For the most part, McDonald's has a better track record than it's local competitor, Jollibee, when it comes to the toys they create for their respective kid's meals. The McDonald's Happy Meal used to boast the best toys largely because it had the best licences, including the Disney line and Marvel Superheroes. However, since their falling out with Disney (which also includes the Marvel line-up now), they've had to resort to the lesser animation studios' characters.
Jollibee's been able to take up some of the slack, but they just can't really field the same quality of toys that McDonald's can. Most of the time they seem satisfied with tiny role-play toys that sport silly action features: great for kids, but they kind of suck for the collector market. They don't hold a candle to McDo's old 101 Dalmatians line or the Changeables from the 1980's.
Lately, however, they've come out with some decent toys that hearken back to the time when McDonald's had it together. The latest set is two toys that promote the newest DC Comics animated series, Green Lantern: The Animated Series.
The first toy is a figure of Hal Jordan as Green Lantern that is called "The Energy Spinner".
As with most fast food freebies, the figure comes wrapped in a little baggie with the instructions for play printed on the bag. It's easy to keep this mint in bag, but I fail to see any display value at all in the packaging. The instructions are clear thought and you can make sure you've got everything that's supposed to be included by peeing through the plastic.
Once you've opened it, you'll find one "action" figure that stands about 4 inches tall, and three accessories that you can stuff his hand into.
I really like the fact that he's made of translucent plastic. It photographs fairly well and if you angle it correctly with the correct background, you can make it seem as if he's glowing with power.
Unfortunately, this being a toy basically made by the lowest bidder, you can't expect top notch paint applications. There will be some missed lines and some bleeding no matter which figure you pick from the box. You can't really avoid it, seeing as the meal you bought is only about Php 80.00. The burger and drink run about Php 50.00 by themselves, so this thing's roughly Php 30.00.
The aforementioned accessories are a hammer, a shield, and his Green Lantern "battery", all cast in green.
The way they work is that you place them on his right fist, twirl the horn he's got growing out of his shoulder and it's supposed to "spin" the weapon around.
Sadly, this doesn't work. Normally, action features like this make use of gears to increase the force applied by you before it reaches the object meant to spin. This is just a peg in a hole, so it's limited to the speed you can manage with your thumb and forefinger. Whee.
It's kind of dumb, really. I threw all three in my bits box after I was through taking photos. There's also a second action feature, but we'll get to that in a bit since it involves the second set now available: the Force Field Ring.
The Force Field Ring is basically a stand that has the words "Green Lantern" embossed on the base, plus a "ring" with a red LED light inside it with four transparent caps.
You can choose any of the four caps and place them on top of the ring and the light will allow you to project the image tampographed on to the center of the cap. There's also a platform on the stand that allows you to place the ring inside (in the photo above it's assembled incorrectly - sorry) and project the image onto the table.
It doesn't work all that well.
The stand isn't really well engineered, so most of the image is cut off by it's base. Plus the height of the stand is too high: the image comes off looking very blurry and soft. You need to get the thing right up close to a flat surface (preferably dark) to really get a crisp look at the logos.
Now if you've hunted down both of the toy sets, you can take the Force Field Ring and the action figure and do something with them both.
The figure has a hollow in it's back that accommodates the ring. Plug it back there and give it a turn, and Green Lantern's light shines from his chest to bring justice to the universe.
Only it's red. Way to go Jollibee.
I do like the action figure by itself, as it's styling is reminiscent of the Justice League Unlimited toyline. It's very distinctive and fun. I do have issues with the stump on his shoulder and his gorilla arms, not to mention his awkward, in the middle of something pose, but displayed by itself, I think it's a nice little figure.
I hate the action features though and wish they'd just had created a few semi-articulated figures instead. Maybe Hal and one of the bad guys from season 1 of the cartoon. That would have been great.
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