I had a bit of a shopping
spree:
It was nice, nothing cost
that much and all of them brought more satisfaction than any three toys in the
store that cost three times their price could/would and you know what’s great?
They all (just about) fit October’s Halloween theme – we’ve got mutants,
Ghostbusters and Kane, who’s pretty much the wrestling equivalent of Jason
Vorhees. So whatever I review I’m good but I’ll be honest I have no idea how I’m
gonna review Playmobil or Hasbro style WWF figures so we’ll just deal with the
straight-up action figures, I can do that.
Meet the Grossery Gang
Putrid Power Action Figures. My knowledge of Grossery Gang before today
(whereupon I did some customary research for this post) was that they were one
of various bling bag lines that had risen in the wake of the success of Trash
Pack, cool but too vast for me to get into when I hadn’t finished my
collections of the mini-figure lines that made my childhood a delight yet let
alone start on modern lines like Trash Pack or Fungus Amungus or those
M.U.S.C.L.E. like alien wrestlers (I forget their name). Turns out they’re
produced by Moose Toy (who also make Shopkins and the Ugglys Pet Shop) and are
a direct spin-off from Trash Pack that’ve been on sale since last year (2016).
My interest in the line was only piqued after the tweets starting making the
‘rounds about their new Putrid Power figures and specifically the characters
Putrid Pizza, Dodgey Donut and Fungus Fries (Fries isn’t out yet), why? Well do
they look a bit similar to you, like you’ve seen them before? Or you remember
them even though they’re new? I don’t think we’ve got any actual confirmation
on this but the whole internet has pretty much agreed that if these aren’t
direct homages to Food Fighters (specifically Private Pizza, Major Munch and
Fat Frenchie) then they might as well be and coincidence is a marvellous thing.
I cannot stress my love of
Food Fighters enough, their bizarre concept, their flat out awesome characters,
the fact that they’re pretty much dog toys kids are allowed to play with all
just make them utter gems to me. So like many others the merest whiff of a
tribute, or even a similarity, was enough to make me buy ‘em, it’s taken a
little while because the Food Fighter-esque figures have been sold out
everywhere I’ve looked, with only the non-Food Fighter-like figures remaining,
unloved and unwanted because they didn’t recall a cult-favourite toy line once
sold for about a dollar fifty but now I’ve got ‘em so you get my two penn'orth
as well, lucky you.
Putrid Pizza was the one of
the three I was least excited about getting, simply because he’s such a radical
departure from his Food Fighters equivalent (Private Pizza) and I couldn’t
figure out why you’d want to avoid a pepperoni eye patch on your pizza man? Now
I have him though? I fucking love him and I shall tell you why: while playing
about with him I realised he as effectively Food Fighters and Toxic Crusaders
combined, that made me like him, but that thought also lead onto the
realisation that had Food Fighters been released (or revived) in the 1990s,
Putrid Pizza is what they’ve looked like and that made me delighted. Putrid
Pizza is effectively filling a whole in my childhood I didn’t know needed
filling. He has everything I liked about the 1990s toys I grew up with –
detailed and skilled sculpts, bursts of neon paint, whacky themed accessories
and actually pretty decent articulation, sure it’s all nostalgia but it’s also
all there on PP here.
In comparison I have very
little of note to say about Dodgey Donut – possibly because his appeal should be
self-evident in the photos: he’s a barely sane doughnut man wielding a nunchuck
and drooling slime. I greatly enjoy that his gauntlets/socks are made up of
icing and they sure do look and feel like what they’re supposed to be, I wonder
if they moulded icing? That sounds messy but worth the effort. DD has a more
modern look all over really, and a more realistic feel to him, PP has some damn
fine sculpting that really does look like burnt cheese (I want to chew it) but
he’s still blasted in various Toxic Crusaders neons whereas the texture and
little paint apps on DD make him really look like a doughnut, I want to eat him
and don’t feel bad about it. On another note but one related to DD as it’s more
obvious with him: these figures are small, technically they’re 3 ¾ inch scale
but they’re such bizarre proportions and such a variety of proportions that
they seem a lot bigger than they are, this ‘seems better than they are’ carries
over to the articulation, there isn’t much there – PP has five joints and DD
only four (because he has no neck, being a doughnut) but they’re all ball
joints or close facsimiles thereof and all the limbs get a great range though PP’s
head doesn’t, it’s less of a ball joint and more of a wobble joint but it’s
still a ball joint, it still gets more range than a swivel joint and still
makes the toy feel ‘better’ than five points of articulation would feel if they
were only swivels.
Each figure comes with an
exclusive Grossery Gang mini-figure – which is a damn sensible idea as far as
I’m concerned, it takes the figures from an optional extra to a must-have extra
for collectors of the main line – from what I can figure out these are
technically the ‘pre-transformed’ versions of the figures, at least for these
two. This is the first time I’ve ever handled a Grossery Gang mini-figure and…I
don’t like it, they feel like wet cake. I suppose this could be intentional,
they are after all supposed to be gross – it’s in the title – but they feel too
soft and too wet and I’m sure they’ll degrade over time (and if that’s the case
then I can’t understand why any toy company would choose a material that
degrades for a toy based around collecting). Aside from the feel though I think
they’re adorable and work as a nice counter to their mutated forms, instead of
a fearsome pizza and a deranged doughnut we have a sad little pizza slice with
all his cheese fallen to the bottom (foreshadowing his action figures’ body)
and a confused little half eaten doughnut.
And so this disjointed mess
comes to a conclusion and that conclusion is: these were so worth the
frustration finding them entailed. They cost £7.99 in the UK, a fair price for
a toy their size but damn cheap for their levels of awesomity, sure that
awesomity is strongest to a niche market that’s completely outside of the
target demographic but if you’re part of that (and I am) £7.99 is fuck all –
buy these weirdos friends, buy them so that there may be a second series with
burgers, pancakes and hot dogs!
No comments:
Post a Comment