JILL VALENTINE & WEB SPINNER

 

When Resident Evil exploded in the Playstation at the end of last century, ToyBiz took that same excitment to the toys epartment (i am shocked how fast they did it...now day figures based on a game or movie comes out like 6 years after the game or movie release) with the debut of theyr "Video Game Superstars" line based entirelly on the cast of Resident Evil.

One of the most memorable parts of the collection was how they release two characters together: sometimes a main character and a villain or sometimes a big character with a smaller one, but this always helped to build a diorama or a nice display set up from the very start. Of course the very first figures in the line were Chris Redfield and the Cerberus dog but following pretty close was the second protagonist (or first....back then 100% of us played with her and not Chris): Jill Valentine and the Web Spinner.

Jill is a little bit smaller than Chris while the Web Spinner is the same size the Cerberus dog. Jill have the scale of the figures from back then soo its the same size a modern Figma and she can stand on her own perfectly as well as her spidery friend.

She is articulated on the neck, shouders, elbows, legs, knes and ankles while the Web Spinner is completelly static. Just like Chris, Jill articulations are "90s articulation", just cut joints with movement to a single direction except for her shoulders that have ball joints. The shoulders are the best articulated area but still her shoulder pads really keep in theyr way soo this dosnt give a lot of change for different poses.

Again, back in 1997 we only had Jill,s blurry 3D render and the artwork used on the boocklet of the game and ToyBiz took the artwork as base.Jill is very cute looking tough not specially curvy, her face is very basic tough her hair is nice sculpted. Unlike Chri, her legs are not preposed soo she is on a pretty neutral look. There no texture here, just basic plastic.

The paint is very basic too with strong plain blues and greys tough the STARS logo on her cap is perfect as well as her big anime girl eyes, and just like Chris, she dosnt have too much of an expression.

The Web Spinner is hairy and its legs really needs a more edgy sculpt but this is just a big ass spider soo theres not much else to see here. The radioactive hgreen eyes looks really good against the black head with the red hair around it and the red and yellow legs are pretty odd looking.

The thing here is this: while we have a lot of Jill action figures by now, this is pretty much the only figure based on the Web Spinner, one of the most classic monster from the game. Despite not being the most exciting creature, this makes this little guy pretty special.

Unlike Chris, Jill have no knife but she comes with her M9 gun with no paint and a very generic sculpt and i have she have problems holding it as well, maybe because her hands are smaller? She also comes with a big ass flamethrower!! Though this weapon is smaller than Chri´s rocket launcher and looks a little bit "normal" is still nto game accurate and looks more generic than anything.

The glames misil is made with transparent plastic and looks really cool and once inserted on the weapon and pushing a button on top, the flames are trhwon with a spring action. All those from back then had to have thos weapons for some reason.

Another must on this toys are the action feature and jill share the same with Chris, an ugly huge level on her back that onece pushed down, make her rise her arm and turn her head to auto aim to an enemy. Sadlly for some reason this time this feature dosnt works too good and her arms dosnt move too much. Maybe the her body is too small for the mechanism??

The Web Spinner works much better tough: push its head and its main body opens up and catapult a green web with tiny spiders to Jill!! The spiders arent painted and are made with elastic plastic, but the feature works soo well it looks pretty cool.

As simple as this toys looks by now, this were the very frst time we see in plastic this characters and even with theyr flaws, having both Chris and Jill on the desk figthing against a Cerberus and Spider while playing the actuall game was one of the best feelings ever for a 90s kid.