Toy Review - Transformers: Titans Return Highbrow (Wei Jiang version)

If you've tried to buy Transformers in the past few years you'll have heard of third party figures, which is when a company designs their own version of a character (usually Devastator), puts it into a small production run through some Chinese sweatshop and charges the customer the fucking Earth for it even if it doesn't really work. It's a decent way of making coin out of so many Transformers fans' legendary impatience and poor judgement of value for money. 3P manufacturers aren't seen as bootleggers as while they entirely steal the designs and trademarks of others to cash in they do at least use their own engineering. Amusingly and predictably a certain tribalism has grown around the thing and many fans ardently follow certain 3P companies. If you want to know which one just go on the internet, it seems part of any transaction is a contractual obligation to be a dull 3P evangelist.

Toy Review - Machine Robo Series 07 - Shuttle Robo/Gobots Masterpiece Spay-C

The joy I felt from the return (after what felt like a worrying hiatus) of Action Toys' Machine Robo Series was tempered a little by the choice of two characters I wasn't particularly keen on in any real form. The original Shuttle Robo, ported over to Gobots as the Guardian Spay-C, was one of the weaker toys of the series despite the cool alt mode, while the character didn't grab in either of the cartoons. In Revenge of Cronos Shuttle Robo was largely a background character, a member of the arrogant but basically sound Land Commander 5 team; in Challenge of the Gobots Spay-C was a female Guardian who didn't really do much, especially as the faction had a more popular space-going female in Path Finder. But obviously I bought the toy anyway, because Masterpiece Gobots.

Film Review: The Lego Batman Movie

USA, 2017, 104MINS

DIRECTOR: CHRIS McKAY

STARRING: WILL ARNETT, MICHAEL CERA, ROSARIO DAWSON, ZACH GALIFIANAKIS, RALPH FIENNES

Spun off from the genuinely excellent Lego Movie, The Lego Batman Movie had two major pitfalls to avoid - that the superb arrogant send-up of the Dark Knight that was so funny would support a whole film and that it would live up to the hype after the arsenal of trailers. The answers are affirmative. 

A quite brilliant take on Gotham City makes an excellent canvas, a city populated by every member of Batman's Rogues' Gallery worth a mention and a few that really aren't. The resulting plot is a respectable mix of moral fable and adventure story pitched firmly at the kids; grownups will guess the shape of the plot from the opening moments but that's not the point. 

The journey as Batman finds a new family is fun for adults because like its predecessor the film is genuinely and unrelentingly funny on so many levels, with everything from slapstick to weird in-jokes about casting in Tim Burton films and taking the piss out of Orca while also hanging a lampshade on Batman's seeming inability to keep crime in Gotham under control.

As well as Batman there's a funny take on ward Dick Grayson; if Batman is a ripe send-up of the Nolans/Frank Miller and the whole Dork Knight thing then Robin is straight out of the sixties TV series, all wide-eyed mindless optimism. Joining them are a proactive spiky Barbara Gordon, recast as mixed race and well voiced by Rosario Dawson (carefully avoiding retreading Wyldstyle) and a disapproving Alfred courtesy of Ralph Fiennes. 

The other side is led by Zach Galifianakis as a needy take on the Joker, who dumps his usual allies (aside from a mercifully rationed and deslutted Harley Quinn) in favour of.. well, I won't spoil it beyond guessing that Lego's Dimensions licence is the key to swinging the sort of crossover cast that would make anyone else weep with envy. None of the rest of the Batman villains don't get a gigantic amount to do but a surprising large number get a call out or little bit to do. Some serious research has gone into this whole area,  hence big screen debuts for the likes of Calendar Man, the Kabuki Twins and Gentlemen Ghost. Seriously, comic fans might want to see this twice as you'll spend the first time character spotting.

If there's a fault it's that for a film made entirely from (computer generated) Lego bricks Lego isn't actually hugely integral to the movie aside from a few visual jokes and a belated mention of teaching Robin Masterbuilding. It's a weird criticism though and I feel a bit Comic Book Guy now that I've said it. Maybe the closest thing to a real criticism is that it's not quite as fantastically transcendent and genuinely touching as The Lego Movie but then I've seen thousands of films and few are.

The Lego Batman Movie does utterly succeed on its own terms. There are no caveats here - it's not great for a kids film or a toy film or anything.  It's a riot of adventure and wit, with something for everyone who isn't dead and cold on the inside.

