 Charlie Clone |
Welcome to Charlie Clone's All Action Figure Revue at SWAFT.info! I'm your host, Charlie Clone! |
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Ugh. I'd hate to do this to you, reader, but I
think we have a new grand champion for the worst Dollar Store Toy to be
reviewed, yet. It's the Marble Shot Botz Blast Bot with Light-Up Action. This is another toy to be produced by Ja-ru, the same people who brought us those Jungle Realistic Animals...the ones that had the alarming white powder on them. Apparently we can thank Ja-ru for the dreaded Blast-ball, a toy that ignited sparks and burned at least six. Always ready to sell toys to those willing to live on the edge of danger, Ja-ru now brings us a portentially mortal marble shooter... My Marble Shot Botz Blast Bot was purchased in a Dollar Tree and was distributed by Greenbrier International, Inc. of 500 Volvo Parkway, Chesapeake, Virtual Accident 23320. Made in...Finland?...Norway? No, silly! He was made in China. |
 He's not Mega Man. He's not Bomberman. He's MARBLE MAN! |
CONCEPT:
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Marble shooters. These have been dollar store favorites for quite a while. I still fondly remember picking up my red foil colored TMNT Raphael marble shooter from a Dollar Tree back in the 90s. You can pretty much take any franchised character, stick a marble in its gut, and some collector will be game. The Marble Shot Botz toy didn’t really intrigue me sitting on the rack until I looked at the back and saw none other than Hudson Soft’s lovable little anarchist, Bomberman, staring back at me.
Oh, the hours I’ve wasted chasing friends across the TV screen trying to lob incendiary devices at them in the Bomberman video game series. Anywho, what I didn’t know until I read Wikipedia while researching this review is that the Bomberman franchise actually overlaps with a series called B-Daman. A whole line of B-Daman marble shooting toys, and in some cases very expensive marble shooting toys at that, are available in major retailers. B-Daman has a TV show and everything. If you haven’t seen them, they look like Gundam-style-anime-samurai robots, and If you don’t know what that description means, then you clearly don’t get the Cartoon Network. The only thing off here is that they all appear to have facial features that Bomberman himself has always seemed to lack. I’m not entirely sure if it is a mouth and/or a nose. Perhaps this was how the people at Ja-ru hoped to avoid copyright infringement. |
 
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ACCESSORIES:
The good part of the accessories is that there are a lot of them: six pieces of armor and a mini-figure. I have to admit, I’m always a sucker for the sidekicks. Who doesn’t always feel like they are getting more for their money when they get a G.I. Joe with a parrot, or when a Transformer is packed with an extra little robot. I’m not talking about those Star Wars hologram figures or Transformers decoys though. They are good for nothing. You couldn’t play with them. No, when I’m looking for a bonus figure, I want a mini-spy or a pet timberwolf...not that there’s anything wrong with Charlie Cat, mind you.
So the accessories look cool enough, but darned if I could get those shoulder pads or chest plate on. There's also an engineering irony at work here. I'm assuming that when the Shot Botz don their armor, they are supposed to be somehow powering up. As the case is, however, they become very unstable, and the chest plate (when it can be nearly affixed) usually blocks the marble from shooting out.
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FEATURES: Both the full-size and mini-robot shoot their marbles. The full-size bot utilizes a fairly functional button mechanism on his back. My big, meaty, grown-up hands had a hard time finding where to grip this toy though to get good leverage on the button. The mini-bot was virtually impossible to shoot, and by the time I applied enough force to launch the spheroid, I had lost control of the toy.
For some reason the larger robot also features a light-up action whenever you push down on the fuse on his head. The toy was packed with a plastic slip that was supposed to prevent the light from accidentally triggering and going dead, but only one of the two figures I purchased had a working head light. I’m not really sure what this light is supposed to represent, but he might want to consult his dermatologist.
I can’t say much about the paint jobs because there weren’t any. Each of the Shot Botz, and there were several I didn’t buy, had its own color scheme, and its plastic was molded in those colors. Apparently, all of the Shot Botz are also Caucasian. Both legs were made of a single piece of plastic and joined in the middle. This meant that the toy had an odd strip of flesh colored plastic exposed across his crotch that I was uncomfortable looking at.
All other coloration was done through stickers. This includes the face on both the big bot and mini bot. There were numerous expressions on the individual Shot Botz. I ended up with Winking White and Befuddled Black.
In terms of articulation, the big bot has a swiveling head and swinging arms (which are also connected in the middle). Given how they are attached to pegs, the feet also can move in a circle. The hands, which have a rather annoying habit of popping off, could also swivel, but since they are nothing more than featureless balls, that doesn’t buy you much.
Finally, the directions taunt you by showing you a cooler, and probably more expensive version of the toy you have just bought. This Platonic ideal of a Shot Bot has more coloration, and all of his armor appears to fit. |
PLAY VALUE:
Maybe I’m getting to old for this job and my youthful imagination is starting to wear off, but I’m coming up with pretty limited applications for these little fellas...
“Recess has gotten out of hand, again! Better call in the Shot Botz to bring an end to that runaway game of marbles!”
“That’s not a marble; it’s a thermonuclear warhead!”
“After the accident, Bruce never thought he’d shoot marbles again...that was, until he met Dr. Catseye and his cybernetic Shot Botz procedure.”
“A single, well-aimed marble would set off a chain reaction destroying the entire battle station.”
“The marbles! They’re everywhere! How will we ever get rid of them all!”
“Oh, no! The intergalactic overlord Marblus has just challenged the planet Earth to a cosmic game of marbles! If we lose, we face eternal slavery...whoever will come to our aid!”
Other than that, I’m afraid this toy really falls more under the category of “shooting device” than it does “action figure.”
A Final Word:
Friends, I am going to do something I don’t normally do in the All Action Figure Revue. I am going to advise you to steer as far away as possible from this toy. Now, as a clone who reviews dollar store toys for fun, I have a pretty high tolerance for lameness, but Ja-ru’s Marble Shot Botz Battle Bot is by far the worst toy that has ever undergone my scrutiny.
First, this is a really dangerous toy. Granted, the makers have “Age 4+” and “Choking Hazard” warnings all over it, but this toy has two different size marbles, and a tiny detachable hand that looks like cherry candy. I tried to eat it twice myself.
Next, it shoots things. Not only does it shoot things, but it’s very difficult to get it to shoot things, which means it’s very difficult to aim, which means that the mini-marble is eventually going into an open human orifice.
And I kept scraping myself on the sharp edges of brittle plastic.
The only way this toy could be more dangerous
would be if it
shot lead balls and had a real-working lighter. Oh, wait, that would be
the Ja-ru Blast Ball!
On the other hand, the packaging is actually pretty cool. It has bright color graphics on the front of fancy die-cut cardbacking, and it displays a fully-rendered grayscale set of directions on the back...so if you are a non-opening DST collector, you are in for a treat.
| Until
next time...
--Charlie Clone |
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