The front of ED’s arms are decorated with his gun barrels and ammo clips. Again, we have some more wires that add a more realistic look to the figure. Instead of a second gun barrel, ED’s right arm also houses a small missile battery. I was surprised to discover that this little piece is articulated and can slide up into a shooting position. Definitely a nice little touch that the folks at NECA didn’t have to include.
ED’s legs and feet are our last stop. Again, NECA worked the articulation into the figure with those large sliders on the back of the legs. There is a lot more panel work as we get closer to the feet. There’s also some great sculpting between the toes with tons of wires and conduits. The feet themselves are designed pretty wide to stabilize, and they do a great job. I don’t have any worries about this figure taking a shelf dive.
The paint job on this figure is right up there with the sculpt. The majority of ED’s body is done in a metallic blue, similar to Robocop’s color. There are also some plain silver and black areas for contrast. But it’s the intricate details that really impressed me most. All the molded and sculpted wires on this figure have been done in various red, gold, or metallic gray. This is even true for areas that aren’t always visible, like the inside of his front grill. There’s also a dirty metallic layer of paint on each of his exhaust ports, which is a really nice touch. There are even little warning decals posted all over the figure.
ED’s articulation is good, but not entirely movie accurate. His arms attach to the main body with swivels. They have hinged elbows, and the turret forearms are attached with swivels. The panels above the shoulders are on hinges, so the arms can be positioned up if wanted.
The upper body connects to the lower with a swivel. The two legs connect to the lower body with swivels, and then the upper legs connect to the lower with swivels too. The lower legs can move up and down on those long tracks, making ED taller or shorter.
The two big areas where the figure differs from its movie counterpart are the “thighs” and feet. In the movie his thighs were actually ball jointed, so it could actually move and remain balanced. The ankles and toes on this figure don’t even move. I’m actually OK with these decisions NECA made. This figure doesn’t have to walk, so I’d definitely rather have stability on the shelf.
ED doesn’t come with any weapons, but he does have an action feature. The folks at NECA included five sound clips that the figure will repeat with the push of a button on his side.
All around, this figure is a fantastic update to one of my favorite robots in all of cinema. ED-209 retails for about $60.00, and is entirely worth it. This figure was made to order, so you’ll have to hit up your favorite online retailer if you want to pick one up.
My own is on the way and all your pics did was make me even more excited for the toy to arrive.
On box art, I agree WITH an important note: Hasbro has been creating some nice original artwork for their Transformers Generations toys. Some VERY nice art.
I was hoping those blast effects were a surprise pack-in I was unaware of… Drats. Anyway, mine should be here tomorrow,then I’ll need to figure out where to display him.
P.S. You mentioned you had the NES Robo, where did you get him from? Mine is still on preorder from BBTS.
Shweeeeet.
I’d buy that for a dollar!
(or sixty.)
}Sigh.{ I am destined never to own an ED-209.
Great review, though!
You had me looking to pick one of these up until the “no articulation in the ankles or toes” part. I’d much rather have these articulation points over the sound feature. One of the best scenes of ED-209 in the movie is when he’s trying to go down the stairwell and wiggles his toes before falling down. This just seems like a misstep (pun intended) for NECA and it results in a lost sale.
Unless they come back later and retool the feet and release a variant with different feet and no sound feature. Then it’s called planning!
to be fair, articulated toes would blow. there’s no way, as heavy as the toy is, that the toes would enable anything even passingly resembling stability, so you’d have a shelf diving 60 dollar toy with extended guys and plastic wires on his bits… see any problem there? i know, it would look cool while you’re holding him in the air inspecting him, but there’s no logistical way to pose the ED coming down a flight of stairs with his toes in mid-“find purchase” without having a giant train wreck on your floor, so what good would articulated toes really be?
the only real way you could articulate the toes and keep stability would be to release a steel display slab and embed four or five strong earth magnets in each foot… and you’d be encouraged by the rest of the community to enjoy you’re 100 dollar ED and the rest of us would bemoan that price point. 🙂 you win some, you lose some, but i truly think passing over articulated toes is like not buying the HML black cat because she doesn’t have a working vagina.
I think it was a great idea to include sound clips. One of the things I fondly remember about ED was the noises he makes, especially during the stairwell fall scene that was mentioned.
the folks over at NECA really knocked this one out of the park, didn’t they? alas, much like spider gremlin i can really only admire from afar.
it’d kind of funny — to give a sense of scale, the pic with mp soundwave makes EDdie look pretty big here, but when he’s next to the other figures it looks smaller.