Monday, February 23, 2015

REVIEW: Crashlings Aliens Vomiting Visitor

Crashlings
If you haven't already seen them - or read our previous Reviews - the Crashlings are a range of blind-bagged (well, technically, blind-sphered) minifigures from Wicked Cool Toys. Available in a variety of packs (from single, $1 individual figures to 10-figure multi-packs and playsets) the Crashlings are divided into five different sub-themes - Dinosaurs, Insects, Monsters, Sea Life and Aliens. And it's from the Aliens theme that the subject of today's Review comes.

Vomiting Visitor
Like many minifigures of this type, the Crashlings are available in different colorways - in the case of Vomiting Visitor there are two Common colorways (this green figure and a purple version) plus a Special Edition (gold) figure. As much as I dig the metallic-effect Crashlings, I was pleased to see the figure I'd received came with a standard paint app. 
As we've mentioned in our previous Reviews, the Crashlings come in pop-open Meteor containers. Simply pop and twist the two halves apart and the Meteor cracks open to reveal your new figure!
Vomiting Visitor is a pretty good-looking alien, overall. I like that the designers have mixed it up a little in terms of the number of limbs/eyes the figure has (that's four legs, two arms and five eyes) and the single head antenna is a nice touch and a break from the expected twin antennae. I certainly get the impression somebody got the memo that these were supposed to be ALIENS...!

The ''vomiting'' aspect of the character is pretty gross (in a good way - kids love that stuff) and there's some lovely purple drool/vomitus dripping from his lips. Whether it's intentional or not, he also has that kind of post-puking kind of washed-out look to him, with his big doe-eyes and loose lips giving him a kind of pathetic look (again, in a good way.)
The paint app is fine for a figure of this size, with his eyes and mouth both being reasonably well painted (the black dot below his left lower eye was actually a piece of... something... which I originally took to be a splodge of paint but then came off as I was putting him back in his Meteor...)
The figure comes with a collector sheet, detailing each of the 30 available Crashlings. On the flipside are details of three games you can play with your Crashlings (most of which seem to involve either throwing them or popping the rubber-side of the Meteor...) Personally I'll just stick to collecting them for now...

Final Thoughts
The Crashlings are, as we've mentioned in the past, really fun little minifigures. And with prices starting at just $1, they're great as allowance money or impulse pick-up toys. Just be warned: you will quickly find yourself developing a bit of an obsession with these little critters.

As for Vomiting Visitor, he's a cute figure. It's always tough when designing alien creatures to hit the right balance between ''readable'' features and alien-ness and I've a feeling Vomiting Visitor may be a little too alien for some. Granted, it's not like he has Flaffing Nodes or Liptic Podules or anything that weird but the six-limbed, five-eyed (and one antenna) design does drift a little close to the overly weird and some people may find it just too outre. Yet even for all his oddities, he still has a wonderfully sympathetic look to him that will, I'm sure, resonate with collectors who dig monster and creature toys.

Regardless of his unique design, he's a well-produced figure with some great up-close detail, an interesting look and a neat (for the size) paint app. In other words, pretty much everything you'd want in an alien minifigure.

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