Review – Marvel Capsule Machine Figures
A recent visit to the grocery store had me shoving quarters into a capsule machine in an attempt to grab a few of the Marvel figures hiding inside the plastic shells. At $0.75/each these weren’t a bad price, but they’re nothing more than simple capsule machine toys so don’t expect the sculpting or paintwork that you can get out of actual action figures and statues.
Ghost Rider
First up we get this tiny Ghost Rider toy. At about 2-inches tall this is just big enough to me noticed, and barely large enough for more than the minimal sculpt and paint that all three of the toys I got feature. But he was less than a buck and makes a simple addition to any display so I’m gonna say that Ghost Rider here is just fine for a capsule machine toy.
Ghost Rider, like the others I got out of this machine, came in pieces but it didn’t take more than a few seconds to snap the three parts together to make one toy. Someone with a little time and black paint could give the skull a wash and bring out the details, but you’d really have to be a Ghost Rider fanatic to put that much work into such a simple toy.
Spider-Man
Next up is Spider-Man, and I’ve gotta say that the soft plastic used for these toys really lets us down with Spider-Man; take a look at how the wall part of the base is curved. That is some seriously cheap plastic! But as cheap as this toy feels it’s actually better than the chocolate egg Spider-Man toy I got while in Cancun (review here). I guess I’d better be careful before I find myself with a collection of ridiculously cheap Spider-Man toys.
The Thing
And the third and final toy I bought from the capsule machine is this simplistic Thing which, while as tall as the others, feels a lot heftier than either Ghost Rider or Spider-Man. But it’s still a very cheap capsule machine toy and has the same soft sculpt and low-cost paint as the other two toys.
But then I didn’t expect much from these toys for $0.75/each and can say that a full collection (the machine claimed there were eight designs inside) would probably look just fine as part of someone’s larger Marvel toy collection.
Closing Thoughts
Cheap, silly, and intended for kids begging quarters from their parents, these Marvel capsule machine figures are exactly what you expect to get from one of these machines. And now that I poke around a little online I find that for $3.25 I could have gotten the entire set from Amazon*, but then I would have missed out on the fun of shoving quarters into the machine.
These toys are not at all recommended to anyone.
Philip Reed kinda wishes he was in the business of designing toys and trinkets to shove into capsule machines. But he has mental problems and should probably be ignored.
I must say these are very cool i will have to keep a eye out for them in my neck of the woods. : )
I’m a big fan of capsule toys (blind-bags, too) so I thought these looked pretty neat. It’s too bad the execution isn’t so great.
I think they’re just fine for $0.75 toys, but you get what you pay for. And these aren’t stylized or special in any way; no, these are just tiny superhero figures.
Can I get the Ghost Rider figure, I’ll send you the $