#105: Voltron - Blazing Sword Voltron

Before Mattel made their massive and expensive Voltron available through the subscription model, they released a smaller, non-converting Voltron figure as a San Diego Comic Con exclusive for 2011. Apparently they way overestimated the demand, or perhaps it was their plan all along, but they have had it for sale on Mattycollector since. It was pricier than I was willing to pay for it, and even though they lowered the price last year on I think the Cyber Monday sale, I still passed. Afterwards, I decided that I did want Voltron for sure if it ever went on sale again. For this year's Cyber Monday sale, they lowered the price again, as well as offered reduced shipping, I so took the opportunity to finally order it.

In the typical con exclusive fashion, the packaging is fancier than what you would get in a store. In this case, it was a big window box with a sound feature that plays part of the Voltron intro (or possibly a recreation of it). Voltron comes packaged holding the blazing sword which gives the figure its name, a representation of how the sword appeared in a flash of energy on the cartoon. Of course, it also includes the sword in standard form, ready for a fight. It's a pretty cool figure. One of its main advantages is that it's a Voltron that is well articulated. The original wasn't super posable, and this is a cool improvement. There weren't any of the dreaded stuck or broken joints on mine, although there were a couple spots with paint errors. Nothing major, fortunately. One neat feature is that the mouths that form the hands are spring loaded to automatically close, so that is how the sword stays in place.

That's not my original Voltron, but a re-release I picked up at Toys R Us in I think 2000.