DEVILMAN

 Its been a long time since the last adition to the Devilman collection because, despite how well known he is now thanks to Netflix, toy companys leave the license completelly a long time ago. But there was a time when Toy R´Us and other places where full of Devilman figures and products and i remember seen them in awe throght the PC screen, when i was a teen.

One of the figures i saw back then was Medicom Real Action Heroes Devilman, a 1/6 scale figure that was considered one of the most expensive merchadise of the characters and after 25 years of seen images of such figure, against all my expectations, i finally was able to get him!!

Its odd to see how simple looking is th box of this figure despite being a limited edition (number 989 from ???) and how this was (or still is??) Medicom more expensive and premium line but i guess this was in line of how this figures looked in last century - 1997 to be more precise.

Like i said, this is a 1/6 scale figure soo he is really big and the same size as modern figures of Hot Toys, Sideshow, Asmus, ThreeZero and he have no base and can stand on his own....sometimes, since his articulations are kinda loose soo its just a matter of find the rigth balance spot and he can stand with no problem tough i dont know for how long, soo its best to use a base with this figure.

He is articulated in the neck, waist, shoulders, elbows, legs, knees and ankles and all of them use ball joints soo they have a big range of motion or at leats the head, waist and knees and ankles does, they turn around nicelly and tilt in different directions tough the legs articulations are restricted by the pants and the elbows...for some reason they dont move to the sides too much.

Also, i got other Medicom figures, Real Action Heroes actually, and the materials used on theyr bodys are really cheap and break pretty easy and given how old is this Devilman, i am really afraid the plastic used on the articulations just turn into dust if i aply too much force to it.

Actually this figure is soo strange i am not sure i can explain how it is build....is basically a base body with big transluscent plastic ball joints on each section and is completelly modular because each section can be removed and dismembered. Is pretty strange but then again, i am afraid soo much removal of sections can damage the plastic pegs.

Then, covering the each section, there is a plastic "skin" with the sculpture of Devilman, soo in reality this feels like....a dummy generic figure with a Devilman costume? I dont know and i really dont know if other Medicom figure worked like this but i got the feeling this was the first try to make a figure like the modern TB League figures: a metalic articulated eskeleton with a soft plastic skin to cover all articulations.

This seems to replicate the basic idea but its not made correctly since the articulations are very much visible and the only nebefit here is the skin texture with the soft plastic. The sculpt is nice tough, despite the material theres a lot of wrinkles and life like details here, like veins on the arms and chest and hair on his abs. The hands are totally made of soft plastic soo they are pretty soft and realistic to the touch tough they are useless to hold any kind of accesory.

The head is the best part deffinetly, the sculpt is on point with Go Nagai art style and character design with his wing structure looking completelly irregular and very organic looking, with the pointy horns, wide eyes and giant mouth full of fangs. The upper fangs are protunding and the way the fangs follow the mouth shape make it looks like a piranha and the tongue is sculpted behind them.

The paint is really good too, with the skin tone looking very solid and the fangs in yellow stand out agains the red of the inside of the mouth. The eyes are yellow too with red veins aroudn them and while the rest of the head is black it does have red airbrush around that makes the wings reflect the ligth very nicelly despite the "all black" image it have.

Sadly,, the skin tone of the rest of the body is ligther than the face color but i am not sure if thats how it was made or if the march of time affected the color of the body thanks to the soft material. The torso is pretty muscly tough it also have in-human features like the protunding ribcage and the opening section on the chest. The hairs sculpted on the back and on his abs is very nice as well as the open scars on his shoulders.

The body have different tones of skin colors, airbrush of softher and lighter tones with darker ones to give volume to the musculature and some artofocial shadow. It looks good in close inspection actually and the part that stands put more are the hairy bits.

The hairy legs tough.....instead of sculpting them, Medicom decided to give him pants, literally, black velvet pants. This limits the legs articulations but while i understand the effect they try to give it, they looks too much, well....like pants. Also they have a tail made with soft plastic in the back but its not articulated and just hand in the back, while the material helpt it flow a little bit to make it looks natural, i wish it was wired.

