Tintin figures from Plastoy!!!

For years I’ve been wondering about what a line of proper Tintin action figures would be like, that kids could actually play with. Finally, that dream has come true. Here are the first released pictures:

The one we all want: Tintin and Snowy (thankfully packaged together in the same box!!! I was worried they would try to charge full price for Snowy…). These great toys will come with accessories, and as you can see Tintin will have quite a few: The Unicorn (of course), binoculars, a torch, a bone and even a notepad…poor Tintin, looks like it doesn’t come with a pencil. I guess kids will have to just imagine that. Note the lack of gun.

What bugs me is the pose that Tintin’s in, or rather his apparent inability for him to ever get out of it…It looks like his arms move, but that’s about it. His legs don’t look like they’ll move, so kids are stuck with a Tintin that can’t even walk. To make up for this lack of movement, Plastoy decided to move Tintin’s jacket back. I’ll assume it’s the wind that’s blowing it back, since Tintin doesn’t look like he’s running. What this really looks like is an attempt to make a Tintin toy with a similar pose to the running Tintin on the box, but that can still stand up. While Tintin himself looks great, the resulting figure is kind of weird. If I were a kid it would drive me nuts that the figure barely has any joints (all in all there may be about 2 parts of his body that can move. The average Star Wars clone trooper figure for sale at the store has about 16 parts of his body that can move). I mean really, can Tintin even hold those binoculars up to his face?

So I’m not really sure whether it’s an action figure trying to be a collector’s figurine, or a collector’s figurine trying to be an action figure. Looking on the bright side, if you are a fan of both, this may just be the best of both worlds. You can at least play with this, and any kid with a great imagination will overlook the joints and just have a great time with Tintin and Snowy (who nobody expected to have joints anyway and looks pretty cute in my opinion) just like he would with one of those Burger King toys that have no joints at all. The difference is that those come free in a kids meal, and these will cost the price of a toy. However, it should be well worth it for Tintin fans.

To be fair though, I did some research on Plastoy, and they are a french toy company that specializes in collectible figurines based off of comic book characters (they have lots of Asterix and Smurfs). And all these don’t move at all and appear to just be for your shelf. They’ve also worked on the plastic figures of Tintin that don’t move at all sold by Moulinsart,so they were a logical choice for these. What we see above is a step up for them.  On to the next photo.

You’re kidding me! It’s every Tintin collectors dream! All the main characters in one set!  These look smaller and resemble those little tubes of dinosaurs or cowboys and Indians you can buy at a dollar store…but this is so much cooler. Unlike the last set, I don’t see anybody complaining about a lack of joints when they play with this any more then they would complain that you can’t move the arms on an army man. This would also make a great display with all those guys lined up on your Tintin shelf (you do have a Tintin shelf, right?) I am soooooo getting this. The only guy we don’t exactly know the name of is the guy to the right of Tintin who yelled at Allan in the trailer. Many think he’s a descendant of Red Rackham who will substitute the Bird Brothers and be played by Daniel Craig. On the official website Tintin is described as having to face Rackham, but he can’t do that unless a Rackham exists in his time. So it’s a good guess.

On the subject of Red Rackham, he now apparently wears a red Zorro mask. Interesting…

While I don’t know about other sets, it looks like this may only cost  about 12 euros because Plastoy has many other tubes of figures like this one for that price. That would be awesome! cheapest Tintin figures ever!

Cool teeny tiny Tintin key chain. The big deal in this picture is, unfortunately, too small to make out. Notice that in all the previous images, and indeed even in the top right hand corner of this one, that same image we saw on the Meccano boxes still has Tintin’s face erased! At this point I have no idea why. What’s weird is that Tintin’s face ISN’T erased at the bottom left hand corner of the image. But again, the picture is too small to make out the details.

Poor Snowy got left out of this set, but this time we get Captain Haddock instead. Unlike the last weaponless Tintin, this time around both characters have weapons. It looks like this set is amimed at slightly older kids. Just a reminder: Tintin DID use guns in the series when he had to. For example, read ”The Red Sea Sharks” when Tintin yells out ”If only I had a gun! Give me a gun!” and then shoots an airplane out of the sky with a massive machine gun. Of course, if he hadn’t he would have been killed so of course he used the gun. By the way, Tintin’s face is erased again in the bottom left corner. I add this to my group of unsolved Tintin movie mysteries, along with the mystery of the missing Haddock arms we had with the sticker books a while back…

Finally, what kid wouldn’t love to have this awesome motorcycle, which happens to be another paint job of the cycle from ”King Ottokar’s Sceptre”? Maybe it has something to do with the video game scene we saw? But hold on…please tell me the wheels turn…yeah they probably do…and that the bi-pod can be lifted up so kids can drive it around… not so sure about that one…it may just be another cool collector’s item.

If you go back to that picture of the key chain there’s a picture of a box-second image on the right-in those little circles on the bottom. I don’t have an image of that one, so I’ll just have to wait for it.

To wrap this up, every one of these figures looks great and will be great to collect. But I hope another toy company releases a line of action figures designed a bit more for children, that can do a little bit more. Also, while more may be coming, for now at least we have only seen Tintin and Haddock as large figures. I hope all those characters in the little tube set get made bigger. It wouldn’t surprise me if this were to happen, since Plastoy isn’t a very well known toy company around the world and it’s possible another company gets to make these characters for the kids in countries like the USA.

Awesome find, Steven! And thank’s Archibald for finding these pictures.

Sources: http://cinema.jeuxactu.com/news-cinema-tintin-bientot-dans-votre-salon-15223.htm http://www.amazon.co.uk/plastoy-Toys-Games/s?ie=UTF8&rh=n%3A468292%2Ck%3APlastoy&page=1 http://home.base.be/luc.jansen/