Sarah Connor’s journey from regular girl worrying about money and the maintenance of some kind of personal life to psychotic mental case babbling about a robot apocalypse while fighting unstoppable war machines and trying to raise a child who will go on to be the savior of humanity stole plenty of screen time from cinematic goliath Arnold Schwarzenegger. You can have all the metal-on-metal mayhem you want, but without the human element you’ve only got a two hour “Rock ’em Sock ’em Robots” going on.
With NECA’s recent line of Ultimate Terminator figures, we’ve managed to get fully functional versions of the T-800 and T-1000 from Terminator 2, and Linda Hamilton’s Sarah Connor joins them in plastic Valhalla. I say fully functional because previous versions of those characters were static from the waist down, which means they weren’t truly super-fun toys the way these are. Sarah also has full articulation complement from the waist down. Apparently the first Terminator film will be getting some Ultimate goodness of its own soon.
Linda Hamilton transformed herself into a scary-ass woman for Terminator 2, joining the likes of Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley as women you absolutely don’t want to screw around with. While Ripley found herself battling alien cockroaches, Sarah’s battle was against sentient hunks of near-invulnerable metal with the single-minded goal of killing and then killing some more. Her toy is every bit that scary-ass woman: a lean, mean, Terminator-terminating machine.
Being Ultimate, there are no shortage of options. Sarah comes with three heads, so you can pick and choose which version you want as default. There’s her all-business hat and shades “going to kill someone” head, her looser ponytailed no-hat-no-shades look, and then her completely disheveled “I’ve been hunting Terminators all day and boy are my arms tired” look. I really can’t decide which version I’m going to stick with, but I think I’ll probably end up on the no hat no shades pony-tail look. It’s less scene-specific and works better as an all-around head. All the heads have a decent Hamilton likeness, maybe not perfect, but you definitely can see who it is.
Sculptwise the figure looks great. She has a vest that allows for a nice range of motion and doesn’t detract from her ability to hold all her firearms. I would have liked a little more range in her elbows, but, again, she has no issue holding her weapons, so there’s really no damage done there. Her knees don’t get a ton of range, but she can get into good walking poses. The crotch overlay is nice and flexible like most of NECA’s crotches have been, so they don’t impede her hip motion. She’s articulated right at the waist, so she can bend up and down a bit. There’s not a ton of range, but, again, it’s par for the course for NECA and does the job.
You can’t kill future robots without weapons, so luckily Sarah came with a nice assortment.
She comes with a nice complement of weapons for various points in the movie. Her vest has a holster for a removable knife that she really can’t hold well, but I can’t fault its inclusion.
She comes with a Colt/Detonics 1911 that she uses throughout the movie to shoot at the T-1000. She can hold it well and looks great doing so.
She comes with the Colt Commando CAR-15 with laser sight and silencer that she took with her to kill Miles Dyson. Again, it fits well and she can hold it in a decent number of poses.
Finally, she has the Remington 870 Police Combat with folding stock that she uses against the T-1000 at the factory. This is the gun she single-arm pumps and fires over and over like a total badass. The stock on this actually folds as well. Again, she can hold this one well in various positions.
The renewed Ultimate Terminator line is getting off to a great start and delivering some excellent toys. Sarah is no exception
You can pick her up at Big Bad toy Store