I've been away for awhile, and for that, I apologise. I had two reviews lined up, but suffice to say, anything and everything went wrong, I had to scrap the first review due to faulty batteries, then the second because of time. Also, I didn't want to flood the Playmates section with reviews, if that makes any sense, and it gave me time to get some new figures for review. Enough excuses however, to the review!
In 1996, a year after the first wave of Voyager figures, a small second wave was released, consisting of some interesting figures, some Delta Quadrant species in the form of everybody's favourite organ harvesting species, a Vidiian, along with a Kazon, some crew in the form of Seska before her reveal of traitor turned traitor, and everybody's favourite reoccurring lucky redshirt, Joseph Carey (so lucky in fact he was demoted in favour of a Maquis terrorist, seems to disappear for 6 years, then pops up again from nowhere only to die a senseless death a week or so before they all get home). Along with those four where two more, two character variants, a full Klingon Torres (a figure I'll review at a later point), and the this guy I'm reviewing, Chakotay in his Maquis gear, a figure I've pursued for two years.
Is he worth the wait? To the pictures!
A front view of him before being deboxed. I don't believe I've reviewed a Voyager figure before, so a few words on the box. Similar in style to the TNG, DS9 and TOS movie individual waves, the main ship in each series, Voyager in this case, is doing a flyby at the top with one of those multicoloured nebula's in the background, with a nicely done planet of to the right along with info on ol Commander Chuckles, with open space to the left. Simple, yet eye catching and very appealing in my opinion. So if anybody is still awake after my small detour, to the back.
A back view. Nothing too dissimilar with other Trek lines, the "important note to collectors" is something new that I believe is universal for 96 and a few waves afterwards. Fun fact, something interestingly wrong, though it's not visible with this resolution, is the fact Kes is called "Hes", the Kazon, "Hazon", the Klingon, "the Hinglon" etc on the card back. I thought it must be the way K's are printed in this font, but Kathryn is spelled correctly.
A view of his bio (excuse the blurriness). Nothing too strange, except that it insinuates Chakotay comes from Dorvan V, something that I don't think was established in Voyager. I could be wrong, however.
Enough of box graphics, the figure!
Or the accessories, at least. Standard dayglo tricorder, a medicine bundle (consisting of the wings of a blackbird, CHAH moonz ee stone, and an akoonah according to
Memory Alpha) and, for the first and only time I believe, a phaser without the beam, necessary for Chakotay in a few minutes. It does indeed appear Chuckles Maquis-looted phaser is a standard TNG phaser without the beam and silvering colour (as far as I can see).
And...
His base, featuring the embalm of the Maquis, only coming with him and the Ensign Seska figure. A very nice base that's extremely accurate, bonus points for including something that could've easily been another combadge base (not that's bad or anything, but the extra effort is always appreciated)
A front view of Chakotay. He's extremely accurate to the original costume,
as you can see. (I've really got a hang of this hyperlinking haven't I?). Some of the lines on his shirt don't match, but I'm not that crazy to complain. All the necessary details are there, the tunic, the boots, the rolled up sleeves, even his phaser holster (more on that later).
A close up. I have to say, this has to be one of the best Playmates likenesses, to me at least it's a perfect likeness to Robert Beltran. No paint-apps-gone-wild as well on the face, which is excellent.
The same, however, cannot be said of his left arm. There's some sort of smear, I'm not fussed about it, as far as I'm concerned, it's a phaser burn. It's not noticeable unless you focus on it, and a lot of other Playmates figures have the same sort of thing, however, I thought it was worth mentioning. The mock stitching on his tunic his carried on around the back, as you would expect, and like the rest of the figure, the detail is very nice, and accurate.
Something else I noticed....
His boots, they have grips! Pretty nice detail, not needed, but still present. Again, another extra mile I didn't even notice till I was photographing him.
And as hinted (and seen) earlier, he had a holster for his phaser, complete with some circular detailing on the front. Again, a little extra that makes it all the more better. However...
(continued after this short break)