Seven 1/48 Votoms Toys

Mega Review: Discount VOTOMs toys!

 

 

Packaging & Extras: (2/5)
I’m not aware of many Seven products but the ones I am aware of are cheap, no frills, discount toys.  When upscale toys were being shipped in Styrofoam, Seven was shipping their toys in the plastic trays that ultimately became industry standard.  The box is decent enough with some very nice AT art and windows to let you see what you’re buying.  Inside the box you’ll find the following in addition to the AT:
1) Backpack
2) Standard gun, Rifle for Scopedog & Brutishdog, round fat gun for Snapping Turtle)
3) BFG – Scopedog and Brutishdog come with the BFG used by the Balarant forces off Quent while Chirico is raging in a Melkian Scopedog, Snapping turtle comes with the missile launcher Ypsilon used in Kummen.
4) Forearm mounted weapon (Scopedog and Brutishdog only)
5) Smaller gun (Scopedog and Brutishdog only)
6) Foot covers (Snapping Turtle only)
The BFG, forearm mounted weapon, and smaller gun that come with the Scopedog and Brutishdog are all attached to a plastic tree and must be removed by the owner of the toy.  Mine were all still connected so I apologize for the lack of pics with this optional equipment.

Charm & Collectability: (2/5)
While the Snapping Turtle and Brutishdog might be a little harder to find, none of these toys are particularly collectable.  That may largely stem from the fact that Takara has since released its 1/48 Actic Gear line which included vastly improved versions of all of these ATs.  If you’re a diehard collector these toys might prove a little confounding to pick up but not nearly as confounding as Seven’s Mospeada Ride Armor toy.  There were only three volumes in this line:
AT Collection Series
01 – Scopedog
02 – Brutishdog
03 – Snapping Turtle

Sculpt, Detail, & Paint: (4/10)
Like Takara’s 1/60 AT Collection Scopedog, the Seven 1/48 toys eschewed the antennae in favor of durability.  Given how well this toy holds together, that’s definitely a good thing, but that’s a subject for another section of this review.  Rather than adding a lot of detail to the plastic Seven went the pre-applied sticker route.  There’s no handle on the foot well but there is a sticker that shows that detail in yellow (which would not be the right color).  The stickers are often hastily applied at incorrect angles so they sometimes muck up the look of the toy more than they help.  While the sticker on the belly is the correct trim shade, the whole upper body is molded in the primary color so the majority of the belly is the wrong color on the Scopedog and Brutishdog.  Similarly, it appears Seven stuck to a maximum of two shades of plastic being used on the Scopedog and Brutishdog so the visor on the head is the trim color rather than the gray the Scopedog should have and the red that should be on the Brutishdog.  If you rotate any of these toys to an angle that isn’t looking straight onto the face of the AT you’ll notice large hollow gaps where Seven saved themselves some money on plastic or less complicated molds.  There aren’t any gimmics here like opening cockpits so what you see is what you get.

Design: (2/10)
These toys are even more poorly designed than Takara’s diminutive and extremely basic 1/60 AT Collection toys.  The joints are open ended so bend the knee and the leg might pop right off its peg.  Here’s the standard breakdown of features:
1) Scopes rotate: No.  Scope tracks left to right: No.  Head twists left to right: Yes.
2) Visor opens upward revealing the pilot: No.
3) Opening cockpit: No.
4) Internal controls: N/A.  Articulated: N/A.  Gun stowage: N/A
5) Removable Pilot Figure: N/A.  Articulated: N/A
6) Opening foot well: No.
7) Articulated armor panels on hips, feet, and wrist: No.
8) Articulated shoulder mounts: No.
9) Removable armor with internal mechanical detail: No.
10) Back that accommodates different accessories: Yes, but only because at this scale the accessories attach via the screw hole in the back of the toy.
11) Foot wheels: No.
12) Functional foot pivot spikes: No.
13) Punch mechanism: No.
14) Dog mode: No.
In a bit of an unorthodox move, Seven put the hole for the gun peg on the side of the toy’s fist.  This means when the toy isn’t holding the gun it looks a little better than it would have with a big hole in the top of the fist.  This also means the gun has two big pegs sticking off of it but that doesn’t hinder much.

Durability & Build: (6.5/10)
This toy suffers from some pretty poor build quality in how the stickers were applied.  Otherwise, this is an incredibly simple play thing and should be difficult to break.  Unfortunately, it’s also incredibly easy to disassemble and that means it’d be pretty easy to lose parts.  Then again, there’s not much you could do with this toy so it probably wouldn’t be handled very often so maybe losing parts wouldn’t be that big of a concern.  Don’t expect any metal on these toys.  They’re all plastic and very light.

Articulation: (3/10)
You essentially get exactly the same articulation in this toy as you would with Takara’s 1/60 AT collection except you don’t get a couple articulated armor panels.  You get:
1) Knees (less than 90 degrees range of motion)
2) Shoulders
3) head rotates

Total Score: (19.5/50)
What would happen if you took Takara’s 1/60 AT Collection toys, increased their size, removed all their metal, and then tried to make them out of as few pieces of plastic as possible?  You’d get Seven’s 1/48 line of toys.  A simple scaled up version of the AT Collection vehicles would have been an easy improvement over these toys but I wouldn’t be surprised if the Seven toys have always been cheaper than Takara’s mini metal figures.  If I’m looking for some fun little vintage Votoms figures to stash away on my desk somewhere, I’d look to Takara’s AT Collection first.