The only accesory this figure have are his wings but Medicom wanted to be really inventive as well in here and instead give us a set of plastic wings, they made a steel plate covered in back velvet. Put the wings on is really difficult since theres two cuts on Devilman back and the metal plate must be slide on them but the plates are really sharp like a blade!! Not only they cat cut fingers pretty easy, but i am afraid they also cut the soft plastic skin of the figure as well!!

Once instaled the wings plate cna be shaped in different ways and while the idea is pretty good, the wings are actually extremelly small. They looks very "toy-ish" and the black velvet material looks kinda cheap.

Its odd because this figure is full of pretty inovative ideas like plastic skin covering the figure articulations and vendable metalic wings but it seems they didnt had the technology back then to full fill all this ideas. And despite the funny looking pants and small furry wings, the body sculpt is really good and the head looks fantastic as well and in the end, this is pretty much the only Devilman in 1/6 scale to ever exist.

Compared to wath IconiQ Studio is doing rigth now with Street fighter or Tunshi with Samurai Shodown, or Hot Toys and other 1/6 scale brands are doing, this figure looks pretty cheap, rough and rugged, but somehow.....that fits Go Nagai art style and his characters and i got the feeling back in 1997 this figure was incrediblly impresive and advanced for its time.

In the end this figure looks like a pretty old and vintage japanese toy but it really thats wath it is, a product of its time and i am happy that, after seeing images of it for 25 years i finally can touch it and play with it (tough i am afraid to broke it and i am sure those pants and wings will get extremelly dusty pretty fast) and despite its faults, this is one of the cloest representations i ever seen of the core design of Devilman.

WOLFMAN

A few weeks ago i found something really unusual; large scale statues based on NECA´s The Nightmare Before Christmas action figures from 20 years ago.I never before saw something like this on in real life or onlain, not even in NECA´s official site. After some research onlain i only foind this are actually NECA´s official products and they was released in 2006.

Soo they are almost 20 years old but still, this statues have no presentation, they came in a brown cardboard box wth no logos, artwork or anything at all soo it made me wonder wath was theyr propuse?? They were sold to the public or to stores just for advertisment? They are part of a price or for internal use in NECA´s headquarter? At first i tough this were the prototypes for the action figures but it seems they produced 200 of this soo they are not unique, but they seems to be crazy limited.

Soo where did they sell such limited versions of theyr figures? Soo many questions but almost all info of The Nightmare Before Christmas related to NECA is about the action figures. This statues are not listed anywere really.

Soo it seems the collection consist in 4 statues: Jack as Santa, Dr. Flinkenstein, Harlequin Demon and the Wolfman. All characters from series 2 except the Wolfman and i was lucky enough to find not only the Harlequin Demon, but my favorite Halloween Town citizen as well; the Wolfman!!!

I love Tim Burton version of the Wolfman and when i saw this figure i was 100% i was going to get him no matter wath. The Wolfman is much more taller than the Harlequin Demon and nlike him...he can stand on his own thanks to his small paws and digitigrade legs but he comes with a round and very elegant base that let him stand with no problem....well, almost no problem.

This sculpture is a whole place, with no seams or different parts united and is made with resing soo this figure is EXTREMELLY heavy!!! Really a direct hit of this guy in the ehad can kill someone pretty easy!! And his legs are soo thin... plus the base is extremelly heavy as well but to hold him in place inly have two thin resin pegs that goes in a hole on the paws of the Wolfman, soo a tough movement of his upper body and the pegs can broke very easy.

With the pegs gone this figure is doomed to never stand again because given to the round and thick shape of his body i doint think i will be able to find a base suite for him soo i am really afraid of toush this guy, i got the feeling he is pretty delicate...i mean, my Wolfman action figure from NECA also broke his pegs and i had to glue him to the base...of the plastic version broke, i am rpetty sure this resin version could broke evn more easy.

