Battle Morphing Orbs

Here it is, the very first toy spotlight for The Plastic Eyeball:  Morbs!

Morbs are awesome.

These guys were originally released in the UK by a company called Flair and are brought to us in North America by ToyQuest.  Now, I don't need an action feature or gimmick to sell me on a toy.  In fact, I'm not particularly fond of them in most cases.  Oftentimes an action feature can take away from the flow of a figure; but when a toy line is built around an action feature, I'm usually pretty forgivable.  If not sucked in completely, like in this case.

The figures all share the same body design, which is basically a large ball-shaped head on a tiny body (clad in what looks oddly enough like a wrestling singlet).  Just like a lot of those designer toys out there, the sculpts might all be the same, but it's the deco of each figure that makes them different and stand out from each other.  The gimmick that really sells Morbs for me is that their little bodies can be tucked up into their big ol' heads.  Simple enough.  Why does it appeal to me as much as it does?  Who can say.  It just does.  The nice thing is that the gimmick works pretty flawlessly, with the bodies of each figure I own popping smoothly into the heads, which hold tight.  I'm also a fan of those toy lines made up of lots of weird little characters to collect.  Some of these guys are actually pretty cool looking, and one is an eyeball-head.  They knew what I was looking for when they put these guys out.

You can buy these guys as singles in blind bags (ever the rage these days) or in two-packs where you can see the figures you're going to get.  All of the figures are available in the two-packs, so I'd recommend just using them to get the ones you want instead of taking your chances with the blind bags.

I like Morbs a lot, and I'm going to try to get as many of them as I can.  From what I can tell from my Morbs searches online, it looks like the UK is up to at least Series 2, while it seems we got MOST of series 1 in here in North America.  The UK also looks like they got some 3-packs with accessories (hats), vehicles (a tank, a jet, and a flying saucer), deluxe bodies to launch the regular figures in ball-mode, and even a military base playset.  So while they seem to be doing pretty well across the pond, I'll admit that I don't really see them catching on here.  I can see them appealing more to particular tastes (like mine) over the average toy collector.  Kids may like them for a bit, but I doubt they'll keep their attention when the next new thing comes out, which is sad because I'd like the chance to get some of the accessories and vehicles.  And I just want to get as many different Morbs characters into my collection as I can get.  If we're not lucky enough to get any vehicles over here in the colonies, I've found that some of the Bakugan vehicles work rather well.

At any rate I'm always up for something a little different, and Morbs fills that role nicely.  You can see more Morbs stuff at http://www.flairplc.co.uk/brands/Morbs/