In the modern age of figure collecting, it’s still a kick to be able to walk into a store and find something you didn’t know existed. Even if that figure is out of your usual wheelhouse.
First, some disclosure: I suck at basketball. I was a decent football player, but I was never good at basketball, and because of that, I always looked on in envy as an outsider. My favorite sports game of all time is NBA JAM, with the modern NBA JAM for 5th gen in second place. The last NBA game I went to was Game 6 of the 1998 NBA Finals, which is fine, because I can’t think of a better game to end on. So when I say I know who Kobe Bryant is, it’s mostly because I had his ’97 Lakers Rookie Sensation card. Sue me, I’m old and set in my ways.
So when I came across some NBA figures in the “specialty” aisle at Toys R Us, I didn’t take much notice at first. But on the second pass, some automatic tics started checking off: 6-inch scale? Check. Articulated? Check. Cheap? Check!
So I bought two. The two whose names I recognized.
The figures are branded as “NBA Heroes,” and the box art and bios read like something from a mid-’90s cartoon plot — you know, one with a strong anti-drug message and a talking dog sidekick. It’s obvious the cyborg attachments and superhero attributes are the price of entry for some decent NBA action figures, but at $12.99, that price isn’t very steep.
Anyway, each figure is extremely well articulated, with double elbows, knees, DCUC-type hinged hips, swiveling ankles, ab joints, bicep cuts… you know, the works. The bodies are very WWE-esque, and the uniforms are well done, with sculpted shorts and nice soft goods jerseys. The heads feel cartoonish — hell, maybe there is a cartoon for these guys somewhere in the works.
As far as I can tell, both Kobe Bryant and Kevin Durant share mostly the same body sculpt, and it’s roughly a 1/12-scale body. Whether that’s Marvel Legends scale or not depends mostly on how heroicly scaled you think of your figures as — with Pab’s favorite scaler Black Panther here, they may be a little undersized.
The poseability and playability of these figures is very high, like total hand-candy level. Solid plastic and good articulation layout make these a lot of fun to mess around with. The cyborg-y upgrade parts are strange and require you to dismember the figures a little bit to use them. The both come with the same cyborg arm, which can be used to launch the basketball at your pets and coworkers, and then each has some “character specific” parts to make them even more confusing.
But, hey, it’s not like you’re paying a premium for them, so enjoy them or not, they’re not deal-breakers.
As far as I can tell, this looks like a TRU-exclusive deal, including a half-court play set of some kind, but that might change later. This is the first series comprising of, I think, five figures, so that’s not a bad rollout for a line that snuck onto the scene. If they get to some “NBA Legends” stuff going forward, you can count me in for at least a few more. But for now at least, if you like NBA stuff, and you like 6-inch figures, these are some fun impulse buys that won’t break the bank.
