'Ghostbusters' action figure prototypes revealed, and they look awesome

With every big sci-fi or fantasy movie comes an entire line of toys. The original 1984 "Ghostbusters" and its animated spin-off TV series from 1986 generated toy versions of the famous phantom-fighting crew. The reboot live-action film will keep that tradition going. Director Paul Feig tweeted a photo on Thursday of the four leads, played by Kristen Wiig, Leslie Jones, Kate McKinnon and Melissa McCarthy, in action figure form.

The action figures come from toy company Mattel and will be 6 inches (about 15 centimeters) in height. That's a pretty standard size for action figures, so you should be able to fold them into imaginative play along with your Star Wars and Star Trek collection. The crossover possibilities are endless. I can't wait to see what a proton pack does against Kylo Ren.

The prototypes look to be fully articulated and dressed in pretty accurate representations of the costumes as we've seen in photos so far. They all have proton packs at the ready. Presumably, Mattel will also release some ghosts to go with the set.

The issue of female characters in toys and games came up recently when game maker Hasbro left Rey, one of the stars of "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," out of its most recent Star Wars Monopoly set. Hasbro answered complaints about the exclusion with a tweet saying Rey will be included in a new version of the game due out later this year. At least we know we won't have a shortage of strong female lead action figures once the "Ghostbusters" characters come out.

"Ghostbusters" is set for release in July. Feig has been plenty busy on Twitter throughout the filming and movie-promotion process, sharing images of everything from the Ecto-1 car to the entire lead cast all outfitted in their ghostbusting duds.

If the finalized action figures look pretty close to the ones Feig shared, then fans will have some cool-looking playthings to call on whenever ghosts appear in their toy boxes.