Ah, Toynami, I wish I could quit you...

No, seriously, after this wave, I kinda wish I could quit the Futurama line. But the problem is I really like Futurama, and the figures presented in Toy Fair were so cool that I will give them another shot. But I'm sure hoping they step up their game a bit.

Instead of looking so far ahead, let's check Futurama Wave 9. This was a wave of two characters, since one is a version of Bender (again), I was only expecting one of them.



URL, the robot police officer. First of all he looks and feels a bit cheap, the sculpt is super simple, but it matches the character. And the articulation is just plain weird, the legs turn but why would you want to turn them to the side, both his wrists turn too, but one needs to be straight to hold his laser baton and the other consist of just three fingers so it doesn't really matter how you move it, it will always look the same.

He has a swivel neck but the helmet is not removable and the right arm could have had an elbow joint, but it doesn't so it looks weird without the accessory. Also I think it's pretty lame to have a character that's part of a duo and know that we're probably never gonna get the other part. If this line has waves of two characters why not URL and Smitty.



I know URL is part of the League of Robots, but unless you're willing to give me a Hedonismbot I won't buy your character selection.

The other figure in the wave is Wooden Bender. I guess you need a Bender or a main character to improve sales. But in a line with very few waves a year and only two characters per wave we are getting way to many duplicate characters. I mean, this is the fourth Bender we have out of eighteen figures (not counting the three Build-a-Robots), that's a more than a 22% of the entire line. I think that's a bit high, considering we also got one duplicate Fry and one duplicate Leela.

Another thing that pisses me off is that I preordered this wave knowing that I was getting a Wooden Bender, but assuming there was going to be Build-a-Robot parts included. If I had known that there were no parts I would have skipped that figure entirely.



So, I get it if this is like a transition wave after finishing the main team and starting with the Robot Mafia, I really hope things will start to look up after wave 10, because I used to really like this line. But I already know that one of the figures will be Flexo, and yes, he is another character, but I'm still counting him as a Bender variant. Why? Because you made me mad, that's why.

Well, at least I can use this figure to laugh at the Police... Nah, I would never do that...



Until next time.