Hello everyone! It's been a little while since Equestria Daily has done one of these unboxing reviews.
Personally I blame the entirety of last year for slowing down on product releases/reviews, so it is to be expected.
But the good news is that they are back with avengeance!
So what is in this box that I am reviewing today?
Well it just so happens that Mighty Jaxx sent Equestria Daily a case of 12 My Little Pony Hidden Dissectibles to take a look at.
Please be advised this box was provided for free for review purposes. As per Mighty Jaxx's webpage, we know that a case of 12 contains all 6 of the regular variants available and no guarantee of receiving a rare (Twilight and Fluttershy are a 1/24 chance, and Wonderbolts Rainbow Dash is a 1/48 chance).
So the possibility of me just getting the regular is high.
As always, you'll be able to check out the full unboxing review after the break.
Not making a big deal with opening the box this time, because I am rather curious to see what is inside. I will say this, Mighty Jaxx does ship their product extremely well. Putting in foam corners to surround/suspend the product box in the middle of the shipping box is a very good practice to ensure the contents arrive safe and sound.
And by looking at the shrink wrapped box it is completely undamaged. So investing in those foam corner shipping boxes paid dividends.
Let's take a look at the actual box itself shall we?
I will be blunt and say outright I am not a big fan of the Hidden Dissectibles reusing the My Little Pony: The Movie Mane 6 character vectors/poses. It's something we've seen far too much of since New York Toy Fair 2017.
That said, updating the vectors to showcase how the Ponies have been dissected is HIGHLY effective. It's enough to make you stop and take another look at the My Little Pony toys and go: okay this is different than the usual My Little Pony toys. Let's go take a look at this.
The rest of the box is the usual late G4 My Little Pony branding/packaging. If you've bought any of Hasbro's toys for seasons 8 or 9 you should be very familiar with this branding.
Which I have to tip my hat off to Mighty Jaxx for getting it exactly right. This perfect branding combined with the dissected ponies really do make for an effective strategy for getting attention.
The fact this box is also labeled as Series One has left me hopeful that there is going to be multiple series for this line.
Considering an 8.5" Tall Princess Celestia was announced after the first wave of this series shipped in September, that's probably a very good indicator that yes there is definitely going to be more!
The front of the box is as colorful and on brand as the top.
"Reveal the Magic" normally wouldn't garner much of an eye raise out of me, BUT considering the nature of this toy line, it is an ingenious pun that gives evidence as to the type of humor this toy line was built off of.
The back of the box contains all the product info. And in a first encounter for a toy line for me, the name of the artist who designed these toys.
His name is Jason Freeny, and he's been designing dissection/anatomy toys of pop-culture kids/all ages franchises for a very long time.
Noticeably he created a Pony Disection Print of the G3 My Little Pony toys. Which is probably what landed him the job of designing the Generation 4 dissection toys.
I'm not going to go into too much detail about the left and right sides of the box, since it just shows the CGI renders for the Mane 6 toys. The left side showcases the Dissection side of the Ponies.
And the right side showcases the normal side of the ponies.
Considering that this exactly how these toys are split, that is actually a nice little detailed touch.
HOWEVER, there are a 3 noticeable omissions on the sides of the box. The chase variants are not rendered/pictured on this box. Nor are the odds for getting one of them listed on THIS box.
Not even on the bottom of the box, which is unfortunate.
Usually the retail display box contains all the information about what could be contained in the box. So the fact there is no information about the chase variants means either the retailer has to know about it before hand, OR if you purchased directly from Mighty Jaxx, you have to know about it yourself.
Yes, that information is listed on their commercial product page. But the fact it was omitted from the retailer display box is still odd.
I'll get to the individual blind boxes in a second. I still have a couple of comments about the big box to get through.
Having the front flap of the top cover go all the down to the interior front side of the box is an odd choice. Until one actually finishes opening the box to see what is inside.
Ah there are the 12 blind boxes contain at the very least the Mane 6. I'll get to them in a moment. For there is one more feature of the retail display box to look at.
The side are micro perforated. Which means a good portion of the front of the box can be remove and discarded to reveal…
The actual retail display! I love this! I really really do! If you end up purchasing the full box, you are going to have a really nice display to look at.