Aside of that strong fear of brakeage, i have no issues with this figure, quiet the opposite. I always loved the action figure but this version make every detail pop up much more, the sculpt of the fur texture is pretty sharp but also the shirt have a texture of its own that mimics old fabric look mixed with some sections that feels a little like clay and this makes the figure looks an feels more like the puppet of the movie.

The head sculpt is excelent, with the sharp nail like fangs and the expresive eyes. The yellow and green of the eyes have a coat of shine that makes them looks weet and alive in contrast with the black body. More specifically, the fur is grey with darker tones of grey wash to enhance the sculpt and the black is only keept for the claws on the hands and feet.

The shirt also have a mix of different browns in a strips mattern and not only the paint is perfect in each strip, but the strip lines are also sculpted!!

Just like with the action figure version, theres not many accesorys here. Aside of the base he comes with a small present wraped in red with a yellow ribbon. Is much smaller and less eventfull than the Harlequin Demon present tough the sculp and paint are perfect.

And the biggesta ccesory is a singing elf! A perfect replica of the elf included in the action figure except this have no articulation on the neck and arms and the piece of paper cant be removed. He also comes with a round and black base that somehow makes this piece looks pretty elegant.

The whole elf texture looks like hand made with since the prints of fingers are visible all around  and of course, the paint is perfect if a little simmple and the side of the paper in front of him have the musical notes painted on it (i wish they were at the othe side tough) and while i never was fond of this little guys in the action figure series, this one hace a nice quality to stand out as a general Christmas ornament.

This figure is extremelly delicate but the sculpt and paint quality are much better than that of the action figure and given how big he is, is pretty easy he gets a lot of presence on any shelf or any collection, perfect for both Halloween and Christmas, this figure makes me wonder if they are really as limited as they say and makes me want to get the Dr.Flinkenstein but i doubt my luck strike twice after 18 years.

HARLEQUIN DEMON

 As silly as it sounds, its pretty easy to feel excited when finding unknown merchadise of a favorite series, movie or character, an item that holds a mistery of where it came, when and for wath porpuse. And a few weeks ago i found a mistery like this: statues based on NECA´s The Nightmare Before Chsitmas action figure series from 2004. 

I found two of them, with no presentation at all (with no window box to see the figure or a box with TNBC art al around or the NECA logo, they came just in a brown cardboard box with a bar code) and based in one character from series 2 and one from series 3. The one from series 2 is non other than the Harlequin Demon, one of the most "Burton-esque" designs of the movie since every bit of this character is reminescent of Burton 2D artworks and have his own twisted and childish visual cues.

I alsready did a review of the original action figure version of this character FIVE YEARS AGO !!!! Soo since its been soo long i will review this as a brand new figure instead of a variant. First of all this guy have an amazing balance and can stand on hiw own perfectly and unlike the action figure version, he have no base of any shape.

This guy is literally twice the size of the action figure and instead of plastic he is made with resin, soo he is also really heavy and have no articulations at all, even the tentacles on his head are not bendy, this is a solid resin piece, a single piece sculpture that is more for decoration than the actual action figures and comes in a pretty neutral pose (not like his body let him take many different poses anyway).

The sculpt is very good, with all the dragon scales that looks like a dress sharply sculpted as well as the spiky arms with a hairy texture, the odd alien like hands (he have no thumb!!!) and the short legs and feet with 6 fingers, all body proportions are great but the realy eye catcher is of course, the head: The big bowl shaped jaw full of sharp fangs and the skull levitating on top, covered in fangs as well, with the sharp eyes and tentacles that looks like horns.

Compared with the action figure, this sculpt looks even more faithfull to the on screen puppet. I mean, the action figure was always damn close but this version on a much bigger scale is even closer, if not perfectly match the on screen image. The lines on the tentacles are sculped as well as the expression line on his evil looking eyes as well as each torn on his hairy arms.

While the character is cartoony, the paint is really well done as well. The feet and arms are kinda simple with only the thorns painte din white in between the hairs and while his jaw is pure grey, the dragon scales have irange and yellow with a dark wash around that makes them looks....well, kinda dark, kinda dirty, a little old, the perfect texture the puppet had in the movie. 