Minifigures - The Lego Batman Movie, Villains Part 2

Tidying up the bulk of the 'villain' figures in the blind bag series, so largely another collection of background no-marks that were highly unlikely to get a Minifigure official or otherwise had not some brilliant maniac decided to make absolutely certain this was the most fun Batman movie ever (no, the Adam West stuff is shit).

THE JOKER

Thanks to several distinct looks - comic book, drug suicide guy, guy out of 30 Seconds to Mars - there's already a plethora of official and unofficial Joker figures out there and the character gets a further more exaggerated redesign for The Lego Batman Movie, with more clownish make-up and a huge messy swept-back mop of hair plus Zach Galifianakis as voice actor, a fantastic move in that it's managed to upset fans of Heath Ledger, Jared Leto and Mark Hamill all at the same time (which is a good thing) and this despite the thing being a comedy. There are versions aplenty in the boxed sets, most featuring longer coat tails. The blind-bagged version comes in an Arkham Asylum uniform and is obviously present so the film's major villain can be presented in the series without robbing a big money set of a selling point. However, the minor genius is that apart from the head and hands there's absolutely no unique marks on the overalls, which means in ten seconds flat you can whip up an Arkham inmate version of basically anyone.

KING TUT

Unlike most of the characters featured King Tut actually originated from the sixties TV show, being belatedly brought into the comic by some hack or another who liked the show's repetition, heavy-handedness and laziness. Presumably. As with Orca or Catman the figure being a recolour probably helped get King Tut into the film and onto the shelves as he's effectively a repaint of the early blind bag Pharoah figure. However, there's no corners cut on the extensive paint masks including lots of luxurious gold trim and to be honest if you wanted to model an Egyptian scene with realistic skin tones you could do worse than recruit this guy as an actual Pharoah. Lego thrown in a snake and a sceptre too.

MIME

That Mime was created in 1987 explains a lot about her look; while there's whiteface to justify the Mime thing with her dark purple mohawk, fishnet top and black/dark pink outfit she looks more like a villain from Jem and the Holograms than super-serious Batman comics. If anything this makes her even better; the new wave look is a rare one on official Minifigures and it adds some fun visual variety. Once again heavy painted details really help bring the look off while she has two energy bolts for whatever her powers actually were. One of the coolest things about the range is the spread of eras, with daft Batman villains from most decades getting roped in rather than a focus on just, say, the sixties stuff.

THE RED HOOD

The Red Hood has a convoluted past - the criminal originally became the Joker maybe but later was a largely unseen separate villain whose costume was used by the guy who became the Joker while years later the same title was taken on by Jason Todd, the second Robin, on his return from death. This is basically why DC reset their universe every few years. The figure is present in its' original Golden Age form with the gigantic opaque dome over the head, cloak and evening dress, right down to a printed bowtie on the shoulder armour. But he can't be the Joker because the Joker's in the film so not for the first time Lego have a bit of fun - popping the dome off reveals the head of the Jason Todd version of the Red Hood. Nice. And with the dome in place it's a fitting tribute to a villain who was one way or another crucial to the relationship between Batman and the Joker but still looked absolutely ridiculous.

ZODIAC MASTER

A sixties creation following the standard template of the era - find something vaguely topical, make a supervillain who uses it for crime - Zodiac Master was naturally all about astrology, initially using it to apparently predict disasters he was actually responsible for, selling his apparent premonition as a service to various other criminals. So the Minifigure gets his cool (well) zodiac-symbol suit covered with paint apps, plus a crab for Cancer and a fish for Pisces. It's about as good as Zodiac Master is going to get; let's just be thankful DC contained their astrology tie-ins to this one guy unlike Marvel doing all 12.

Minifigures - The Lego Batman Movie, Villains Part 1

It's hard to miss the upcoming Lego Batman Movie, span off the character's superb showing in The Lego Movie. And it looks like a cracker even if I'm getting increasingly sure I've seen most of it now from the myriad trailers. Not only does it look like a cool film but its' off-beat nature means the stranger end of Batman's Rogues Gallery are getting Minifigures, characters that would never have done so any other way. They're spread across sets but some have also been released in the long-running and much acclaimed series of blind bags, a biggest-yet set of 20 coming out. If the ones for the Lego Movie are anything to go by the characters featured will be a mix of variants of main characters (in this case some oddball gag costumes for Batman, the Joker etc.) and guys who will likely to either a one-off punchline or even background, like the 2014 series' Velma Staplebot or Panda Guy. But who cares, we still get awesome Minifigs out of it.

