010-R
Toy Biz- The Fellowship of the Ring: Deluxe Horse and Rider.
Release Date: 2001
Current Price and Availability: $50.00
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/Lord-of-the-...DuRX:rk:1:pf:0
2001 was a rather big year for a lot of things including the birth of my son, the 9/11 terrorist attacks that propelled the US (and it’s allies) into two fruitless wars resulting in thousands of casualties at home and abroad, thereby leading to the further radicalization of an even worse terrorist group and subsequent formation of a growing police state through fear mongering of an overzealous zionist base who forgets what their country was built on...and more importantly: some really great movies including Shriek, Monsters Inc, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and finally The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the RIng. Now while I could write for days on how great this time was for movies, I’ll try to keep it to the topic at hand.
The Lord of the Rings franchise was a remarkably large effort complete with 3 amazing movies that were released one year apart. And as with many other movie blockbusters, the toys and merchandise are almost as big as the actually movie. In what amounts to a similar herculean effort as the movies, Toy Biz went crazy with a full line up of movie toys with all the characters for each of the movies; and when I say all, I mean we are talking Star Wars level of producing an action figure for every character. Something that unfortunately forced me to scale back my typical compleatists desire of collecting every figure to only focusing on the characters from The Fellowship of Ring, a move that I somewhat regret given how my love for the movies has grown in the past few years. Thankfully, if I was so inclined, I could probably pick up most of the figures on a pretty deep discount given that LOTR (and let’s be honest, most toys from that era) didn’t exactly become collectors items.
Pros: From their first appearance in the movies, Wraiths have certainly some of the more iconic scenes of the movies what with their imposing stature, headless cloaks and deafening shriek and for the most part Toy Biz did a great job in capturing the overall look. The sculpt on the horse also does well to capture the look of a horse that had basically ridden out of hell. He also comes a non-removable cloth cloak and a selection of appropriate Hobbit stabbing swords.
Cons: One of the downsides of the Toybiz line was that figures tended to include spring loaded “action features” that hindered posabilty. For instance, the horse has spring action movable legs that just make it difficult to stand the horse upright. Additionally while the rider is removable and looks great on the saddle, he’s a bit too bowlegged to be used as separate figure. So much so that I kind of surprised that he was not just permanently affixed to the horses back.
