It's a mystery why some toys, despite being so interesting, seemingly are completely ignored by the toy-community. For example, why isn't there as much buzz about LEGOs as there is about DCUC figures? And are we, as reviewers, partly at fault when a great toy-line goes under for not covering it enough? What is our role in this community, exactly? AD asks that hard question to some of the most well-known reviewers around, along with a few other questions with the soft, gooey, consistency of smashed Madballs. 

It's a difficult journey to try and understand what your role in life is. It's even harder to stay the course knowing in the end the answer you find may not be the one you wanted. My life's paths have crossed each other more than the lines on the palm of my hand. Do I want to be a painter? A photographer? A villain? I'm lost. But I like the flowery words growing by the roadside to Reviewer, so I'll follow those for now.

What are a toy-reviewer's motivations? I used to enjoy showing kids all the cool toys available to them when I was a kid myself, bragging most likely had a part in it! Remember Show-and-Tell sessions in school? I'd take my beat-up toys and tell everyone how awesome they were, and to my surprise, there was always someone who wanted to play with them, despite their ratty appearance. My words (with no small amount of help from Michaelangelo's ridiculous pizza-launcher) were enough to convince others to save lunch-money or annoy their parents enough to buy the toys. That was a good feeling, as if I had done something, at the very least, significant.

What's the first thing you think of when someone mentions toys? Children playing with Hot Wheels and pogo-sticks? If you're old enough to be reading this, then I think it's fair to assume The Children aren't the first thing to come to mind. You get older, vastly more cynical, and instead think of all the other geeky 20-year-olds with Star Wars and Witchblade posters on their wall, like yourself, and all the great ways to screw them out of that rare purple MOTUC He-Man. Just kidding. Well, no, I'm not. Though I hate to admit it, my reasons for buying and reviewing toys aren't as pure and selfless as they once were, if pure they ever were. Review a toy and you might make people laugh. Review them well and people will send you free toys as a treat, to keep writing them like a trained dancing-bear at the circus. Keep writing them enough and the other bears begin to growl. Luckily, bears stamp their feet and snarl at each other out of respect, at least that's what Jack Hannah says, but look how that guy dresses, you can't trust a guy in shorts!

So why do we do it? Why do we stay up all night telling everyone about Gandalf's light-up staff and Jenna Jameson's latest action figure? Is it to show-off? Inform others of their lead-based dangers? To promote our suppliers? Why do we do it? And more importantly, do our opinions even matter

Say hello to our guests, Wes Crayon, Poe Ghostal, and a bunch of the guys from OAFE.net, ranging from a monkey-child to a guy who sounds like "yogurt"!

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Articulated Discussion: Do you believe reviewers are a necessary part of the toy-community?

Artemis: Toy business, no, toy community yes. Once you get past age ten or so you stop actually playing with other kids' toys (until university when you all get a Wii), so discussion is really all that brings adult collectors together as a community. Reviewing is nothing more than sharing opinions, so it'll be around as long as there's a community - maybe it'd be better to say it's not so much 'necessary' as 'inevitable'.

Poe Ghostal: I do. They provide a useful service by informing collectors about the quality of particular figures and help them make purchase decisions. Getting a good look at the production version of a figure through a reviewer's photos, finding out what its articulation is like, how strong or brittle the plastic is, and so forth is quite valuable when you only have so much money to spend on playthings. I know I've often bought a figure I was waffling on when I found out it had a ball jointed head or came with an alternate hand or something thanks to a review on OAFE or Michael Crawford's site.

Rustin Parr: Originally, my answer was that no, we are not a necessary element. Like with anything, an individual is going to make their own decision about buying or not buying any particular thing. What we get from reviews is an informed opinion, answers to question we had or didn't know we had. However, I would argue that we are in fact very necessary because we can vocalize positives or negatives or a particular toy that could otherwise not really be made as directly public as (at least we hope) we do with a review. We will all make our own decisions, but in todays market when many figures need to be purchased on line, reviews provide that "first hand" look and opinion we would normally get from handling the toy in a store.

