Review – Ashley Wood’s World War Robot Square 10-Pack

Manufacturer: ThreeA Toys * Year: 2009

After playing with — and breaking! — my very first Ashley Wood World War Robot toy, the membership Bramble (review here), I almost thought I was completely finished with the World War Robot series of toys. But, after some thinking, I decided to take a chance on the Square, and dove into the new release by buying the 10-pack. My thinking was that I’d review the lot of them, choose one or two to keep, use one as a prize, and sell the others on eBay.

After getting some time to play with these little guys I have to admit that the plan is kinda tough to follow through on. These are some cute — and solid! — little vinyl robot toys.

Packaging

There’s no doubt that an artist is responsible for the design of this entire series, because even the packaging is a beautiful work of art. While the Square 10-Pack packaging is nowhere near as elaborate as the Membership Bramble box (that thing was overkill for any toy), it’s still a wonderful box and one that I’m going to keep to display with my collection.

Yes, the pack’s a minimalistic design, but it’s well designed and more classy than it is elaborate or overwhelmingly attractive. This looks like the sort of packaging you would see used for high-end jewelry or a fancy watch — definitely not a toy — and I appreciate the fact that the box was given the same level of sophisticated design that’s usually reserved for art magazines and gallery brochures.

The box consists of a slipcover and a window box that opens to display the 10 toys. You could easily remove the slipcover and place all 10 toys on display in the window box but how would that be any fun? Nah. I think I’ll just have to ruin this pack’s “MIB” status and pop open the plastic shells that are locking the Squares in place.

The Square Sculpt and Design

Even though this is classified as a “10-pack,” all 10 of the toys inside share the exact same sculpt and design. For that reason we’re gonna start out by taking a look at the blank — often referred to as “DIY,” since it’s intended to be used as vinyl canvas for artists to create their own custom design — version of the toy that was included in the box. This is the best way to look at the toy’s sculpting, articulation, and general quality of manufacturing. Why is this the best way? Because I said so.

Keep reading.

Standing roughly 4.5-inches tall, the toy’s most obvious feature is the blocky, cube-like main body from which the Square draws its name. The surface of the cube is pitted and scratched, looking like it has seen some serious abuse throughout the years. The photos of the DIY piece very clearly show the sculpted scratches and damaged areas, which is a lot of the reason that I wanted to open with this blank non-design version of the toy. The legs also show some signs of damage but nothing like what we see on the cube-like body.

Besides the square body, the toy’s other primary feature has to be the very cute smiley face with single tooth that’s sculpted into the front of the body. This childish, almost alien and baby-like face is at first a bit unusual when seen as the face of a robotic war machine and, for a few months after first seeing the painting, the face really bothered me. It’s comical, nowhere near the grim and serious I expected from the World War Robot series, and it looks drastically out of place on the various paint designs. At least, it looked out of place but as I thought more about the design the face bothered me less and less.

Do I love the face? Not at all. But I can say that it doesn’t bother me like it once did. I still would have preferred something more serious (or even no face at all, which I think would have been better) but I’ve grown to accept this twisted, silly face.

The toy has more articulation than I expected, with a 360-degree twist waist, ball-jointed hips, and hinge joints at the knees. For a giant box on legs that’s a lot of articulation — 5 points total — and the toy balances fairly well on its stubby legs. You’re not likely to get it to stand on one leg, but you have more options when posing the piece than you’d first expect from something without arms or a separate head.

Overall the sculpt and design is excellent. And, best of all, this is a solid vinyl toy. Not solid as in the cube body is a single chunk of plastic, but solid in that you can play with it without fear of breaking something. It’s actually one of the more durable vinyl toys I’ve encountered.

Paint

Obviously the blank toy doesn’t have any paint; you can see that in the photos and if it had paint it wouldn’t be blank. No, I’m going to take a few moments to talk about the general level of quality of the paint job on the other nine Squares that were packed in the box. And there really isn’t a lot to say because the painting on all of these is fantastic. Layer after layer of paint and detail, with every single toy weather worn with washes and dry brushing that looks like something you’d expect to find on a custom piece and not a mass-produced toy.

Ashley Wood’s toys are expensive, yes, but the quality of paint shows just where that money is going. I can’t name any other designer toys with paint jobs this beautiful, and you can forget seeing something like this on the toys you find at Wal-Mart or Target. The only toys that I own that even come close to this level of paint quality have to be the pieces from Sideshow Collectibles, and all of those don’t attempt anything near this level of weathering detail.

To show just what I’m talking about I’ve taken three photos of each of the nine painted Squares that are packed in the box; one front view, one back view, and one view from above. Click each image, study the designs, and I think you’ll see what I’m talking about when I say that these paint jobs are amazing.

And once you’ve looked over the photos scroll all of the way to the bottom of the page for my few complaints with the Squares and my closing thoughts on this pack of fantastic vinyl toys.

---

Deep Powder Square

---

Desert Square

---

Dirty Deeds Square

---

EMGY Square

---

Euro Defense Square

---

Iron Panda Square

---

Lil Red Square

---

Lunar Square

---

Medic Square

A Single Flaw

Generally, and I want to be very clear on this, the Square is a fabulous toy. There is a problem with them, though, that needs to be mentioned: the joints are very stiff when you first pull them out of the box. I worried over the first couple of figures, as the paint was making it very difficult to move the joints and I was worried about breaking one of them (understandable, after what happened to my Bramble). But after about an hour of fooling around with them I managed to break all of the joints free and the pieces are now just fine. So it’s a minor complaint but it is one worth keeping in mind if you get one of these and find stiff joints.

Closing Thoughts

These little guys are fantastic! I’m definitely keeping Lil Red and Deep Powder (Gina chose Deep Powder), I’m going to hang onto the DIY, and then I am going through with my plan of using one of these as a prize and selling the remaining pieces on eBay. (Keep reading to find out how to win one of these Squares.)

So far I only own three toys by Ashley Wood and even though the physical design of the Squares is my least favorite I have to say that this is the best toy design I’ve seen come from Ash’s company. These are playable, portable, cute, and have amazing paint jobs. And I am serious when I say these are durable pieces. In just the short time that I’ve owned them I have stacked them on top of each other, dropped them, and drug them out into the yard. I’ve even watched as a pyramid of all 10 toppled over and every single toy survived without any damage.

Congrats, Ash, for a great toy. I hope your future releases can achieve this same level of playability and durability.

Win a Square!

I am going to give one of the Squares away to a randomly-selected battlegrip.com reader who comments on this or any other review at the site during the month of September. To enter you need only leave a comment on any review at the site during September (I reserve the right to ignore any comments that aren’t serious or actually contributing to the discussion of toys). Leaving comments in multiple reviews will get you entered multiple times.

This contest is open to everyone, but only US readers will be sent the Square free of charge. If a reader outside of the US wins then I will work with him on shipping (splitting the costs) and if he passes then I’ll move to the second randomly chosen reader. Sorry, guys, but shipping continues to get expensive.

So dive into the site, leave some comments, and good luck!

Paper Squares

If you’d like a Square, but don’t have the cash to buy one of the vinyl versions shown here, you can always take a shot at making your own out of paper. This post at Paperkraft has all you need to create your own paper Square.

Buy World War Robot at Amazon.com and support battlegrip.com!

---

Philip Reed almost wishes the Square wasn’t as solid and fun of a toy as it turned out to be. If it had sucked he could have easily ignored the other upcoming Ashley Wood toys. But since it’s a durable, well-constructed toy Philip now has to watch as each new World War Robot toy hits the market. And he no doubt has to buy some of them.