Ghostbusters Classics:
Ray Stantz Review

The Ghostbusters line is on the tertiary of my collecting interest. It shouldn’t be. I love the movies. I love the cartoon. I’ve always had Ghostbusters something around whether it’s a t-shirt, a pin, or a Stay-Puft shaped notepad. But for some reason, I’m just not that excited piecemealing my GB’s together month-to-month. Of all my SDCC exclusives, I was the most lukewarm to Egon (he’s s a cool figure) and in that Twitter feed to the right you can see me tweeting back-and-forth with ActionFigurePics about how I just wasn’t excited for the upcoming Ray before he got here. Ray is up for review today, but does he rekindle my interest in the line?

I can’t pick a least favorite Ghostbuster. Winston was always my favorite, followed by Venkman, and then Egon. So Ray should be my least favorite, but I don’t think I could characterize him that way. Ray was clearly the heart of the team. You couldn’t see Egon and Venkman hanging out together. You knew they functioned as a group because both were friends with Ray first. Ray and Egon talked shop. Ray and Peter talked movies. Even when they added Winston into the mix, he was fastest friends with Ray. Ray’s the identifiable guy. He wasn’t the smart one, or the cool one, and he wasn’t the new guy. So, almost by default, he ends up being the most important Ghostbuster – the guy the team was built around. I don’t think of Ray first when I think of the Ghostbusters, but storywise, he’s very important. No Ray? No Ghostbusters. I’m going to have to remember that going forward.

If you picked up Egon, you know what to expect of Ray’s sculpt from the neck down. I don’t like that all the Ghostbusters will have the same body, but I don’t think they needed four unique bodies either. The guys are all between 6′-6′ 2″ and of average build (I think of Ray as fatter and Egon as taller, but that doesn’t come from the films…). So, technically, they can all have the same body, but some variety might be nice. Maybe I’m still traumatized by Playmates Star Trek: Voyager line. They did the whole crew with only three bodies – tall man, short man, and woman – ugh. Maybe when Mattel gets to Venkman, who should have some different pieces, the ensemble will look better. I can only hope.

So, what makes Ray unique is all in his noggin. Of itself, the head sculpt is okay. I can see Aykroyd when I look at him, but it does seem a little small compared to Egon. I don’t know if it was resized in production, but if it were a little bigger – or even if the neck were a little more slender, I’d probably be a lot happier with it.

I did have one blip on my Ray. Unbeknownst to me until I opened it, Ray has two left hips. I haven’t decided if I’ll try to go through Mattel’s Customer Service and get it replaced yet. It lines up okay for the most part, so it’s only a minor annoyance. At $20, we should be expecting near perfection, butsince I haven’t heard of rampant QC problems on the figure I’m just going to assume I drew the short straw. On the upside, I might end up being able to use the extra peg hole (for the hose when on the proper side) to attach Winston’s trap to the figure.

The proton pack isn’t an accessory since it’s attached, so I consider it part fo the sculpt. It’s identical to Egon’s, but the wand and tube are made of a sturdier plastic this time around. The upside here is that the wand is not as warped by the packaging, but we might lose some durability over the long run. It feels a bit brittle comparatively.

The paintwork on the figure is decent with one exception. The paint apps on the head bring out the details. The proton pack work is excellent. The little silver details on the zippers and clasps are sharp and the tampos for the name and logo are perfect. But I’m going to have to touch up the paint around his collar. The black t-shirt wasn’t painted to the edges and wasn’t painted at all where the neck attaches. It’s not bad from a distance, the overall shape is right, but up close it’s annoying. Continue to Page 2…

30 thoughts on “Ghostbusters Classics:
Ray Stantz Review

  1. My problem is the lack of accessories. $20 for Ray and all you get is an Egon do-over with a new head and a different ghost? Mattel needs to spread the wealth and give us PK meters and the ecto-goggles. I am buying, but they’re ripping us off more than usual.

    1. I know that Mattel as a company has to try and get us to pick up as many as possible, but I don’t like the idea that “Hotel Sedgewick Ray” will include the goggles as a re-issue. It’s one thing if they want to try and offer the guys in different duds (the darker uniforms are a personal favorite of mine), but the accessories shouldn’t be looked upon as something for redos.

      This Ray should have his goggles. Egon should have had the meter. They should all have a trap. A poster on the Buzz mentioned alternate gloved hands as a possibility – I like it.

      I guess what I’m saying is that I wish the larger toy companies would do something smaller toy companies do and give us an end-all, be-all figure. All the accessories, alternate hands, etc. The play value would increase well past the $20 I paid for it.

