A Face I Almost Recognise: BSG Series 2

I've got a few posts backed up at the moment, and while it's school holidays here (school in Oz is broken up into four terms of 9-10 weeks each with a 2 or 3 week break in between each except for Summer (Dec-Jan) which is a much longer break) there's alot to be done around the house, and in a couple of days I'm on double Daddy-duty as Mrs AFB is going off for a work thing, so I'm going to try to teach the kids to garden so that I can catch up with all this toy stuff. Presently they are enthusiastically into weeding, but can't yet discriminate between between plants and weeds. Wish me luck.

First cab off the rank of backed up toys is Series Two of the new Battlestar Galactica figures. This series features Starbuck, Kat, flight gear Helo and a non-blood-splattered Cylon (my blood-splattered Cylon just arrived today with my SDCC Exclusives, watch this space, but wasn't around at the time of photographing).

The good: There is good consistency across the line so far, with everyone pretty much in scale (most accomplished by sharing body sculpts, but hey, whatever gets you there.) The pilot uniforms are particularly detailed. The figures are all easy to pose and stand well on their own. Each of the figures, even the Cylon, comes with extra sets of hands. I particularly like the hands with playing cards that Starbuck and Kat come with! Starbuck also comes with a cigar which is another fun accessory.

The Cylon figure is brilliant, although I did find it a little hard to get him/it to stand upright. It cuts an imposing figure above the other characters.

The bad: with the amount that DST is saving by reusing bodies in this line, you'd think they could really pay attention to the headsculpts and make sure they're spot on. Kat is the best likeness here by far, and I'd put Helo up there too if he didn't have that vacant stare. It's a shame that Starbuck, much like Apollo in the first wave, disappointingly misses the mark. It's encouraging to see that the sculpts for Adama and Roslin (Wave 4) look to be much more spot on, but it's a shame to have two of the biggest characters in the series practically unrecognisable.

The range of characters covered so far in this series, including supporting characters like Hotdogs and Kat, speaks well for the future of the line, although "President Lee Adama" in Wave 4 seems like a bit of filler. I'm very hopeful for a Wave 5 consisting of Baltar, Tigh (with eyepatch variant) and perhaps Cally and Gaeta before we see this come to an end.

I just hope I can recognise them.