Junkrat

It's a perfect day for some mayhem. A lovely day! Real Name: Jamison Fawkes Age: 25 Occupation: Anarchist, Thief, Demolitionist, Mercenary, Scavenger Affiliation: Junkers (formerly) So Overwatch's version of Australia is like all other pop-culture versions of Australia: a blasted, uninhabitable hellscape. (Which Shocka informs us is also the country's current status, thanks to those massive wildfires from way back in... oh my god, that was just this year. 2020 really has been several decades long already, hasn't it?) Pretend-Australia got destroyed when a robot factory blew up, leaving only the people who could survive the radiation to scavenge the wreckage littering the Outback. Junkrat found something valuable out there, and attracted too much attention when he couldn't stop bragging about it. Junkrat is a scrawny little guy with a big smile, exactly the kind of character who looks like he'd probably be voiced by Mark Hamill. His hair is spiky (where it hasn't been burned entirely away) and there's layer of ash covering the upper half of his face, like a cartoon character who just had a bomb blow up in his face. Primarily because he is (basically) a cartoon character who's (probably) just had a bomb blow up in his face. We've made a lot of the fact that the Overwatch Ultimates are too small to play well with any ofther 6"-scale figures, but Junkrat actually isn't too bad. It's not just that the character is officially 6'5", there's something about the scale and proportions that makes him look better standing next to a Marvel Legend than, say, McCree does. He definitely dresses like a Mad Max character, wearing a single loose boot, a fingerless glove, and tattered pants. His left leg has bandages wrapped around the shin, rather than a sock, he wears a belt with a satchel and a canteen hanging from it, and there's a backpack/harness thing on his chest with eight grenades attached to the straps. As you'd expect from someone who makes his own explosives, Junkrat is missing an arm and a leg. Well, presumably the arm could be a fancy technological glove, but the leg is definitely a prosthetic, because it's just a metal stick - a metal stick with a heavy-duty spring and a fancy hinged joint in the middle of it, but a metal stick nonetheless. The paint on these pieces is uninspired. Maybe Hasbro already saw the writing on the wall and didn't want to spend any more money than necessary? Or the entire paint budget went to the dirty face? There are patches sewn on his shorts, and those don't get painted, either. At least the articulation is good. Junkrat spends most of his time hunched over, and the toy moves well enough to follow suit. He has a balljointed ankle, double-hinged left knee, single-hinged right knee, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, a hinged torso, balljointed chest, swivel/hinge wrists, double-hinged left elbow, swivel/hinge right elbow, swivel biceps, swive;/hinge shoulders, hinged neck, and balljointed head. The plastic in the right knee feels a little soft when you move the joint, and the fact that the one remaining ankle is a true ball-and-socket joint means it's hard to keep him standing unless you've got him posed very carefully. There are lots of fun accessories, beginning with his Concussion Mine. As the name suggessts, it doesn't do physical damage, just knockback, but that means it can help the player get around the map faster. There's a hole in the center that his pegleg can fit into, allowing it to act like a stand for the figure (at least a little bit). He also has an alternate left hand holding the mine's trigger. An alternate right hand is shaped to hold the grip of his Frag Launcher, a gun that seems to fire explosive cricket balls? It really needs some more paint, here, not just the swath of yellow on the grip and the cap at the end. The ammo should be red, at the very least, and the magazine the same green as the mine. A translucent yellow burst effect fits into the barrel. The final piece is his RIP-Tire, a motorized bomb that can race all around the map and blow up your enemies. While it doesn't have the ripcord that he uses to start it up, they did sculpt the big silver spikes that stick out of it and the chain that wraps around. It plugs onto his backpack, which really unbalances the figure even more than he already was! Good luck getting him to stand now. Surprisingly, Junkrat may be the best figure in the Overwatch Ultimates line - yes, the paint could be more complete, but this is Hasbro we're talking about here, not NECA. He's actually close to fitting in with your other 6" figures, which was the big problem with everyone else; maybe if more of the characters had been able to integrate with existing collections, the line would still be alive today. -- 08/01/20

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