JILL VALENTINE

 Its hard to belive how much merchadise about Resident Evil we got long time ago, when the series started. Now its one of the pillars of gaming but despite that, merchwise Resident Evil is pretty low tough both RE7 and 8 arent exactly toys friendly. But the first gmes are still pretty good for action figures and despite having a lot of Toy Biz and Moby Dick Toys figures back then, Plisades Marketing released 3 series of articulated figures at a totally different scale.

But they also released statues. A Resident Evil 2 pair with Claire Redfield and another with William G-2, that never saw in my life and it seems they are extremelly rare and limited, looked fantastic and by 2000-2001 they also released a pair based on Resident Evil 3: Jill Valentine and Nemesis.

I think tough this statues are based on japnese garage kits but i am not very sure...i just know there is a japanese version of this figures but i dont know the brand. Plisades version of Jill tough is 11 inch soo she towers over the action figures series but is really really ligth since she is howllow and the vinyl is pretty thin.

Sculpted by Tunehisa Namimatsu, this Jill Valentine have a lot of problems standing by herself sicne her legs arent that well adjusted and she is juts kinda lanky, i really wish Palisades gives her a stand or a base. Anyways, i guess the convertion from garage kit to mass produced vinyl statue really hurt Tunehisa sculpt, or maybe its the material, but the sculpt is extremelly soft and lacking details.

Jill is standing on a very simple and basic pose with her gun in hand, theres no movement in here or any kind of dynamism but her face dosnt have too many features to beggin with and the rest of the body either...she kinds of looks like the image of a pretty old videogame or CGi from the 90s. I am not sure if that was the intention but i doubt it since the 90s werent that far back then.

The paint is really basic, really pale skin color with no shadows or details at all, electric blue for her top, black for her skirt and brown for her boots. But the worst part are the belts around her shoulders and the little military pockets on her waist, the green is mixing with the skin color and her outfit and looks really bad specially on such big scale.

Her face is pretty, tough extremelly basic and sadlly, the brown of her hair is mixing with her skin as well. The bangs on her forehead are soo awfull looking, is really dissapointing.

Also, thanks to the march of time (more than 20 years!!) and how cheap is the vinyl used in here, the material is starting to brake and the glue is also lossing its effects....plus she likes to fall a lot, soo this statue has been broken into pieces multiple times already. Soo far i been able to fix her but it gets really tiresome at some point.

Maybe a totall repaint can fix many of this figure problems. Its true the sculpt is not that good and is kinda unidimensional but a good paint may help a lot. Mmmm i will think about it, maybe this Jill can come to life and be able to look closer to the prototype shown on the box?

JILL VALENTNE (REGINA VERSION) & BRAIN SUCKER

 In 1999/2000 not only we had a explosion of videogame based toys thanks to ToyBiz and other smaller younger companis, but we also had the first arrival of japanesetoys and they looks way way too different to western toys!!One of the most legendary serires back then was the Fewture Model Devilman and another one was BIOHAZARD 3 Real Shock Action Figures with theyr amazing monster sculpts, impresive size and accuracy to the source material.

Figures were packed on a gigantic box with gory artwork and two figures inside; a human and a monster, as well as an extra piece to build Nemesis Type-3 (just like how Fewture Models did with Dante and Devilman Skeleton). Serires 1 had Jill facing a Drain Deimos and Serires 2 had Jill on her STARS outfit facing a Hunter β. Series 3 had.....another Jill Valentine!!! This time using her alternate outfit based on Regina from Dino Crisis!! And she was facing a Brain Sucker.

Both figures have a descent size, taller than your average action figure and had a huge presence comapred to the rest of the fgures from back then (tough nothing comapared to the Hunter β). Jill cant stand on her own but she comes with a replica base than her first version (tough with a weird blue like water pattern) and the base works wonders despite being really simple. 

She is articulated on the head, shoulders, biceps, wrists, waist, legs and on her boots section, a lot more movement than her first version with the skirt. All cut joints that only move on one direction soo theres not much movement option, tough the ball joint on her neck works great and helps to give her much more personality.

She is pre-posed with her knes bent to hold the gatlingun soo her body is mostly on a weird position tough her small frame and slender shape looks really good. The outfit is simple and clean and sculpted on grey plastic to keep the paint at minimum. The black parts are painted with shiny black to give it a very leatherysh and shiny look and looks fantastic and her face is just as beautifull a the first version.

The second improvement aside of the articulation is the paint work. Like is said, her Regina outfit is pretty clean and shiny in the boots and torsi section but the fleshy bits are cast on skin colored plastic, soo her skin looks much more natural than  her first version and she even have her fingernails painted in pink.

The paint on her face is even better than the first version since thanks to her more pale and clean skin tone, her blue eyes and red lips stand out much more, also the hair on her forehead matchers her hair color that looks more redish this time. I dont know if this was casual or on porpuse to make her look more like Regina. The paint application on her eyes is trully amazing.

This time around he have more accesorys as well. She comes with a big gatlingun wth a boog and complex sculpt but not much paint on it, just metalic plastic. The weapon needs to be hold with both hands but thanks to the shape of her wrists and biceps articulation, the gatlingun fits perfectly on her hands.

