Ghostbusters Classics:
Slimeblower Winston Review

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They’re back! In June, I picked up my first Ghostbusters Classics figure in a year-and-a-half. I liked it so much that I wasn’t sure why I stopped buying them in the first place. Check out this Slimeblower Winston Zeddemore review and then let us know if you’d like more Ghostbusters Reviews.

Even if you’re an IAT regular reader, you might not know how excited we were about the Ghostbusters line when Mattel first announced it in 2009. We snapped up Slimed Egon, Ray, Winston, and then… I’m not sure what happened. None of us bought Walter Peck. No one wanted Slimed Peter. I forgot about Lab coat Ray (& I wanted the Subway Ghost). After awhile, it turned out that none of us were really collecting Ghostbusters anymore. We even sold all that we’d bought… save one.

I ran back through the three old reviews (and don’t go look at them, they’re awful “early days of IAT” reviews… eek!) to try and figure out why we stopped buying them. Reading through my thoughts from two years ago, I think the problem was that I wasn’t willing to stick with it. I wanted the four guys and I didn’t want to wait. Combined with the fact that the MOTUC line was growing ($$$) in 2010 and my wanting to keep my MattyCollector.com bill somewhat in check, Ghostbusters fell by the wayside. I kept my favorite Ghostbusters, Winston, and sold the other two (as I had predicted in my Ray review, he’d broken anyway). And I was fine. My little Ghostbusters shelf had the RGB quartet from Kenner, Stay-Puft’s from Kenner & Neca, and a few select minimates. Then came Slimeblower Winston and temptation returned. Well, not at first…

I wasn’t impressed when Mattel first showed him at SDCC 2010. In fact, Mattel botched it. The slimeblower was ridiculously tiny. The chest harness was missing. And I think the head was oversized to boot. Simply put, he was awful. And you know Mattel, “once we show you something, it’s too late for sculpt changes”. Well, if you’re a regular reader of IAT, you’ll know that never, ever deters us. For our part, we asked about it immediately via the Q&A and were told that it wasn’t fixable. But the collector base kept asking and, finally, Mattel caved. Slimeblower Winston was pushed back from January (all the way to June) and Mattel did him properly. It was refreshing and it made me happy to be able to purchase the figure.

Winston still reuses a lot of parts – the basic buck for the arms and below the waist, a GB2 belt from the 4pk, the gloves from Slimed Peter. But he now has the requisite new parts – a head sculpt depicting Ernie Hudson’s change in appearance between the two films, a new chest with the sculpted harness, and an improved Slimeblower. Simply put, he’s a great kick off for Ghostbusters II figures (I know the TRU 4pk was a GB2 product, but Winston is the first regular one in the line, even featuring modified packaging with the “2” logo).

The head sculpt is pretty cool. Going with a smile was an interesting choice, but I think it suits Winston just fine. I think the previous head sculpt looks more like Ernie Hudson than this one does, but like most of the GB sculpts it really just depends on the angles from which you’re looking at it. I don’t buy too many toys of real people, but it just seems like a tricky thing for toy companies to deal with when I do. Continue to Page 2…

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24 thoughts on “Ghostbusters Classics:
Slimeblower Winston Review”

  1. As a huge collector of the line, your original reviews & checklist are what got me hooked on the site. As I don’t collect the other items you review, I’d love to see a return of Ghostbusters! I have everything Matty’s released to date & think the stuff on the horizon may be some of their best yet. In the next year they’ll be completing the “Ready to believe you” line & giving us Vigo & Possessed Dana. I’d love to hear your thoughts on those!

    1. I think I’m finally as caught up as I want to be. I’m still wavering on Vinz Clortho, but I have everything except him and the slimed figures. (I sold Egon and have no need for him now that I have 4pk Slimer. I don’t think I need Slimed Peter either).

      Anyway, glad to hear you’ve enjoyed the reviews and I did buy a Ghostbusters sub for next year, so keep an eye out!

  3. I really enjoyed the review and the pictures as always, great job.

    What you were talking about with the likeness on the last paragraph of the page, it reminded me of how annoying I found it that the Horsemen couldn’t sculpt a decent likeness of faces as detailed as Bill Murray or Harold Ramis. I mean, we’d been having celebrity cameos in DCUC since the beginning, and we see this more and more with each new MOTUC (can anyone really say that Battleground Evil-Lyn doesn’t look just like Colm Feore?) and then there was that sense of betrayal, even though I hadn’t purchased any of the figures when Mattel revealed that the Four Horsemen had naught to do with Ghostbusters.

    I can’t really ever see myself buying anything non-second hand from Mattel related to Ghostbusters, but I’ll read whatever you review, honestly, hehe. I know I’ll be entertained.

    1. Thanks!

      I’m never sure about the celebrity likenesses in DCUC, but thats’ probably because I’m not always good at picking them out. And wait… isn’t Colm Feore a dude? 😀

      And, yeah, telling us about the change in sculptors almost a year after the 4H quit working on the line was pretty crummy. I’m still not sure exactly what they did and didn’t. I might have to shoot ’em an e-mail and get the scoop.

  4. Yes! Do it! That way you can review all the stuff I can’t. I couldn’t afford Stay-Puft or the sub, so no Rookie for me… 🙁

    1. I couldn’t really afford Stay-Puft either… If my birthday weren’t so close to the day the Mattycollector SDCC stuff went on sale, I would’ve likely been screwed. He was a lot of money.

      I don’t know if I would’ve bought the GB sub other than I was cutting down from 2 MOTU subs to one. I figured I was still coming out ahead and getting the GB figs out of the deal.

  6. Yes please!! Do the reviews! That’s what some people need in order to decide whether to pick them up or not.

    Amazing review!

  9. It really seems simple to me, guys. If you buy it, review it. You spent hard earned money on something, and clearly it created an interest to cause you to spend that money, so it’s nice to hear the thoughts about it.

    I don’t come here to read specific reviews of specific lines, I read for the fun, for the goofy pics, for the knowledge.

    I’m probably going to have to sub up to the BBS side soon, otherwise I can’t tell Vault to start hitting Big Lots because excess Monster High stuff is showing up in bulk there… 🙂

    1. We do for the most part, but sometimes – because previous reviews drew so little interest (Vault’s Monster High or my JLU for example) – we buy stuff and don’t always feature it. Some stuff just falls by the wayside too. I think I have 25 toys to review at the moment… and more stuff is coming… 😛

  12. The biggest qeustion about these (for me) is are they worth the price? The 20 price tag plus s&h has been what has scared me away. I picked up the 4 pack for less than 60, and I think it’s a great deal at around 15 per figure but Iwouldnt be as warm to It at 20-25 each. I get that price isntthe focus of a review. That said 18 bucks a figure has turned a Dcuc into a hohum line where as 4 for terminator salvation figures (10 for the hunter killer plane) turn crappy figures into a good buys. So no matter what price figures into the “fun factor” and while I would love to own a Walter Peck with containment unit Matty make a bearded Harvey Dent
    with an oversized accessory less fun than say a 15 dollar toys are us find.

  13. having watched the newest Torchwood: Miracle Day the other night and now seeing the “head swap” gag, if you swap GB1 Ernie’s head/hands onto Peck, you have a custom figure of his character in T:MD or Heroes! LOL

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