I've been on a vintage TMNT buying spree for the past year. It's a great line to collect: cheap enough to be collectible for those of us on a tight budget, but varied enough to include really interesting figures, like Chrome Dome. I don't remember him from the cartoon, but I have an odd fascination with shiny action figures, so his inclusion in my collection was inevitable. Let's see how this dude holds up.
STATS
Year Stamped: 1991
Company: Playmates Toys
Size: 4 1/2"
Price: $7.50 loose complete from eBay
Original Packaging: Carded
APPEARANCE
Chrome Dome has a cool robo-samurai sculpt augmented by vac-metallized shininess. The sculpt isn't as detailed as most figures from the vintage Playmates TMNT line, but the overall effect of the shiny metal contrasting with the black detailing and limbs looks sweet.
Chrome Dome's robotic proportions don't quite work, though. TMNT figures typically follow a specific proportional formula: the torso is proportionally thick, but the head, hands, and feet are larger to balance it out. In Chrome Dome's case, his hands and feet are too small compared with his head and torso. Other humanoid figures like Casey Jones played the proportions game perfectly, but Chrome Dome comes up short.
ARTICULATION
Mr. Dome features swivel neck and shoulders, and ball hips. Vintage TMNT figures usually include additional POAs like swivel elbows or wrists, but no such luck with Chrome Dome. He barely moves better than Kenner figures from this time period.
ACCESSORIES
This Mechanical Master of Metal comes with a number of accessories (from left in the pic above):
- Shogun Sash: This holster belt for Chrome's bladed weapons is cool, but I haven't quite figured out how to attach it to him. It seems to be just 2 or 3 millimeters too short to fit around his waist. Has it shrunk in the past 20 years?
- Servo Sai: A nifty little weapon that fits his sci-fi mechanical nature.
- Neutron Ninja Swords: There isn't much about these swords that fit with Chrome Dome's robotic design, so they don't quite work with the look of the figure. But they're cool for basic ninja swords and other figures would doubtless find them useful.
- Gigobyte Goupillon: What's a "gigobyte"? Is it like a "gigabyte" but with more go? Regardless, this is probably my favorite of his accessories. It's weird, it's science-fictiony, and it's distinctive.
VALUE
$7.50 for a loose complete vintage figure is a good deal, but it's close to my upper limit of cost tolerance for individual TMNT figures. This particular Chrome Dome isn't quite mint either, with scratches and chips in his vac-metallized chrome. A mint figure for $5 would have gotten a perfect score.
COOLNESS
Chrome Dome looks like what would happen if a Terminator melded with Baron Karza a la Brundlefly. His vac-metallized plastic and black limbs also strongly reminds me of those super-awesome vintage BSG Cylon figures.
I wish he had some additional play feature, though. Metalhead has glowing eyes when you shine light through his brain and Fugitoid has opening panels exposing inner circuitry, but Metalhead has nothing.
Also, his small feet, combined with his tilting right foot, mean that posing him into a decent standing position is very difficult. It took me about 15 minutes to contort his legs into a standing pose and he's still not particularly stable. Bump the table, and this dude flops over like a fish.
OVERALL
Chrome Dome's vac-metallized plastic is undeniably cool. But his comparatively featureless sculpt and 5 POAs can only be considered average for a line that regularly featured excessive detailing and great movement. He also needs some sort of play feature for him to be comparable to the other TMNT robots. But the shiny robot samurai design is cool enough to make him an interesting figure on the shelf.
5 comments:
Fun review. I got Chrome Dome, Dirtbag and Groundchuck all at the same time. They instantly became the new lead villains in my world.
Subsequently, they all ended up appearing in the same cartoon episode which aired as a special movie version in my neck of the woods. Chrome Dome was an indestructable robot (and gigantic) but he had one weak panel on his heel that Donatello simply hit with his bow that caused ol' Dome to fall apart.
It was lame...
Cool feature of the figure though is that he had those panels on his ankles sculpted in.
Gigobyte Goupillon! Great Scott!
Nice thorough review. I remember thinking Chrome Dome was a middle-of-the-road figure. He was simple, and his accessories were by-the-numbers. Not bad, but not special either. My friend had him, but I never felt like buying my own.
Keep up these Turtles reviews!
I remember getting Chrome Dome... man 91', Crap, that's 19 years ago! :D I loved the metallic robot, but remember having similar problems with him. I could never get him to stand either.
Interestingly, I believe the belt was wrapped around his waist in the package. So perhaps that is your problem. Sadly my Domey was a victim of the TMNT Bone Deficiency Disorder. Where the 'wishbone' like plastic hip balls ran up and the inside of the body, and was held in place via square holes by the body pegs. I had a handful of my figures break at the square peg holes. This was Chrome Domes fate...
I wonder if I ever removed his belt? If I could get to my figures I'd pull him out to see...maybe one day I'll be able too. <_<
That's odd. I never had any Playmates figures break at the "wishbone." My biggest problem was the forearms popping out of their joints.
I never had Chrome Dome as a kid, but he was one of the first figures I sought out when I started collecting TMNT figures as an adult owing to my love of the character in TMNT: Tournament Fighters. I still play that game on an almost daily basis!
If Playmates ever saw fit to release a new, superarticulated Chrome Dome figure, I would SO buy it.
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