Toy Oddities: Avengers Black Widow Grab Zags!

Many weeks since release, The Avengers bandwagon still circles the block, beeping its horn and turning the massive crank on its built-in hype machine. And after purchasing the mysterious Italian Black Widow I have made it my fool's errand to continue to collect tiny effigies of the catsuit clad Scarlett Johannson in an attempt to build a shrine and eventually summon her.

This time we have the oh-so-crazily named Grab Zags, mystery packages that contain "cool surprise toys". Grab Zags have already done a Marvel series in the past but this set is specifically based on the Avengers movie. What kind of toys can you get? Check out this wacky sampling of eclectic WTF:

Over 100+ blind-packaged toys to collect? That sounds like a shivering, wallet-draining, waking nightmare for completist types. And what a weird selection of stuff? The figures seem like a desirable no-brainer, but if I opened up one of these and got a mini skateboard I'd be sorely disappointed, and I'd rather shit a shuriken than get a mini disc-launcher.

But to see what I did get (by eBay cheating) and to get a sense of the entire line... join me after the jump!

Okay! You made it! Good job!

Now let's flip over the insert and take a look at the entire Avengers Series 1 collection! Ooooh:

Okay so there's only actually 24, not 100, so the boastful, misleading package-man must be also factoring in past and/or future series. Cunning. But at least the completists can breathe a little easier. (I'm sure some hardcore completist reading this just breathed a sigh of relief, climbed down from his chair, loosened his noose, and said, "Not today, Death!). Cheerful!

Okay, so looking at that checklist I think that we can all agree that getting a disc launcher would be like finding a piece of glass in a bowl of cereal. And the only cool thing about the skateboards is that one of them has a picture of Scarlett Johansson on it that you can ride around with your fingers. 

Hey! Did you notice that Nick Fury doesn't get a skateboard or a disc launcher. Samuel L. Jackson probably stormed into the factory and said, "Just try to put me on a disc-launcher again! I dare you. I double-dare you, motherf**ker! Try to put me on a disc-launcher one more goddamn time!" and then he slapped it out of their hands.

But the figures at least are kind of cool, in an obtuse, stylised, deformed, alien kind of way.

So here she is:

Okay so she looks less like Scarlett Johansson and more like a watermelon, but at least there's clues here that it's supposed to represent her movie character. She's doing the jumping, legs akimbo kick that we've seen on a lot of Scarlett promo material, so that's a plus. A negative is that she kind of looks like Strawberry Shortcake. I also wonder if Black Widow loses some of her appeal when her body is a flat chested ball. 

So this is what we have amassed so far:

 Aaaaand none of them look like Scarlett Johansson. But we do have Hot Toys for that when they finally release the full images.

Thank you for sharing this sickness. I am appalled to report that there is more on the way!