Voltron Lance and Red Lion Review

Hello all,

Key Stand

Despite my complaining about Mattel 3 ¾” figures and their lack of articulation I couldn’t help but purchase the right hand of Voltron! I didn’t sign up to the subscription service. Actually I only found out about these lions through the Toy Fair coverage at cool toy review.

As soon as I saw them I decided I had to have them! I mean can you imagine having that giant fully formed Voltron! It looks amazing and it’s massive! The thing that really got me excited though was the fact you could fit the pilot inside the Lion. Now From the pictures I saw the figures looked really good but the articulation was poor at best, the second thing that worried me was the ‘spring loaded’ limbs gimmick. These are meant to be exclusive collectables, yet the gimmick and articulation reek of ‘movie’ toys.

I’m not one of those people that’ll freak out the white spots on the shoulders or about the fact that the legs are white instead of metallic or even that there are no die cast pieces. I don’t even care about the packaging (please don’t ever expect to see photos of packaging here). All I want are high levels of articulation and figures with removable helmets, hats and weapons with holsters.

The Ladies Man

Now I may appear a little negative here but keep in mind that I paid a lot for this figure, so unlike some ‘movie’ version figure that’ll set me back $15AU this figure set me back, well I’d rather not say... I think I’ve covered most of the things that I dislike about the figure, except for one thing , the spring on the right leg of my lion is busted, I noticed this the first time that I transformed the Lion into its ‘arm mode’ when I pushed the button one leg came down while the other stayed in its place. It hasn’t affected it except for the fact that it won’t ‘spring out’ when the button is pressed, I have to use my hand which when I think about is what I wanted in the first place, but then again, I paid so much for it!

Anyways, this isn’t really a behind the times, except for the fact that this figure has been reviewed to death so I’ll spare you  the details you may already know so without further ado, here are the likes and dislikes:

Likes:

WTF?

- The size of the lion it is awesome! The arm is the size of some of my superion! It Dwarfs all of my Joe vehicles

-The figure design is very cartoon like

-The figure is made of plastic, it’s heavy if it had been made of metal I’m sure it’d kill a small animal if it landed on it!

-I’ve already mentioned the size, but I love the scale 3 ¾” is awesome, wish they made transformers compatible with the G.I.Joe figures I guess this is as good as we’ll get and believe me it’s not bad!

-The key that doubles as a stand is really cool and you can use it to open up the cockpit and to press the buttons for the action feature

-Speaking of the cockpit t is really cool! I just wish that they had included some form of steering wheel or controls that Lance could hold.

-The sculpt on Lance’s face is awesome just like in the cartoon

-Really like the fact that the figure has interchangeable heads one with the helmet on and one without-The Voltron force insignia on the figure is really cool too

-I absolutely love the idea of a completed Voltron, I don’t even know where I’ll put him! I’m also looking forward to having the whole set as I never had a complete Voltron set when I was a kid.

Dislikes:

-The spring loaded gimmick, it reduces articulation on the Lion and it’s completely useless and as I mentioned  before fragile, I wonder how many people this has happened to?

-Even though it is a very ‘Blocky’ robot, I really think they could have added a lot more articulation so as to have the lion do some really cool poses as it is the Lion is very limited and the gimmick means the legs won’t stay where you want them.

-The fact that the spring broke. Now this may be a blessing in disguise as it looks like the leg now has more poseability!

- The lack of articulation on Lance, it really is bad, DC universe infinite heroes bad! For a figure that’s so expensive don’t get any wrist articulation, ankle articulation. Just the addition of these two would have made the figures awesome, but no, that’s too much to ask.

-Sculpted on pistol, useless!

The broken spring

Now don’t get me wrong, I’ll get ‘em all! But the shortcomings aren’t as minor as others would make you think. This is my first real ‘collector’s item’ and it’s a bit disappointing to pay so much (what’s this the tenth time I’ve written this?’  for something that could have been perfect! I wish I could say that the Hasbro Collector’s club was doing better but who knows when that will become available, I ended up taking all the money I’d set aside for that and now I’m spending it on these guys. At least these guys are available!

 The verdict:

3/5 ‘behind the times ‘

and yes, I’ve yet to come up with something better!