#i found a doll on ebay and i want to buy it. it’s relatively cheap. i have a disc drive for my laptop.

[prettyboysmlm]

hm. should i make a rash decision once more.

[bwprowl]

It’s a bit of a slow news week as we inch towards the twin titanic reveal-fests of Winter WonFes and Toy Fair, but we’ve still got a few things to check out, with superstar Sentai and Russian-style Rangers from either side of the pond, plus some surprising new Marvel drops. I’ll also mull over available Transformers bootlegs, plus a recent release from a line I haven’t looked at enough. All that and an adorable, Nendorable Korra-ble, here on Tuesday Night Toys!

New Stuff: Cosmonauts

A new blockbuster movie means an explosion of new, previously-unheard-of merchandise for the source material. I saw it with Transformers back when the first film came out in 2007, and it’s set to happen again with Power Rangers and that movie next month that I’m still patently unsure about. In amongst all the new Funko Pops and plush toys and other collectible gewgaws, we’ll be getting this bizarre little piece: A set of Russian-style nesting dolls designed after the five original Rangers, plus Alpha 5! PPW Toys is putting these out, and as far as esoteric shelf-space hoggers go, you could do a lot worse. I hope for more fun stuff like this to come out of the renewed Power Rangers licensing blitz this movie will be leading, for better or for worse.

On the other side of the Power Coin, if you thought you could escape my pre-premier Kyuranger hype even here, then you thought way wrong. Pre-orders for the toys of the newly-numerous Super Sentai series have been steadily going up, headlined by the main mecha: The shamelessly Scramble-City-style KyurenOh! 

Boasting the unique-to-Sentai ability for each individual unit (here called ‘Voyagers’) to form either an arm or a leg around the red Ranger’s main Shishi Voyager, this ‘bot will start with an unprecedented number of configurations, especially including the four extra Voyagers that are sold separately from the main set. And how cool do Hebitsukai Voyager and Tenbin Voyager look?

Surprising no one, I think I’m going all-in on the mecha on this one, but as with Zyuohger, I’ll be sticking with the smaller, cheaper, but more posable mini-pla versions. Assisting in this is that AmiAmi is now offering those in single sets, for half the price of the full boxes you had to buy before. I’m glad I already got my pre-order in, since they’re all sold out already, natch.

Some new Marvel Legends figures were surprisingly revealed a little while ago. These would be the 3 ¾” Legends that were rebranded from the Marvel Universe line, and they’ll be filling out the Marvel Cinematic corners of your smaller display space. Looks like there will be at least three two packs all based on the most recent movies in the line: Dr. Strange with an astral projection of himself, Star-Lord and Yondu, and the current iteration of Spider-Man with the Vulture he’ll be fighting in that Homecoming movie. The Guardians of the Galaxy set is the most appealing to me, of course (look at Yondu’s goofy grin, he looks great!), but I really want that Spider-Man movie to be good, so if it is, I’ll likely get that one as well.

Wishlist: Lockoffs

Transformers has always been a line that attracted countless counterfeit versions of its wares, from dime-store knockoffs to convincingly-recreated G1 bootlegs. More recently though, a different variety has emerged, as Chinese eBay accounts and other somewhat-shady places offer tweaked fake versions of relatively-recent molds. You see these all over the place searching for TFs on eBay; they mostly encompass the recent movie toys, either being versions in new color schemes, or upscaled with die-cast added for value. There’s of course that delightful AoE Hound with the bio that was written based on Thew, but I recently had to throw this big ol’ black Lockdown on my watchlist, because the prospect of a bigger, badder version of design I liked (from a film I otherwise didn’t) is rather appealing, and these things don’t even cost that much! Maybe I’d feel a little bad going in on a fake, but not that much, as I spend plenty on Hasbro’s Transformers already. If nothing else, these are interesting purely from a standpoint of showing all the various pillars that make money off Transformers’ selling power, whether they legitimately should or not.

Speaking of things that popped back onto my radar, the ol’ Pose Skeleton line it appears is still going strong, with plenty of playsets and even a bunch of animal and dinosaur companions for your bony buddies! These little things have always been a hoot, especially with the accessorized options you can lend them, all for pretty dang cheap. The latest expansion just-released for your flesh-challenged family is the ‘Cute Person’, a shorter, pink-tinted skelley with a cute lil’ bow headband. It’s a good excuse to add another to your skeleton hoard, even if you had a few already.

And of course, unless you were living under a rock for the past couple weeks, you know the first Yuri on Ice Nendoroid went up for pre-order.

Yes, I still need to watch this show

On Desk: Uncommon Korra

Korra from the titular The Legend Of series was a pretty unexpected release for the Nendoroid line, for being a western cartoon as well as the show having been over for almost a year and a half when the toy was first revealed (GSC tends to like to do very recent, current series for their toys). Response must have been good though, since they opened the orders from western-only to worldwide through their usual Japanese avenues (which amusingly meant I was able to order this west-focused toy of an American character for cheaper through a Japanese shop), and even added a few extra accessories to it at the last minute!

The instructions even include English. They know what they're about.

Korra does feel like GSC testing the waters with this kind of release though. Even with the extra accessories, she still feels a bit bare-bones. She has a few different arms and legs, but they're all in service of just a few different generic action poses; the 'extra mile' Nendos sometimes go towards recreating specific points of the series isn't found here. She also only has two faces, and since one is the Avatar state, she really only has the one facial expression, which is almost unheard of for this line (especially given that Korra did have quite a few memorable faces throughout the show).

Granted, the base figure itself is very nice. All the details are present and nicely-accurately conveyed at the scaled-down chibi proportions. The hand-poses she comes with in particular are nicely effective for what they are, and her little hair-dainglies can even swivel around a bit! And she can use what she has to assume a variety of cool bending-based action poses (accompanied by the extremely nice elemental accessories). The fire and water streams especially look great, and just on their own make for an unmistakable awesome desktop Korra.

The one really cool thing the toy can do is assume that aforementioned Avatar state. Swapping in the faceplate and arranging all four element effect parts around does the trick, and it's actually surprisingly easy to get it all set up (nowhere near the madness I engaged in with Chris), and looks admittedly pretty impressive when it's all done. As a display piece, this might be the best way to default to having your Korra. It's eye-catching and adorable, as a Nendoroid should be.

Overall, Korra's impressive mostly that she got made, that GSC branched out like this. She's pretty light as far as Nendoroids go, not a bad toy by any means but not outstanding either. If you're a fan of the show like I am, she's pretty much a must-own, but there's simply not enough to her to recommend as a general purchase. I am really glad I got her though, and am excited to see if GSC follows up with anything else.

You enjoy the rest of your night, everyone! Have fun, I'll be here when you get back!