11 Jan, 2009
Futurama – Wave 2 review – Zapp Brannigan and Leela Toynami Toys
Posted by: Dr_Teng In: Toys
Over the next few while, I’m going to try to do 2 reviews a week. Work through the backlog, keep the content fresh.
Today, I’ll be reviewing Wave 2 of the Futurama toys from Toynami. Each Futurama wave is 2 figures, and these particular ones are Zapp Brannigan and Leela.
To start off, I’ve got a few problems with the Futurama toys that applies to the whole line. For one, the release schedule makes little sense (4-6 toys over an entire year, when they’ve released 3 Futurama movies in 6 months?), they’re kind of expensive given their size and near-complete lack of articulation, and the character choices are bizarre at best. Bender in Wave 3, followed by another Bender in Wave 5, another version of Leela coming up, and no Professor? Well, whatever, on to the toy specific reviews.
Zapp Brannigan is by far the better of the two. His articulation is incredibly limited, but his pose is spot on and he looks as smug as he should. Plus, you can move his arms to make it look like he’s dancing or giving a gun show for da ladies. He comes with an awesome prop, the Nixon head and base. They nailed it, it’s pretty much perfect. He’s my favourite of all the Futurama toys released to date. They didn’t paint in underwear either, which makes this figure kinda gross, but that’s Zapp for you.
Leela here is in a really static pose and her limited articulation hurts the figure a lot. She comes with two guns, which fit well enough into her hands, but since you can only stick her hands straight out, straight up, or straight down. They look stupid in most poses. You know that Seinfeld episode where the one lady couldn’t swing her arms and looked ridiculous? This is the action figure equivalent. She’s worth owning, but she’s disappointing.
The paint job on both figures isn’t anything outstanding, but it does the job well enough and aside from a slight problem with Leela’s neck on mine, there weren’t really any imperfections. Both figures come with a build-a-figure piece for the Robot Devil. Of course, since Wave 1 (Fry/Zoidberg) goes for insane prices on Ebay, good luck actually building the Robot Devil.
Overall opinion? 3/5. Slightly overpriced, limited articulation, but a good likeness of the figures and as a Futurama fan, it’s not like you’re likely to have many other options.
Buying Options : Available on Amazon for a reasonable price.