Okay now for the blind boxes.
This is a simple and effective lid. The My Little Pony logo embossed over a gradient background with the Mane 6 cutie marks as a pattern.
I like it.
The front and back of the box have the exact same design as the cover of the retailer display box. The only difference is the MLP Logo and the Series One iconography have switch places.
This keeps the branding for the toy line consistent so I see no problem. I do wish the back had a different design and I'll get to why in a minute.
The left side of the box showcases all of the renders for the dissected Mane 6. So we are starting to get an idea of what this box of wonder may contain…
Product information, including the barcode for use at retail, is located on the bottom.
For the most part, it's the same information that is on the back of the retailer display box, so there is fine.
On the right side of the box we get the first indications that there are chase variants in this collection. The are:
- Fluttershy (Enchanted)
- Twilight Sparkle (Enchanted)
- Rainbow Dash (Wonderbolt)
What isn't perfectly reasonable is the information that is left out. I am of course talking about the odds you the purchaser have with getting these variants.
Which is information that could have been made plain as day on the back of the box.
Mighty Jaxx could have put this in a flowery font.
You might not know which of the Squad you'd get in an individual box. What about the rare Fluttershy and Twilight Sparkle (Enchanted), or the ultra rare Rainbow Dash (Wonderbolt)? There's no guarantee! With a 1/24 chance for the rares, and 1/48 chance for the ultra rare, you might be the lucky one!
All I did was slightly edit the description on Mighty Jaxx's website.
I am a firm believer in making sure you have as much information as you need before making a decision on whether or not you are going to purchase an item.
Nine times out of ten all the information I need about a product is located on the retail box. The fact the odds were not printed on this box at all means that if you came across these at retail, you can't make an informed decision about what you are gambling on.
Let's make no mistake about this, blind bags/boxes are a form of gambling. You are purchasing an item worth approximately the value of the MSRP ($13 in this case) with no guarantee of which product you are specifically getting.
And because this is a form of gambling, the odds of what you are pulling for need to be on the box. End of story.
Okay. Time to step off my soapbox. Let's go see what's inside.
It's all covered in mystery.
We have a silver pouch of some kind.
A black card.
And a white plastic bag that screams blind bag toy.
Well, I know what I'm going to do first.
Open the toy!
Full disclosure, outside of Hasbro's blind bags (which have codes telling you what's inside them) I have the absolute worst luck when it comes to pulls. I have no double it's probably going to be one of the regular variants.
Knowing my luck it will be Twilight Sparkle as opposed to best pony Rainbow Dash.
Well, time to open up the bag and—
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
…
Well. This was an unexpected but VERY Merry Christmas surprise!
(Note: yes I did get the review box on Christmas Eve night, and unboxed it Christmas Day).
First pull, Wonderbolt Rainbow Dash…
…
…
Right toy review. Anyways, the white bag contains the hidden dissectable toy and a heart shaped base/stand for it. I'll get to the stand in a second. First I think I'm just going to look at Rainbow Dash.
Yes Rainbow Dash is contained in a vacuum formed protective cover. Yes this is a really good way to ensure the product itself is not damaged in transit.
Yes you can tell I am very impressed with how Mighty Jaxx has packaged these things. It's like they are works of art or something.
Definitely a step above what Hasbro has done with their Blind Bag toys. Though it should also be mentioned Hasbro's MLP blind bag toys are near indestructible. Short of intentionally chopping those things up with a knife, we aren't breaking those.
Though with the thickness of the vast majority of these vinyl toys, you are not breaking these either. With the possible exception being the where the tail joints the body…
…and the boney wing joint. Surprisingly this piece is very solid.
And I absolutely love the detail on the dissection. You can see Rainbow's bones, lungs, intestines, her throat, and couple of other organs I cannot identify because it's been about 16 years since I took a high school biology course.
At first glance, this display would seem to be nothing out of the ordinary.
However, when you get to the bottom, you'll notice there's an RFID blocking sticker placed on it.
That means inside this base/stand there is an NFC ID chip. Probably much like the ones that can be found in Nintendo's various Amiibos.
I'll get to that functionality in a minute.
Up first though, let's look at how awesome Rainbow Dash is on the display!
From the right side? Awesome!
Left side? Awesome!