The head too have a fascinating finish of blacks and greys that gives him a pretty elegant and silk texture to it. The orange on the tentacles is perfect and the yellow eyes with green framing have a weet and shiny layer that makes the Demon looks more alive.

One of the accesorys of the action figure was a mallet he uses to create his hats and in here the mallet is present but is part of the whole sculpture and cant be removed. The texture and soft brown coloring makes it looks like a tiny piece of wood despite the reson material.

His other accesory is his table, a wood table with a piece of paper on top, scissors and a yellow ribbon on it as well as a dead rat. In the action figure the rat was a separate accesory but here it is part of the table and cant be removed. The sculpt in the table texture is really sharp as well as in the fur of the rat.

The grey tones in the table paint makes it looks old and real and is a totally different grey than the one on the rat. The ribbon looks vibrant and the scissors are painted in silver soo everything stands out perfectly despite having mute colors that gives it a gothic look. 

Also, unlike the action figure, the table have a long peg in the side that must be inserted on the Harlequin Demon belly. This is another difference with the action figure version, tehres a hole on his belly.....and is rpetty odd looking but the table cover it. I am guessing they expect the table to be used as a sort of base and keep the figure in balance but the reality is that the Demon can stand on his own and dosnt need the table at all. I hate the hole on the figure but nothing can be done about it.

There is also the bat hat Jack put on the Demon´s head in the movie. The scupt of the fur is really really good and the grey paint of it is extremelly sharp and well defined, unlike the smaller sale version that is just plain grey, this one have different tones of grey in between the hair strands as well as in the wings. Tough for some reason it only have a single leg and of course, it cant be put on the Demons head since it made with resin and not soft plastic.

And finally he have a gift wrapped in orange paper with spiders and a grey ribbon. The irregular shape as well as the color palette mix perfectly the Christmas and Halloween spirits of the movie and the material make this little gift quiet heavy as well.

This character is a pure representation of Burton in his best moment and while this is an exact coy of the action figure eveb to the accesorys, the difference bewteen the two are quiet sharp and this version looks more luxury and perfect. Of coruse i am afraid to broke his head, the fangs of the pointy tentacles, this piece is really relicate but looks soo good on the svhelves, specially in this season!!

LULU

 

Final Fantasy X was the first in many ways and the last in others: it was the very first Final Fantasy to have voices and facial expressions and it was also the last to be a tradictional turn based RPG as well as the last one from the team behind the original first 10 Final Fantasy games. The next six games had some really spectacular entrys as well as others not soo shiny, but non had the voice of Hironobu Sakaguchi imprinted on them and this game was the last to echo that voice since not even X-2 had it.

Final Fantasy X was also the very last game of SquareSoft...and back then they didnt produce theyr own figures soo it was Kotobukiya that had the rigths of theyr characters and while they release lots of action figures based on VIII and X (i still dont know why IX had no merchadise) for me the cherry of the cake was theyr ArtFX statues. In 2001 they were extremelly classy and spectacular looking with Tidus and Yuna being everywhere and having limited articulations, Rikku and Auron being very rare to spot and finally Lulu and Kimahri being imposible to find and really expensive!!

And against all odds and after 23 years of search, i was able to find Lulu. She have a little bit of battle damage but i got the feeling this was going my last chance to get her and she is in 95% perfect condition. She is on 1/6 scale soo she is huge and fits perfectly in size with Hot Toys, Sideshow, Tunshi, Medicom, ThreeZero figures and she can stand on her own perfectly. I mean with that dress she is super stable, like a mountain.

Just like the others in the collection, this sculpt is completelly faithfull to the Tetsuya Nomura art design soo the details really pop up. The sculpt on her face is trully beautifull, specially on her pouty lips. It dosnt matter wath angle she is look at, the lips and nose looks pretty perfect and natural always and even her eyes are sculpted (or only one eye??? I have no idea of the eye behind her hair is actually sculpted or not).

