WEREWOLF

 

At the end of the last century McFarlane Toys was changing the landscape of figure collecting first with his Spawn line, and secondlly releasing pretty controvertial figures like the Movie Maniacs line, based n monsters from cinema. But before that was the McFarlane Monsters, a serires of play sets of the Universal Monsters redesigned by Spawn´s father.

As a kid i loved this play sets to death. I loved the Dracula set and while i wasnt very thrilled by Frankenstein simplcity, the Werewolf was trully an spectacular set for me since it touched the same cords Dracula did: displaying a pretty traiditional horror landscape with a disturbing twist and some gore.

The central piece of the set, the Wolf himself is bigger than Dracula and he is pretty damn awesome, with his long torso and supernaturally shaped claws, he looks really twisted in a cartoony way but the sciulpt and paint was detailed enough to give him a weird realstic nature. 

He is articulated on the legs, waist, head and shoulders but all of them are simple cut joints, the standar articulation from the 90s. The sculpt is amazing, again, every muscle and the fur on his back, his small head and huge animal feet and the torn clothes, this is actually a much better looking design for a Werewolf than the big scale action figure McFarlane did in 2002.

And the paint is just as good as the sculpting, with different browns to give him a pretty good volume. The opposite of the spectrum is the secondary figure: Richard, a huntsman using a generic outfit with a brigth orange vest, gloves and cap. And he is soo generic, bald, with a mustache and glases, but the sculpt is soo funky, his hands soo big and he have no neck at all....and of course, the paint is as muddy and shaddy as the sculpt.

He cant stand at all and he can barelly keep his weapon on his hands and not even his cap fits on his head...he is an incrediblly frustrating little figure that looks extremelly boring and he is not articulated....or is he? Actually, he can be dismembered completelly, lose one of his legs, his two arms and his head revealing his bones. Pretty cartoony bones but still, theres is gore in here somehow.

All the removable sections can be moved around tough it dosnt help to make him posable since his only propuse is to be the victim of the savage hunger of the wolf, being dismembered by him and nothing more.

And how we know his name? At the side of the display base there is a plaque that reads "Richard He Deserved what he got!". A pretty nice detail that can be a little creppy at times, like why is he bing killed by a Werewolf over his own tomb? It was destiny or hes actually a ghost? I love how this playsets have this tiny details are allround.

The set consist on a path in a forest tough this is no pretty path with pasture and flowers arund, the soil is dry and muddy, there is no green in here eccept for a dry, dead and hollow tree on the side. The sculpt and painting of the base is gritty and matches perfectly the horror setting and the tree looks pretty natural too. The road is inclined soo is extremelly difficult to put Richard on it but the Werewolf looks spectacular on top of it.

The tree can be open and Richard can be hanged inside with the help of a hole on his back and a peg. Of course he fits inside once he lose his limbs. Open the secret door on the tree and there he is, hanging with his arms and head liying around, like some kind of butcher basement.

Is cool to think that the Werewolf is soo smart to store his food like this, i mean, he is part human, he must be smarter than your average wolf. The sight is pretty gruesome, tough as a kid i really loved it.

I really dont know if i like this playset more than Dracula. I hate Richard but everything else is pretty impresive tough i can say i like this design much more than the later version McFarlane released in 2002. And i like it more than the playsets that i am misisng on my collectiob, Frankenstein and Quasimodo (i never liked the Hunchback as part of the Monsters line up).