McFarlane Toys Hockey Figures - NHL Series 5 (Series 7)

Hockey Figures - NHL Series 5 (Series 7)

The official McFarlane Toys website - spawn.com - has published pictures of the forthcoming Series 5 figures in the NHL Sportspick range - the 7th series of these figures when you count the first two NHLPA licensed ones. This series is based solely on players from the Canadian NHL teams including the Quebec Nordiques who moved to Colorado a few years back.

In Canada, the Series will be offered to all retailers but with a slight twist - the Patrick Roy figure will only be available at WalMart and the Mark Messier will only be available at retailers other than WalMart. In the US if you want to get your hands on a set you can do so by joining the MsFarlance Toys collectors club who will be offering this online in sets of 7. Depending on the shipping costs from the club it looks like I’ll be hitting eBay again in July!

For those completists out there who just have to have every variation of every figure, four of the seven will have variations with the exceptions being the Saku Koivu, Mark Messier and Patrick Roy figures.

The only drawback for me with this series and a couple of the more recent figures in previous series is the strangely familiar feel to some of the figures. Obviously the Roy, Messier and Sakic figures are simply re-paints of the existing sculpts for these players and I can understand that but start studying the others compared to previous series and you’ll notice that Cloutier is essentially a re-paint of the Brodeur figure, Koivu of LeClair, Hossa of Mogilny and Domi of Iginla. I can see how this is a quicker way to get a series made but I would prefer to see new sculpts and poses - two of the most impressive figures for me are the Kovalchuk and Thibault ones from the last NHL series - simply because of the new poses used. Having said that with the promise of another new series in October featuring new sculpts of some of the top NHL players already released including Mario Lemieux, I have no real complaints!

PD - 04/05/03

all pictures from www.spawn.com