Shocka: Not really - I think reviewers like ourselves write mostly for entertainment, an extension of the hobby. For us, it's fun to write, and for readers, it's fun to read about and look at the pictures - actual criticism comes second. Companies are not the least bit interested in what we really have to say about their product - MattyCollector is absolute definitive proof of that - but it's fun to read about the toys we're interested in and see them before we buy them, and it's also good to get the occasional heads-up on stuff that isn't so great, that might be wonky or problematic. The best action figure reviews are showing off the product, giving some background, describing the poseability and playability, and letting you know if there's anything you need to look out for when buying.

Wes Crayon: Er... yes and no. Yes, it's very helpful to have the opinions of folks who've already purchased and/or experienced certain products to nudge us in the right direction, but we can get that from posters on toy forums, so I'm not sure we need people posting detailed text reviews. I mean, I can be as verbose as anyone when it comes to reviews, but several photos of a toy and a paragraph or two highlighting its merits and faults are probably sufficient to "review" a particular item!

Yo Go Re: In most cases, no, not really - at least, no more "necessary" than any other kind of reviwer. People will go see Transformers 2 no matter what film reviewers say, and people will buy Transformers 2 toys no matter what we say. And since, as Poe once said [in his Tick review], there really aren't very many negative reviews, we rarely provide the service of waving someone off a truly bad purchase.

However, there is one definite benefit collector-aimed reviews provide, and that's shedding light on otherwise overlooked figures. Transformers Classics Mirage was a total pegwarmer and looked unimpressive in the promo pics, but everybody who bought one loved it; if someone didn't tell you how awesome that figure was, you would have missed out.

 

Artemis: To justify all the junk I buy. And because I get feedback - self-enabling and ego-stroking, really.

Monkey Boy: I will say that, as an adult collector, there's only so much you can do with your toys beyond opening them, posing them, putting them on a shelf to display and then forgetting about them, more or less. To share your thoughts, critique the figures, comment on it, discuss its highs and lows, is sort of how I "play" with my toys.

RP: Fifty percent of it is wanting to clue people into some cool toy I've come across that I feel others would like (like some Papo Mutants I recently found) or providing an honest evaluation of something high profile that a lot of people have specific and common questions about (like DCUC). The other fifty percent is the same reason everyone likes to be online - I completely agree with my opinion and want you to, as well.

Shocka: Pleasure, really. It's fun to write and be read and get feedback. I don't get a lot of time to review toys nowadays sadly and I've been weirdly out of touch with the hobby since McFarlane Toys fell, though I still enjoy buying toys and reading reviews and other online press. We've gone through phases of the biggest and best toy companies, beginning (for me) with McToys, then moving into ToyBiz and their Marvel Legends, to NECA, and now the big hot property is weirdly enough MattyCollector, which is hilarious because they seem to hate the collector. Talk about biting the hand that feeds you - yet they have so many great properties and excellent toys (minus the occasion issues) that you can ONLY buy via them, they're bound to have a big part of the market, and bitching about them is part of the fun.

The Articulated One: This is something I ask myself on a pretty regular occasion: "Am I just wasting my time?" But then I get comments like "wow, nice review, I think I'll try to find him now", and I realize that I'm having an actual impact on people's buying decisions. That makes it worth the time investment and also makes me realize how responsible I have to be with the comments I make. People turn to us for advice. We're the food testers who make sure there's no deadly poison inside, and I'm glad to be the one making that sacrifice sometimes.

Wes: I don't have a good answer to this question! I think I'm just compelled to write at length about whatever crap strikes my fancy, and recently that's been toys and action figures. Sometimes I wish I weren't driven to write about action figures, movies, and other "unproductive" subjects, though -- then I could focus on my fiction writing and bang out a bestseller or two. Or, more likely, I could pen a handful of manuscripts that would go unpublished until they were discovered centuries later, whereupon they would be regarded as the best things since solar-powered-robot-sliced Martian-approved bread. If a Martian approves it, you know it's tasty.

Also, I probably write reviews because the Internet provides me with an audience that I lack in real life.

