Tuesday was old school and today we are back with the new school half of the Hasbro Plasma Series wave from Ghostbusters: Afterlife with a look at Lucky, Podcast, Trevor and the build-a-ghost Sentinel Terror Dog.
The boxes have some nice graphics, though I must admit it is still weird to see digital renders on the packaging material.
Podcast comes with the ghost torso piece, a tiny little shrunken head, ecto-goggles, a remote control, a tiny little Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man that they’ve been calling mini-pufts in marketing, and some pieces that makes him look like he got slimed with marshmallows. Lucky comes with a proton pack, proton wand, proton stream, ghost head, and ghost trap on wheels. Trevor comes with a map, a ghost arm, a proton pack, proton wand, and trail of mini Stay-Pufts.
The mini-puft has a fun angry expression and while he was shown standing in promo material I couldn’t get the little slug figure to stand at all.
The marshmallow gunk is two pieces, one that goes over the chest and plugs in the back and the other is like a bracelet. If you look closely, you can see some melted mini-pufts in the marshmallow goo.
The mini-skull totem has an impressive amount of detail for such a tiny little thing and can peg into the hole on Podcast’s belt. Lucky and Trevor have holes on their belts, but they don’t work as well with the totem as Podcast’s.
Podcast also comes with a remote control, that I assume controls the ghost trap on wheels that comes with Lucky. It’s got some nice detail and minimal paint hits and fits well in his grip hands.
My favorite accessory for this kid is the ecto-goggles. The ecto-goggles really finish off any Ghostbuster ensemble and these ones have the third strap that the goggles from wave one were missing. The strap is designed to work around his hair, so it looks a little unnatural, but works for me as a toy accessory.
The torso for the sentinel terror dog is almost as big as the Podcast figure and transitions from a translucent purple to a more opaque dark gray.
Lucky’s proton stream is a little different from the other proton streams and has a purple lightning rather than the blue for the original busters. I’m curious to see if there is a story reason for this in the film or perhaps they just changed the aesthetics for the proton stream in the new movie.
The pack appears to be the same pack from the original Ghostbusters, but the green alice frame with the straps is a little more substantial. The straps don’t quite want to rest on her shoulders and I think the packs from the first wave fit a bit more naturally on this figure.
The mobile trap is a fun little design and has rotating wheels, but the trap doesn’t hinge open. Paint is pretty minimal, but the strips on top and silver on the side get the job done.
The head attaches with a ball and socket joint to the torso and has an opening jaw. There is the same silvery over-spray that we saw on the Hasbro Terror-Dogs from wave one.
Trevor also comes with the same pack as Lucky and it has that floaty feel to it too where the straps don’t quite want to rest on the shoulders, but not quite as bad. Trevor does get an extra paint hit on the band of multi-colored wires on the back of his pack. That part is gray on the rest of the Hasbro packs.
Trevor also has a strip of mini-pufts designed to look like they are scaling his pack. It kind of looks like they’ve got a hold of some wire from his pack, but it’s not clear due to the lack of paint detail.
Trevor’s paper accessory is a little more successful than Winston and Peter’s from the wave as it is a map of some sort with some nicely scaled graphics and tattered edges. It is pretty fragile.
The Terror-Dog Sentinel is locked into a deep-lunging gait because it has no real lower body articulation. The upper body has minimal movement with a ball-jointed head and swivel/hinge shoulders, but the left shoulder doesn’t hinge the way you expect. Instead of hinging up/down, it hinges backward. The sculpting is nice, but it’s basically a statue and it looks really weird from behind because there is a large square on the inside of the figure visible on it’s translucent butt.
The sculpting is nice, but it’s basically a statue and it looks really weird from behind because there is a large square on the inside of the figure visible on it’s translucent butt.
The sculpting here is good with nice likenesses and a strong sense of weight in all the clothing wrinkles and folds.
The articulation is disappointing. They have similar articulation to the other Plasma Series figures, however all three of these kids have zero ankle articulation. Lucky has a boot swivel, but Podcast and Trevor’s shoes appear to be glued to the pants legs. The ball and socket torso and heads are fairly limited too with decent wiggle, but not great up and down movement. They also don’t have the butterfly hinged shoulders, so proton firing poses are a little tougher to hit.
The paint is okay here with some decent face printing and mostly clean hits on the paint details they add to the packs and accessories. The mini-puft accessories like the guys on Trevor’s pack and the half melted ones on Podcast could use a little bit of paint so you could see the expressions more clearly.
Overall these are a decent group of figures, but the articulation cut really hurt them for me. Ankles are an extremely important articulation point for posing, so I hate to see them randomly axe that from a group of figures. I was thinking they would make good custom fodder figures since super-articulated figures of kids are pretty rare, but the articulation does make them less attractive for that purpose.
Source: Fwoosh
