Action Figure #818: Jazwares Pokemon Select Tyranitar

 Catching'em all will be expensive at this rate!

 Well, I just paid a pretty penny for this Tyranitar here, but being one of my favorite Pokemon... I had to bite the bullet. Luckily, now that I know about this line, I'll be able to get new ones at release for much cheaper. Spoilers? Spoilers!

 Now THIS is the Tyranitar figure I meant to get when I bought that 4 inch Tyranitar. No harm done, mistake corrected! As far as the sculpt goes, it's a perfect representation of Tyranitar. I think this version's shade of green is closer to how it looks in the modern games, but I kinda like the other one a tiny bit better.  Unlike the 4 inch version, however, the paint apps are perfect, and no silly action gimmick this time around!

 His only accessory is a base to help stand him up in case you have a had time balancing him on its tiny feet or for some funky poses.

 And, much like with Typhlosion, articulation is were everything falls apart, only that Tyranitar is even more limited in how it articulates. Let's start from the top! While the neck and head are quite obviously separate pieces you can't turn the head, not one bit, but at least you can open and close its jaw, I guess. While the arms are segmented in three pieces, there's not much you can do besides raising his arms or putting them down, that said, there's a tiny little hinge at the elbow bend, and you can rotate its forearms. It's not much, but it's better than nothing. The chest and abdomen are clearly separate pieces, but no articulation here either. And the legs can move about 90 degrees upwards, and no further. The feet can pivot, but it feels tense, as the feet try to rever to facing forward, and he also has tiny toe-joints. Lastly, the tail can be raised or lower a bit, or by rotating of its segments, to the side. It's kinda lame. He is a bit shorter than Bucky Cap.

 Well... the sculpt is fantastic, it is an excellent looking Tyranitar, that's for sure, but the articulations lets it down SO hard. Even Typhlosion was a bit better in that regard. Ah, well, at least it's a six inch figure of one of my favorite Pokemon!

5.5

Action Figure #817: Power Rangers Lightning Collection In Space Pink Ranger

 I wonder if her satellite gun can pick up some TV waves...

 Enough detours, back to the In Space Rangers we go, and joining up next is the In Space Pink Ranger which, by the by, I scored alongside the Zeo Yellow Ranger for very cheap! At least it gave me a good reason to get started on the Zeo Rangers.

 While I thought this costume didn't look so good in yellow... it does look really nice in pink. It's a good looking design with a nice color scheme, whatcha want me to say! 

 She comes with a blaster gun, a satellite gun, and unmasked head, a unique effect piece for her satellite gun and... I think an open palm and a fist... if they weren't the Yellow Zeo Ranger's that is! While the SatGun looks kinda silly by itself I think that she poses really neatly with it.

 This figure seems to be built on a revised female buck before they went for pinless joints. Elbows are still single jointed, but they have butterfly joints that do add some little extra range. Her ab crunch is on a ball joint, while the waist is on a hinge. She has double jointed knees with swivels on her thighs and boots. The skirt is short enough as not to limit her legs too much. She's a bit shorter than Bucky Cap.

 Overall, I think this one is a neat Pink Ranger. The costume looks really good in pink and I liked her weaponry. As per usual, the articulation is decent enough, for an older Hasbro female buck anyways! So, yeah, she's a welcome addition to my growing In Space collection.

7.0

Action Figure #816: Power Rangers Lightning Collection Zeo Yellow Ranger

 Are those 'chucks? It made sense for Mikey to be the Yellow Turtle Ranger after all!

 It's about damn time I started swelling my Zeo Ranger ranks, and why not start with the best colored ranger, the Zeo Yellow Ranger. Zeo was probably the last PR season I watched in earnest before I fully outgrew the franchise, so maybe I should've started getting some Zeos earlier!

 Well, the Zeo designs are curious. I don't think having the lips being part of the helmets without any color division just looks weird, and some of the visors, like this one, don't seem very practical. Being a yellow Ranger, the golden accents don't look as good as they'd probably look on the other Rangers. That said, the Zeo designs make up for their oddities with their fun armament, for you see...