The hair lack deffinition but this is mostly because of the material, vynil dosnt hold up extremelly intrincate designs, specially on the hair tough i do love her braids and how soft they are. Sadly, this softish material also makes it delicate since she is misisng 3 of the 4 hair ornaments.

Sadly her jewelry around her neck and earing are sculpted on top of her bdy instead of being separate pieces and this give it a pretty plain look despite how perfectly sculpted they are. Her skin is very smooth as well as her long dress texture that looks really spectacular from the back given how long is the back tail tough her corse ir sich in details and wrinkles, the part that atract more the attention are the belts.

While all belts are a whole piece, they are sculpted in layers and have different levels that wrap around each other while still keeping the flow of the dress and her exposed leg is not part of it, thats section is a hole and under it her legs are completelly sculpted, posed in a very femenine way and using black stiletos as well as black translucent stockings. All this is hidden by the dress and her feet actually touch the ground soo she is not flaoting with her dress, her legs have the perfect size and are anatomically correct (and yes, she is not using underwear).

Her Moogle plush tough is a totaly independent piece and fits nicelly around her arm ins a very natural way. The sculpt is clean and good looking for a weapon tough he is missing also the pom on his head, one of the most delicate part of his design and in vynil, one of the weakest as well.

Lulu´s skin color is very pale and makes her look like a very unatural doll tough thats fits her perfectly (unlike the very pink and healty skin color of Yuna) and the color of her hands and legs matches perfectly the color of her chest and face (most of the time this is very rare even in modern figures) with only very little shade on her chest to give it EVEN MORE volume.

The black of her eye lashes, white in here eye, brown in her pupil, her mole, the purple lipstick, every detail is perfectly painted as well as the metalic red and blue of her jewelry. The leaf details on her dress and sleeves is kinda sloppy tough and invades some black segments tough theres different tones of grey in here to make it stand out more.

Again, the belts also stand out with the many tones of black, greys blues and reds perfectly deffined as well as the metalic bits. The deffinition is impresive!!

This is an trully femenine and sexy design that gets sexyer the more you look: the goth makeup, the elegant dress, the exposed leg, the stockings and stiletos, the bosom and corse, its been soo long since Final Fantasy had a design lik this and i doubt we see it again. Nomura was really good at character designing and managed to make look cool even the most ridiculous dieas (a dress made of belts).

Maybe i see this ArtFX statues with pink colored glases, the vynil material feels kinda cheap and some of the paint is kinda sloppy, but this statues have such a huge presence on the shelves thanks to the big size and how close they look to the original artwork design, i sure wish Final Fantasy XVI had vynil statues like this instead of those useles Bring Arts crap. But also its soo easy to love this characters. Now i only need Kimahri Ronso but judging by how long it took me to get Auron and Lulu i dont know if i should give up or not.

NOSFERATU

 

One of the things i remember about the pandemic times was my hype with the Thundercats thanks to the Super 7 Ultimate action figures series, a dream come true after soo many years. Sadly, after an incredible first series (actually made by Hasbro), series 2 was a HUGE dissapointing for me and i decided to let it go and stop collecting Thundercats. Over the years i been looking at Super 7 and i been surprised to see how many complains exists for soo long thanks to the bad quality of theyr figures, the high price and some really shady actions from them - like only show computer renders of the figures unti the actual figures comes out (looking totally different).

I was pretty close to fall in theyr trap with the Silverhawks too, another of my childhood dreams, but i avoided that bullet long enough to see them re-release the figures all in silver chrome months after the first release and after they insisted they didnt had the technology to produce chrome figures. Yes they are extremelly sneaky to secure pre-orders even if they have to lie about it and i have other tells i been learning from them but i finally got another of theyr figures, i coud not resist.

Its pretty evident the remake of Nosferatu is near as wella s the 100th anniversary of the origina with soo many toys coming out this year about this character: Funkos, Mezco, NECA, Caustic Plastic and of course, Super 7 also did his version that comes in a super slick and beautifull box, perfectly fitting for a "Ultimate" figure.

