overdue reviews presents

1995 toy biz marvel 10″ fin fang foom

this toy is totally great. also? terrible, in a distinctly 90s toy biz kind of way.

a way that carried over from the awful 90s marvel comics that the terrible iron man cartoon this figure is derived from was itself derived from. i mean, this is a cartoon where tony stark unfolds his briefcase like a grandma’s picture wallet, and there is his iron man armor. in a briefcase. not a suitcase, not the trunk of the stark roadster, not in an underground base. in his fucking briefcase. (i’ve never read an iron man comic from before secret invasion, where DOES he keep his armour in the comics? what happens if he gets caught in traffic across town during an iron man grade emergency?)

anywho. i picked this bad mother up for twelve dollars on ebay, because i didn’t feel like paying a hundred and twenty dollars for a bunch of hulk figures i don’t want (other than savage she-hulk because she’s practically naked), and because this version is awesome. he’s chunky and has apalling articulation, yet is still dynamic and has some great posing opportunities. mainly in the soda advertisement and game show host varieties.

plus, whereas the new figure just looks kind of wierd, this one looks like a jack kirby drawing. not a jack kirby drawing OF fin fang foom, mind you, just… something that jack kirby might have drawn. from the shape of his head frills, he’d look nice next to the jlu etrigan the demon, which also had a chunky jack kirby vibe going on. (crap, now i need to ebay that too.)

back in 1995 he was available in an assortment including a chrome gold dragon and a chrome silver dragon, who’s names i refuse to look up even though i have the package literally right here. they were lame, they shelfwarmed and went on clearance. foom is awesome, he sold out long before that. original price at KB was $12.99, so i saved a buck by waiting thirteen years to pick him up. not bad.

this was back when the xmen cartoon was superhot, the spiderman cartoon was number two, both had successful toylines, and marvel also tried cartoons and toys with minimal luck for iron man, fantastic four, ghost rider, hulk, and silver surfer. every figure from all of those lines retailed for $5.99 at tru, and nearly everything went on clearance three months later for $2.99. we all had a LOT of marvel figures that wouldn’t have sold otherwise.

his articulation is actually pretty decent, from an era before standarized ball joint shoulders, double hinged knees, and whatnot. i mean, there are still batman figures with only five points of articulation even today, but back then they weren’t unusual. so foom here has double swivel on his stubby dragon neck, so he can look around and cock his head to the side. swivel shoulders and hips, wrists, tail, and single hinged knees. no ankles, so he’s either crouching a little or a lot. all things considered, the head movement is way above average for the era, and swivel wrists mean he can get some surprising range out of his limited arms. those are the keys so he wins in that regard.

but the wings… oh man, the wings are complete ass. i mean, wings are hard to pull off pretty much 100% of the time, but they really dropped the ball here. completely undetailed shiny green wings with hardly any range on a horribly implemented flapping action. the button is up on his back, and the tail and tightness of the wings means you can’t grab him by the waist and flap the wings one-handed. no. you have to either hold him by the leg and push the button with your other hand, or hold him by the shoulders! and reach down with your thumb to flap those suckers.

so no flying him around the room pretending to shoot fireballs. kind of crap. looks nice enough standing about, though, and those giant feet make him super stable.

for the record, my gold standard of crappy action features on monster toys was set by the alien queen and flying alien queen in kenner’s aliens line, in 92 and 93 respectively.

queen one had a hip-mounted button to swing the upper body around, lashing out with the long back-mounted tail. the tail was pretty solid, and the mechanism was so strong that you could swing it right into the next notch in the ratcheting assembly. half a dozen heavy lashes and you’d get the ’start’ position back to normal. not to mention the six arms, and the pneumatic extending inner jaw. not terribly accurate to the movie, but i still ended up with at least three of the buggers.

the flying queen, meanwhile, was translucent blue, had only two arms, but grabbing claws for feet, and some crazy flapping attack wings. big thick trans-blue pvc numbers, heavy and mounted on a solid mechanism, even more mass behind them than the first queen’s tail lash. put these two together and you could knock the crap out of the severely lame colonial marine figures, the joes you were probably using as surrogates, and anything else standing nearby.

i’m kind of off on a tangent here, and if i keep talking about the aliens line i’m liable to mention how cool atax was, or get on ebay and pick up a moc snake alien. suffice it to say that old foom’s wing suck, new fooms wings don’t look much better, but that’s okay, because old foom is so un-foom already anyways, he can just be a green kirby demon-thing. and that’s awesome.

i’d buy the new foom if he was styled after the stuart immonen art, and came with tiny figures of the nextwave squad. oh man, why isn’t hasbro doing nextwave figures?! elsa bloodstone is in the new iron man in vegas mini by jon favreau! machine man is all over the place right now! the time is ripe!