Review – Redakai Harrier

When I found this Harrier action figure from the Redakai series* earlier today (mentioned here) I was actually pretty excited. A great bird-man design — even if the “feather” sword seemed pretty silly — I decided that as soon as I got home it was time to rip open the package and get a look at the toy.

What a terrible toy it turned out to be.

Packaging

The package, as you can see in the pics, is attractive and clearly shows off the action figure. The design stood out nicely on the pegs at Wal-Mart, and while it’s not anything I would keep it did its job and caught my eye. And the back of the package shows the full toy while giving a short bit of flavor text. All in all a professional, clean design.

Sculpt

Lots of smooth, clean lines and a tight, excellent design make this toy look incredible. The sculpt is excellent and even though I’ve never seen the series I can say that it was the Harrier’s look in the package that made me go ahead and take a chance on it. The wings — separate parts that snap on once the package is open — look fantastic and really add to the toy’s size while those long, grasping arms help give it a menacing appearance. The figure itself is 3.75-inches tall and the wingspan comes in at about 6.5-inches; you get a lot of plastic for your money in the package.

Paint

There aren’t a lot of different colors involved, but the paintwork is fairly clean and tight with only a couple of sloppy spots. The silver and metallic green was a nice touch; no, it’s not the paint that makes me call this a terrible toy. The paint’s just fine for a mass market action figure.

Articulation

While not the best range of movement, the Redakai Harrier has decent articulation. There are ball-hinge shoulders, elbows, and knees, swivel wrists, and the hips are swivel on ball connected to a post that runs through the body. The head, waist, and feet don’t move at all which is kinda sad but not disastrous. Neck articulation would have been very appreciated, but I can get by without the waist and feet articulation on a monster of this size.

So What Makes This a Terrible Toy?

So far the review has been kinda favorable, so why do I call the Redakai Harrier a terrible toy? Well, looking at my complaints point by point is the easiest way to illustrate why I consider this to be a failure as a toy.

• Balance Issues – The toy’s very back heavy and it takes a lot of work to get it to stand. Those giant wings look great but the design didn’t take the weight into consideration and the design just doesn’t work as well as it should have.

  Clarification: It’s not that the toy won’t stand. No, it’s that the toy must have its arms in just the right positions to help offset the weight. So while the arms have okay articulation you can’t really take advantage of the articulation because of the balance problem.

• It Keeps Falling Apart – Those legs just will not stay on. Each time I pick up and play with the toy the legs fall off at the hips. That’s completely unacceptable in a toy that we’re expecting kids to play with. And since the Redakai series* is completely new you can’t sell to old collectors who are fans of a series from the eighties. Kids playing with this toy will spend more time putting the legs back on than they will actually playing with the toy.

• Sword Just Sucks – That sword wasn’t designed at all for the toy’s hands. To get the Redakai Harrier to even hold the sword you have to hook it over the thumb; the handle’s just too thin to fit properly in the hand. I don’t know why the sword was designed the way that it was, but the sword’s a failure and contributes to taking what could have been a fun toy and turning it into a waste of plastic.

Closing Thoughts

I bought the Harrier without knowing anything about the Redakai series* only because I liked the way the figure looked in the package. And I can admit that I still like the look of the toy, but as a toy it’s a total failure. Falling apart, unable to stand, and a weapon that just doesn’t work are too many serious flaws for me to recommend this toy to anyone.

I hope the series can survive this first wave, because if Spin Master can learn from their mistakes and recover from this bad toy design then it’s possible that future Redakai action figures will actually be fun and playable toys. The paint and sculpt are just fine, so it’s time to work on durability and creating usable accessories.

I have no idea if all of the figures in the first wave share the problems of the Harrier, but I’m not about to spend any more money on the series until I hear from several people that the other action figures are actually good toys.

Philip Reed hates writing negative reviews. A team of people no doubt sunk a lot of effort into creating the Redakai Harrier and it sucks to tell someone that their work didn’t succeed, but the Harrier is a real letdown and everyone out there needs to know about the problems with the toy.