Top Down? Awesome!
Straight back? Awesome!
In fact, this figure is so awesome that if you look behind her goggles, you can actually see her eye is fully painted and detailed!
That is a level of detail often skipped upon as a cost saving measure for anything that is massed produced.
Not here though. These toys just scream quality!
Now, what about the black card we saw earlier? The front side of the card is really nothing special.
The back, however…
…outlines how the NFC chip functionality of the display base. With step 1 being download the Mighty Jaxx app from the google play/itunes app stores.
So that is exactly what I did.
I downloaded the app. Created an account. And went to register the toy.
If you look at the registration of Wonderbolt Pony in the back ground, you'll notice there's two ID numbers.
The first one is the Model Number which identifies which of the My Little Pony: Hidden Dissectables you have. The second is the UUID, which I can only assume means stands for Unit Unique Identification Number.
On a technical level, this is really freaking impressive. For this means that each and every single NFC chip has to be individually programmed with not only the model number, but a unique identification number.
And when registered via the app…
You get a digital certificate of authenticity, which a unique certificate number, which is tied directly to your user name. Why is this done?
Well oen of the options of the app is that after you've digitally registered the toys, you can then transfer ownership to anyone else who has the app, should you decide to, oh I don't know, resell the collectible at a later date.
This is a product theft protection feature. It is one of the most technically advanced and comprehensive that I have seen. If your item is stolen, you can prove without any sherd of doubt that the product is yours straight from the records of your phone.
That is absolutely insane.
This is also something that I absolutely despise. For one very simple reason: the secondary purpose of this functionality is data collection and marketing research. Since this app is being run by Mighty Jaxx, this is data that is being collected directly by the company that produces the toys.
This is analytical data. This is market research. While it is useful to use it as a security feature, I really do not care for paying for the privilege's to give market research data.
Moving on from my second soapbox, let's see what is in the silver package.
It's a little Rainbow Dash trading card.
And on the back is the MLP logo, Hasbro Logo, Mighty Jaxx Logo, and Jason Freeny logo. You know, if I ever run into Jason Freeny at a comic con (or MLP Convention), this would probably be a good thing to get signed by him.
Anyways, I think I'm going to go open up a couple more boxes and see what I—
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
…
…
…
So… anyone up for some glamor shots of the toys provided by MyLittleTies for the use in this review?
Good. So while we go look at that, I think I'm going to go reexamine how lady luck has personally influenced my life over the last few years.
So awesome.
I love how you can see her eyelashes behind her goggles.
That split from wonderbolt suit to skeleton is a little bit jarring, but I really don't care.
For this is Rainbow Dash. And she is awesome.
Significantly less awesome as the "enchanted" translucent chase variants.
Especially since Flutterbat would have been a much, much, MUCH better choice.
I get it. Tooling for injection molding is expensive and using a different colored vinyl plastic is a great way to make a variant figure without spending a ton of money.
Here's the thing though… most of the people who are buying these toys are doing so at a premium.
$13 a pop is really expensive for blind bag toys.
So making a translucent chase variant for the… I get the cost of production choice for it. I really don't get it for the target audience.
Especially since the Rainbow Dash Wonderbolt figure needed some new tooling created to give her the goggles.
That said, the Fluttershy variant is much better than the Twilight Sparkle Variant. For some reason the sparkling translucent pink plastic look so much better than the translucent purple plastic.
I don't know why, but it just does.
The sparkling translucent chase variants are not my cup of tea. Part of the fun of these toys is seeing how the full colored character looks dissected.
Making a sparkling glitter chase variant takes a little bit away from that fun.
It also makes the differences between pony anatomy and full skinned pony a lot less jarring.
It makes it look like something is missing from the experience.
Case in point, just look at this Twilight Sparkle!
And huh, I didn't even notice that the bit underneath the skin is is actually muscle tissue. The colors were too close together on the Wonderbolt variant for Rainbow Dash and—
IT'S HER HEART!!! That's the organ I was forgetting!
This is without a doubt the highest quality Twilight Sparkle figurine I have ever seen.
Just look at how jarring that dissection is.
Just look at her perfect jawline! Absolutely incredible detail!
And speaking of detail, two things stand out immediately.