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I believe if someone takes the time to write something, you have a duty to read it, no matter how silly or ridiculous it may seem. Hell, ridiculous helps keep me going! No two reviews are the same because no two people are the same. To assume everyone says the same things, and not read what they write because of that, is what makes writing a waste of time. Take the time to read, whether it's a novel or some guy's thoughts on a half-naked Amazon action figure, we'll try to make it worth your while.

-DrNightmare

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And because everyone loves free bonuses (except you build-a-figure haters, lol), I thought you all might like to learn a little more about what these guys think on the following subjects. Also, it's fun to see Wes rant about how much he hates video reviews!

Where did you get your toy-info before the internet took over?

Artemis: I didn't - first thing I knew a toy existed was when I saw it on sale.

MB: Before the internet allowed everyone to spread toy news, magazines like Toyfare were really your only hope...and before that, it was so pathetic that the chief source of toy information was the back of the toy's package or card. That was often the only way to find out which toys were in the same wave, or what was coming out in the future. And often those cardbacks were totally inaccurate, featuring toys that never got produced, or changed drastically from prototype to production. Those were dark times.

Poe: Before the Internet? Wow. I guess the only way I'd find out about new toys back then was either commercials on TV or actually seeing the figures at the store. Or a friend might have gotten some figure I'd never seen. I remember being insanely jealous of a friend who had the TMNT figure Ray Fillet--it was months before I finally got my own (thanks to some behind-the-scenes hard work by my parents).

RP: There was a year or two in the late '90s when Toyfare was an annual release rather than monthly that it and Tomart's would be the best source. I remember being at a comic store in Phoenix in late '94/early '95 and they had test sample of the Kenner reboot of Star Wars figures, which was the first I had even heard of new SW toys. In reality, till the late '90s most if not all of my toy news came from cardbacks and toy aisles. Thats the only way, without an industry connection, to know what was out or on its way.

Shocka: Nada. I became a collector because of the internet.

Wes: You mean when I was still in the second and third grades? I didn't! Or, rather, I got my toy information from other kids at school -- if Craig showed up with Rat King or Wolverine II in his backpack, I knew they were out. Co-sells on the backs of figure packages also told me what to be on the lookout for, as did the occasional advertisement in the latest issue of X-Men, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Adventures, or The Amazing Spider-Man.

YGR: Ultra low-tech style: by walking into a store and seeing what was there. ToyFare magazine only predated wide internet toy coverage by a small margin, and while Wizard had some toy coverage, it wasn't a lot. So it was just a question of going to Wal*Mart, KB, etc, and seeing what was new.

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Do you ever read other people's reviews of a certain figure before covering it yourself? What kind of research, if any, do you do before writing your own?

Artemis: I read most everything here on OAFE, and drop by Michael Crawford's site every few days to see what's new, but I don't seek out reviews of a figure as part of planning my own (although a couple of times Crawford reviewing a figure has prompted me to get off my freckle and review it finally myself). I look up the character I'm reviewing on wikipedia, but so far as the toy itself goes I just wing it.

MB: I like to research a character's history before I review a toy, especially if it's a character I'm not particularly familiar with. I know when I read other reviews background information always seems a bit lacking, and I usually want to know more about the character and, if possible, about the history of the toy itself. being aware of what's going on with particular toy companies, checking in on their Q and A's, or peeking around forums on the interwebs, you can often track a figure's progress from announcement to production. It helps to see what the general fan reaction is, particularly with those ultra-rabid die-hard fans like Transformers or Star Wars fans.

Poe: Sometimes I'll read someone else's review of something I'm going to review, so I can see what angle they took and whether I can shed some light on something else about the toy. In general, though, I strive to be as objective as possible in every part of my review except the "raven rating" (which I admit takes into account such things as my own fondness for a particular character).

Depending on the review, however, I do quite a bit of research on the character, the history of the figure's production and so forth, and then I put as many links into the review as I can. I recently had a reader thank me for all those links, which was nice to see.

