I hadn’t been planning on buying anything from Ghostbusters: Afterlife until after I saw the movie, but I was surprised to find these on the shelf at Target and they looked pretty neat, so I caved. Today we are going to look at Winston, Ray, and Peter and later we’ll cover the new kids.
The packaging is a nice, Ghostbusters variation on the typical Black Series style packaging. I do like that for this second wave they changed out the stylized figures on the side of the box from the original Ghostbusters to the kids from the new movie. There is a very light bit of character detail on the back that hints at where the original Ghostbusters might be in life as this movie takes place.
All three figures come with a proton pack, a detachable proton stream, and a piece of the build-a-ghost and each ‘buster gets his own unique accessory.
The pack looks like the same design from the first wave of the Plasma series and includes a ton of detail and some nice paint hits. The pack is proportioned well to the figures and I’m not sure why because the design and materials look identical to me, but I found it a lot easier to get these packs on than I did with the first series. The wand and the cable that connects the wand to the pack are all one piece. It’s a fairly stiff plastic, so the cable is a little stiffer than I’d like, but I’ll take that trade-off in favor of a wand that holds it’s shape better.
The proton streams are a two-part translucent plastic piece that pegs onto the tip of the proton wands securely. It is tough for any chunk of plastic to capture such an energetic and chaotic special effect like the proton streams, but I think this works fairly well and I’m just glad that every ‘buster got one.
The build-a-ghost parts create something called a Sentinel terror dog that seems like a cross between a man and terror dog. The legs have zero articulation and the arm has a swivel/hinge at the shoulder and swivel at the wrist. This is a pretty poor showing in terms of articulation in this type of figure.
Ray gets the best unique accessory with an in scale version of Tobin’s Spirit Guide cast in plastic with a little bit of gold paint to highlight the name on the etched detail of the front cover. Peter and Winston get cardboard pieces with some printing. Winston’s looks like the classified section of the paper he circled to get his original job with the Ghostbusters and Peter gets four of the cards he used in the experiment from the opening scene. I don’t hate the idea of these two cardboard accessories that reference the first movie, but the execution could use a little work. The printing on Winston’s paper is just ridiculously massive and is blank everywhere but the front. An actual in-scale newspaper accessory might have been cool. Venkman’s cards are also one-sided. I think I would have liked them better if they had the regular card back pattern on the other side.
The figures look like all the same body with the exception of Venkman’s untucked pants. I think they all use the Ray body from the first wave. I guess I’m sort of use to this level of re-use on the Ghostbusters because it doesn’t bother me too much. The portraits have a slightly exaggerated feel to them, almost a little cartoony.
The figures are mostly cast in the tan plastic of the uniform, so that is a little glossy, but the detail hits and the face printing are nice. One bit of face printing weirdness is Winston’s mustache. The sculpt looks to have a full mustache, but the print basically has a line for the ‘stache and the rest is blank. They also darkened the suits a bit from the wave one figures, so these versions of the suits fit what I picture in my mind’s eye when I think about the Ghostbusters a bit more than wave 1 did.
Articulation is good with:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Double hinged elbows and knees
- Ball and socket head and waist
- Swivel thighs and bicep
- Butterfly hinged pecs
Overall, these are decent action figures and I’m glad each figure gets his proton stream, but the other accessories are mostly disappointing. Fortunately, if you have any of the Mattel stuff or wave one of the Plasma series, those accessories work well with these guys.
