#final faction

[spacecadet2k]

Found a little plastic toy on the street that looked like a drone (to me) but after googling what it was, turned out to be a wing jet pack of sorts for a Final Factoon toy figure (4th pic) . Still, here I share it as a depiction of my initial assumption; a high altitude spy drone 🛰️

[dimestorehobby]

Mini-Adjacent Pt. 1 - AKA Dollar Tree

Apologies in advance for the hasty photography.

TLDR: The Final Faction action figures at Dollar Tree have some cool designs that cross over well into 28mm sci-fi tabletop.

I've had my eye on some of these for a while. Their "real" scale is wrong for standard 28mm heroic, because the action figures themselves are GI Joe-ish in scale. But the accessories are a different story.

The human faction has some cool bits for $1.25 apiece that make for excellent mechanized units, e.g. the walking turret on top left, or the Battletech-reminiscent walker on bottom left (scale-wise, that could plausibly be an exo-suit of some kind). The alien faction has similarly sized biological units with a chitinous, insectoid, Zerg-y vibe.

You could totally play these as actual units/creatures in a minis-agnostic game like Stargrave or Starfinder. The other possibility, however, is playing them as really cool objectives. Secret bioweapons to be destroyed; a raid on the enemy's rear to destroy his artillery or a mech depot.

[titleknown]

SO, I made another custom figure with Final Faction parts, namely a base body from the series' big bad the claws from a vehicle pack, some bones from some Halloween gubbins and the beetle head from a toy beetle! Also I used epoxy putty, lots and lots of epoxy putty.

As a character in the actual Final Faction universe, I'd imagine her to be, like, a prototype Kharn bioweapon with superior strength and the ability to generate some kind of bio-energy directly from her body rather than using external weapons, but deemed a failure due to the annoying flaw of "compassion" and basically only surviving due to an inadvertent timely attack by the Final Faction team, who she ends up following back and eventually joining.

But, that's just me. Concept and original design elements are CC-BY 4.0 crediting Thomas F. Johnson if anyone wants to do anything with it, including the folks at Dollar Tree themselves...

[therobotmonster]

Mutant Rumbler and Kharn BioDrone Customs

Dollar Tree’s Final Faction toy line is super-90s in concept, so when making up for the lack of paint on the original figures, I decided to match the sculpts more than the canon. 

These were done with a base of black primer (I actually used spray paint, trust me, get real primer it's worth the extra cost) with neon and blacklight reactive acrylic hobby paints. Mostly washes and dry-brushing.

Mutant Rumbler - Altered by infusions of Serum-93, more beast than machine, a mutant Rumbler cannot be commanded or controlled. It must be trained. A loyal mutant Rumbler under the guidance of a skilled Kharn can decimate a fleet of Arrow-ATVs but a careless Kharn may find himself in his own Rumbaler’s gullet. Every mutant Rambler has unique weapons, making no two exactly alike.

Kharn BioDrone - When Serum-93 fails to induce full mutation in a Kharn Hive-drone, a BioDrone is the result. They are marginally tougher and smarter than a standard drone but their true power is their empathic connection to Snythoids and Rumblers, even mutant ones. These advantages come with increased curiosity and independence, a drawback Diabol is willing to overlook for now.

[donxmikeyblog]

Final faction is a cartoon on YouTube for a dollar tree 3.34 scale toyline. Which I'm a fan of. The third episode has finally release after half a year. And I wasn't expecting this reference to TMNT.

Fanfiction crossover potential.

I think that's pretty awesome to see this. Which means finale faction and teenage mutant ninja turtles coexist in the same universe.

[thriftrescue]

FRIKKKIN AWESOME  FINAL FACTION Arrow ATV vehicle at Dollar Tree + Upgrade kit!  LOVE THIS SO MUCH.  little built it yourself kits are cool!  So well done for $1.25 each.  got the bad guy one too. 

GO get your own!

www.final-faction.com

[nintendroid]

What if I told you the best toy line this year wasn’t produced by Hasbro or Mattel but Dollar Tree? No, this isn’t a joke. 

