TOY NEWS FOR 12/15/2012 - ROUND 2 - CAPTAIN ACTION - IRON MAN AND WOLVERINE COSTUME SETS

The original Captain Action from the 60's certainly has a well-deserved place in toy history, and there have been a few reissues and resurgences of the good Captain over the years, but none have been that successful...

I admire what Take 2 is trying to do with Captain Action and their "retro" approach to the line, but I also believe it's why the Captain Action relaunches have failed.

I'd love to see Captain Action still wearing something very much like his original costume, but updated a bit. Something that feels like the original, but fresh and new at the same time. And he needs (head) sculpts that are of the kind of quality we've come to expect in the modern era of toys.

Take 2 has decided to take a different route-- and it's one that could very well be successful-- but I've seen these figures in person, and I honestly just don't think that Take 2 has the chops to execute what they're trying to pull off...

First, just starting with the Captain himself-- and his nemesis, Dr. Evil-- while the clothing and weapons are all decent enough, the head sculpts on these two are just... honestly, freakin' awful. The heroic Captain Action looks like a cartoon caricature of a toothless old man, and Dr. Evil looks completely goofy, and not "evil" or intimidating at all.

I understand thatTake 2 are going for a "classic" comic book look to the figures and costume sets, but it's just not hitting the mark. The heads/masks especially look particularly weak, which I don't understand because there are so many brilliant sculptors out there these days just looking for work-- this could have been an amazing opportunity to create something brilliant!

You want to make your Thor and Loki look like Kirby drawings? Great! I'd love that! But when the figures look like cheap toys trying to look like Kirby drawings... Ehhhh, it's an easy pass for this toy/comic geek.

This all brings me around to my main point about these new pictures. Obviously, these are not product pics, they're digital mock-ups. And if these are the face sculpts that they are showing, then either Take 2 is really stepping up their game, or they're just telling a bold-faced lie. I have yet to see any Captain Action figure come close to the quality of sculpt they are showing in these pics.

Without a properly done Captain Action, I'm out of the game on any future Captain Action products (that's just how I roll, yo!), but I'm curious to see what these sets look like in person. I guess we'll find out in April when they're released, although I'm not sure where Toys R Us is going to find the shelf space for them since they're still overflowing with the current stuff...