 She comes with a sword and a blaster, both which can be equipped on her belt, but she also comes with two nunchucks, a blaster effect, and unmasked head and... I thought she came with no alternate hands, but looking at the photo I took of the figure in the box... I see some hand pegs rearing their head! So I must've misplaced them when taking my new figures home, either hers.... or the Ranger's from the next entryy!

 This figure seems to be built on a revised female buck before they went for pinless joints. Elbows are still single jointed, but they have butterfly joints that do add some little extra range. Her ab crunch is on a ball joint, while the waist is on a hinge. She has double jointed knees with swivels on her thighs and boots. The skirt is short enough as not to limit her legs too much. She's a bit shorter than Bucky Cap.

 She's an OK figure, but nothing too exciting. The costumes with golden accents just don't work as well with the yellow rangers! She's fine, she's OK, the Zeo design just isn't the most exciting thing ever.

6.0

Action Figure #815: Power Rangers Lightning Collection Dino Fury Blue Ranger

 The third TRIceratops Blue Ranger is home!

 Why let go of a good motif, so here is the third, and last, Triceratops Blue Ranger, the Dino Fury Blue Ranger!

 Just like I gushed about the previous Dino Fury rangers, this Blue Ranger is no exception, as the dinosaur knight look is incredible. The asymmetrical design is a banger, and the black, blue, silver and gold color scheme looks really nice too. The only issue I had is that his blue gripping hand is really hard, so putting on the sword was a hassle and a half.

 For accessories he includes two gripping hands, a fist and an open hand, as well as an alternate unmorphed head and a yellow effect for the sword he also comes with.

 Articulation is exceptional as always, with double jointed elbows and knees, butterfly joints, swivels at the biceps, thighs and boots, a ball jointed ab crunch and a hinged waist. Everything you need to get him to look cool. Surprisingly, he is as tall as Bucky Cap.

 Man, these Dino Fury designs are SO good, it's a shame Hasbro didn't get to finish the line before cancelling it. But, yeah, good figure, nice paint, great articulation and smooth joints too!

9.0

Action Figure #814: G. I. Joe Classified Series Cobra-La Royal Guard

 World's most expensive army builder.

 About time I added a new JOE into my collection! Believe it or not, G. I. Joe eventually got super weird, adding the Cobra-La faction to take over the Cobras... but only in the original show, as it seems most sequels ignore them. Here we have the Cobra-La Royal Guard upon which I knew I had to add to my collection the moment I saw him. Now, if Serpentor could get a re-release...

 This guys is the most expensive Army Builder. He is 42 bucks, but comes with a ton of different pieces so that you can make different configurations of the guy. To note, he comes with four alternate heads. A scarred, serious bald head, a psychotic smile head and... sadly, two helmets that aren't hollow, so have to remove one of the heads in order to use either, which, if you ask me, kinda sucks. Making them hollow would've added so much more playability to the guy! He also comes with two sets of pauldrons, one is bigger and looks much more badass, and I kinda wanted to have one of each, but the bigger one restricts the shoulder too much, so I settled for the smaller shoulder pads. He comes with two sets of arm-guards too, some are mere arm guards and the others have a bone blade protruding from it's end. He has a removable soft-goods cape, a gun, two removable insect wings, a bone saw and a bone-staff-lance that I sadly lost when I moved the figure from my mother's to my house. Bummer! As you can see, he can be configured in a large number of different ways, but, sadly, he is too expensive for a figure to build an army with!

 The sculpt itself is very nice, I love the muted greys and reds he was sculpted in. He has a nice, creamy looking bone highlights. For some reason, the bone parts in the helmets have a black wash... but no other bone accent on him does, not even his weapon, so it looks kinda out of place. Aside from that, he is a great looking figure. I love all the rough feeling texture he has all throughout his armor, honestly, the unmasked heads give him mini-boss aura which I adored.

 Articulation hits all the usual Classified trappings. Double jointed elbows and knees, drop-down hips, swivels on his biceps, thighs and boots... albeit due to the armor on the thighs and boots, you can't really turn them 360 degrees. He has butterfly joints, but the added range is minimal, and the ball jointed ab-crunch AND waist barely have any forward or backward tilt. Overall, while not the most impressive, it's good enough for the type of character that he is. He is a bit taller than Bucky Cap.