THE CALCULATOR

Typical of a dippy seventies Batman villain, the Calculator consisted of taking something - the mid-seventies boom in pocket calculators - and running with it as far as possible. Someone spoilt the fun a bit by turning him into a proper character for Birds of Prey but there's none of that here as Noah Kuttler is rolled back to his debut appearance where the numerically-obsessed villain dressed in an outfit adorned with visual nods to - yes - a pocket calculator. The Minifigure's more bulky, no doubt due to the desire to reuse the extant cowled armour one-piece; there are only a handful of newly cast pieces across the blind-bags, most of the new toolings being channelled towards the boxed sets. However, it does mean they can go to town on the paint apps and in addition to a neat pattern up the side of his fetching purple/white jumpsuit the Calculator has his numberpad chestplate present (it's too small for actual numbers but '+', '-' and '=' are present so you know what it is) and a visor reading '07734' - presumably 55378008, the only other thing anyone put into a pocket calculator, wouldn't fit. The overall result is smashing, one of the best of the series - and just about serious enough to fit in with other non-movie Batman villains in a display. 

CATMAN

My middling knowledge of Batman was exposed when I nearly discarded Catman as just another nutty Batman costume variant but no, he's actually a separate guy, albeit one who started out as a bit of a joke - firstly by trying to frame Catwoman for a spate of burglaries (because they both dress like cats, right?) and then having much fun made of him for being such a dim idea before being another guy to be Gail Simoned into respectability (she also announced the character was bisexual via Tumblr, just in case you'd missed the sort of desperate posturing for attention the industry's been reduced to in the past decade). Anyway. The character's thing has always been his costume being close to Batman's and that's not wavered in the face of boring identity politics, so naturally he's a recolour of Batman in Minifig form. It's well-done with some good paint applications, not to mention a brown version of the new utility belt piece. The only parts variation is the addition of a pair of Wolverine-style claws; while it's better than nothing not for the first time I'm wishing Lego had a smaller version made.

ERASER

A sixties creation, Lenny Fiasco crossed Batman's path due to placing adverts everywhere extolling his ability to remove all evidence from crime scenes for fellow criminals. Naturally he decided to so so dressed as a giant pencil with the eraser end as a helmet. I'd make fun of the name Lenny Fiasco but it's not bad for sixties DC. Anyway, he's yet to become all hip-and-happening for the 21st century, his main appearances since seemingly further gag ones in one of those manchild-friendly Bruce Timm cartoons with fellow loser villains. The Minifig is spot-on for the sixties version with its' ostentatious yellow pin-striped suit and the head is a new piece that does the job exactly - with a nice side-helping of absurdity as there's theoretically a person in there but unlike the comic they can't cheat with someone having a narrow head and the result is his head is about half the width of everyone else in the universe's as a result. It works, and the addition of a notepad for upcoming jobs rounds him out nicely.

MARCH HARRIET

One of the more recent additions, the comic version of the March Harriet provided T&A for an Alice in Wonderland gang as one of DC's intermittent attempts to combat the grimdark. Thankfully the Lego designers get more action than the DC artists so Harriet looks less like she's wandered in from Hustler's This Ain't Alice in Wonderland XXX; the emphasis here is more on cute and unhinged than slutty with a reserved take on the costume and a smart reuse of the extant Bunny Guy headpiece. And so she doesn't look too harmless she had a Tommy Gun, making for a solid and cringe-free figure.

ORCA

Another relatively recent addition thanks to Harry Llama, Grace Balin is unique among recent female superheroes through not actually being even remotely sexy in her super form; rather than some sort of tarty mermaid she's basically an Orca on legs, though occasionally some of the more sexually frustrated artists give her a pair of comically pendulous breasts. Just a massive pair of tits on a walking Orca. She's considered one of the worst Big Two characters to have appeared this century and with good reason. About the only reason she's getting a workout here even in a film full of weird bad guys is that the Minifig Shark Guy (a.k.a. Left Shark), thankfully with the whole boob thing played down. A neat piece of work is the head recoloured to be a gaping mouth inside the shark head. It's about as good a piece of merchandise as a crap character is likely to get but I'd really rather have seen the Condiment King; I'm sure any kids buying the figure, Googling for more info and being greeted by this would agree too.