Michael Crawford's Review of the Week

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Futurama Die Cast Set
Posted 01/12/01
Overall score - *** out of ****

(originally posted at the Comic Book Galaxy)

One of my favorite shows (uh, and they have a comic now too!) is Futurama. Unfortunately, Fox has treated them worse than an ugly cockroach, putting them on at 7pm each Sunday. Why is that so bad? I've only seen one complete episode so far this year - the rest were either entirely or partially preempted by the long running Sunday football games. Even if Fox is trying to kill the show, there are still plenty of fans. And this year we get several toys and figures for the line. Part of this merchandising is this set of die cast figures. These come from a company call Rocket USA, and they have a company web site at www.rocketusa.com. There are four figures - Leela, Fry, Bender and Farnsworth - and a clicker reminiscent of the old Jeopardy home game clickers. There are actually three different clickers available - the black one pictured below that says Planet Express, a white one that says Friendly Robots, and a white one that has a picture of Nibbler.
	I picked this up from www.fandomshops.com, where they run around $21, but there is a coupon right now - just type in SALE2 - and that get's the price down to a reasonable sum. You can also pick these up at some comic shops, although not many. It seems they figured that since they were die cast no one would care. The Media Play stores (Media Play, Suncoast Video, Sam Goody) are also carrying them, but selling out quick. Packaging - *1/2 Great stuff! The card art is terrific, with lots of lines similar to the humor of the show. I particularly like "20th Century technology at 21st Century prices!" Sculpt - * These aren't perfect, but they aren't bad. I particularly like Professor Farnsworth, and Leela is quite good as well. Fry's grin seems off, but that might just be me. The heads are not metal - they are PVC - but the bodies are all die cast. Quality - * The paint quality is pretty good, with very few problems on this set. Unfortunately, I haven't seen any other sets yet to determine if there are problems overall. The clicker I received did appear to be easy to chip though, so be careful. Value - 1/2 These seem to be pretty consistent in the 20-25 buck range. Fifteen is a much more reasonable price point, but since there is so little Futurama merchandise currently available, most folks won't complain too loudly. Overall - *** Good sculpts, great characters, and they're die cast - what more could you want?

Figure from the collection of Michael Crawford.