“I couldn’t help it. It just popped in there.” What just popped in there, you ask? Why, it’s our First Look at the upcoming Ghost Busters Classics Ray Stantz figure! In fact, here at The Fwoosh we are calling it Ray Day. Or maybe Stantz Sunday. Either way, we have a pair of reviews for you that are all about the heart and soul of the Ghost Busters.
When it was announced last February that Mattel would be making figures of the Ghost Busters with real actor likenesses, I was thrilled. The Ghost Busters was the line that I collected between my Super Powers/MOTU era and my foray into the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. I always loved the cartoon figure but not having proper figure from the movie was always frustrating to me. Well, Matty and the Four Horsemen are making up for lost time with the Ghost Busters Classics line.
Back in July we got the SDCC exclusive Slimed Egon figure with Slimer and Ray here represents the first regular figure in the line. These babies will be coming to Matty Collector about every other month starting on the 15th and Ray will be followed by Winston in December, Walter Peck (!) in March and Slimed Peter in May.
If you currently have the SDCC Egon on your shelf you have basically have the Ray figure in terms of overall body sculpt. They share all of their basic parts from shoulders to feet and I really like this sculpt. At first I was worried that there would not be enough variety between the Busters in terms of body type. I think the cartoon actually skewed my view of this though as Ramis, Aykroyd, Hudson and Murray were all basically built the same back in ’84. The reuse should come as no surprise though as Mattel has been candid about it. As I said, I don’t think any of them are really different enough in terms of build to warrant all new sculpts.
The Proton Pack is just as detailed and nicely painted for Ray as it was with Egon, but the actual “gun” portion seems to be made of a slightly less rubbery plastic here. Like before, the pack is not removable. Also, as you can seen, Ray is crispy clean with no slime on his duds. As you can see from the picture, he just makes Egon look like he has had a hard day of bustin’ ghosts.
The likeness to Aykroyd is pretty good, certainly not as strong as Ramis, but it is not as far off from the figure I saw in the booth at SDCC. I do think the head got a little pinched in production. I am thinking that perhaps Aykroyd will end up being the hardest likeness to master (this is also evident to about the same extent in the 12 inch figure), but I hope that the Horsemen get to take another crack at him for a future variation. Toy Guru spoke of perhaps a “Sedgewick Hotel” version with the Ecto-Goggles, that would be a great place to try out a new head sculpt. Overall though, this one is not bad.
Ray does come with a fun accessory in the Ghost Busters logo “No Ghost”, complete with removable slash sign. It is cool to finally get this little guy though I am a little torn on the glow in the dark feature. It is neat (not quite as neat as Scareglow) but I think I would almost have preferred to have had the ghost cast in a bright white plastic to better resemble the logo. Perhaps we will be seeing that sometime in the future and I am happy to have this one. It does include a stand just like Slimer’s.
It is great that Egon is not standing alone on my shelf any longer and the arrival of Ray makes me excited to be getting Ghost Busters figures with regularity in the coming months. I cannot wait until we have all four of them (even if there will be some slimed decos) to have the fully assembled team. I always thought of Egon and Ray as the real brains and innovators of the team so it is great to have the real scientists together at last.
I suggest you not pass this one up. I know that not everyone will be in the market for some of the secondary Ghost Busters characters but Ray is as essential as it gets and overall he is a really fun figure. Be on www.mattycollector.com at noon Eastern on the 15th to get yours. The more I play around with this figure the more I really like it, it so cool to be getting these guys after so many years. It looks like December’s Winston might just be the best one yet and he comes with the all-important trap so I am definitely looking forward to him. Kudos to Mattel for gunning for this license, I hope it pays off for them and we get Ghost Busters figures for years to come.
*Thanks for reading and thanks to Matty and Toy Guru for making this First Look possible!