Buzz Lightyear! AGAIN!

‘Another Buzz Lightyear?!?!?!??  Man, didn’t his guy do enough shots of his last one?!?!???’ I hear you cry.  Well, I did do quite a few of my Revoltech Buzz, mainly because I was mightily impressed with it.  Then I saw this Chogokin version of Buzz and when I saw one particular feature, I decided that I would give it a try.  So which is better?  Read on…

A bit of background on the Chogokin series of toys.  They generally make robots and are expensive.  Why? Well that would be because the majority of the figures they make are die cast metal!  just like Buzz here.  I have a Drossel Chogokin and also a Gold Lightan (who is gold plated by the way!) and all of them are very nice figures.  And not on the cheap side.  So to be fair, Chogokin Buzz Lightyear here costs about $110 or so.  Revoltech Buzz was about $30.

Firstly the box.  It is completely closed, so you can’t see what you are getting.  The card board was surprisingly thin considering how much heft the box had, I was expecting some tougher cardboard on the outside.

Fairly standard box really.  Nice to see that all the pictures of Buzz on the box are actually made using the toy itself and are not computer generated ones!

Once the box is opened, I was surprised to see the inners comprised of two parts.  One that held Buzz and the other held his accessories.  In the picture, there are three parts but in the box, the part which hold the faces are stacked on top of the bit holding the base.


His accessories include 6 extra faces, making a total of 7 all up, 3 pairs of hands, a rose, 2 batteries, 2 types of helmet and the stand and claw.

When I lifted Buzz out of his bed, I was shocked at how heavy he is.  An impressive 435grams!  (incidentally, Masterpiece Optimus Prime weighs in at about 900grams, so 1/3 the height and half his weight!)Taking into consideration his weight and a brief lookover, I thought that he would end up a bit of a brick.

I had a gentle look over his design.  The sculpting was fantastic, the colours spot on.  The buttons on his chest all move, although they don’t activate anything and I was pleased to see that the button the (in the movie) activates his ‘karate chop action’ can be pressed as well!  NICE!

Buzz isn’t terribly large either.  About the size of a deluxe Transformer

My big Chin Brigade!



A bit more play and I discovered some cool things.

Excellent detail and his communicator opens to reveal that he is in Gamma Sector 4.  Paint applications are all beautifully crisp and clean!

First attempt at a pose.



He has some great sculpting on his suit.

I was concerned about balance issues as he felt a bit heavy towards the back. 

However, I needn’t have worried as after a bit more playing around with him I found quite a variety of joints throughout his body.

The shoulders pop out a little to help him reach across his chest.  I was also worried about the strength of the joints, but as you can see (and feel), they are ratcheted and metal too!

His neck has some joint that is much more than just a ball joint.  It swivels easily and can move really well, and best of all, when done properly looks very natural.
Unlike this photo.

A bit more playing.

I was surprised to see him be able to pull this move off.  He has rotatable knees and hips, arms, waist and shoulders.  The waist can be made to bend over as well and the ankles are really flexible too.  I was very surprised.  Buzz isn’t going to be a brick after all!  The balance never really became an issue either.


I managed to get this out of him unaided, and thought it was time to test his wings.


His wings are stored neatly in the back pack.  The very end slide into the larger part and they fold down.  It’s neatly done and hard to spot the fact he has wings folded away.

The wings even have little clear bits on the end for the starboard/port lights, although not coloured.

Action pose with wings?




“To infinity…AND BEYOND!”

Well, before we go beyond infinity, I would like to introduce the base and stand, as they will be needed for the trip.  the base has a nice moon look with a metal plate telling you what you are looking at.  Considering how heavy Buzz is, I was worried the stand would just crumble under his weight and I would be relegated to having him standing on the base with the claw as a balancing aid, or to stop him from falling over.

The claw does a good job, grabbing Buzz’s waist, and, er, well other parts quite securely.

Whoa! Hey! Normally I get bought a couple of drinks at least!!

I like the pictures above as you can see how they have plugged up the screw holes.

Ok, now off to beyond infinity!

WHOOOOSH!

As you can see the stand manages to hold his weight nicely.  It was a little bit wobbly when I bumped the table, but it wasn’t horrifyingly nerve-racking.  Nice to see Andy’s name on his foot and the visible screws in his feet, which if I remember correctly is the way his feet look in the movie.

It’s not flying, it’s falling with style!


You can make the stand really quite high and it still doesn’t collapse! AWESOME!!


Extra points if you can name the character that flies with their arms in this pose.
Hint, they have had a cartoon in the1960’s, 1980’s and 2000’s…
(answer at the bottom of the page)

So the flying options are right up there, as are jumping, hovering etc. etc.  The claw and stand are damn good and strong!

