the ratings boost a cameo on Batman would provide, since it doesn't seem like the type of show a kid would watch).

• Warner Klemperer as Colonel Klink from Hogan's Heroes (no explanation as to why the Colonel appeared to be the same age as he was back in WWII).

• Ted Cassidy as Lurch from The Addams Family.

• Don Ho, perennially popular Hawaiian entertainer.

• Andy Devine as Santa Claus (!).

• Art Linkletter, famous 1960s TV host.

• Edward G. Robinson (who ironically was famous for playing gangsters in the movies).

• Susie Knickerbocker (definitely a product of the 1960s! Apparently she was a gossip columnist and member of the jet set back in the day).

• Cyril Lord as The Carpet King. Who the hell's that, you ask? Good question. Although he sounds like he could be a Bat-villain, he was supposedly a well known businessman who sold expensive carpets in England in the 1960s. William Dozier, producer of Batman, bought a fancy carpet from him and paid him with a cameo on the show! So because William Dozier's wife wanted a Persian rug we had to look at Cyril Lord and act like we knew who he was.

There was only one cameo appeared in Season One (Jerry Lewis). The rest were all from Season Two. There were no cameos in Season Three.

So what's the verdict? Is the set worth buying or should you give it a pass? The figures are fairly well done, but the wall and rope are pretty much wastes of plastic and time. 

But don't let that stop you from buying it. If you're a fan of the TV show or you've already bought the regular line, then definitely buy the set, as this is the only way to get Robin. As I said in my review of the original line, it's taken fifty years to get figures based on the show. You can either buy these or wait another fifty!

Read all about the first wave of Classic Batman figures here.

I'm A Grown Man And I Bought This: Mattel 12" Ghostbusters

I've been a big fan of the movie Ghostbusters ever since I saw in in the theater back in 1984 (yeah, I'm gettin' old). The sequel I didn't like so much, but the original is as perfect a movie as you're ever likely to find.

The only problem was that in all these years, no one ever released any official Ghostbusters action figures. Oh sure, they had a whole line in the 1980s based on The Real Ghostbusters cartoon series, but it just wasn't the same. I wanted toys from the movie, dammit!

From what I've heard there were many toy companies that wanted to make GB toys, but there was always one thing stopping them. One Mr. William James Murray. The other actors from the film were more than happy to have their faces immortalized in plastic, but for many years Bill Murray was always the holdout. Since he was for all intents and purposes the star of the film, there wasn't much point in making toys without his character.

Then a miracle happened: the Toy Gods answered my prayers. Bill Murray finally deigned to allow his precious likeness to be used and Mattel announced they were making official movie version Ghostbusters figures. Huzzah!

These figures actually starting coming out sometime in 2009. Mattel released one every three or four months until the team was complete in 2010. However, they were priced at $60 each. Believe it or not, that's actually not a bad price for a 12" action figure these days. In fact, most 12" figures from Hong Kong toy company Hot Toys regularly run well over $200! Yeah, toys are crazy expensive these days.

So even though someone was finally making Ghostbusters figures, I couldn't afford to buy them. Thanks, Universe! You are hilarious. I went about my life and eventually forgot about them, remaining Ghostbusterless.

Then another miracle happened; just last month Mattel had a big sale on Ghostbusters merchandise. At last the price was right, and I finally managed to get my Ghostbusters figures!

I picked up the Peter Venkman, Ray Stanz and Egon Spengler figures. Mattel also made a Winston Zeddemore figure, but... alas, I didn't get him. I desperately wanted him, but I had to draw a financial  line in the sand somewhere, so I limited myself to the three main members. Sorry Winston. Maybe next time you're on sale.

By the way, these are online exclusive figures, so don't expect to be able to waltz into your local Target or Toys R Us and buy them. The only place you can find them is at Mattel's online store, mattycollector.com.

The figures come in large, fairly sturdy plastic and cardboard cases. If you're one of those weirdos that keeps their toys in the box, then you're in luck. The boxes look great and the figures are clearly visible inside.

Although the boxes appear to be collector friendly, I was surprised to see that they most definitely are not. Not that I cared, mind you. I open all my figures and I pretty much destroyed the boxes trying to get them out. Keep that in mind if you plan on taking out the figure and placing it back in the box.

Oh, we're not nearly done! There are tons more photos after the jump! Read the rest by clicking below.