Flynn - TRON

Flynn

TRON Diamond Select figures - Walgreens Exclusive

Bless you, Diamond Select.  Taking a buried-by-Star-Wars Disney property and showing it some love and light of day.  Their first TRON figures were worked into the Kingdom Hearts line, and they were fantastic.  Now, they are doing a three figure wave of Tron, Flynn, and Sark, each with piece of a buildable Recognizer ship!  Before those drop, single packs without the ship pieces are already hitting Walgreens stores.  Other than the ship piece, the notable difference in offerings is this figure.

What?!  They made the standard blue Flynn figure an exclusive?!   Yup.  The Flynn in the main line is the red disguise.  Normally, I would shun this type of promotion, but I have handful of WG stores in my town and they seem to be plentiful.

Best of luck to those TRON fans without a handful of WG stores in their radius...you will not want to miss out on this one.  I think he has slightly upgraded articulation compared to the Kingdom Hearts figures, and includes his disc and a display stand.  The sculpt on these are also more defined, less cartoony than the KH versions.  

Likeness wise, I can see young Jeff Bridges here.  It's not as strong as the prototype pics, but he's definitely there in certain angles and lighting.  Like most toys, a stronger paint job can make all the difference.  Everything else about the program suit looks great:  strong lines, bright paint.  His tunic is a flexible, rubbery material that doesn't hinder his articulation much and still allows you to port his disc to his back easily.

I am looking forward to adding this guy to Diamond's growing TRON offerings.  I'm off to print off a Master Control cardstock background!  End of line...

TRON Kingdom Hearts figure review

Tron

Tron

Diamond Select - Kingdom Hearts

'Member Tron?  Tron Legacy?  You know...the successful revisiting that turned a profit but Disney shelved any potential sequels after they bought out Star Wars?  Fuck you, Bob Iger...

Anyway...new Classic Tron figures!  And they actually look like Bruce Boxleitner and David Warner!  I hope someone gives Mr. Warner one of these or it was part of a likeness deal because, with all the great movies he's been in, I don't think he's ever had a figure like this.  There's still hope that "Evil" will see the light of day on account of a new Time Bandits series in the works.

The figures look great and sport more articulation than was expected from the early promo images.  They looked like they may not have any knee articulation.  Final product?  Double-jointed knees!  The paint and lines are clean and my only gripes are that the costume is a bit restrictive with elbow movement and they did not come with identity discs...but I stole some fudge-ably scaled, glow-in the-dark ones from their smaller, retro counterparts!

Sora and Goofy look awesome, all decked out for the grid.  Articulation is similar with earlier versions of these characters.  Sora has the Tron-ed out Keyblade and Goofy gets nothing.  Aw, c'mon!  Small weapons getting cut as saving measures can't reduce cost all that much!  Not as much as you would save cutting a full character from...hey, where's Donald?!  Ugh...guess we'll have to keep our fingers crossed for a Walgreens budget release...

The lack of Donald is even more baffling considering the third pack from this Kingdom Hearts wave.  Mickey in his robes is the main draw here, and the larger Heartless is all-new...but another standard, inarticulate Darkness?  Sure, he's got a nifty, translucent purple paint job, but we couldn't even get a reused Keyblade for the Head Cheese?!  At least these negatives aren't as disappointing as the world selection for KH3!

I threw in a Tron Legacy Clu figure that I picked up on Ebay.  I didn't buy these with the movie's release, as they were slightly larger in scale than most figures I collected.  He's about 7.5 inches tall...so not too bad next to these new figures.  The articulation is not great, but I did always think the electronic gimmick was neato.  With the press of a button, a young Jeff Bridges flickers in the helmet and spouts several lines of dialog, appearing to be moving his mouth in an old school video sort of way.

If you like Kingdom Hearts, these figures are a win.  If you like Tron, these are a super win.  Get 'em while the gettin's good.  It's surprising that Disney let these guys out to play.  Tron isn't even featured in KH3...must be some big fans over at Diamond Select!  End of line...