Plasma Tech Bogkov

I love cheap toys, crappy toys, and robot toys. To combine all three should, in theory, make me a very happy bunny. And seeing Mega Bloks' Plasma Tech range for the low, low price of £1.99, how could I refuse? Anime-esque, badass looking robots with swords, hammers, and ludicrous Gundam-size guns. And they come encased in meteorite tub things, and if you push a button on their back, their torsos light up! Sweet jumping beans. I'm sold.


The store I discovered them in had a choice of Quantic, Spoke and Bogkov, and since those first two had silly looking guns that didn't even compare to the last one's sword, I went for Bogkov. He's black, his head looks like Movie Megatron's, and dude, giant sword! Though if the whole range were there, I totally would've nabbed up Gyro. That guy looks like he serves up kick-flavoured ass for breakfast, lunch and dinner, with leftovers for supper, even!

Though my my my, I wonder who Roy-V looks like!
 

After opening up the meteorite pod tub thing, you've got to assemble your robotic dude, all of which are stored inside dinky plastic baggies. They all have plugs for a ball joint, and lo and behold, the torso has five ball joints for the arms, legs and noggin. Whack 'em in, equip him with his weapon and tada! Bogtov is ready to be villainous and slash people and whatnot! Because you can't have a dark, pointy robot be heroic, can you? No sir. Not in today's society.
 

The figure is composed of soft plastic, which feels really out of place for a super meteorite robot of presumed death. The ball joints are the only poseability the poor sod has, but thankfully, they actually provide some nice range. The legs have as much freedom as knee-lacking legs can get, the neck is long enough to get some nice tilting and vertical action going on, and although the chunky shoulders impede the horizontal movement, the arms are still ready to hold a blade single-handedly quite well. The lack of knees, elbows and ankles is a bit of a bummer, though. For the arms you can live without them, and the guy can still stand without knees in a small variety of poses, but the feet, being wide and flat, are in dire need of ankles to make them look less stupid. If you don't mind warping your cheaply-made toy, the soft plastic does allow some give, but it's meant to be a robot, man! You can't go giving him new joints where they don't belong. Besides, the packaging warped his sword slightly, so now the tip is aiming away from where the rest of the blade is going. How inconvenient.

Being a Mega Bloks line, it'd be a bit of a letdown if the only building part of it was just piecing the fellow together, especially when the card clearly had enough space to package him complete. But that's where the advertisement poster comes into play!

Accompanied with FERNBOGG THE SWAMP DRAGON - who burninates the hippos and marshes, I imagine - we see that Bogkov's pieces can be swapped with Fernbogg's to... turn into some squat, asymmetrical, horrible thing, or into... something else that looks pretty horrid. Except this one is lanky. And horrid.

Wonderful.
If anything, combined with the other human-like figures, this could make kitbashing much, much easier!

On the subject of the poster, it rips off Transformers once more and provides tech specs for the character. It claims he's an "Aerial Defence Cyborg" (trademarked!), and his pod thing is 8/12, the aiming is a dire 5/12 (considering he's got no projectiles I suppose it's forgivable, but not much of a defence cyborg is he), his giant cartoon rocket is 9/12, and his football team insignia defence is, appropriately, 10/12. Unless I'm reading that wrong and every stat except his aiming is dire. Marvellous. Gotta love how it doesn't even provide a personality for this guy.
 

For a £2 figure in a store that's still selling bootleg Pirates of the Carribean crap, it's a toy that's not too shabby and almost dainty, and I would possibly dare risk saying I kind of like it! But apparently its original RRP was £6. When you reach the £5 mark for a toy, that's when you start expecting quality. And it doesn't help matters that the box puts way more emphasis on the hardcore artwork of the character, instead shoehorning the figure into the pod where you can barely even tell what it looks like. You'd think the image below that on the packaging would help you get a better idea, but that shine really distracts from it. And how does the Photoshopped light-up compare to the real one?

I think that answers it.
In its defence, it was made last year and has likely been sitting around the whole time, but you need two 1.5V batteries to replace the light. Screw that.
 

It costs a pound less than a chocolate orange, features ripped-off designs, decent poseability and a faulty battery, and a cheap and effortless way into basic kitbashing. As wonky as the Plasma Tech line seems, I may, in fact, have to give it a mild thumbs up! It's not perfect, and definitely nowhere near perfect and probably bordering around the mediocre area, but my standards fluctuate between fussy and not caring at all, so that's my justification for positive feedback.