On to the accessories now.  Buzz has finished flying about and needs a change.  This is one of the things that drew me to this figure.  He needs to change his batteries.  As we all know, in Toy Story, Buzz is an electronic toy with light up laser and noises.  My large Buzz at home has some speech and sound effects when you press the button.  he is looking a bit worse for wear now, as I got him when the first movie was out in the cinemas and didn’t know about plastic care like I do today.  Chogokin buzz however doesn’t have and lights and sounds, but he still comes with batteries!

Specially made BnL Batteries.


What I love about this aspect is the cross referencing.  BnL is the short version of ‘Buy n Large’ which happens to be the mega-ultra-super company that runs the world and made a garbage collecting robot who goes by the name of Wall-e.  That is what made me want this Buzz.  Sad hey?  But it is a very neat idea!!  These batteries are fake ones of course.


And compared to a real one.  They are meant to be AA size batteries.

Because he has batteries, one would need a place to insert said batteries would one not?
Buzz has a space for that as well!  Holy moly!

I was impressed to see that not only did they include a fake ‘demo/play’ mode switch that can be moved, they even included a little fabric tag for pulling on to get those batteries out again!  And I suggest you use it, as I found that the batteries were a bit hard to get out otherwise.  Brilliant!  there is even a small hole for the reset button in there as well!

H e comes with some extra hands.  The fingers aren’t articulated.

And you just pop the hand off and clip onto the stump.

WHAT THE HELL?

He comes with a bunch of faces, which remind me of marshmallows for some reason.  The faces are all easy to swap over and clip in nicely.

One of the faces looks like he has taken a kick in the johnson.  But I suspect it is just there to be part of his falling in love ability.  Being made after Toy Story 3, he comes with a rose accessory for the times when you need the suave Spanish Buzz!

They all have excellently painted eyes.

Looking a little stoned there Buzz…  At least it’s not as bad as Woody.  Just be careful when putting in the rose, as it is a terribly tight fit into the hand.
Nice shot of the laser arm too.  The laser is a piece of red plastic, but it doesn’t light up.

The final accessory is one that ha been in the pictures, but not yet mentioned.  It’s his 2 types of helmet.  One is a non-retracted helmet and the other is a fully retracted helmet.  Well, it would be if it could go all out.  you have to swap them over.

this one can be pulled over to cover his whole head, as well as having the front half pushed back to open up his face.  The back part stays there as it can’t fold down into the backpack.

However, if you really want it to, there is another piece of plastic that is meant to simulated a completely retracted helmet.

It is irritatingly hard to photograph, but you can see the clear plastic on the back.

Otherwise it looks like this when empty.

Oh and the final thing that really made me want this figure.  It comes with a fake instruction manual that looks  just like the one in the 3rd movie!  And it’s mini as well.  Quite a bit longer than I expected, printed in English and it repeats the same information over and over.  But still, very, very impressive that they included it at all.

AWESOME!

Oh and a quick shot of the instructions for the Chogokin toy.



A comparison shot with my Revoltech Buzz Lightyear that I wrote about here.

Looking at the Revoltech one now, the face sculpt seems a little too fat in the cheeks.  The Chogokin one gets an advantage in not only price, but paints as well.  Being a painted toy his whites are whiter and the green is a tad more vibrant.  The Revoltech one obviously uses white plastic which can be hard to get really white and the green is a slightly lighter shade.  Don’t get me wrong, the Revoltech one is a good figure, when compared to the Chogokin one though, you notice these things.  I never noticed them when having Revoltech on his own.  Naturally you need to keep in mind the price difference.  Chogokin is 3 times more expensive.

So as you may have gathered, I really love this figure.  It is a great version of Buzz Lightyear and the accessories although limited are pretty damn good.  The articulation is fantastic, balance is good and the stand allows much freedom to pose.In fact, I am so impressed with this Buzz, I think that any future Buzzs that I see will have some stiff competition before they impress me.  Although, I doubt I will find another Buzz with the same price tag on it.  About the only thing that could make this Buzz more cool, would be if his green paint glowed in the dark (like Buzz should do).  My original toy has glow in the dark paint for the green areas, and I have noticed in other Buzz Lightyears of consecutive releases, this has been one gimmick they have left out, so it’s not such a disappointment that he doesn’t glow.
Interestingly a light up Buzz toy has been released in the local shops, and it costs about $69.  It is quite large and the lights are cool, but it looks like it lacks the articulation  of this Buzz.  So Chogokin here even beats the official Buzz toy.

To summarise, this is a great Buzz.  However it is an expensive Buzz, so you should expect it to be great.  I would recommend this to the hard core fan of Buzz Lightyear, as it is by far the best version I have seen of him (and will probably remain that way for a while), the avid toys collector as it is a well made product, but for everybody else I would suggest a cheaper option.

Some random pics with a couple for size comparison.