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Bon jovi friday, as it turns out.

on the other hand, it’s going to be a good year to be a 3 3/4” fan. (not so much in this economy, but you know what i mean…)

not only do we get the new little trek figures, but playmates has also picked up the terminator salvation license, which if nothing else means a bunch of endoskeletons. kind of hard to screw those up, although i’m sure they’ll try their hardest.

(side note: i was looking at the terminator voice-changer mask and the battle-damage skin patches to reveal your terminator-ness to your friends, and the 3 3/4” + 6” + 12” toyline, and my first thought was, hey, this is just like batman begins last year, this feels vaguely inappropriate for a movie about robot genocide. then i remembered, a, i had plenty of aliens, predator, and terminator 2 toys when i was ten, and b, they did dark knight toys not because it was a kids movie, but because, you know, batman. also, battle-damage face decals with sculpted terminator bits? where the hell where those when T2 was the greatest movie of all time?)

there’s still plenty of star wars figures coming, many from the clone wars cartoon, including anakin, obi-wan, and ahsoka in retro spacesuits with dome helmets. also gijoe movie figures, a few greatest hits from the 25th anniversary line, and a few figures from the warren ellis scripted ‘gijoe: resolute’ dvd animation that’s riding the coat-tails of the new movie.

additionally, hasbro is using their marvel license to full effect. not content to stick with the standard six inch spiderman, iron man, and marvel legends stuff, they’ve just started a 3 3/4” ‘marvel universe’ line, which is pretty rad already. that’s getting comic packs, like the joes and the star wars lines have been doing, which are all from secret wars and feature redecoed figures in their 80s costumes.

(side note again: if hasbro does a star wars or gijoe comic pack based on an old marvel comic? they redeco the figures to match the awful 80s marvel coloring jobs. we’ve gotten a bright baby-blue cobra commander with lime green duke, and an orange rebel officer with a vader covered in blue highlights, and giant red eyes. fucking sweet.)

but that’s not all! there’s little figures coming from xmen origins: wolverine, there’s wolverine figures based off the comics, and there’s animated style figures from the new cartoon ‘wolverine and the xmen’. not to mention the new iron man animated series.

over in transformers land, there’s the ‘human alliance’ stuff from the new movie, with humans and robots working together, although i think those are actually closer to mask-sized? still, i’m counting them anyways.

mattel just launched a 3 3/4” dc universe line, and there’s a nice character selection to be had there. ben 10 is, to the best of my knowledge, still pumping out plenty of wierd aliens in a solid 3 3/4” scale, and lets not forget the wwe ‘build n bash’ line, where the build-a-figure conceit each wave is the squared circle, a steel cage, and so on. specifically, let’s get excited about the sgt. slaughter in the next wave, giving us what amounts to a modern update of the old gijoe figure, as a companion piece to the 25th anniversary joes. here’s hoping the build-n-bash figures extend into the ‘classic superstars’ umbrella and we can also get red/gold hulkamania hogan, macho man randy savage, and maybe even andre the giant.

and that’s just what i know about right now. i’d be shocked if james cameron’s avatar doesn’t get a toyline, and since the alien characters are supposed to be much taller than the humans, we’ll probably see 3 3/4” stuff off that. find out at sdcc, probably.

uhura, on the other hand, looks just fine. bones has a decent headsculpt, the rest of the figures vary from almost but not quite, to just generally poorly sculpted. it’s possible they’ll look much better in person, but i’m not holding my breath.

there’s also 12” kirk and spock and etc, with hilariously beefcake generic army bodies wearing nice enough uniforms and with generically awful headsculpts, as well as a line of six inch figures that look like the 3 3/4” stuff scaled up, as in, not very good for their size class.

and then there’s the barbie kirk, spock, and uhura. barbie uhura looks fantastic, probably the best single item coming out for the movie. kirk and spock’s faces aren’t much better than the ‘real’ 12” figures, they have real hair, the uniform shirts aren’t bad, and they’re on ken bodies, which makes them actually somewhat normally proportioned. i can’t decide which 12” incarnation looks worse.

little captain kirk. where to begin? let’s start with the head. that’s not the guy. that doesn’t even look like an adult. but okay.

the ray-gun phaser i could do without, although i guess i do like that his belt can hold all his gear. but having the utility belt strapped on over his tunic? if that’s movie-accurate i hope it looks better on the big screen than it does here, which is ridiculous.

the articulation looks to be pretty solid, comparable to modern star wars figures. ball jointed shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles, with swivel neck, waist, and maybe wrists. i can’t tell if it’s a ball-socket neck like all the new gijoes, marvel figures, and star wars stuff, if not, too bad.

but here’s my beef with kirky and by extension all the little trek figures except uhura. look at his gigantic linebacker shoulders. hold up your hands and block off his arms: notice how his shirt already looks pretty broad? imagine if his arms stuck out another six inches or so on either side of him. now remove your hands. holy crap! kirk is juicing!

seriously. before they were putting ball-jointed shoulders on everything, hasbro designed arms that tapered at the shoulder joint so they’d look more natural. when they needed the arms to remain full-width right to the end, to make room for the shoulder hinge, they had to embed the arms into the sides of the torso somewhat.

okay, hold on. highly technical discussion, just go here and look at luke skywalker (yavin ceremony)’s shoulders. then look back at kirk and notice the difference. lukey still has a bit of heft to his shoulders, but he’s also wearing a jacket.

playmates, seriously, simple formula here. if luke skywalker looks better than kirk? you’re doing it wrong.

also, no fucking way i’m buying eighteen of these things. especially when half of them are in fugly ‘cadet’ uniforms.

and here’s little kirk’s cardback. notice the diagram of the build-a-playset enterprise bridge layout. kirk comes with part b9. the various consoles and monitors and chairs that don’t come with the $25 bridge playset are numbered up to b18.

as in, you have to buy eighteen of these fucking things to get a fully equipped bridge playset. now, if they were any good, that wouldn’t be as much of a problem? and if you don’t want the new figures you probably don’t want a new bridge?

except that the enterprise bridge is the enterprise bridge, you know? even if the movie chunked and i hated all the figures, i still wouldn’t mind a nice 3 3/4” scale bridge playset. and the best part is that even if i do pony up for $150 worth of soapy merch, i still don’t get a ‘nice’ bridge playset unless i mount the whole thing on a solid base and build up some walls, install some led lighting, and buy a dozen of those $15 photo-album lcd keychains, load them up with okuda-grams, and install them in all the wall consoles.

at which point should just buy the next gen bridge from the 90’s figures. at least that was solid plastic and already has walls. i could make a better bridge than this out of a cobra terror-drome.

3 3/4” kirk carded. notice the four fucking twist-ties on his arms and legs, the fact that he’s on a cardback sized for a much larger figure, and that he comes with enterprise bridge part ‘b9’. this may come up later.

Ah yes, good old ‘don’t trust the internet’ day.