Panda Mony Toys - Sham (Alter Nation)

Sham's name is pretty apt for two reasons: you can't quite tell what his true motivations are since he is both a saviour in his mini-comic and yet is somewhat cold-blooded (yes! I went there!) and frees the main villain, Sabotage (yes, he is a member of the GK Special forces). The second reason is the most obvious and that is that he is a chameleon man!

I absolutely love his look and his accessories which do make him very much the covert spy and saboteur of the team. The figure has a really nice translucent green and yellow throughout the skin. He's pretty snappy in his bow tie and has pretty good lower limb articulation although the upper body leaves a lot to be desired. His action feature is pretty neat, and the end of that tongue is really quite sticky!

Panda Mony Toys - Albert VII (Alter Nation)

He's a monkey/bull hybrid. What. I mean it's just the horns but interesting enough! I would think a highly agile practical joker character who leaps and climbs would be at a slight disadvantage having clunky horns to watch out for all the time, but clearly, I wouldn't qualify for GK Special forces! According to his store bio, he does have legs strong enough for both leaping and charging!

He's one of the most articulated and fun to pose characters of the six and has the most 90s practical joke accessories: boxing glove hammer, whoopie cushion (yes, it works, folks), and (I assume) banana cream pie!  Even his two weapons have joke pieces to them. I'm not sure why his name is Albert VII, but interestingly enough on some parts of the website, his name is Little Bighorn. I actually find that one a bit more fitting, since there's no real explanation as to why Alberta VII.

Panda Mony Toys - Daart (Alter Nation)

A young and naive operative of the team, Daart is the most teenager out of the lot. He is the largest member of the team (at least by the action figure standard!). He's the most singular in his hybrid form, being a very unambiguous giant poisonous frog. His powers include jumping a ridiculous amount, super agile, paralyzing skin poison, and some mean martial arts skills. He's my favourite in terms of character design. He's got the cool gloves, gear and headset at all times, as well as the flashy red poison dart frog colours. Admittedly he's one of the most restricted in terms of poseability, but he still looks great on the shelf and comes with some cool items.

Panda Mony Toys - El Ray (Alter Nation)

Number 2 in our Panda Mony Toys entry, El Ray is a fish-man hybrid member of the GK Delta Team. He's the water-based archetype hero of the group with a few powers including glowing, an electric touch attack, and tail-whapping! In the mini-comics, he is an explorer and higher standing member of the team who is also one of the better fighters alongside Quillroy.

I like its design because it mixes a lot of different elements: catfish whiskers, clawed appendages, nice proportions and most importantly an abundance of fins. He has better articulation than Quillroy and also comes with a decent number of extra weapons (all ocean/diver themed of course!)
His action figure gimmick is two-fold: a floppy gel material tail you can whip about and if you press the symbol on his belt his shoulders light up with LEDs! (demo video at the end!)

Panda Mony Toys - Quillroy (Alter Nation)

Panda Mony Toys is a very recent toy company to the scene. They sell (at this time) a limited line of action figures based on their own created lore and min comics (a graphic novel is due out this summer though!). Their marketing is to focus on kids' toys that aren't repeats of the older generation of collectors have (GI Joe, Transformers, etc). To that end, they succeed really well in marketing something interesting with play features, accessories and enough posing to make it a fun toy.

The setting of the Alter Nation toyline is that of a team that has been created on a remote island called GK Delta Special forces by mixing traits of both animal and human genetics. They fight against the Kymera conspiracy while also trying to deal with a society that fears them.

Mafex Batpod - The Dark Knight

Ok so in keeping with The Dark Knight trilogy I couldn't pass up a slight discount on Hobby Link Japan for a 1/12th scale Batpod. The crazy motorbike-ish design first featured in The Dark Knight. The idea of the front two wheels of the Batmobile turning into a motorbike was apparently so complicated that it was computer-rendered when it emerges, despite Nolan's desire to have things as natural as possible.

I won't be reviewing this the same way as I do an action figure since it is, in fact, a vehicle! You can't evaluate points of articulation the same way (especially since it barely has anything that moves when manipulated).

