Hi guys, Sharp-O back once again with another Mint in Box review and today we’re going to be looking at the Solar Saver mecha from Chinese tokusatsu series; Battle Strike Team: Space Deleter. A fantastic toy with great plastic quality and a dynamic look that I’ve been after for a while, you can check out the video review for the Solar Saver below:

The series follows an enthusiastic transfer student with the look of a delinquent and a heart of pure gold, Gentaro Kisaragi, and his endeavours to make friends with everyone in the school. Gentaro is pure, unadulterated awesomeness. To go with the Gurren Lagann analogy, he’s the Kamina of the show. His sense of wonder and desire to befriend everyone could be construed as naivety and is often treated as such by some characters but ultimately, he’s a being of sheer will and conviction. He truly believes in the best people can be whether they be friend or foe.

He falls in with space-case Yuki and the perpetually-ill tsundere, Kengo and soon becomes embroiled in a plot to use the students of Amanogawa High School
as guinea pigs for a nefarious organisation. Thus, Gentaro takes Kengo’s place as Kamen Rider Fourze!

As their adventures go on, our trio (soon dubbed The Kamen Rider Club, in true Japanese school tradition) begins to grow as they add a motley bunch of outcasts and clichés. Shun and Miu, the self-proclaimed king and queen of the school, who are actually pretty insecure and in desperate need of someone who won’t bow to their every whim and accept them for who they are. JK (pronounce ‘Jake’), an ‘information broker’ and massive coward who manipulates everyone around him, until he comes face to face with Gentaro. Tomoko, a shy goth girl who fell in with a bad crowd but found true acceptance with the Kamen Rider Club (a group she inadvertently inspired in early episodes). Each character tends to be introduced to the team in their own two-parters but, thanks to the serialised nature of the show, they’re reoccurring characters before they become club members.

The Zodiarts are your bad guys du jour and are, fittingly, based upon the constellations while their masters are the Horoscopes, 11 lieutenants who mostly manipulate troubled students into becoming monsters and the head honcho, Sagittarius. They run the gamut of utterly evil to simply misguided and they take some surprising turns with Horoscopes like Aquarius and Virgo. Cancer has to be my favourite though, he’s such a ham and delightfully evil plus his design is pretty menacing.

Joining the Kamen Rider Club undercover is the prickly Ryusei, aka Kamen Rider Meteor. He infiltrates the school and the group with a timid façade but his faux-cowardice doesn’t hold out forever as his mission and his true nature reveal themselves over time. As much as Kengo has a mild disdain for some of the others, Ryusei is the unwilling straight man to many of the group’s eccentricities early on but eventually comes around, even winning the heart of a certain witch (O-T-P! O-T-P! O-T-P!). He also screams like Bruce Lee when he fights. It’s kind of hilarious.

Fourze’s main gimmick are Astroswitches, powered by some ill-explained Cosmic Energy. Fourze is a portmanteau of ‘Four’ and ‘Zero’ as both a nod to the 40th Anniversary and that he has 40 switches to access various weapons and forms.

If you’re interested in the show, I definitely recommend watching the movies too since events, characters and power-ups present in the movies show up in the series proper too, which doesn’t happen too often in Kamen Rider. Luckily, the movies usually take place within the timeline of the series so it shouldn’t be too much trouble to find out where they slot in.

Kamen Rider Fourze is probably my favourite KR series (but it has tough competition, which I’ll get to). It’s action-packed, it’s funny and incredibly charming and heart-warming. It dances on the fine line between goofy monster-hunting friendship adventures to angst-ridden drama and while it may stumble, it gets to the finish line with a genuine smile and hearty handshake.

Ever since I was a little kid, my favourite LEGO themes were either Space and Aquazone. I loved the likes of Ice Planet 2002, Exploriens and the Insectoids. I’ve always been into Sci-Fi and LEGO had plenty on offer for me. Coming back to LEGO in a big way for reviews and I’m happy to see nothing has changed. Galaxy Squad is latest in this intergalactic lineage and, after it’s release in January 2013, garnered a fair amount of praise from LEGO fans and kids alike. The Galaxy Squad are 4 colour-coded teams featuring humans and robotic partners, fighting against insectoid invaders.

The set I’m looking at today is the 70707 CLS-89 Eradicator Mech, part of the Orange Team. It has a piece count of 440 and retails for around £34.99. This is by far the biggest set I’ve reviewed so far (that may change in a week or two) and it shows as you open up the box to find 3 big bags (with tiny part bags inside) and two instruction booklets. I went through two episodes of Mystery Science Theatre 3000 while building this thing, that should give you an indication to the build time of this behemoth.

