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A Phantom Stranger Among Titans

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  • TRDouble
    Permanent Member
    • Jul 10, 2012
    • 2525

    A Phantom Stranger Among Titans

    Figures Toy Company. Love them, or Hate Them. Or be the rare person like me and find yourself somewhere in-between.

    I received my order from FTC today. With the newly released Phantom Stranger and Lilith, and the announcement of the Mego Deathstroke, it felt like a good time to catch on a few holes in the FTC collection. I was going to add onto Krypt0nite's Phantom Stranger thread, but I decided to start a new one since I picked up a bunch of other figures too. I might try and post some pictures this weekend, if time permits.

    First, the bagged for full price Phantom Stranger. He looks good. It's interesting how they redid the new Superman sculpt, with white hair and the way they painted the eye area. I think it works well and I like the new fedora hat. It's hard to judge the body because the suit makes it hard to move the arms due to the bulkiness. The clothes are fine, I like the amulet and the cape is well done. My OCD will always notice that it's not sewed down properly at the collar at chain part on his right side, but really, it's more me than the cape. Nope, the real problem are those soft, gooey dress shoes that FTC uses. They make it hard for the figure to stand, and they melt, particularly on certain plastic stands. Yuck. So I peeled the shoes off, put a pair of FTC socks on him, and used some extra shoes I had from a Mego figure (Major Nelson, maybe?). Done and ready for display.

    Next up is the other bagged for a full price figure, the Teen Titans Lilith. Out of the bag she looks good. I think the face is well done, the clothes are nice (once I rotated the belt), boots match the top pretty well... but... there had to be a but!... the knees. Look at the rear promo pictures on the FTC website and yeah, it's accurate that the knees have gaps in them. I thought about trying to tighten them, especially since I had the pan and boiling water going (more on that in a minute), but once I put the legs straight, which is probably needed to keep her balanced without a stand, the gaps are gone and she stands fine. So overall, with some issues, I am two for two.

    Make that three for three, of course with minor issues. The third figure is Teen Titans Hawk. Hawk is an older release, so he came packaged. If you don't like the short sleeves and pants legs, you won't like this figure. But it's okay and makes for a nice set with Dove and the rest of the 6" Teen Titans. A better design choice would have been to extend the sleeves and use colored hands, but they wanted to keep the original Mego Teen Titans aesthetics. The bending pieces of Hawks.. feathers?... don't bend out quite like the pictures, but you can pose them well enough to make them look nice. The FTC male teen body has terrible arms, but they hang to the side okay, so it fits my shelf display.

    Fourth up, and where the real trouble came in at, was fully packaged New Teen Titans Terra. As soon as I removed her from the package, I could see she was a hot mess. The bumpy hips looked awful in the costume. The body was bad (are all FTC bodies just bad?). The left hip was stuck, but I was able to pop it free, but the whole body went into hunchback mode. Since I couldn't get a good pose, I decided to strip her down. Off come the boots... I said, off come the boots... nope, they are stuck. I start to roll them down a bit and you can see that the boots have melted the legs. I manage to get them down the leg a bit, but in the end, to get them off, both feet broke off in the boot, non-repairable. I fish the feet out carefully with pliers and admire the destructive power of the plastic boot on melted legs. I grab a new Mego female body, but they have that weird curved left leg, so I pull out the pan, boil some water, and fix that up the best I can. Next, I put the costume onto the new body, add a pair of long socks, slide the feet into the boots, and finish the transfer of Terra to a new Mego body. The cut of the suit could be better, but it looks much better on the new Mego body, with the bonus of it being shorter than the FTC female body, which works for Terra. But I can't say I was thrilled to have to go through this process for a new $29.99 figure though (this is the FTC "hate" part).

    Finally, to finish up my FTC New Teen Titans, I bought a fully packaged New Teen Titans Jericho. Full disclosure, I bought New Teen Titans #1. Hated it. And by then, I had discovered the X-Men and I was more Marvel than DC during that time period. My NTT experience was with the X-Men crossover and the 2003 Teen Titans animated series (the serious precursor to Teen Titans Go!). I have the NTT omnibuses to see what I missed, but I have little knowledge of Jericho, outside of him being Deathstroke's son. That said, the figure is fantastic! The clothes are very detailed and just well done. Little touches like snaps on the shoulder to keep the scarf in place are very cool. The rubber boots can make it hard to stand Jericho in many poses, but I have him standing fine on his own. The FTC body sucks (SURPRISE!), but I don't think I need to get him in many poses, so I don't think I will be swapping him. I hear Jericho is not the most liked character, but he is one of FTC's most well done figures.

    That's all for now. We'll see how I feel this weekend and if other tweaks are coming. I think it's time to display my New Teen Titans, but with Robin instead of Nightwing.
  • nubee
    Career Member
    • Feb 15, 2010
    • 512

    #2
    Thanks for the review on the Phantom Stranger. Still undecided if I should buy it.

    Comment

    • bobws
      Permanent Member
      • Feb 13, 2008
      • 3462

      #3
      I can't wait to get Lillith, i need my Titans collection to keep growing. I had 8" versions of all Teen Titans up to before Terra joined. All 60's and 70's characters in customs including Starfire Raven and Cyborg.
      Those are gone now and i'm rebuilding them all again. So far i have 8" versions of Wondergirl, Kid Flash, Aqualad and Gnarrk. Speedy is almost done, but i am currently concentrating on the Original JSA and 7 Soldiers of Victory. Thanks to Brian I am also working on Legionnaires! Right now i'm at a pause due to needing to buy a bunch of bodies, i have to wait til next month for those.
      "Hang on Lady... We go for a RIDE!" - Shorty to Willie Scott.Best movie line from Indiana Jones & the Temple Of Doom

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