I think toy reviews tend to fall between two extremes: the thorough, more straightforward ones that help you make purchase decisions, and the ones that lean more toward being a form of entertainment in and of themselves, offering background on the character and commentary through a more personal voice. Michael Crawford is the best example of the former, while I'd say I'm pretty far out there on the latter side. I used to be even worse in my OAFE days.

RP: I actually haven't consciously sought out another's review before I review the same product now that I think about it. There may be some unconscious overlap if someone gets a toy before I do, but if I take anything into consideration it's more that "has this been reviewed yet" in general or at OAFE. More than half the time my 'research' consists of my existing knowledge of the character and chiefly in playing with it myself. For some stuff I'll rewatch a movie/scene, show or flip through a book to look at the reference material and accuracy of the product, but in general my number one concern is how does this item fare on its own merits.

Shocka: Sometimes. I'm not really anal about this - I am entirely different when it comes to writing film reviews, which I've been doing professionally (as in, paid) for several years now, and I try not to let anyone else's opinion distract or alter my own. That said, with toys, it's good fun to read about something you're interested in and check out the pics anywhere you can get them, and that's often in reviews. I rarely buy toys of characters I'm unfamiliar with, so usually no research is required, but Wiki and other sources are great to grab character summaries and other bits and pieces I'm too lazy to find myself.

TAO: If I know I'm going to be reviewing something and I find someone else has reviewed it already, I try not to read it. I want to be as objective as possible and if I let the other review color my own opinion, I may not be doing my job. That said, before I publish a review, I always see what others have said in case I missed something vital. It's usually a little different here and there but primarily the same points and concerns are issued across the board.

Wes: Yes, I do read other people's reviews of a figure before I cover it --mainly to make sure that I don't miss anything. If it's got an extra point of well-hidden articulation that I overlooked, I want to know about that. If someone else's figure happened to be particularly sturdy but mine fell apart two seconds out of the package, I want to be able to comment that my figure might not be representative of all instances of the product. And even though I tend not to write at length about a character's background in my own reviews, I do want to read and review that information -- and I want readers to be able to do the same, so I'll include links to wikis in my reviews so that they can find that information elsewhere if they desire.

YGR: I don't read any other reviews, because I have a TOTALLY high opinion of myself and don't think that anybody but me matters! Okay, no: the real reason I don't read anyone else's stuff is that I don't want it to influence what I'm writing. Say I dislike a paint app, but somebody else thinks it's the greatest thing ever; if I read their review, my position may start to soften, and at that point I'm just repeating someone else's opinion instead of giving my own.

Research, however, is a huge part of what we do. Rewatching an entire movie just to definitively identify a specific prop, reading large chunks of a comic character's prior appearances, digging through Amazon's "search inside this book" feature to find a specific passage... it's a lot of behind-the-scenes stuff that may not make it into the review, but makes us sound like we casually know what we're talking about. We don't have the smartest reviews around because we actually ARE the smartest, but because we do the work to fill in the gaps.

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What do you think of video reviews? Are they as effective as written reviews with pictures?

Artemis: No. If a toy is actually capable of independent action - like the walking Lego AT-AT, say - then maybe a video clip embedded in a text/image review is called for, and I'm not averse to 360-degree turnaround views. But otherwise videos are entirely the wrong medium for reviewing - the imagery isn't as crisp and revealing, the download time is greater, and unless it's a hot lady in the buff I really don't care what a reviewer looks or sounds like.

MB: I personally am not a fan of video reviews, simply because I think a lot of reviewers (perhaps myself included) don't have the charisma or presence it really takes to appear on video. I think some of us are skilled with the written word, but it doesn't mean we can command an audience when they have to see and/or hear us. I know when I watch a video review I frequently have trouble getting past the reviewer's voice, tone, etc. especially when they try to add little quips that tend to fall flat due to a complete lack of the understanding of comic timing. Things like that are easier to pull off in the written word.

Poe: I keep meaning to write up something about this, but basically I don't like video reviews. Part of that is an innate bias against nonfiction Web video content in general. For example, I hate it when I see an interesting article on a news website and go to click the link and it turns out to be a video review.