#1: The muscle tissue of the ponies is a darker shade of their fur color.
#2: Rainbow Dash's face furrows at the skull.
This means her default resting face is badass.
It's official, Rainbow Dash is completely and totally awesome!
Just look at how intense she is.
… on Twilight is hilariously jarring.
On Rainbow Dash, this split dissection is intimidating.
Everypony, take note. This is pegasus, athletic perfection!
And of course Applejack just had to disprove my point about muscle colors.
Just look at this silly, but honest, pony.
Who is appearently looking to share her insides with us.
And AJ's muscle color is red this time. Dark pink, blue, red. What is Rarity going to be purple?
I WAS JOKING!
This is interesting. Twilight's dissection didn't dissect her horn but Rarity's does. That is two different tones of white on her horn.
Simply fabulous.
Considering Rarity is the fashionista she is, of course she made looking half transparent work for her.
Are her bones made of sugar?
It honestly wouldn't surprise me at all.
…
… she's staring straight into my soul. She does this usually, but the half skull face makes this even creepier!
Of course her muscles are pink. Like the rest of her.
If you do not want Fluttershy ruined for you, please skip the next 3 images and go straight to the end.
You have been warned.
Can someone go check in on Silver Quill? I worry this image of Fluttershy might have been too much for his feathered heart to handle.
Especially since Fluttershy is adorable! This is adorable. And terrifying. Adorafying.
Yes, Fluttershy is adorafying.
And more pink muscles.
So now for my ultimate thoughts on the set.
Overall Quality
These are (barring the My Little Pony: Fan Series and Guardians of Harmony toylines from Hasbro and the Equestria Girls statues from Kotobukiya) the absolute highest quality My Little Pony toys ever produced.
Value for Target Audience
I am going to address the elephant in the room, these toys are not meant for kids. Their primary target audience is not the standard 2 to 11 year old age group the My Little Pony toy franchise generally targets.
These are designed and targeted for teenagers and adults with some level of discretionary disposable income for collectibles.
Yes, these toys are targeted squarely at the Brony fandom.
What is the value of these toys for the Brony fandom? It's immeasurable. The toys provide new information about the Generation 4 My Little Pony characters that I honestly did not think we would get after the show ended.
I honestly though we would never get this information at all, and yet here we are.
We have officially licensed/sanctioned by Hasbro anatomy models for My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic. There is no more guessing required. This is what the organs of the ponies look like.
These toys could be exceptionally useful for artists in the fandom.
Price Point
First and foremost, is each figurine worth an individual MSRP price point of $12.99 (plus shipping)? Yes. Absolutely. Unquestionably. You are getting your money's worth and then some with each of these figures.
Heck these things are probably worth at least $7 more than what you are paying for them because of the outright quality of the figures.
In fact the quality of these figure exceed the quality of the old Funko Vinyl Figures. Both the big ones (which had an MSRP of $20 I recall correctly), and the smaller bling bag figures (which had an MSRP of $8 per box IIRC).
Is it worth paying $155.88 to be guaranteed to get all 6 of the base figures and basically gamble with getting a chase variant? Which again you have no guarantee of getting with the box. You also don't even have a guarantee of getting two complete sets.
You have a guarantee of getting one complete set. Is that worth it?
That depends. Are you willing to try your luck with selling the extras on the second hand market (like ebay (where all but the chase variants are trending either at or slightly above/below MSRP)? If you are fine with that, sure.
Do you have a little kid in your life who would probably get a real kick out of getting these toys you want to give the spares to? If you do, sure.
Are you just looking to get a complete set of the Mane 6 for yourself? Then unfortunately the answer is no.
You are better finding 5 friends who would be willing to split the cost of 3 of these sets, build the complete base sets out of them, and then roll a D20 for any chase variants that come up to see who gets those.
Without gambling, that is the best way to get a complete set of these toys.
Final Thoughts
If you are a collector with money to burn, or if you are an artist who doesn't mind going in with a few of your artist friends to split up the costs, you may want to strongly consider picking up a full set.
If you are looking to get just one single specific character, strongly consider passing on these.
The $13 per pull is not worth gambling your money away. $13 a pop is just too much for blind bags.
Anyways, this has been The Illustrious Q. Hope to see you all next time.