The first instruction booklet and the first couple of bags are to build the Alien Abductoids and the Jet/Mech torso. But first, lets look at the minifigs first!

Jack Fireblade and his nameless Robotic Partner are a fun little double act. Their matching colour scheme is a great shade of orange and come with weapons specifically for them. I have to pick fault with Jack’s helmet piece though. It’s been around for a number of years and every time I see it, it’s covering a minifigs mouth and that bothers me. It seems like a design flaw but its a cool design so I guess its here to stay. The Robot Partner has a great new head piece and comes with wings for the torso piece (first seen in the Minifigures line). Interestingly, this is the only set in the theme that doesn’t include an alien insect minifigure.

The first two builds are the Abductoids and while they share much of the same pieces and a similar build process, I’m glad they made them distinct, with one adding wings and a stinger to its cocoon. The cocoons split in half and minifigs can be stored inside (like poor old Santa).

The bulk of this set is the Eradicator Mech, starting with the jet for pilot Jack Fireblade. There’s not as many tiny finicky pieces like the Mandolorian Speeder I reviewed, this is more layers upon layers of plates and bricks to form a solid cockpit/jet.

The second half of the instructions are for the mech torso and this is where they start throwing ball-joint sockets and hinges at you. This will be the solid core of the finished mech.

The second instruction booklet details the mech’s leg assembly and weapon arms. The legs were way more fun to build than they ought to have been. It was interesting to see how the designers built up the leg to maximise their integrity and still allow for movement like an action figure. The hip segment contains ratchet joints on either side to maintain stability when the weight of the torso is added. These LEGO balljoints don’t maintain their grip for too long though and I recall that being a problem with the Bionicle figures of old (the last LEGO sets I bought as a kid)

The weapon arms are simple enough, with a rotating gatling gun gimmick in one and flick missiles in the other. I think I’ll take this time to point out the stickers. They’re mostly transparent and are apply easily. If you mess up though, you can carefully peel them off and reapply though I doubt you could do it too many times.

When you bring all the elements together, you end up with a walking artillery mech and a jet but the main show is the combination of both into the Eradicator Mech proper. The finished product is a terrific titan, with every thought put into it’s balance and articulation. The legs are solid and allow for lots of movement thanks to the ball-joints and hip ratchets. The arms are equally as articulated and the hip allows for the torso to swivel as well. The Eradicator Mech is a worthwhile purchase in my mind, with lots of action features, a really fun build and a gorgeous colour scheme. I highly recommend picking it up and any of the other Galaxy Squad sets if this is anything to go by.

I was completely unaware of Iron Sky until I stumbled across this trailer yesterday but apparently this has had a Snakes On A Plane-like fan expectation online for a number of years. In fact if you go to the official website you’ll see that this crazy B-movie style film has been a real passion project from start to finish.

The premise is that the Nazis have been hiding on the moon for 70 years and decided to finally come to earth to mess up our day and bring a whole bunch of psycho. It’s a delightfully nutty plot and has “fun” written all over it. I’m sure “Nazis from Outer Space” was the tagline that got a lot of people interested. In fact, I’m a little dissapointed it’s not the movie’s title.

Iron Sky will be on limited release but you can demand it for your area on their website. Is it worth doing so? Well, check out the trailer and see.

So… uh… yeah…

– Just Incase You Forgot These Guys Are Nazis

This is why they rock as movie bad-guys. You see something like this and think “…yup”. You wouldn’t even blink. Even on the moon.

– Is It Just Me…

… or is this really pretty?

It’s amazing what kind of effects you can do now even with a b-movie budget.

– This Is Not Sarah Palin

Nor is it a Sarah Palin parody.

Because Sarah Palin is a crazy b**** and nobody would want her to hold a grudge with you.

– OH MY GOD THIS JACKET IS HOT!

What is going on here?

And why is it, with all the insane stuff going on in the trailer, this is the thing I have issues with?

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I’ll be honest, I don’t think I’d bother to go see this on the big screen as this sort of low-budget affair rarely looks good in Tyrano-vision. But I would definitely give Iron Sky a go on DVD. Get a few friends around with some beer and pizza and I can be pretty sure a good night would be had.

Hopefully it’s able to recreate the success of the previously mentioned reptiles on an airline film.