JOHNNY & BOUERE FROGS

 Starting new year with something from 22 years ago, back then was an interesting moment for action figures since, thanks to McFarlane Toys, figures were starting to be geared towards mature collectors and videogames started to get a big popularity and they became the subject of lots of new born companys. One of them was Palisades Marketing that produced some astonishing Resident Evil figures, the Pink Panther, the Muppets, and many other, but it started with all with the Sega Dreamcast, producing figures of one of his most iconic serires: The House of the Dead.

It wa deffinetly really popular back then and Palisades had the brillant idea of ignore the main characters (who everyone stoped remembering them minutes after turning off the game) and focus completelly on the zombies that used to be soo well known back then, starting with Johnny and the Bouere Frogs, somethign really common back then, add smaller characters with the standar characters for a two pack feature.

Sculpted by SOTA scupute and design, Johnny is one of the most well known faces of the serires, he is the axe throwing zombie and have some issues standing byt how own, given to his small feet and the sculpted pre-pose on his legs (walking) he needs to find the exact point to be able to stand. The frogs tough, while the four leg one have no problem, the one in two legs cant stand at all soo he is destined to be liying around forever.

Johnny is articulated on the neck, shoulders, elbows, half arm, waist, legs and knes tough the legs articulations are useless because, while they have a descent range of movement, if you want him to stand you better leave his legs completelly alone. Also the shoulders are the only ball joints, soo the rest are cut joints and only move to one direction. This is specially tricky with the elbows since with a rotation they change from stretched to bent. I really hate how tricky and limited is this movement system, i am glad figures dont use it anymore.

The sculpt is good, he is lanky and his mouth full of pointy fangs looks really good and the sculpt on the frogs is also pretty good, with theyr huge human teeth and fingers and wart covered back, tough they lack any kind of articulation. Johnny tough is a variant, something very common back then, they produce a lot of color and sculpture valiant exclusive to specific stores. This Johnny have half of his head blown soo he is missing and eye and have a huge weird hole that makes his head appeare miuch more ligther. I love it, i love how gory this is and is deffinetly very "house of the dead".

The paint s a different matter. His shirt have stripes and thats always troublesome with articulated figures but th main issue is the skin. I dont know wath kind of tools they had back then for painting, but instead of add brushes they pretty much added green stains and spots in different tones that looks very unnatural.I mean, even for a zombie, this dosnt looks like a rotting flesh.

His face is covered in green blood too and that kind of block the details, its looks pretty messy along side to the darker color of his hair and beard (it should be blonce) and the result is kinda difficult to see....i mean, from a distance looks like a mess and just in closer look, you cans ee the details on the face. I like the wet texture on the head hole tough.

Strangelly, the Bouere Frogs have a much better paint, with just different tones of green, huge yellow eyes and white teeth with just some bloody stains on theyr mouth, just enough to not cover the details of the sculpt.

Aside of the Frogs, Johnny comes with his trademark axes. Again, the sculpt of the axes is good tough the paint is really primitive and looks like they are painted by a child. Also, is kinda difficult to put the axes on the hands thanks to the hard material. The last accesory is a base with The House of the Dead logo carved on a rocky ground with some green vines and grey skulls around. The sculpt and paint in the base is FANTASTIC (how ironic) tough is purelly decorative, since theres no peg for Johnny feet soo the figure is just standing on his own force.

I dunno wath to say about this guy. The paint job is really poor and the articulations could be better, tough this was the standar for 22 years ago soo i guess i cant be too hard judging. The second figure was Ken with the Murrer Worms but sadlly i dont have him but i will look forward to find him someday.