Yesterday afternoon, I was browsing my dashboard and came across a post by a thrift blog I really enjoy, @thriftrescue​. They posted a picture of the toy section at their local Dollar Tree with unusual enthusiasm for a line of toys called “Final Faction”. The enthusiasm threw me off so much that I had to see what the buzz was about. I’ve been on this earth for over 30 years now, and I can’t tell you a time past the age of 6 where I was excited for any toy that came from the Dollar Tree. 

A search led me to Dollar Tree’s website with an entire page dedicated to this line of toys. Character profiles, the action figures and cheesy backstory wasn’t anything phenomenal, but was done so well, It kept me interested. On the same page was a cartoon featuring today’s subject. I went in expecting to turn my nose up snobbishly and laugh at how bad it was but something happened; it wasn’t bad!

The cartoon is full of corny jokes and action and at six minutes long, doesn’t wear it’s welcome out. It has a vibe of Starship Troopers meets Halo and to me, that’s a good thing. The Halo influence is strong here, if you can’t tell by just looking. The aliens and their weaponry look like something right out of the Halo series..

..Is it just me?

Dollar Tree really went all in on this outing and it’s so out of left field that you have to commend them for such a bold effort. If you grew up low-middle class like myself, you had several toys from the Dollar Tree and while they did the job, they were never on anyone’s ‘favorite toy” list. They were cheap, generic and flimsy and most of the time served as underlings or faceless bad guys for your good toys to stomp to dust. 

I was sold and since I had some shopping to do that day, I went to the Dollar Tree at the local mall and picked up a buttload of figures.

The figures look slightly above normal ‘Dollar Tree toy” standards and they’re already winners on that merit alone. The packaging is just as much a star of the show here. 

It should be noted the heroes come in these yellow/orange cards, while our villains come on purple cards. The artwork is clean and bright with the character’s names featured under them. 

The back features a character profile cutouts with stats and a quick bio ala G.I Joe and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. That’s friggin’ cool and that’s not all! 

Under the awesome synopsis of the series and featured character’s in this “series”, there’s a QR code on the back that takes you to the first episode of the cartoon! The cartoon let’s kids know “Hey, this isn’t just a generic group of sillynannies, we’re legit heroes.” Smart marketing.

Ok, packaging and presentation is great, but are the toys themselves good? At the end of the day you can cover dog poo in ice cream sprinkles but it’s still poo. Fortunately for us, this isn’t dog poo.

Final Faction is legit, y’all. I wish I had more pictures but given the short notice I just took these two. The paint jobs aren’t perfect but they’re not too sloppy. The accessories attach to ol’ Shift’s back well and yes, they’re removable and interchangeable with alien weapons (I didn’t mention that they’re weapons packs available). She holds her weapons well and nothing about her feels flimsy. These suckers are built for playtime. 

Now I hear you toy snobs out there with your NECA collections, snickering and nudging one another. Look at it from this perspective. You’re a family with little pocket money for Christmas this year. Most figures at Wal-Mart and Target are over ten bucks. If you got ten dollars to your name, do you buy an overpriced figure with no accessories, or take five bucks, buy two heroes and two aliens with a weapons pack? For the budget and quality, Final Faction is a home run. 

I never thought I’d give a glowing review of a line of toys produced by the friggin’ Dollar Tree but here we are. I want to see this line succeed and I hope they do more lines like this down the road. in a decade from now, you’re going to see a cult following pop up for these guys, I’m certain of it.

I’m not a guy that brags on his deeds, but I donated the rest of the toys I bought to a local charity, because I really feel like these are cool toys worthy of passing on. Many strange things happened in 2020, the strangest being I became a fan of Dollar Tree toys. 

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone out there. 

Final Faction on Dollar Tree’s website

[waltkneeland]

Final Faction

Seems to be getting to be an annual tradition for me, unexpectedly "discovering" some new toy line in January of a new year. In 2019, it was Lanard’s Primal Clash line of dinosaur-riding soldiers. Last year, in 2020 it was again Lanard but with an Alien Collection. Now in 2021, it’s Dollar Tree‘s Final Faction. During the first weekend of the new year while browsing a local Dollar Tree store, I…

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