Who You Gonna Call- ACTION FIGURES

In a truly rare moment, I once more controlled my excitement over new toys and documented opening them to write a review.

My insane levels of fandom  of Ghostbusters has been mentioned. It showed up in the Eighties part of the giant list of important movies that shaped my personality, and my daughter yells at me when we watch it because I unconsciously mouth all the words.  Multiple separate groups of my friends and I quote it in strange situations.  Luckily, my friends and I find ourselves in strange situations near constantly.

There have been multiple releases of action figures for this franchise from different license holders. One would think I'd own some by now.

One would be forgetting that New Jersey remains the armpit of the action figure universe.

Previous releases sometimes would not include all four main characters in the same wave, making me reluctant to purchase part of the team knowing the rest may never arrive in my state.

Other times, they would all be in one wave, but due to uneven packing distributions, one or more would be impossible to get without a huge flea market/ eBay mark up.  This even happened with the female Ghostbusters that supposedly no one but my immediate family and a few friends liked.  The entire line was on clearance, except Holtzmann who required a reverse mortgage and an animal sacrifice to obtain.

It almost happened again with these Ghostbusters Plasma figures.  I was impressed by pictures I saw online and did some digging. The whole wave was on Amazon at cover price or slightly lower.

Except Egon, he was sold out and going for almost double list price.

I despondently checked back occasionally and found his price rising as time passed.

Then a miracle happened. I found an auction listing for the whole set at list price with free shipping!!!!!    My guess is the miracle was enhanced by the rest of the vendor's stock being small china dolls and decorations covered in doilies.

I broke down, ordered them,  they came in a much smaller box than I'd imagine they'd fit in and here's the review-

The packaging is very cool looking, with internal art matching the Tobin's Spirit Guide book that I made sure Anabelle had a copy of as soon as she liked the franchise..

I still opened them and threw the packaging away, toys are meant to be played with.

I did save a couple side panels for nifty book marks.

Starting with the two ladies of the group, Gozer and the Possessed Dana, the appeal of the sculpture and paint is immediately obvious.  Dana looks like Sigourney Weaver did in the film.

The other figure looks like Slavitza Jovan, but slightly less like Gozer. Sadly, we're still technologically distant from having plastic figures that can continuously shoot real ectoplasmic energy out of them at all times.

Having less accessories, and not being the main crew of figures, these got the largest pieces of the build-a-figure.  Dana has nothing else for her character.  Gozer has extra sparkle hands. In a nod to continuity that I found squee worthy, the demon dog build-a-figure is labeled Vinz Clortho on the box. While indistinguishable from the more well known "ZUUL" in the movie, using that name indicates it is different from the Dana figure the body comes packed with.

Getting on to the main four, the paint, sculpt and pose-abilty of the guys and their uniforms is amazingly well done.

They each come with a Proton Pack and one other accessory that ties to an iconic scene.  

The packs have straps like they would in real life, but for easy assembly to the figures, pop open on one side They also have a peg that goes into the figures' backs to hold them in place.  This made getting them to wear them correctly a simple operation.  There was one minor negative due to figure accuracy. Ray is a bit stockier than the other figures and all the proton packs are identical.  Getting his pack to resnap once it was on him took a bit of stretching. (and swearing)

For the iconic props:

Ray has his goggles from the cigarette dropping moment when he first sees Slimer, and other scenes.

Venkman has a trap, featured in,  "We came, we saw, we kicked its ass!" when Ray was holding it.  Oddly, Pete is the only Ghostbuster NEVER shown holding a trap in the film, but it took me about a half hour to get it in one hand, the proton blaster in the other, and get Ray to hold his blaster with both hands, and then stage them both. Therefore, I'm not taking it out now. 

Winston has a proton stream....because someone had to, and they probably couldn't get the legal rights to make "A big Twinkie."

And Egon has his PK meter where he makes that great face when scanning Rick Moranis.

Speaking of faces, It is the sculpts of the faces that kept me searching for these. They're fantastic approximations of the actors!

The only complaint I have about these gems is the information on the back of the box indicating which leg of Vinz Clortho comes with which Ghostbuster was wrong.

I must confess to quite a bit of (more) swearing when I thought the eBay seller had somehow screwed me and swapped out legs. (Which given the intactness of the packaging was impossible, but sometimes rationality slips when I already feel guilty about a big toy purchase.)

However, all things ended well, it was easy to figure out which leg went where and this monster may be the build-a-figure that went together the easiest and sturdiest while retaining the ability to stand and pose it out of any I've seen.

And it's nicely beefy too!

These are fantastic, and thanks to my wife's amazing construction abilities, the new shelves in  the comic room have a perfect place for them.  As of now they're living on end table seen in many a Christmas Battle.  

They are there instead of the usual "new figure" space, since that changeable super hero shelf  or the TV tower is currently occupied by Anabelle's Muppet figures brought when the Easter Bunny may have gone a little overboard for her final High School egg hunt.

There is no reason for this aside, other than the photo I took of the Muppet figures is the best picture I've taken of that shelf in years of trying.

Here's hoping we get a Ghostbusters Plasma Wave 2 with a build a figure Stay Puft Marshmallow Man!!!!

Lets see, we need a Janine Melnitz and a Louis Tully...previous lines have made Walter Peck.  Slimer's small but could come with the large Stay Puft body...now we need two more.

The Mayor and the Cardinal are a long shot but it would be cool to set up the,

"Lenny... you will have saved the lives of MILLIONS of registered voters," scene.

Or, since I'm wish listing anyway, how about we get the two new villains from the sequel, Vigo and Janosh?

I'm over thinking my toys again, aren't I?

Please help me.