Following the slight departure that was the introduction of the NHL Legends line, McFarlane Toys returned to the modern day for this, the 11th series of hocley figures based on current NHL stars - the 9th such series to be fully licensed by the NHL and NHLPA. This series was due to hit the shops in December 2004 so you should be able to pick these up at your usual outlets or, if like me you live in the UK, on eBay. There may not be any play in the NHL at the moment (or for the forseeable future) but that isn’t stopping the production of these excellent figures. This time round we have eight players represented, 2 netminders: Martin Brodeur and Andrew Raycroft and 6 skaters : Daniel Alfredsson, Pavel Datsyuk, Sergei Fedorov, Brian Leetch, Joe Sakic and Mats Sundon. Three of the players represented (Brodeur, Sakic and Sundin) have appeared as McFarlane hockey figures previously - in Sakic’s and Brodeur’s case they have appeared both in the NHL series and the Team Canada sets. While you can’t argure that these three are three of the best players in the game at the moment - and the Brodeur sculpt is certainly something different for a netminder - it would be nice to see a wider range of players represented rather than continually revisiting previous players and resculpting them. Having said that it is nice to see a reduction in the re-use of previous sculpts with only the Raycorft figure appearing to fall into this category - Tommy Salo and JS Giguere from previous series share this pose. The NHL figures go from strength to strength with Series 10 also due for release and Series 11 announced alongside a second set of NHL Legends figures not to mention the continuing double-packs such as the forthcoming Heritage Special featruing Jose Theodore and Jason Smith. I will be featuring all of these and any new announcements over the next few weeks but until then, enjoy the images of the figures making up Series 9 and hit eBay to see if you can secure yourself a set. The only problem I have is where am I going to put them all?!! PD - 09/01/05 |
