Well, I suddenly find myself wishing that I’d posted this review a little sooner. Having only recently come back into the Ghostbusters line as a collector, the news of Club Ecto-1 being cancelled was a rather hard blow. Still, the line’s not dead and that means the reviews will continue too…
I picked up Egon about a month ago (he was the August Ghostbusters offering), but I’ve been so swamped with other toys that I hadn’t had a chance to even open him up. Well, I wanted to add a “The Sub is Dead” graphic to Tuesday’s crappy news, so I popped him open real quick and… well, that more or less moved him to the front of the review line. It happens.
Ready to Believe You Egon, or simply Lab Coat Egon if you prefer, spawns from the Ghostbusters commercial featured in the first film. The commercial has ended up as good fodder for both Mattel and Art Asylum, as it’s another instance (besides the regular uniforms) of when the guys donned matching uniforms (except Winston, who hadn’t been hired yet).
RTBY Egon is a study in how to slowly build a figure with parts from other figure’s. I dropped the Ghostbusters line in early 2010 (only to play catch up this summer), so I don’t have reviews of Walter Peck and RTBY Ray to link too (yet), but those two figures are essential to building Egon here. Walter Peck first provided the arms, pants, and shoes to RTBY Ray who then added a new torso and the lab coat to get the look (mostly) right. Take that mix, pop on an Egon head and glue a scientific calculator over the pocket protector and… viola! Ready to Believe You Egon is ready for sale.
I’m not complaining, because it does work for the most part. I’m not the biggest fan of the Egon head sculpt, but this figure looks more like Harold Ramis to me than the one I bought from SDCC 2008 (even though it’s the same). Yeah, the jacket should be buttoned up (and with the lack of an ab crunch, there’s no reason for it not to be), but that’s a minor point. I’m glad the calculator is there, but I don’t know if I should be amazed/happy or simply satisfied. Ghostbusters is a confusing line to collect. (The sub getting cancelled might just be weighing on me…)
The paint work is sold on the figure, but most of the pieces are molded in the appropriate colors and decos have been kept to a minimum. The paint on the head is good and the calculator is painted sharply. There are more differences from RTBY Ray in paint than there was in sculpt – the tie has been changed to blue, the buttons are white (they were wrong on Ray) and Egon has a silver belt buckle to Ray’s gold. I’m not sure if that last part is movie accurate or just to spice things up. It works either way.
The articulation for this line is broken down into two standard sets – the uniforms and the non-uniforms. Egon here sports the standard non-uniform articulation: a ball-jointed head & shoulders, swivels at the biceps, wrists, waist, and thighs, hinges at the elbows and knees, rocker ankles, and the 4H hips. Everything works fine and I had no stuck joints to report. It’s funny because I’ve got a few other reviews in various stages of completion, and articulation is a crucial part of some of them, but Egon’s articulation doesn’t seem to matter all that much. I’m not saying Ghostbusters should be stactions (or even have one joint less), but I just don’t see myself utilizing the articulation like I do for DCUC or MOTUC. Continue to Page 2…
That last pic is great!
Thanks!
“yeah no human can stack books like that.” favorite line from ghostbusters.
Tell ’em about the Twinkie.
LOL. I have to say that all my favorite GB lines are spoken by one man: Ernie Hudson.
It’s a nice figure, but sadly Mattel had killed my interest in the line a long time ago. If they do an accessory pack before they kill teh lien, I might bite…
I was kinda wondering if that was what would be a good item to sell to subscribers would be – the gear. I doubt the special item will be anything cool though.
They really need to do some box sets combining the ghosts in the top pic with the team in labcoats or in the RGB colors or something. Take some pre-orders to see if people bite cause I would be in….
I’m not sure what they’re going to do. I’m curious if the line will even go on beyond this “4th figure”.
The comment about the PKE meter says volumes, really.
OTOH they could have just made one, right? so…I don’t even know.
I’m glad they did this, definitely not knocking that. Better to get all three than just repacking the old one. It’s just weird how the toy world works.
I always want some of the ghosts from this line
Mattel miscalculated on the ghosts, I think. It’s a crying shame we have so few, regardless of what the logistics dictated.