 I really liked this guy. I love the good degree of customization he affords, although some parts, like the helmets being heads, or the big pauldrons limiting arm movement, could've been thought out better. That said, he is a badass looking villain, so I'm happy he is in my shelf now.

8.0

Action Figure #813: Star Wars The Black Series Droideka Destroyer Droid

 Goddamn, I love how Droideka sounds.

 I've been meaning to get the Droideka Destroyer Droid for a while now, as he was, to me, the most iconic part of The Phantom Menace. This was the first Star Wars movie I was gonna watch on the cinema, and here come the Jedi, the do short work of the droids... until these guys come around and they have to run away. And in the TPM videogame they also made them deadly! So... yeah, I've been wanting to get one of these guys for a while now.

 For starters, the sculpt is beautiful. While this is not the most detailed guy around, they made all his robotic engineering look really good, with rivets on his blasters, cables and pumps on his arms and what not. He is molded in metallic maroon and gunmetal grey that looks really nice too. So, on the whole, I can't complain about how the figure looks.

 That said, do not try to get him into a ball, this is not a transformer.

 The articulation, well... since this is a non-humanoid figure, there's a lot to say about it. From the top, his head and neck are joined by a tiny ball joint. It's so tiny that I'm scared it might break, and, I've owned him for little over a day and his head is already loose on it. The neck piece is rather large, reaching  down to his ball-formed pelvis-part thing, but it connects to the 'spine' through a double hinge that lets you prop it a bit upwards or downward, but very little. The spine connects to the pelvis on a hinge, so he does have some waist articulation of sorts. The arms are hinged to the chest, so you can move them forwards and backwards a bit. They are connected to the 'forearms' by a single joint that can turn, but sine there are some cables in the way, you won't get 360 degrees without breaking them. These forearms are connected to hinged blaster 'hands'. On his 'hips' there are two plates on his sides that are hinged and can be moved. Lastly, he has three legs, two on his sides and on the back which can be moved to the sides as well as upwards and downwards, so you can get him trying to look taller too. While he could be as tall as Bucky Cap, his 'accurate' standing pose has him standing a bit lower... but he is wide, so he is, overall, a rather large figure.

 While the articulation isn't all that, I can't really fault them, this is a complicated figure to sculpt right, so the fact that we get any articulation at all deserves some praise. On the whole, it's a nice piece, although the neck could've been a bit better.

8.0

Action Figure #812: Marvel Legends Grizzly (...or Ursa Major)

 Just bear with me, man!

 I wasn't 100% sure if I was going to get Grizzly but, well, while he is kinda silly, he came out during my favorite era of Spider-Man, the 70's-80's. So... yeah, plus, Rhino needed some company.

 Grizzly is a recycled Ursa Major, to the point that he comes with an alternate set of paws and head, with an articulated jaw, in case you prefer the X-Men. As for the figure itself... it's a guy wearing a bear costume, I really don't have much more to say. The sculpt looks good, and he has a darker brown wash to highlight some of the musculature, which is very welcome. If I had any other thing to say... well, maybe a pair of fists would've been nice to have him be able to punch something.

 That said... he has some of the best accessories for a villain. He has the aforementioned Ursa Major head and paws, but also... a money bag, a set of order god ingots, a set of spread gold ingots and a lone gold ingot. As silly as it sounds, these accessories can help with any other street criminal display, they look fantastic. 

 Grizzly has single jointed elbows and knees which barely reach 90 degrees, the usual for the larger figures. By now maybe we should've started getting double jointed elbows and knees with these, but I don't mind since these larger figures don't really need to be nimble. He has useless swivels on his biceps, since you can turn the elbows, but the swivels on his thighs do help since the knees can't turn. Probably a byproduct of being a BAF, but the right leg kept coming out at the swivel, so I had to use glue to make the peg thicker, since then, no issues. The ab crunch is on a ball peg with little range forward, but a lot of range backward...

 ...at the cost of looking like this. Not a nice sight. He is as tall as Rhino, and taller than Buck Gap.

 Grizzly is... he is unimpressive. The idea of a man wearing a suit is the kind of silliness the 70's were filled with. But he ain't a bad figure, and being able to be turned into Ursa Major is a neat extra. His accessories are dope, however. So... yeah, I don't think it's a must've, but I'm not disappointed from my purchase.

7.0