  2. Again, the pack-ins are disappointing.

    Also, you should raise hell for the messed up hip.

    1. The worst pack-in goes tothe Containment Unit Wall being released next year. It comes with a Walter Peck? He’s a terrible pack-in. XD

      Maybe I wouldn’t want more out of the pack-ins if the boxes were’t so big. There’s some room in there.

      If he had a non-functional part slip-up, I would be more angry about it.

  3. If I were you, I think I’d contact customer service for a replacement, since he’s still in stock. Why settle for an imperfect figure when you’ve paid twenty bucks?

  4. It sucks there are only two figures so far. If they’d just tell us when they’re going to do regular Venkman that would be something.

    Anyone think they’re releasing slime first hoping to get us to buy it as a sub until they do a clean one?

    1. I do think the slimed one comes first for that reason.

      Once we get to March and Peck hits, we’ll be back on the bi-monthly track. But I don’t see them doing Slimed Venkman and regular back-to-back. I’d peg September ’10 as the earliest we get the regular Venkman.

  5. Glad you posted the on the GB Forum! I’d never heard of the site before and that checklist is great!

    Loved the “Four Hours” shot!

    1. I wouldn’t skip Ray (if you have the funds) a clean Egon will be out sooner or later.

      And I kinda want one. I didn’t mind before, but when you put them together Egon looks silly.

  6. I think the logo ghost would look better molded in white. GID is cool and all, but it doesn’t look good in regular light.

    1. That show ruined a lot of lives by not being clear it was a TV show. 😀

      The funny thing is that I don’t think you or I ever saw it past the second season. Frewer was on for two seasons and then he left the show and it STILL kept going for a year…

  7. The proton packs really should come with streams to cross. I know Bobby Brown’s kid brother really wants some.

    1. Yes, that has been the biggest thing missing!

      I want total fanservice from Mattel here too. The unslimed Venkman is minimum 11-12 months away – he needs the proton stream and he needs to come with four of them.

  8. seriously dude, you paid 20 bucks for that? and you’re NOT going to complain about the hip? seriously, if you buy the fig and want to mod it, that’s your deal… but to suffer a pretty big factory imprefection for a 20 dollar toy… you’re letting them steal from you. if that was a 14 dollar terminator fig you snagged at TRU, you’d return it in a heartbeat, or you’d contact NECA… why let mattel off the hook?

    1. It’s not really suffering though. A whole left leg is suffering. Or if an arm where missing. This piece blends in for the most part – just the hole is there and I’m going to make it work for me.

  9. Okay, honestly, you’re talking about roughly $30/figure. If you’re like me, you try to group purchases to lower shipping costs. With Mattel, that plan is thrown out the window most of the time. Think about this, if you are only interested in collecting GBC, you’re waiting months between figures. Sure, Ray is still available 2 weeks after his release, but there is no guarantee he’ll be around in Dec when Winston is released.

    I skipped out on SDCC Egon because I didn’t and still don’t understand why he is slimed. And the fact that they’re using the same body and the lack of true accessories, I can’t justify these purchases. I’m not going to complain about the proton streams because they’d have to be really long to look cool on figures of this scale. Coincidentally, that brings me to my obvious (and only) alternative: Ghostbusters MiniMates!

    Hell, I never collected any minimates before, but I found the Venkman/Terror Dog 2-pack at TRU, and I love them. I picked up the Winston/Terror Dog pack yesterday. And you know what else? Proton streams! Yeah, I don’t prefer this scale more than 6″ figures, but in this case they offer a readily available assortment, large variety of characters, and probably best of all, affordable! And when you compare costs for what you can get, minimates beat Mattel. For the price of the first three figures in GBC, you can basically assemble the whole team (w/ alternate versions), secondary characters and bad guys!

    1. I do get the benefit of the figures averaging out to $22.93 a figure because all of us at IAT make one large purchase, but you’re still right about not being able to combine the spread out releases.

      I don’t know if it was ever confirmed, but I’ve always been convinced that Egon was slimed because Bill Murray interfered with Mattel’s plans. He was supposed to be the slimed one in that exclusive, but they didn’t have the likenes yet and Egon got switched in. It would have been better for them to drop the slime entirely. On the brightside, a clean one will come out eventually.

      The Minimates are sweet too! I own all of them so far and they’re great. But I love my 6″ scale stuff too much to pass on Mattel’s offerings. And I want them to get to RGB figures sooner rather than later.

  10. You guys can’t just scrub the slime away with acetone? Someone send me their Ghostbuster figure and I’ll figure out a way to do it for free! 😀

  11. I kinda wanted these but I already missed Egon. I just don’t know if I want to start a new line.

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