Review – Mars Attacks Blox

The Blox series from Funko (Amazon.com search*) is one of those lines that looks far, far cooler when you have a giant batch of toys than when you only have one or two in the series. And today we’re taking a look at the Mars Attacks Blox toy which was sent to me as a gift direct from the team at Funko.

And I cannot thank both Topps and Funko enough because between them I managed to get not only this Mars Attacks Blox toy but also the Pop! Vinyl Mars Attacks toy (review here) as gifts. That’s two fun toys for free in one year! Yay! And my review is no doubt influenced by these being gifts, but I feel that if you’re a Mars Attacks fan you’ll learn all you need to know by looking at the photos.

We’ve Seen the Blox Before

I’ve reviewed three of the Blox toys in the past — SDCC Exclusive Franken Berry Blox review here, Batman Blox review here, and Franken Berry Standard Blox review here — and they are all quite cute if slightly flawed with rough paint apps. In fact, the one constant complaints I’ve had with Funko toys in the past was their weak paint apps, but this Mars Attacks Blox seems to overcome that flaw with tighter and cleaner paint that we saw in the earlier Blox . . . this is a good thing.

Not Quite Flat

This Mars Attacks Blox continues the Blox style of being an almost-two-dimensional toy with just enough depth to it to make it fun. I love how the designers cheated the clear bubble helmet — the face is raised off of the dome background on the front while paint on the back defines the reverse side of the head inside the helmet — because it’s a simple idea that works and isn’t something I ever would have thought of. A creative solution that no doubt saved Funko quite a bit of money over using an actual clear helmet (like we saw on the Mars Attacks Pop! Vinyl toy.)

A Short Review of a Fun Toy

The Mars Attacks Blox* vinyl toy is everything I expected from the series and just a little better since the paint apps are neater than we’ve seen before. This is definitely a collectible for fans of the Mars Attacks series and not an action figure, but the entire Blox series is such a neat idea that I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that someone out there is trying to collect the entire line regardless of what the individual characters are.

Funko’s one of those companies I just love to watch. They secure a wide variety of licenses, make very adorable and simple toys, and I find it very entertaining to see exactly what they’ll come up with next. The Blox series (Amazon.com search*) is recommended to anyone who collects vinyl toys and finds the photos posted here interesting. Without any articulation this is one of the few toy reviews where the pictures really do tell you everything that you need to know.

Philip Reed has some Christmas Pop! Vinyl toys from Funko that he should try to review over the next week.