Tuesday, September 1, 2015

MASHERS!


HEY, you there!  You look like a smart fellow who likes a good mash!  Why not step inside and have a look around? 

...no, it's not weird stuff, it's toys.  It's just----NO NOT THAT.  Just get in here!

If you are unfamiliar with Hasbro's current Mashers series, then you haven't stepped foot in a toy isle recently.  Chances are, if you have stepped foot in a toy isle, then you may have even stepped on one of these!  They're everywhere, they're flying, falling, and crawling off the shelves. 

Hasbro took a classic theme of mixing, added some crazy proportions, and then did the sensible and genius thing and added nearly ALL their biggest properties to the concoction.  It started with Marvel Superheroes, moved on to Transformers, stomped all over Jurassic World to add some dino parts, and will soon be adding Star Wars, just in case they were afraid the cash pile wouldn't be cushy enough to sleep on.  It's like Katamari Damacy, but the only thing you're picking up is body parts and big-money franchises. 

I've been sitting on these things since they came out and had planned on a big post about it, but I feel like the main event is the Mashing itself, rather than a deep look into the toys.  So, to keep things nice and easy while I work on other things, here's a list of the crazy junk I've mashed so far.


First thing is something from a previous Schwag Brag: the Indominus Rex from Jurassic World mixed with Grimlock parts and two little blasters from Soundwave.  I badly needed a cyborg dinosaur, so here it is!


...the extra parts went to this, plus a missile pack from Bulkhead, a gun arm from Optimus, and a knife from Drift.  I call it the SERIOUS REX.


Dr. Doom was one of the earliest ones I bought, and I kinda sat on him, waiting for interesting parts to use with him.  The problem with JUST the Hero Mashers was that I wasn't terribly interested in mixing Heroes with other Heroes.  Some of the parts looked non-descript, but many are very obvious parts from known Heroes and villains.  Adding Transformers to the mix was perfect!  Now I had robot parts! 

In comes Bulkhead (who was on clearance).  Green parts for the green Doom!  He's using Bulkhead's arms and legs with two different Optimus parts:  The gun is from the mid-level Optimus, and the energy hand is from the deluxe Optimus. 


For me, there isn't any point to keeping these guys in their original states.  I made it a mission to create the most ridiculous versions of my old favorites in ways that I kinda did back when I was a kid.  I would always be adding things to my toys - cocktail swords, bright rubber bands for energy gauntlets, other accessories from across the board.  These Mashers are like a make-your-own-90's-toybiz-variant machine, and I'm in love.


That's right: Iceman, Ghost Rider head, and weapons from deluxe Optimus.  It's contradictory ghost!  This is what I'm talkin' about, and why these Mashers are so dangerous, much like any mixing toy line.  Anything you buy could be fuel for something else.


And just to load up on the fire, there's an arm from Pyro as well.


Dr. Doom's leftover arms and legs went to Captain American to make this armored versions (it matched his chest design).  The Cap himself is from this neat deluxe set that came with him and a bunch of random Avengers parts.


This one is a favorite!  His body is Electro, and the arms, legs, and head are from Whiplash (while the sword is from Drift and the throwing star is from Deadpool).  The colors just worked out really well. 

Let me take this chance to point out a running change in the construction, though: The Mashers started out with outwardly moving shoulders on your standard disc, but Electro's body showed up with only front-and-back movement for the shoulders.  Some figures will use the old shoulders, so sometimes it's hard to tell which ones will have what.  Doesn't matter much, in the long run.  The shoulders are one of the few parts of Mashers that don't come out, so you can't mix those anyway.

It makes sense, honestly.  When these first came out, I was FLOORED by the cheap price compared to all the parts you get.  You can spend 20 bucks on one Marvel Legends figure, or 20 bucks for a deluxe Masher with one figure and LOTS of parts.  It's a steal!  Naturally, it IS a bit a steal, so you can see cost-cutting measures show up in the change with the shoulders and some parts that are hollow underneath.


