Doc Thomas Reviews > Deformation TrainRobot

A millennium ago when I began chiseling my personal Word of God upon Poe’s stone tablets of wonder and virtue, I reviewed a very special toy, one that had elluded me for some time until I finally chanced upon it and had it delivered to my front doorstep – the Thomas the Tank Engine Voltron, Voltromas. This caught the attention of kind reader Onigaijan of the fantastic site Fanboy’s Closet, who emailed me to say he’d come across two of Voltromas’s children! He very kindly sent me them to me, to review for Poe’s site as a follow-up to the grand original. Presenting: Deformation TrainRobot! (more…)

Toy Aisle Trolls > Omega Raptor

Toy Aisle Trolls is a feature highlighting acts of vandalism to in-store toy items. If you find a ruined package, a stolen figure, a swapped-out figure, or any other such acts, take a photo (cell phone photos are fine if they’re not blurry) and email them to poe AT poeghostal.com. Also, please note: I’m deliberately being over-the-top with my condemnation of these people–I don’t actually wish bodily harm upon them. Just severe mental anguish.

Poester Engineernerd sends in this instant classic:

I’m pretty sure both the left-hand and middle ones are both wrong–not sure about the third one–but at least the middle one is, y’know, Iron Man. The left one, though–I don’t even know who the hell that is, never mind what he’s doing under the name Omega Factor Armor. Nice of the scumbag who did this to include his accessory, though.

Roboto’s shoulders are on backwards

Mattel QC has done it again.

I’m still trying to decide how much I care about this, but over on He-Man.org fans have discovered that Roboto’s shoulders appear to be backwards, much like the first-release He-Man. It looks like the Horsemen sculpted them to match the vintage figure, and Mattel screwed the pooch on the assembly.

Oddly enough, this was perfectly evident way back in the SDCC pics, but apparently no one caught it.

The shoulders are reversed on the Pixel Dan review as well, so I think we can safely assume every single Roboto will have backwards shoulders. And this time we’re being forced to pay for defective products. At the very least, Mattel should allow fans to opt-out of the sub for this one figure and wait for a reissue.

What do you think? Do you care enough about this to not want the figure until it’s been corrected?

I mean, this is pretty damned bad. Yes, you can say it’s not really that noticeable–and that’s kind of how I feel–but at the same time, remember, you’re paying $30 for this thing.

I don’t want to come off like some hysterical fanboy losing my shit over this, because I’m still not sure it bothers me much (although apparently the reversed shoulders on the He-Man caused them to rub and wear away at some points of contact, and the thought of that happening does bug me a bit). But given the subscription, there’s a principle-of-the-thing aspect to this that’s really bugging me.

UPDATE: I want to point out that it’s entirely possible that the sample Pixel Dan received was an early one and that this was caught and corrected at the factory before general production started. But they said the same thing about the bleed around Orko’s ears, and it wasn’t corrected. So you’ll forgive me if I don’t hold my breath.

Feature > The Dark Arsenal of the Space Pirate

Since I now have a working relationship with Spy Monkey Creations, I’m not going to do a “review” of the Dark Arsenal of the Space Pirate set. Instead, I’ll just say a few words about it, and then let you check out the photos. (more…)

Any questions for Mattel?

This is for the November 1 round. Questions are due by 11:59pm October 13.