Goku and Vegeta

Goku and Vegeta

Dragon Ball Z

Dragon Stars - Ban Dai

I'm not a big fan of anime overall, but I do have a soft spot for Dragon Ball Z.  Good memories of watching Cartoon Network's Toonami line-up after a long day of high school with friends.  With a mix of wacky humor and melodrama, absurd powers, and long, action-packed fight sequences, DBZ was tailor-made for that type of audience:  a super-nerdy soap opera of sorts.  And how could you not be pumped up after being introed by Optimus Prime?!

Anyway, I had some early 2000 Irwin Toys figures for some time that were 5-inch scale and had limited articulation.  Not terrible as far as sculpts go, but I sold a Frieza freezer bag full of them for $40 close to a decade later.  Big mistake?  Not at the time...I'm sure I spent it on more toys!  Though, I have been revisiting the series on Blu Ray recently and it has made me wish I had some of these now-iconic characters in my collection.  Luckily, Ban Dai has a Marvel Legends-type series of DBZ figures available to US markets as close as your Walgreens down the street!

These scale closer to the current 6-inch standard and have much more articulation than my older figures.  Sculpts and paint are clean, and the figures look just as they should leaping from the screen.  You get a set of interchangeable hands and, in Marvel Legends fashion, each figure comes with a piece of a larger figure to build.  Series one has pieces for Shenron, the dragon that grants your wish after collecting all of the dragon balls.  I am probably going to cherry-pick this line, so I'm not sure I will complete him (6 figures per wave.)  He looks nice, though a little small.  He's definitely no Fin Fang Foom!

I cherry-picked the biggest names from the series first: Goku and Vegeta.  They look and move great, though it kinda sucks that, in an age of extra head accessories, they still make you buy two versions of these characters to go Super Saiyan.  And would it have killed them to have thrown in at least one energy/blast effect per character?  I also miss the Dragon Balls themselves that came packed with the Irwin figures.

Oh well...I now have a Goku that can go toe to toe and scale to scale with Superman! (If you're one of those sad geeks who like impossible crossover "so-and-so" could totally beat "blank" debates.)