This beast was made possible with the help of Jetfire's body, a backpack from Megatron, guns from Grimlock, legs, and arm, and a helmet from deluxe Hulk (with Optimus' head underneath 'cause it fits), and a red arm from Soundwave's pack (for Sideswipe, I think). 

The helmet is a first in the line, 'cause it's a helmet rather than a regular head.  The Hulk pack it came from is new, and features a Hulk with a crazy face and an action feature...and food items.  You'll see.


This one is themed after an Alexx Classic: Space Spider-Man!  I used to dress up my Spider-Man figure with some huge boots and a Robocop helmet and call it a space suit, so this sorta runs with that theme.  The boots are the only thing that carries over from the old days - everything else is just junk I figured would look space worthy.  Like the huge web cannon!  For, uh...fixing hull breeches.  In the ship.


This one is an Iron Man body and head from the same pack as that Captain America above.  The arms come from a deluxe Iron man, legs and shoulders from deluxe Optimus, and the cannons from Grimlock (because he came with a friggin' TON of weapons). 


Ghost Rider body (if that wasn't obvious), Tony Stark head from deluxe Iron Man, brown arm from Captain America, and a Destroyer arm that came with Groot.  I call him Action Figure Hero, 'cause he looks like a dollar store toy.


Drift body with Electro's arms and head.  Worked out well!  Drift has this creepy skeletal body and I thought this made for a decent creepy robot.


This is sorta "extra parts man", 'cause I dunno what I was thinking beyond "put parts here?"  It's a whiplash body and upper legs with Captain America lower legs, along with War Machine's left arm, and an armored Hulk right arm that also came packaged with Whiplash.  Oh!  And a Destroyer head from Groot's pack.


Out of all of them, I felt like Deadpool would be the one to use anything possible. 




The "A-Bomb" blue arm, green spikes, and pizza come from the recent deluxe Hulk, the purple Skywarp arm and rocket launcher came with Megatron, and the raptor legs came with a raptor, as you might have expected.  The pizza is the real winner, though!  That deluxe Hulk pack is magical, I tell ya.  There's a burger in it, too!  Plus the armored parts are useful anywhere.

I haven't mashed everything yet, but even if you don't, they're chunky and fun figures.  They're easy for small hands, and candy for larger hands.  Trust me man, these are fun for all ages!  If I had any complaints, it would be that many of the weapons have to sort-of "float" above the hands, because the right hands have a peg hole and the left ones are open to fully hold a weapon.  Like the Iceman-Ghost Rider guy I made above: The sword is so high up in his hand 'cause he can only hold the peg (only a left arm with an open hand would be able to hold it without the "floating" look). 

Seriously though, it's such a small and adult-collector gripe that it doesn't matter in the slightest.  Every time I tell myself to stop adding more of these to the pile, I find a new one that has PERFECT parts for another creation.  If you wana give these a shot, I suggest getting one from each franchise!  You can only truly understand the Mashing when you have enough random, unrelated parts.

Do it!

17 comments:

  1. One of your hovertexts reminded me of how disappointed I was that I missed out on this:
    http://mechazone.storenvy.com/products/13767147-metal-gunner

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    1. I actually found out about it at a time when I could have preordered, but I just couldn't bring myself to drop that much on something so small. Granted, I totally understand the price VS small production range and the standard independent toy costs, but it still hurts, as a consumer. He does make some great stuff there, though.

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    2. Yeah, that's the problem with low-run stuff like that. Would have been fun to paint up, though.
      What hurts more is the aftermarket price of the game - I bought it back in 2005 for 20 bucks or so and now it's almost 200% of that.

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    3. Ha! Yeah, the aftermarket for some games is WAY worse than that little toy. Seems like it happens for a lot of those old mech games, too. I really want Metal Warriors for the SNES, but that always seems out of my willing-to-pay range. At least Cybernator was cheap, for some reason. I don't think a lot of people realized that was awesome, and possibly the best Gundam game that was not Gundam.

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  2. Replies
    1. Hadn't thought of it that way! Good point, there certainly is a Sigma look to the designs. Then, of course, the mix-and-match of Xevoz, though nothing will ever match the style and part count of that awesome series (that I totally need to cover).

