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Frozen
Assets and
Girls of Gotham
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After more than a dozen years, Hasbro has given up the Batman license. Mattel is
the new owner, and collectors have been excited about the change. I suspect it
will be 'The king is dead, long live the king', but only time will really tell.
Hasbro isn't going into that dark night without a fight though, or at least a stab
at squeezing every last little dollar out of the license. The final two Toys R Us
multi-pack exclusives have now hit stores - the Girls of Gotham, and Frozen Assets.
Each set contains four figures, and retails for $20.
The Girls of Gotham consists of Poison Ivy, Batgirl, Catwoman and Talia. Frozen
Assets includes Batman, Nightwing, Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy. You'll notice
that I didn't even take the figures out of the packages for this review - really,
with one new figure and seven repaints, what's the point? You can see all you
need to with them still inside their plastic tombs, which is never a good sign.
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Packaging - **1/2
Both of these sets come in new style boxes, with the figures displayed prominently
in a square, rather than a rectangle. The boxes look nice enough, and display the
figures just fine - but why change now? This breaks the look of the other sets,
and certainly doesn't help for those MIBBers that will be storing them together.
This seems to be an unnecessary change that causes more issues than it fixes.
Sculpting - **
There are eight figures between these two sets, and only one new sculpt. If that's
not a pathetic performance, I don't know what is. Poison Ivy is the one new sculpt,
and that is less than stellar.
The sculpts on Nightwing, Catwoman, Mr. Freeze, and Talia are all decent, but we've
seen it more than once in most cases. Batman is one of those less than stellar,
goofy variants, and Batgirl is the same as the previous TRU four pack. Her sculpt
is just as silly as ever, and this time she's not even 'new'.
The one new sculpt, Poison Ivy, can barely stand on her own. Actually, if you manage
to get her to stand without some sort of external support, I'd love to hear about it.
If you're going to resculpt a figure, at least make sure it can stand up.
Paint - *1/2
The paint ops on these four packs has been consistently bad, and these two sets are
no exception. Lots of bleed between colors, sloppy lines, overspray, and just plain
poor work.
And some of the color schemes make no sense - Talia isn't even different from the
previous version! At least give us something closer to the actual source material.
Articulation - *1/2
The standard five points of articulation on most of the figures, but Talia and Batgirl
don't even manage that. They are both missing the hip joints, and what little articulation
they do have does little to improve the goofy stances. Batgirl is particularly poor in this
regard, and don't even get me started again on Poison Ivy's inability to stand.
Accessories - *
If I never see this damn 'nose' gun again, it will be too soon.
Every figure comes packed with re-used accessories, and several of them (like the nose gun)
were stupid the very first time around, let alone the fourth or fifth time.
Value - Bupkis
Twenty bucks a set for this crap? Hasbro should be ashamed.
Overall - *1/2
They get a star for at least a new Poison Ivy - too bad she is such a disappointment.
It looks like Hasbro swept the plastic remnants off the floor, loaded them up in the
hoppers for one last run at the molds, and slapped the paint on as fast as they could.
With final offerings like these, no one will be mourning the move to Mattel.
Where to Buy:
Don't, unless your a complete fool like me. I picked mine up at the local Toys R Us for twenty bucks. On-line:
- Amazon.com has the Girls of Gotham up, but says it won't start shipping for a couple weeks.
Keep scrolling down - the rest of the photos cover the
Frozen Assets set.
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Figure from the collection of Michael Crawford.
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