Retro Week: Mini Figures of the '80s & Fast Food toys of the '90s

A random assortment of Retro mini figures

I've just come back from another week in Toronto (happily, this visit was for a wedding rather than a funeral), so I was able to snap a few more photos of my mother's basement toy trove.

Out of the Box: Shatterstar (ToyBiz X-men/X-Force)

I was preparing a holiday-themed photo-shoot earlier this week, but the weather decided to not cooperate and a lack of sunlight meant those photos weren't going to happen.  As a result, I distracted myself by digging through the retro/discount bins and looking for more of ToyBiz's early '90s X-men figure, and Shatterstar (a fitting companion for the Rictor I found last month) joined my collection.

Shatterstar

In the box.

As is typical for superheros of that era he's awesomely (and ridiculously) over-the-top: a huge ponytail, an open-mouthed grimace, a pair of giant swords and a degree of muscularity that went out of fashion by the late '90s.  The features are fairly broadly done, but the figure (face and outfit) are neatly-painted, which isn't always the case for figures of this vintage, so that's certainly a plus.


The character might not look much like this in the comics these days (he was primarily used in  humour and romance plotlines when X-Factor v.1 was wrapping up last year), but the figure is a perfect reflection of how he was drawn 20 years ago.

A closer view of the face.

The figure has 10 points of articulation - shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, neck, and waist - two more than the Rictor figure (whose neck and waist were fixed).  As with the other figure, the boots are made out of a slightly softer vinyl than the rest of the figure, and that softer vinyl appears to have degraded somewhat.  Shatterstar's boots were slightly less sticky than Rictor's were, but the oiliness was still fairly noticeable.  It cleaned up fairly easily, but I imagine that the boots will continue to degrade over time.

Dual Sword Action, as described on the box.

As with all of the figures in this line, the toy has a unique action feature: "Dual Sword Action" in this case. Before taking the figure out of the box, I assumed that this would be one of those push-a-button/arms-move type actions, but it's actually less intuitive than that.   In order to make the arms swing from the shoulders, you need to push the back so that the figure rotates quickly from the waist.  It works (in a fashion), but it's such an awkward way of providing a fairly standard arm-swinging feature that I wonder why they bothered coming up with something so (relatively) complicated.

Overall I'd say that this is a solid playline figure - this Shatterstar may not be collector quality, but he's an awesome example of the ridiculousness of early 90s superheros, so I'm totally pleased with him on that front.

Out of the Box: Rictor (Toy Biz X-Men/X-Force)

It's been a while since I've talked about a '90s action figure, so it's time to remedy that and unbox this 1994 Toy Biz figure of X-men spin-off character Julio Rictor (specifically an X-Force character at the time this toy's production, although I always think of the character as part of either the earlier New Mutants or the more recent X-Factor).

The figure has that classic early '90s superhero look, with the muscle-heavy body, an oversized weapon and a  ridiculous outfit (the character hasn't looked like this in the comics for a long time now).  The figure takes a final step into the completely absurd with the action feature which is called "Power Vibes" - you wind it up and he moves slightly.  The motion is supposed to recall the character's seismic/shockwave powers but it actually just looks like wiggling.

In the box.

Still, the ridiculous costume is well-painted, and while the lack of neck gives the face a certain oddness, it's not a terrible likeness of the then-current art style (although he's not so fair-skinned in the comics).  Strangely, the boots are a softer vinyl than the rest of the body and seem to have degraded over time, so they're now a bit greasy, which is unfortunate.

The figure has 8 points of articulation - shoulders, elbows, hips, knees.  The lack of neck articulation is a shame, but not a surprise given the lack of neck in general.

The lone accessory is the gun, which is decently sculpted and fits perfectly in the figure's hand.  Most impressively to me (given some toys of this age), he's able to balance easily with the gun in hand.

Side view: the wind-up knob is very conspicuous here.

Overall, I'm in love with the complete ridiculousness of this figure - it's not particular good, but I'm entertained, and that's the most important part, right? ;)

More of the same line.
What absurd features do they have? 
And do I need to hunt them down to find out?