Mafex Joker (Police ver.) - The Dark Knight

I've already reviewed the Joker here before, and that figure was fantastic. The actor was also obviously fantastic in the film! He did have several costume changes throughout that made him appear disturbing in each and every one! He begins appearing as a bank robber with an angry clown mask then in his standard wear, then as a police officer (no makeup) and then a nurse. Mafex and SH Figuarts has released quite a few of these versions.

I normally am not a big fan of variants or versions of the character that appear so briefly in a film or comic. They are a bit unnecessary and a bit of a money grab usually. THAT SAID....I definitely bought this figure for the alternate arms and head for the original Joker from the interrogation scene. Two for one!!

Mafex Selina Kyle 2.0 - The Dark Knight Rises

A lot of people didn't necessarily love The Dark Knight Rises. It had its share of good moments, and while I certainly enjoyed it, it didn't feel as new (at the time) as Batman Begins nor did it feel the high stakes and amazing Joker appearance as The Dark Knight had. It did tie up some loose ends from the last film and added some interesting characters. Tom Hardy as Bane was well done. I might be one of the few that enjoyed Selina Kyle's character (and she is never called Catwoman outright, but that's fine since that might've taken more time to work in in a way that kept with Nolan's vision of a realistic-ish Batman franchise).

Some people compared her too much with the other more beloved Selina Kyla (no, not Halle Berry), Michelle Pheiffer from Batman Returns. I feel that both Catwomen are drastically different in their character approach. I did love Pheiffer's unhinged, seductive and dangerous Catwoman with a handmade costume. Anne Hathaway did a respectable job though, had some good fight scenes, and I enjoyed that she became more of an ally at the end. I also liked the new look and costume they designed, it was neat (though I still don't get why everyone in film, media, and comics still puts a cat burglar character wearing very high heeled shoes...seems super impractical). It was unfortunate there was quite a bit of jumping between characters like Bane and others so you didn't get the best grasp of them all.

Mafex Ra's al Ghul - Batman Begins

Ra's al Ghul is the leader of the League of Shadows, a secret organization that seeks to cleanse the world of its crime and impurities. Ras himself has appeared in many comics and notably as the main villain in Batman Begins, Christopher Nolan's first Batman film of the trilogy. I enjoyed Liam Neeson's performance as Ras, and to be honest there are days when his ideology doesn't seem too radical! That said, he doesn't concern himself too much with innocents vs criminals in the movie, so naturally, he has to be stopped!

This figure, in particular, is the outfit he wears while training Bruce Wayne in the art of Ninjutsu. He has his black padded armour, back hooked bracers, ninja sword, and you can alternate between his masked head and unmasked face. The unmasked head is a great look-alike to the actor! And the sculpt and paint is also pretty on point, though granted they didn't have to do anything much with that given it is mostly black with mixes of matte and shiny finishes. The biggest disappointment here isn't the number of joints exactly but how very limited the range of motion is in this figure compared to nearly every other Mafex I've collected so far. It's kind of bizarre, to be honest! Not the worst figure but far, but probably the least posable import figure I've seen.

DC Essentials - Red Hood (Rebirth)

Though I don't particularly like his personality, Red Hood comes by it honestly as both a character that was kicked to the curb both in the real world and forgotten by his family. Jason Todd is the youth delinquent that managed to steal off the Batmobile and consequently became the second Robin.

From '83 until '88 he was just that. He wasn't particularly popular with fans though, and there was an actual phone-in poll to decide by fans whether to scrap him or keep him alive. In the storyline "A Death in the Family" he was killed off by a narrow margin of votes. He was later resurrected as the Red Hood, a vigilante willing to do just about anything in the name of Justice. He is definitely lawful to his own code rather than a strictly moral one.

What I like most about Red Hood is his character design. Awesome shiny red motorcycle helmet, leather jacket, his own symbol based on the intensification of his mentor's and dual pistols. He's a crafty fighter and the best example of this I've seen is through the Arkham Knight game, as well as the DC animated film, Under the Red Hood. This figure is AWESOME especially for the price of about 30ish CAD dollars. He is a DC Essentials which means very few accessories but here it's enough. His paint and design are great, and aside from some limits in ankle movement, he's got good articulation and is a spot-on representation of the Red Hood from the newer Rebirth continuity.