I’m beginning to think they’re purposely packaging all the good ghosts with shitty variants no one wants.
Definitely. Only the shitty figures allow for the tooling to be spent on the ghosts. 😀
Question: Can these “Generic” lab coat figures cross-over into the DC Universe? I can think of several examples like Black Mask, Doc Magnus or change the lab coat to a suit jacket and pop a Lex head on it. Customizers would love a civillian “Army Builder” for Perry White, Pre-Human Metallo, or tons of other “suits”.
Are there some stupid contractual elements that forbid it?
I’m sorry, I have to do this. DR, Noisy, forgive me.
That’s a really logical, sane idea. Of COURSE it can’t happen! I’m sure there’s SOME reason Mattel can come up with for not being able to do that thing.
I mean, not like they have a suited buck from Two-Face (and Walter Peck of course), and I think there’s a Comish. Gordon in suit and raincoat just out in a 2-pack? So put Luthor’s head on an existing suited buck? IMPOSSIBLE! MADNESS!! 🙂
and hush yo mouth ’bout a Doc Magnus figure. You make me crazy with wanting. 🙂
They don’t crossover the bucks. 🙂 The suit bodies for Ghostbusters are different than the suit bodies for Dark Knight.
The scales also don’t quite mesh. Mattel says the lines are all 6″ scale, but the Movie Masters are smaller than the DCUCs.
Between mattel-owned properties, it would be crazy not to reuse where possible. But given that these are licenced figures, it makes sense that they can’t use the bucks across lines.
But Batman/DCU aren’t Mattel owned either. Re-cutting/re-purposing existing tooling is one of the main ways of recouping the costs of said tooling.
See also Kenner. I won’t even make a Bolo launcher reference here. 🙂
see, here’s where i have to say… where are the mattel lawyers? because the simple answer to this is, no, right now, mattel can’t cross apply bucks across licenses because essentially, the licensor owns the materials… but that’s a TERRIBLE contract from mattel’s standpoint. they should be writing contracts that allow the licensor to rights to the finished product, and not a damned step earlier in the creation process… so like, the licensor does not get rights to the paint masters, or any of the protos, and certainly not the master tools. if mattel’s lawyers aren’t writing contracts keeping mattel in charge of all the production materials, either A) they lack the clout they used to have to keep things profitable for them (cuz those molds ARE mattel’s bread and butter, and are in all fairness, their business and no one else’s) or B) they’re too damned incompetent to do their jobs properly.
either way, if mattel was effectively defining the master tools as tools of their trade, and thus proprietary to their business model, they could cross apply bucks and a crapload of their figures would look the same, but their toys would be cheaper.
DR, I’m not calling you out but I do have to ask, just how sure are you about that ‘licensor owns the materials’ issue?
I understand the IP. I understand the distinctive likenesses. I understand that ‘proton pack’ is a distinct design part of the IP. But a male body in a baggy jumpsuit? Just router out the bits that make it ‘Ghostbusters’ specific and it’s a male body in a baggy jumpsuit.
It’s not like Sony/Columbia is going to run to China and have the multi-ton tooling shipped off to Macau for their own use.
I SUSPECT any comments from Mattel about what a licensor owns may be boilerplate from some other question.
Now, mind, I’m sure the USE of the molds in their unaltered state is controlled by the license. Mattel can’t whip out their own line of “Phantom Containers’ figures with new heads on the unchanged in any way GB bodies. I get that.
But if Kenner could turn a Gammorian Guard into Friar Tuck… just saying, OK? 🙂
(actually, I bet it boils down to internal politics. Look at the replies about the MotU Polly Pockets thing. “we can’t do anything, that’s THEIR department! “)
I don’t know about this one. I mean, I’ve stopped collecting these. There is just so little variation, I really think that these don’t really deserve this price point, especially the new, $22 bucks price. The Dana figure looks nice, and I would like the Ray with the slime blower, but I don’t know…
I’ve resolved to be back in. I do think the price point isn’t really great, but I do know that I’ll have the core guys and the ghosts in my collection for a long time to come with no regrets. Dana is the one I’m not sure on at the moment.
Well thanks to the new Ghostbusters video slot machine “Ready To Believe You” Winston now does exist. If this line lasts another full year he will show up.