Vinylmation Review - Park Starz #3

Released: June 6, 2014

Blind Box Series

Many collectors were excited to see the release of Park Starz #3 this year. It included a second hitchhiking ghost, a second country bear, another It's A Small World installment, plus new characters including a float from the Main Street Electrical Parade, and repeated characters taking the Park Starz mold for the first time. Collectors love the unique nature of the Park Starz mold and I think this is a well rounded series.

Reasons to love this series:

• It has the perfect mix of old and new - what do I mean by old? Well, we've seen a Tiki bird before, It's A Small World characters, Pirates of the Caribbean, The Country Bear Jamboree, and Hitchhiking ghosts, but the figures in this series are still new creations within those categories. Secondly, if you're a fan of those attractions, these figures will help you grow those collections. I think it would be awesome to have all 3 hitchhiking ghosts, to have a whole Country Bear Jamboree set and all of the Tiki Room birds! But, if you're looking for something fresh, this series does boast 4 brand new characters and variants
• Imagination - I think the artists really used their imagination with this series to pick some fantastic character choices. I just love the Main Street Electrical Parade turtle float, the Spaceship Earth Caveman and the Dreamfinder!
• Re-invented characters - we've seen the Matterhorn Yeti before, Dreamfinder as a 9", Ezra the hitchhiking ghost, and Sonny Eclipse on the regular Mickey mold, but they all look fantastic debuting on their own Park Starz mold. I don't think anyone is sad to see repeats of these figures in this series
• A chaser worth chasing - the Tiki figure from the Polynesian Resort logo in my opinion is a wonderful choice for a chaser. It's fun, it's new, it's expertly executed, and you can pretend it's a figure from Adventureland if you prefer. I think this vinyl appeals to a wide range of collectors and makes a worthy chaser
• Exciting variants - Maybe exciting is too strong a word, since the variants don't really appeal to me personally, but I think other collectors are fans. I think a sepia Pig Pirate figure was a good choice because it can be added to the other sepia Pirates figures to continue the set. It also sold out surprisingly quickly online. The same goes for the clear Ezra variant, I guess those are popular. I think that the red astronaut variant was a really smart idea. The blue and red astronauts do look similar and it may seem the color change was insignificant and arbitrary, but actually changing the color makes each figure a different attraction. The blue is Space Mountain and the red is Mission Space. Adding the Mission Space logo to the red variant is a perfect touch to complete the figure. I also love the Big Al and Trixie variant because I think it's a beautiful holiday set in itself, and fans of the extinct holiday version of the Country Bear Jamboree will definitely appreciate

Things that aren't so great: 

• The price - apologies, but I have to mention it. While it's not exactly related to the design and quality of the series, it is a huge drawback to Park Starz. These figures are still 3" and although the tins are pretty and attractive, does anyone blox this series and keep all the tins? Even if you do, are they worth the extra money? I have yet to pick one of these up because they're $18.95 each. I would prefer to buy them on the secondary market and make sure I get the figures I want. $12.95 is bad enough, I'm not going to fork out $18.95 and risk getting an unwanted figure
• Repetition - I guess a downside to this series if you've had enough of seeing pirates, bears, yetis and Tiki birds is that they still feature in this series. Every Park Starz series so far has had figures from Pirates of the Caribbean and It's A Small World. I wouldn't blame some collectors for getting bored