Rampage Toy Review: Lizzie

I recall the video game Rampage from way back in the glory days of video game arcades. Hey, I was there when the arcade cabinets first appeared! I played Death Race, Asteroids, Space Invaders... so many awesome arcade games!

Rampage was an awesome game that showed up back in 1986. It was a great three player game as well! The purpose of the game was to take control of one of three giant monsters. George, the giant Kong-like gorilla, Lizzie, the Godzilla like beast, and Ralph, the giant werewolf creature. The goal was to simply smash the city around you while avoiding being attacked by humans and each other. Once you lost all of your energy, you reverted back to a human form which could then be eaten by your opponents. It was later adapted into a console game that was fairly successful.

With a blast of originality, Hollywood decided to resurrect the concept into a movie. Add Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and you've got an instant blockbuster. Does the Rock ever turn down a script? I like the guy myself. Larger than life in his personality and he seems to be a pretty damn decent human being.

With the movie, usually there's a toy line to accompany it. Lanard, the toy company usually associated with The Corps line of military figures, plus a whole load of other toys, secured the toy license for the movie. This comes after their snag of the Kong movie from last year (?).

Lanard's figures range from a breath-taking two points of articulation to pretty decent near high quality GI Joe articulation. The vehicles are often odd and goofy looking, with some amazing bright spots as well.

Rob, over at joeaday.com usually does an annual post about the Lanard Warehouse Sale. Awesome stuff to check out!

Anyway... Lanard has the Rampage toy license and pictures of the toys have started popping up across the interwebs. The stuff looked really cool and I was anxious to see them in hand.

Just recently, I went to my local Walmart, which seems to be the main store to buy Lanard stuff, and spotted what appeared to be their first shipment of the Rampage toys. 

Apparently George, the gorilla, is the main creature character of the movie. George is a gentle albino gorilla that gets mutated into a giant Kong-like beast. The initial concern about the toy was that it first appeared to be a repaint of the Kong toy. That toy looked very cool, but was disappointing, at least to me. Arm and neck articulation, nothing else. Kind of boring. The Mega-George is nicely articulated and can be posed in a standard gorilla movement position.

I think that I would like to eventually pick up the Mega George, but we'll see. Only $19.87! So very awesome, but he's also so very huge!

The smaller $9.84 sets include a figure, some accessories, and each of the main beasts in their original form. Ralph is a wolf, while Lizzie is an alligator. Maybe... Maybe not... Probably not.

For the $14.92 price point, we get the next stage mutation for George, Ralph, and Lizzie. George just gets bigger; Ralph and Lizzie get bigger and uglier. After looking through everything, I decided on Lizzie as my first purchase of the toy line. 

Holy crap, Lizzie is just awesome! I like a good action figure, but I've also got a weak spot for a well sculpted alien or monster. There's so much photographic potential in this beast! 

I had to do a quick shot with Lizzie and some of my Renegades. More to come eventually!

Next up is a much closer look at all the monstrous glory that is Lizzie. I took a bunch of pictures, so I'm going to just make a separate page for those, rather than load this post with pictures. Click here for more pictures!

FSS 6.0: Rampart & Night Stalker Commander

Time for some new GI Joe figure reviews! The third shipment of FSS 6.0 has arrived and I figured that I would get this dumb blog rolling again with my thoughts on these two figures. 

This shipment brings us Rampart and the Night Stalker Commander. Initial appearances from the card art and the figures in package looks like some good solid work by the Club. Time for a closer look.  

 Rampart first appeared back in 1990 alongside quite a few other brand new characters to the ARAH line-up. Quite a few have already been recreated in modern form by the Club. I believe that Grid Iron, Stretcher, and Rapid Fire are the only ones left to be made. Rapid Fire? Yeah... we'll see... I suppose Super Trooper would have to come out first. Yikes... those two would be interesting to see in modern form! 

Overall, I'm very pleased with how Rampart turned out. He's got a decent set of weapons included with him. The parts choices work out well, mostly. There always seems to be at least one issue with Club figures. The Club often hits solid home runs with figures like Cross Country, but usually, there's at least a minor issue. With Rampart, it has to do with his neck. The head choice works just fine; it's a reuse of the head used for Blocker from the BF2000 Convention set from last year. And like Blocker's head, Rampart doesn't have any eyebrows! No worries, the goggles cover up his eyes nicely. So the combination of the head and the torso is a nice fit, but the head rests just a little too high on the neck post. Rampart suffers a bit from the giraffe neck syndrome. Easy fix though, a gentle twist of a drill bit in the head will carve out a little extra room to allow the head to rest lower on the neck. Alters the original figure a bit,but so what, it's mine to do with as I please. Besides, I've already glued some of the loose bits to one of the weapons that he comes with!

 Next up is the Night Stalker Commander. The Night Stalkers are an original creation by the Club. They were a set of female Cobra operatives that first appeared in the Tanks fro the Memories convention set from way back in 2007 in Atlanta. I actually went to that convention, but only as a one day guest.

The original figures were, of course, made from o-ring molds. This new version is naturally all modern construction. 

What's cool about this figure is that she is a unique character. She's got a real name, Rebecca Bristow. She's pretty much the same base figure that the Club created for the female Cobra troopers from just a couple years ago. The main difference is the arm construction. The troopers used Helix arms, while the commander uses... uh... some other female arms. Baroness arms? I think so.

Bristow is just as... well endowed as the Cobra troopers, which is okay, I guess, but still impractical for the personal protection of the soldier. Overall, the Club has done great work with these female troopers. I believe that the plan is to release a set of Night Stalkers like they did with the Cobra troopers. They'll all be geared up in black uniforms and I believe that they'll be ethnically diverse as well. Hopefully, they'll be out this year and also hopefully available at the convention in Chattanooga in June.

Next up? Who knows? We'll see next month. Maybe I'll have some other new posts on this silly ass blog before then.