Review – Robot Fighters Storm

“Orphan and goddess, thief and crusader, African and American — Ororo Monroe, better known as Storm, has filled many roles during her young life. She has the mutant ability to control the weather around her. She can create rain, hail, snow, fog, and even lightning at will.”
— from X-Men: The Ultimate Guide

In the 1990s, Toy Biz (see Wikipedia) pumped out action figures at a terrifying rate. Ranging in quality from pure trash to fairly nice toys, the Toy Biz plan seemed to be “choose a Marvel series, make a ton of toys with gimmicks, and then move on to the next series.”

Today, as the first step in battlegrip.com’s X-Men Toy Week (in honor of the new movie that launches on Friday), we’re looking at X-Men Robot Fighters Storm, one of those Toy Biz releases from 1997 that embraced “gimmick” and settled for “kinda lame toy.”

Packaging

An over-sized, ridiculous card and blister, this design feels as if it was created more for MOC collectors than it was kids who were going to tear the packaging off and play with the toys inside. The card front is fairly minimalistic in terms of design, but the steel blue with yellow and black hazard tape design is attractive and overall Storm looks great in the pack.

The card back shows not only other X-Men Robot Fighters action figures but also a Spider-Man Electro Spark series (more gimmicks) as well as a short bit of text setting up Storm’s included “robot” accessory, the Spinning Weather Station with Lightning Projectile. But more on that soon enough.

It’s not a particularly amazing card design, but it’s nice enough that I can see where a MOC collector would be happy displaying this piece in his collection.

Storm

Standing about 5-inches tall, Storm’s sculpt is highly stylized — no doubt influenced by the cartoon of the time — with kinda goofy hair and she has very little in the way of articulation. For a mass-market toy released in 1997, Storm’s not bad at all, with a twisty head, swivel legs (no knee articulation), and rotating and hinged shoulders (no elbow articulation). She can position herself in very few poses, mostly because of balance issues that force the figure to topple over if she’s trying to do anything more complicated than the “lean against the wall” maneuver.

Storm’s paint isn’t terrible, and would even be considered acceptable for many of today’s mass-market action figure lines. She’s mostly cast in her dark flesh color, with all of the other colors — except her hair piece, which is cast in white — a basic paint application. And the painting has very little sloppy areas — a little blue splashes onto her skin in one place — even if there’s not much in the way of detail work.

As I already mentioned, the sculpting is quite stylized but it looks pretty good. She’s recognizable as Storm — even if you found her loose somewhere you would immediately identify her — and completely acceptable for a mid-1990s action figure. But just barely.

Spinning Weather Station with Lightning Projectile

“Zapping a holographic Sentinel with a series of lightning bolts, Storm suddenly finds the elements turned against her when the Danger Room’s weather sphere spins onto the scene.”
— from the card back

Storm’s only accessory is the included “robot.” I put the word robot in quotes because this thing is not a robot. It just stands there — spinning, after you wind it up and push the button — and doesn’t even look neat. And the “Lightning Projectile” might have been fun when the toy was first released, but today the spring is so weak that most of the time the lightning doesn’t even make it out of the launcher.

Storm’s adequate action figure could have been greatly improved with a cool robot toy. This thing, though, actually detracts from the package’s play value.

Closing Thoughts

Not a strong way to start X-Men Toy Week, is it? Storm’s an okay action figure — especially considering when she was released — with a lame accessory. An X-Men fan could no doubt snag every release in this series and put together an okay display on a shelf, but there’s not a lot of excitement here that would make anyone want to track down the entire series.

If you come across any of the X-Men Robot Fighters toys cheap — say for a buck — they might be worth grabbing for customization work. I don’t think I’d recommend spending more than $2 or $3 for Storm — even MOC — because she has problems standing, just looks okay, and any more than $3 is gonna make you feel like you were robbed once you open the package.

Philip Reed usually loves robot toys, but calling the machine that’s included with this action figure a robot is a bit of a stretch.