Disney's Gargoyles: Demona

I've always felt that Disney's animated series, Gargoyles, was well ahead of it's time. Dark and moody, unlike most things Disney, the series was excellently written and animated. It didn't take long for the show to become a hit with the older crowd and as such would spawn other merchandise such as video games (Sega Genesis) and action figures by Kenner.

Any good series has to have it's share of villains and Gargoyles was no different. While the human character, David Xanatos would be the prominent antagonist of the Goliath and his band of Gargoyles, Demona was eventually brought into the fold. Once a lover of Goliath, she is now consumed with hatred for the humans and finds herself at the opposite end of the spectrum from where Goliath stands.

Around the mid 1990's, Kenner would unveil a line of action figures based on the Gargoyles animated show. The figures were well sculpted a took after their animated counterparts. 1995 would see the release of Demona, one of two female action figures in a male dominated series. (the other female figure was that of Elisa Maza)

Demona's action figure may not look like it jumped off your TV screen, but I feel the designers did a good job capturing her likeness. From her red hair to her torn and tattered clothing, there is no doubt who this is supposed to be. Most of the figures measured around 6 inches tall and had some sort of action feature. Demona's wings are attached in a way that they can "flap" to assist the idea of flying while playing with the toy. Her arms, legs and tail are also movable although the articulation is rather limited. You've got to keep in mind that most 90's era action figures weren't super articulated like action figures of today.

If I'm being honest here I'm kinda surprised that Kenner even made an action figure of Demona. After all female toys usually don't sell very well in a boy's action figure series. I can't say if I was a little kid that I would've grabbed this figure off the retail pegs when faced with the decision of her or say Bronx. 

Demona was packaged with a rather large projectile shooting gun. I guess you could call it a sniper rifle. I find it a little odd as I don't recall her using a gun very often in the animated series. The other problem with the gun if you haven't already noticed is it's size. The gun is the same size, if not larger than Demona herself!

Trying to get her to hold the gun and balance took quite a bit of effort. Thankfully you can pose the tail and use it for added support. The spring inside of the gun launches the long purple missile a good 3 to feet when the button on the top of the gun is pressed. Be careful that you don't loose the missile as she only comes packaged with one.

I can understand the cult following of the Gargoyles brand and Kenner did a good job with the toys for it's time period. I haven't had the opportunity to personally "play" with many of the toys, but the ones I have had my hands on I've been impressed. I hope to bring you more reviews from this series in the future. For now thanks for reading.

Vinylmation: Disney's Little Mermaid - Max

Last month my family and I traveled down to Orlando, FL on vacation to spend a week at Walt Disney World.  While I didn't find any Transformers while I was away, did you think someone like myself would return home without some sort of toy?  Nope!

Before leaving for vacation my wife and I had brought our daughters to the Disney store are the local mall a few times.  Each time while waiting for my wife to checkout, I had stared at these Vinylmation figures with curiosity near the checkout.  The whole blind packaged toy angle has exploded in the last few years and these Vinylmation figures fall in line here.  It seems no matter the subject the figures are based on (generic Disney, Star Wars, etc) there are 11 figures and 1 elusive chase figure to find.  At $12.95 a pop I wasn't willing to take the chance, but since I was on vacation and hadn't bought much for myself I decided to grab one of the Little Mermaid figures towards the end of our trip.

The figures come packaged in a really nice looking square box, but unlike other blind packaged toys that come bagged it's really hard to figure out which character is in the box.  I don't know if there are any production codes stamped on the box that signifies what is inside, so I just let my oldest daughter grab a random box from the tray.

We ended up buying this figure from the gift shop at our Disney Resort versus buying it from one of the parks.  The advantage of that was the shop had the regular 11 figures on display.  The Ariel, King Triton and Ursula figures were the most impressive in person.  My daughter, Olivia, of course really wanted Ariel.  So who did we end up with?

  

Max!  Prince Eric's faithful companion.  OK, we didn't get Ariel like we were hoping for, but this is still kind of a cool figure.  All of the Vinylmation figures have these translucent Mickey Mouse ears, but they are painted differently depending on the character.  Max here has a storm going on up there, most likely from the last scene of the movie where Eric steers a ship's broken post through the giant Ursula's heart.

I also noticed that Max has different sculpted hands from most of the other figures.  His are curved down and forward as opposed to the more human type hands.  The arms do rotate a full 360 degrees as does the head.

What's most impressive about these little 3 inch vinyl figures are the way they are painted.  The artist did a fantastic job of capturing the likeness of the various characters.  They even look more dimensional with some of the details.

I really dig these Vinylmation figures and I wish I would've grabbed a few more before heading home.  I haven't been back to the local Disney Store yet so I have no idea if these Little Mermaid figures are stocked there.  I've seen several of the lower tiered characters selling for $5$8 each on eBay, but Ariel was going for $20 plus.  Maybe I'll surprise Olivia w/ the Ariel figure for Christmas.  More the reason to get her a little display shelf up on her wall soon.