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  3. I've always liked the Sigma 6-esque stylings of these. I've thus far held off although I am interested in the upcoming Star Wars Mashers. My little one just turned two so I think that she could play with these with Dad's supervision. We actually found the Anakin and Darth Maul sets at K-Mart last Tuesday night but they wouldn't ring up yet. They're cool, though, and my little one does know who Darth Maul is so she was really interested in the set. Star Wars might tip me over on these.

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    1. Yeah, I'm looking forward to the Star Wars Mashers! I wana pimp out some Storm Troopers. And yeah, I bet a two year old would get a kick out of these. Parts are nice and big enough for small hands.

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    2. So, I bought almost all of the Star Wars Mashers at the midnight Force Friday events. I'm checking them out little by little and letting the little one observe them. I'm definitely not letting her have them alone as they heads are pretty small and come off fairly easily. Still, she likes them, and we had a little but of fun today. Until she declared she was going to eat Bossk. Seriously, she told me that she wanted to eat the Bossk figure. Weird, huh?

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    3. I'll be honest: Bossk looks delicious. Kinda fried, ya know? I don't blame her.

      Anyway, speaking of small heads: These guys are a bit smaller than the rest of the Mashers! I bought Vader, a Storm Trooper, and Boba Fett. I'm not really bothered by the smaller bodies, but I guess the parts won't work as well with Heroes - it'll work vice versa, though. I've already got gigantic Venom arms on Vader and it works out hilariously. Jetfire mixes well with the Storm Trooper too, making a cool space robot.

      So, just out of curiosity: Did she start pulling these apart on her own, or did you show her first?

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    4. She kind of discovered it while playing with them. Of course, the first time Bossk's arm came off she looked at me and said "Uh-oh." I told her it was OK and just popped the arm back on. Every now and then the forearms would pop off while she was playing and she'd bring it to me to repair. At this point she's still to young to get the appeal of the mashing.

      The only thing I'm disappointed with is that these don't have swivel/hing shoulders. The Marvel mashers look like they do. Otherwise, we're having fun. Last night was spent hitting and knocking over Darth Maul and Bossk with a giant Hulk ball.

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    5. Ha! Good point, I suppose each time it's going to look like it's broken. Hadn't thought of that.

      Yes, the early Marvel ones had hinged shoulders, but they removed that (probably to save costs) in the last few waves. Any new ones no longer have the hinged shoulders, but they do still reuse the first molds for repaints, so those ones will still have hinged shoulders. Same with the Transformers ones. Guess they just started where they are currently, with the Star Wars ones. I agree, at any rate: I wish they had kept the hinged shoulders.

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  4. What's your luck been with joint stiffness? I only have four Mashers but one has really loose hip joints.

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    1. In most cases, the joints are SUPER stiff. I've only got a loose joint on one or two. Then, in one extreme case, the deluxe Optimus had this crazy rubbery plastic for parts of the hips joints - you would NEVER use that kinda plastic on hip joints. They were normal joints, but the rubbery plastic and stiffness of the joints equaled just ripping the leg right off. I'm assuming it was a fluke, 'cause none of the others were like that, and I bought the normal release of Optimus as well, and his hips were fine.

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  5. Those are really great. I was in the toy store and a grandfather asked me which mash up he should get. I had to explain to him that he really needs to get several of it so his grandson can mix and match for various characters new and old. We spent a half hour talking about toys while he filled his cart with a bunch of different mashups. He bought me a Monster High doll just for helping him out.

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    1. Good advice! I woulda said the same thing, honestly. Funny you mention Monster High - my wife got into those, not long ago. They're really cool, in terms of design. She recently got this robot one with a chrome belt and all sorts of great detail on the body (including a "power" symbol, like on a computer, on her forehead). When I found out they had a mix-and-match series for Monster High, I went and got my wife the whole series for our last anniversary.

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    2. That's an awesome story! I imagine you'll just be hanging out in toy aisles now to assist wayward grandparents and score free toys, huh?

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