This Count Orlok is in scale with standar action figures soo he fits with anything NECA or McFarlane or Storm Collectibles and can stand on his own perfectly as long as his legs are in straight position. He is articulated on the neck, shoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, waist, legs, knees and ankles and to my susprise, all articulations works really really good (ulike the Thundercat´s). The neck is limited of course by his jacket but the rest have a very huge range of movement, even the legs.

Tough his jacket is made of fost plastic and let the legs move around there is a limit and eventually turns the legs to  a straigth position but i guess that is an inevitable restrain of the character design. While the biceps rotate pretty nicelly i am not sure i like the look of the articulation tough i am very happy with how hidden are the knes articulation and how they follow his pants shape.

The sculpt is really good; the shape of his jaw, the long nose and ears, the wrinkles around his eyes and forehead, the iconic details of this monster traslate here veryy nicelly. His body shape is correct and his jacket have a rugged texture that makes it feel like rubber while his pants have a more soft and plain texture and his shoes are pretty shiny.

For some reason tough, Super 7 decided to release him in black and white. I am not against it tough since all the figures i have of Count Orlok are colored, soo this is a nice variation for the display collection soo theres not much color here since each piece is cast on the main color....or main black, since everything is back here.

His jacket have ligther black, the pants are cast in darker black and the shoes are much more darker black while the hands and head are cast in grey plastic. The ligth grey of the skin enhance the soft trasnparency of the material soo it shynes a little bit soo the color is mostly kept for face details.

The very white eyes and fangs stand out with the the grey wrinkles around them as wella s the dark eye brows. There is also a grey wash all around soo the skin dosnt looks perfectly clean and have a natural look (as natural as this monster can be) tough the hands are clean grey and have black knukles. Why the black knuckles? I dont know tough they really made his white finger nails stand out a lot.

On the accesorys side he is pretty ligth tough. He have 4 pairs of hands: closed fist, holding hands, open hands and claw shaped hands. They cna be swaped pretty easy tiugh the finger nails are pretty soft and they were bend inside the blister but is not something that cna be fixed.

Special mention to the claw hands I LOVE THEM!!! The fingers have this bony sculpt that makes them looks like spider legs and also the points of the claws are black soo they have a very poisonous look. This inuman hands are a big part of the character look and gives him a huge expression bost.

Then theres two extra heads that are also very easy to changue despite the jacket collar. One of the heads is called "hypnotic head" in the Super 7 site but i literally cant see any difference with the bae normal head. The sculpt is exactly the same except the color is darker and actually the paint is much more slopy and the eyebrows and eyes are badly painted.

The second extra head tough is very different since he have a more pacific and focued look on his eyes and his mouth is closed, hidding his fangs. Also he have his turkish hat on, his iconic tubeteika nicelly sculpted and with a soft black color and shiny texture. This look of him is essential.

He also comes with an item that has been on all Count Orlok figure soo far: the keys of his castle. This time around instead of a chaine they allmcome together with a metalic rings tough the keys all looks the same and are painted in silver. They fit perfectly on any of the holding hands and the long finger nails keep them in place.

Lastly he have a rat. Only a single rat and it kinda looks more like a pet rat than a pest. The rat sculpt is very cute and basic tough and the paint follows the same route, with his body only having a single black color and his tail, feet and ears in soft greay with no wash or any details to make it looks more natural. It kind of looks cartony at certain degree but i guess it fits the figure, i just wish they added more rats.

Overall this is not a bad figure at all, while the accesorys are pretty basic and the paint could be better, the scult is really good and the articulations works wonderfully. Problem here is NECA´s version is much better and also half the price of this and that proofs wath i always suspected: most of the price of the Super 7 figure is mostly for the pretty box they come in.

Later this year they will release a colored version of this same Nosferatu tough i dont trust Super 7 coloring skills and i got the feeling it will looks cheaper that this version but i am happy with this black and white look.