Meteor II Rift Killer with Onell Design's Phase Arm and Axis Joints
Toy Pizza Action Figure
Item No.: n/a Manufacturer:Toy Pizza with bonus Onell Design parts Includes:Figure with spare head, Axis Joints, Phase Arm Action Feature:n/a Retail:$30.00 Availability: Pre-order November 2019, Deliver January 2020, "drop" in February 2020 Other: Mostly yellow plastic with red and green paint, Phase Arm cast in green
Have you ever wanted to own an action figure out of off-model fan art? Because this might be the best interpretation of that idea in ages.
Ever since I discovered Glyos I was hoping there would be a mass-produced Metroid-referencing figure like this Meteor II Action Figure. I nagged a few people about it, but Toy Pizza was not one I pestered - that I recall. I was pretty surprised when this figure came to pass, and it's one of those things I never thought would ultimately materialize. It's great - but it's expensive. A standard Rift Killer 3 3/4-inch action figure sells for about $18, with Axis Joints at about $3 and Phase Arms at about $2. It's expensive - and I somehow missed the pre-order window. Unlike other figures from its release drop, this one stuck around for a while. I don't think that's remotely a knock on quality, but $30 is really expensive for what you get. If it weren't a "bucket list" figure, I'd probably have a hard time buying it myself. But it is, and I love it.
For years I thought we'd see Pheyden or even one (or more) of the Outer Space Men in Samus Aran's armor colors or even her Zero Suit duds, but it was Toy Pizza that grabbed the trophy for this mass-produced figure. The 3 3/4-inch scale figure's flat coloring is a clear tribute to the 8-bit Metroid game, as well as 1980s action figures. It's simple and flat, while also looking like something Fisher-Price might have sold you. As an added visual bonus it reminds me of a lot of the early Metroid fan art from Nintendo's earlier magazines, where most of the designs had little in common - save for color and a basic, rough form - to what would eventually morph into the official character model.
With one head, a phase arm, and axis joints not part of the typical build this is a pretty plussed-up release. Having said that, it looks incredibly cheap thanks to most of the parts all being a single color. There's a ton of paint to make the heads, chest, and boots that orangey red color but odds are you won't realize it at first glance. The clean paint applications are so perfect that it almost looks like a discount dollar store toy. Fans of this stuff will see where the pennies all went, because making a figure look flat and simple can be pretty difficult when the parts are all gang molded. Articulation varies depending on the configuration, but its default build gets you about 12 meaningful points of articulation, plus two more if you count the Phase Arm's swiveling bits.
Other colorways do a great job highlighting the considerable detail in this mold, but this one makes it look like some lost 1980s or 1990s action figure from a line you neglected. It's covered in weird detailing that serves no real purpose, and with the added new arm pieces it looks somewhat discongruous. As someone that remembers the weirdness of the late 1980s, its asymmetrical, strangely colored form seems like something I should have been given as a present when I was 10 or 11 years old.
I'd recommend it to guys my age who are me. If you're in that oddball intersection of indie toy fan, action figure collector, and Nintendo fanatic, how could you not want this? It's fun and it has a lot of build options if you want to tweak your default build, which I generally do not. Kudos to Toy Pizza for doing it, and I hope that we see something like a blonde, blue-suit Terra Firma out of The Outer Space Men and some sort of weird space jellyfish some day. Given the brightly-colored weirdness from Lanard's Alien line this year, it's a good time to be a fan of 1980s properties.
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