Rinzler

January 21, 2011 | By More


The Emperor had Darth Vader. Cobra Commander had Storm Shadow. Mr. Burns had Smithers. Clu, the villain from the TRON Legacy movie has Rinzler. The character is supposed to be a fearsome fighter and it is highly probable there will be some sort of big reveal in the movie about his identity.

Rinzler wears a variation of the bodyglove designs most other characters in the line have, with some common elements establishing his allegiance to the evil side. Of course, the main giveaway is the color scheme, but there are also a few circular design elements tying the look to that of the Black Guard and Sentry uniforms.

The sculpted details are sharp and clean, capturing well the character design. Rinzler’s helmet covers the head completely and has a shape reminiscent of birds of prey, which I guess was the intention all along.

Rinzler has a fairly slim build, which in turn lends itself to pretty good functionality in terms of articulation with:

Ball jointed neck. Works pretty much as a regular swivel, though.

Peg & hinge shoulders.

• Upper biceps swivel.

• Peg & hinge elbows.

• Swivel wrists.

• Peg & hinge hips.

• Upper thigh swivels.

• Peg & hinge knees.

• Peg & hinge ankles.

The torso is molded from translucent orange plastic, painted with a fairly thick coat of matte black paint. The unpainted areas of the suit are a couple of small circles in the middle of the torso and four small squares placed like a T on the upper chest. These areas serve as “windows” for the light from the built-in action feature to shine through.

The action feature is activated by pressing the button at Rinzler’s back, which turns on a LED inside the figure for about 5 seconds before turning itself off. Even though the mechanism is rather bulky, it is well disguised as part of the costume, so the extra bulk doesn’t look too out of place.

The suit has extra color accents painted in bright orange to simulate additional glow patches but even though these are applied well enough for mass-market standards, make sure to check out the figures at the store for the best paintjob available.

Rinzler comes with the most accessories of all the figures in this series. He ships with two identity discs, two combat batons, a pair of linked combat batons and a round display base.

The loose batons have each an indentation to place them onto Rinzler’s thighs, and this time the shape of the peg matches that of the peg hole, so no fault there. The discs should actually be half discs, as Rinzler is supposed to be able to split his single identity disc in two to fight with each half as weapons, but I concede that would have been a wasteful move from Spin Master to develop the tooling for such an accessory.

The linked batons are intriguing; they resemble nunchaku, but the material they are made of is rather rigid to pose them as such. I wonder if instead these are meant to be some kind of  energy garrote, with the bright orange section between the handles.

Rinzler is possibly the best of the black/orange figures in Series 1. He is very detailed but at the same time he has a much cleaner outline than the other Clu minions, so there is nothing getting in the way articulation should work. Take accessories into account and Rinzler is the best value action figure in the line.

Errex Score: 94/100

Be Sociable, Share!

Tags: , , ,

Category: Featured, Other Film, Toy Reviews, Tron

About the Author ()

I've been collecting action figures since the original Kenner Star Wars days. Nowadays, I still collect pretty much anything that catches my eye.

Comments (2)

Trackback URL | Comments RSS Feed

  1. JD says:

    Rinsler is a bad ass. I wish this figure could move like the movie character.

  2. JD says:

    And I misspelled Rinzler. Stupid keyboard.

    I want a Hasbro made figure of Rinzler, copyrights be damned, they need to make one because their Bleeding Edge Iron Man and Renegades Storm Shadow were so well articulated and sculpted.