Deciding which Terminator film you prefer is similar to comparing pizza with ice cream. On the surface, they're both foodstuffs, and one can easily be enjoyed immediately after the other. However, they evoke different sensations within you. The first movie was harrowing and gritty. The second was spectacular and fun. They are very different beasts, and combine to make one hell of a cinematic one-two punch.
Unless you opt for Terminator 3, in which case you eat shit and you die.
As a child of the '90s, Terminator 2 was always my preference growing up. With its emphasis on catchphrases and special effects, it was practically made for kids, just as long as you looked away when he cut open his arm. Or shot all the people. Or when the T-1000 stabbed the security guard in the eye.
You know what? It actually wasn't child-friendly at all. Who knows what the fuck we were thinking, it was a different time. Regardless, action figures came out in the dozens, and I myself was the proud recipient of these handsome Terminators.
On the left is the Power Arm Terminator. I figured this out thanks to this blog entry from Poe Ghostal, which is incidentally a really excellent read that I highly recommend. I will resist the urge to steal material from that post as best I can, but I'm only human. To his right is the Meltdown Terminator, complete with a canary yellow singlet and a 'white-heat bazooka sprayer' (read: a spray gun). The main meltdown is the one your child will have when they realise that you've given them the wrong toy.
They each feature a few curious design choices that can make you scratch your head and wonder aloud when that ever happened in Terminator 2. The Power Arm variation looks more the part with his black leather jacket, albeit a sleeveless variant that suggests that the seasons are a'changing and he wants to get a more even tan. However, it comes with three interchangeable arms that do a series of things that the T-800 has never been able to do.
The first one sees him pushing a metallic beam from his fist in his best Robert Patrick impersonation. The second is a claw kinda apparatus that looks particularly good for pinching bums. And the final is a goddamn rocket launcher, although in my case, it's down a rocket, so it's just a launcher. A launcher of nothing. A nothing launcher, perchance.
So what gives? Why is Uncle Bob suddenly wielding a magic arm? In all fairness, Kenner had to come up with a plethora of variations of the same basic concept, so creative license had to be taken. My fondest memory of this toy was slowly lowering him in the bath while humming the Terminator theme, ala the climactic scene in Judgment Day. Unfortunately, he was incapable of gesturing with a thumbs up before he went into the imaginary molten steel, so I just had to settle for him firing off a ceremonial rocket at the last moment.
Then there's this asshole.
Despite arguably being the better made figure (that battle damage exposing his inner chassis is a nice touch), all it takes is one look at the bright yellow wife beater that renders his army pants completely useless, and you know that mistakes have been made. And if you thought that interchangeable arms was a curious decision, you haven't seen our dude Meltdown here unleash his fearsome weapon on hapless foes. Y'all are about to be H2OWNED.
The packaging suggests that you're supposed to shoot the water at the White-Hot T-1000 figure, which would change colour upon contact with warm water. But does that mean that you actually have to buy two toys to really make this one relevant? Power Arm has threatening weapons, while Meltdown is reduced to spraying water like a damned five year old? Unless he decides to load up with acid or really cheap gin, it's just not going to cut the mustard. Not even the mustard singlet.
Beyond the two Terminators, the only other T2 toy I collected was John Connor. As you can appreciate, it didn't really see much playtime, because the only thing an Edward Furlong action figure would be good for is hacking into computer systems and releasing lobsters from their tanks. He had a pretty sweet motorcycle that probably ended up in the possession of Raphael, so it wasn't all bad.
Overall, I'd say that these figures are decidedly okay. They could have stood to have a few extra firearms on them to make them feel more movie authentic, but knowing me, I would have lost those within a week anyway. Indeed, before I started this entry, I figured I was going to do this whole thing without Meltdown's water gun or any of Power Arm's powerful arms. So in that sense, I'm coming out of this much further ahead than I had anticipated.
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