My theory about this is that I'm an impatient control freak. I don't want to have to sit through the first few minutes of the video to get to the relevant information. A news report will go through the whole "setting the scene" bit before getting to the who, what, when, where, and why, and by then I'm just annoyed (to be fair, newspapers started doing the same thing ages ago as they struggled to compete with TV news, and I think it's backfired in the era of the short attention span). Video toy reviews aren't as bad as video news articles, but I still prefer the control I have when I peruse a text review. I can go right to the articulation section, or the final overall score, or linger on a particular photo. Also, the photos in text reviews tend to be higher-res and provide a better look at the toy.

I do think video reviews are better for showing things like articulation, but at the same time, I trust Michael to tell me how well all the articulation works.

RP: I've thought of doing video reviews with semi-regularity but haven't pursued and actually haven't ever seen any. [The thing with] written reviews over video reviews is that with the former, the reader can more easily locate the important information to them and get higher resolution images of the product.

Shocka: Nope. Not with movies, not with toys. Video games are the only mediums I like video reviews of, as they give a good look at what the product is that can't be shown in text and pictures, and additionally there are some very charismatic lads (http://www.giantbomb.com/) doing video reviews for games. The toy community is rarely as photogenic or charismatic, and there's not much to really see or do in a video review of a toy. Sadly the vast majority of toy video reviews are people on YouTube showing off Transformers while mouthbreathing. Not what I want to watch.

TAO: I prefer a written review with photos, but video reviews are just fine. I like the ability to look at a frozen image and take in all the small details of a toy. Sometimes that's hard to do when a toy is wobbling around on a moving camera screen. I've thought about trying to do video reviews myself, but never seem to get motivated. I think if I had to say everything I wanted to on a video, it'd be 20 minutes long, which doesn't really work. But some people make video reviews very effectively and informatively.

Wes: I can't fucking stand video reviews -- there's something about them that bugs the living hell out of me. Whereas text reviews with pictures seem like actual, informative analyses of the products, video reviews -- even when they do contain worthwhile evaluations -- too often seem to consist of awkward, annoying people playing with toys while bragging that they got them before I did. Video reviewers in general also seem far less critical of toys, to the point that even (especially) some of the most popular reviewers in this group strike me as making little more than homemade commercials for the products... which is doubly suspicious and infuriating given that said reviewers are getting their review samples free from the manufacturer. I mean, WOW. WOW! I LO-OVE IT! YOU DON'T WANNA MISS THIS ONE!

I came for an objective analysis of the toy, not to hear people with voices that grate on my soul do their darnedest to fellate the MattyCollector mascot for eight minutes straight (even though it would explain that smug smirk on his face). There are other websites I can visit for that kind of thing, and at least tentacle porn has the good taste not to assault my ears with hateful Billy Mays impressions.

Even if they're well done, however, I don't think video reviews are as effective as written reviews with pictures. One advantage text reviews have is that readers can skim them and search for keywords if they don't care about (for example) a character's fictional background or a short history of the sculptors and just want a breakdown of the figure's articulation. Yeah, you can skip ahead through a video review while listening for key words, but it's nowhere near as easy to find the content you want. And whereas many written toy reviews have relatively good photos of the figures, video reviews are often blurry YouTube videos that don't show me whether I'm looking at a really sharp sculpt or little Suzie's latest Play-Doh creation.

YGR: I've only ever watched one video review, and it wasn't very impressive - the upside of a text/photo review is that you don't have to read five minutes of me going "uhm..." between sentences. I'm sure videos are great for some things, though: I've just never gotten into them.

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Who are some of your favorite reviewers? What is the most important quality a review should have?

Artemis: The Oafs; that's about it, really. Crawford's alright but I could live without him. I like photos, especially those that go beyond just displaying the toy in its default pose (assuming it's got enough joints to get out of it), and otherwise it's just a matter of keeping me entertained, one way or another. I'll skim through a boring review of a figure I already may buy, but that's nothing more than the equivalent of checking the program specs to see if a pc will run a game - for actual reading it's got to be entertaining in its own right, in which case it doesn't matter so much whether I'm interested in the toy already.

