For today’s installment of Robo-madness I thought it would be fun to take a look at a couple of toys based on the Robocop film (and cartoon series.) Back in 1988 we were treated to slew of RC merchandising and spinoffs including lunchboxes, school supplies, a Marvel Productions cartoon and a toyline, Robocop and the Ultra Police, from Kenner. Though the cartoon and toyline were connected, for kids like me that never saw the cartoon when it originally aired, these figures and vehicles were just an extension of the film. I only had a couple of the toys, the main Robocop figure and his Police Cruiser, but they stayed in my toybox for years afterwards. At some point during a move, around the time when I was in high school, my parents got a bit sneaky and trashed all of my toys. Because we ended up shifting from a two-story house to a cramped apartment, this unfortunate off-loading of my childhood went unnoticed until I ended up moving out on my own a couple years later. Fast forward to a few weeks ago when I spotted a picture of a new NECA action figure release of a glow-in-the-dark Robocop. Seeing that new figure brought back a lot of my old memories of having RC face off against my Transformers and G.I. Joe figures, and that’s when I did some research and realized that the 25th anniversary of the film was right around the corner. That cinched it, and I knew I both had to spend some time on the site in honor of the film, and track down this new gitd Robocop figure!
It didn’t take long to acquire the NECA Robocop, and after hitting the net in research mode again I realized that new toy was actually an homage to one of the original 1988 Ultra Police figures, Nightfighter Robocop. So I made a quick detour to eBay and found an original Nightfighter that had been sitting in the collection of a former Kenner employee for 24 years. I bought the figure and couldn’t wait to get him so that I could see the two glow-y figures side by side…
Like most toylines in the 80s, The Ultra Police line was filled with all sorts of random variant versions of the main character, sort of like how Batman had six million different costumes in the Animated Series toyline, one for battling lava, one for flying, etc. If there’s one gimmick that always wins me over, it’s a figure made out of glow-in-the-dark plastic. It’s purely for aesthetic reasons, but I love both the way the figures look when glowing and the slightly pale green mixed with milky white of the plastic in normal light. It surely doesn’t hurt that this Robocop variant also features a Gatling Gun arm and cap-firing abilities.
The updated NECA version, released as a Toys R Us exclusive, excludes the chain-gun limb, but it does a masterful job of providing a more realistic take on the Robocop body armor sculpt. The packaging designers also had their tongue planted firmly in their cheeks when transferring the bulk of the original figure’s descriptive copy which reads: “Robocop(‘s) special night gear makes him completely invisible to the evil Vandels gang. Nightfighter armor can be seen only by the Ultra Police troops.” Right, so the eerie illuminated and glowing green armor is actually invisible? Sigh. It made more sense in the 80s…
Another action option that didn’t made the cut when updating the Nightfighter figure was the cap-firing action. The original figures, all of the Robocop figures I believe, had the ability to load and fire strips of caps. I can see this being troublesome in the modern market. Actually, do any companies even make cap-firing toys anymore? Regardless, though this option is sorely missed, this is another instance when the updated sculpt makes up for it in spades. Like most 80s era toys, Robocop’s grip on his gun was somewhat fugly looking not to mention quite tenuous. The new version not only has a nice grip on things, the gun is now almost perfectly screen accurate as well. It might not handily clip to the figure’s hip like with the old toy, but I can let that slide…
One last comparison I’d like to make in terms of sculpting can be seen in the Achilles tendon/pistons on Robocop’s feet. The original toyline tried its best to recreate the idea of this design flourish, but in the updated toy they’re magnificent! Not only are they accurate in terms of sculpting, but they’re articulated and actually work. Granted, I have a fear that with too much moving and repositioning these will be the first parts to break on the figure, but they sure are pretty…
Here’s a nice quality scan of the cardback from the original toy featuring the entire line of Ultra Police figures and vehicles. Though it would be pretty cool to track down a nice version of the basic Robocop figure again, I’d really like to find an affordable version of the ED-260 (the cartoon update to the ED-209.) Not only does it fire caps, but it looks really neat too!
I promised my wife that we wouldn’t go in debt during this Robocop week, so I limited myself to these two figures pictured above. So for these next four images, I had to resort to swiping pictures off of eBay. I just wanted to post the original basic figure, as well as some of the zanier variants that would pop up by the time the live action Robocop series came along…
I guess by the 90s a simple glow in the dark figure wasn’t enough, so they had to upgrade to a series of light-up figures like the one pictured below.
Tying for the most ridiculous variants have to be Sky Patrol and Toxic Emergency Robocops. Though he did attain flight capabilities by the third film, I’ve tried my best to erase the memory of that movie from my brain…