Poe: Well, clearly I think Michael Crawford is the gold standard by which we are all measured. My compatriots at OAFE are also very good, and tend to spread the field a more than MC, getting into Transformers, G.I. Joe and the like. The only video reviews I watch are Pixel Dan's reviews of MOTUC figures--I make an exception for him. Those are my personal faves, but I think there are a lot of good reviewers out there.

TAO: I can't think of anyone reviewing figures who does a bad job. I'm a stickler for formatting, and I like when there are clear breakdowns into categories (as you can imagine based on my own reviewing scheme), so I tend to lean towards reviewers with similar styles. Michael Crawford is of course a good example, as is Poe Ghostal (when he writes reviews), and yourself DrNightmare! (You said I'd get a 'treat' for saying that right?)

RP: I do mean to hype my team, but OAFE, Poe Ghostal and Michael Crawford are really the only reviewers I look at because those are actual reviews that are opinion based. Photos are CRUCIAL to me, so I love sites like Rebelscum and CoolToyReview, but if I got to a review then I'm looking for a specific and honest opinion on how a figure's paint, articulation, etc. turned out on the final product. Most other reviewers seem to shy away from any negative opinions, which is not helpful to me as a consumer (though is undoubtedly how they consistently get early product samples).

Shocka: All of the OAFEs, of course, and for different reasons. I love reading Poe Ghostal - he's a very well-read, educated, smart and funny writer, and has a lot to say on a lot of different topics. I also look at MWC from time to time - even though his writing is not great for various reasons (his sense of humor doesn't match mine, and I frequently find errors in his reviews due to various things like his colourblindedness or he just didn't notice a particular point of articulation) his pictures are fantastic, and they are a core component of toy reviews. I think the reviews should be primarily entertaining, in showing off both the toy and its components, and the character, in such a way to be a fun read, an extension of the hobby.

Wes: The awesome reviewers at Articulated Discussion are among my favorite reviewers, of course! I love you guys. Super Articulated Guy of the extinct superarticulated.com was a particular favorite of mine, and I'm glad and proud that he gave me the opportunity to contribute to the site before its untimely demise. Among others, Newton Gimmick of Infinite Hollywood and Nathan Newell of Dork Dimension are becoming fast favorites -- I especially like Nathan's retro figure reviews, as they allow me to look back at old figures I loved or still might wish to acquire. And I really enjoy looking at Mike Crawford's beautiful photographs even though he tends to review products in which I have no interest whatsoever. I used to be content to shoot figures against a black t-shirt or poster-board background with the camera flash, but Crawford's photos inspired me to get a light tent and fiddle with lighting and various settings on my camera in order to take the best photos that I can. My photos still don't look anywhere near as brilliant as his, though, so I'm still trying to improve!

Along those lines, maybe I'm just shallow, but I think good, illustrative photos are the most important thing a toy review should have -- such that one could probably have a very informative review that consisted of nothing but images. I mean, it's one thing to write that a figure has X amount of articulation and can get into any pose you can think of, but that doesn't mean much to me without a photo to illustrate the point! And if the photo effectively illustrates the point, it's arguable that text to that effect isn't really necessary.

Of course, there are fairly informative reviews that don't contain a single photo -- Dave Van Domelen offers some pretty useful writeups of Transformers figures, for example -- but I don't think they're nearly as easy to grasp as they'd be with photographs, and it's still fairly difficult to gauge things like a figure's poseability without photos to illustrate it.

YGR: Favorites are easy, if a bit nepotistic: Artemis, Monkey Boy, Poe Ghostal, Rustin Parr and Shocka. The most important quality for a review is to be complete. We can't say "this is worth you spending your money on," because we're not the ones in charge of your money or your collection. However, a review should give you all the facts you need to make that decision for yourself.

Special thanks to Newton Gimmick of InfiniteHollywood.com, and all the other great reviewers out there, for not destroying me for not including them in this article! 

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