She also have two extra weapons: one is the classic grenade launcher form Resident Evil and the other is a gun with an extended handle part. Both have really really cool design and pretty sharp sculpts with metalic aplications as well as brown and ligth blue, tough i dont remember seen that gun in the game it looks damn good.

She also have an extra set of hands to hold the weapons, tough they arent easy to swap, this give her deffinetly many more display options compared to her first version with the skirt. Also...extra hands...back in 1999/2000 having extra hands was way too  fancy for a figure.

The Barin Sucker is....a mess. I udnerstand why Capcom dicthed him in the Resident Evil 3 remake. In Resident Evil 3 Nemesis he looked just like the Drain Deimos but green instead of brown and i dont even remember seein him too often either. Here he looks way too different to the Drain Deimos figure but still is such a mess.

He is the same size as Jill and have some issues standing given to the small and weirdlly shaped feet. He is articulated in one of his heads, each shoulder, elbow, wrists, legs, tail and ankles. All cut joints except the shoulders and the head literally only moves up and down to be able to put him in four legs. Also the things on his face, the proboscis, are dendy plastic with wire inside.

His knes are broken and the bones are protunding, his hands....they are not hands but just stumps with spikes coming from them in a random pattern, on the back it looks like he have 2 or 3 spinal cords mixing together, like he is made of different snakes. This is the only way to see this creture in detail, and even soo is extremelly difficult to find out waths going on here.

The sculpt is perfect, full of details and his faces....well, theres no face here or jaw or cheeck bones or anything, just two holes with the proboscis tentacles coming from them and a random number of eyes on top. The eyes are painted in metalic paint tough the rest of the creature is just green with some tones ehre and there to highligth some details, the thing that stand out the most are the red spikes.

He is rpetty mobile, even his little tail can turn around but given his body shape is very difficult to pose him. Also, i broke one of his legs. I had no option since the legs is a little too heavy for glue, i used a twister to tie it to his body. On any other figure i would but it again but not with him....this things are soo rare and difficult to find AND incrediblly expensive i have no choice here.

Moby Dick Toys did the best they could with Brain Sucker but i like much more the Drain Deimos and Hunter β. Jill is really good looking tough and given we dont have any kind of Dino Crisis mechadise, this could pass as the only time we seen Regina in figrue form. I still cant understand the weird choice of release multiple version of a figure in different outfits tough.

JILL VALENTINE & DRAIN DEIMOS

I still remember the shock when i saw them, it was unexpected, a random day near stores when i saw a HUGE ENORUMOS GIGANTIC box with industrial and gore design, japanese text all over and the sticker of Capcom´s Megaman in the front, near the big window and the tittle in red: "BIOHAZARD 3 REAL SHOCK ACTION FIGURES". I was really shocked. I was really waiting a ToyBiz serires based on Resident Evil 3 but instead we got this gargantuan figures under the misteryous and silly brand of "Moby Dick Toys".

While ToyBiz did the very first Resident Evil figures for the west, Moby Dick Toys now was doing the same but for the Japanese market and under direct supervision of Capcom itself. For some reason the figures came in pairs like ToyBiz but this time not only they didnt had any action feature, but they were huge, really really big.

The very first figure to come out - called Serires 1 - was the protagonist of Biohazard 3, Jill Valentine facing a Drain Deimos, one of those creatures that appeare half the game and looked like insects. Despite the similarity on the two pack thing, this figures were the opposite to ToyBiz. Jill Valentine is big tough a head smaller than a modern Play Arts Kai or a Hot Toys, she is in the same scale of the Devilman Fewture Models, a size not many figures use now but back in 1999-2000, there wasnt bigger tigures than this.

She cant stand on her own but she comes with a base with a simple peg connected to her feet. Is really simple but it works perfect and she is articulated on the head and shoulders and thats it....she is mostly an estatue; aesthetic over playability, like McFarlane Toys used to do, a very common thing back then. The shoulders have cut joints soo they only move u and down but the head is ball jointed soo she can tilt her head and the very little movement gives her a lot of personality.

Despite the lack of posing, she is not static at all. She is pre-posed with her shotgun in one hand aiming at a monster and her other hand being used as support for the shotgun and the determined and steel look on her eyes help a lot for the battle pose.

The sculpt is good, she have a very small and femenine frame and every details is nicelly sculpted despite being a single piece: the belts on her boots, the sweatwe tied to her waist, the puches, the belts around her shoulders. Tough she is lacking any kind of texture and i am not sure if this is a good or a bad thing because she deffinetly dosnt looks realistic, but she looks way too much like the FMV in the game wth that clean-plastic look.

Her face is beautifull, perfect, the face of a doll, the same face she got on the FMV´s of the game with the delicate nose and hair on the side. And thats the strongest point of Moby Dick, under direct Capcom supervision they released perfectly accurate models based on the games assets.

She is not cast in color plastic, instead she is fully painted. The colors of hher boots and skirt are perfectn as well as other details, even the sweater have some very soft greys to give it volume tough her top is a little too green and should be on ligth blue instead. I never knew why they use this color since the rest of the figure is soo accurate. The skin color is ligth and soft, with very ligh oranges to give an impression of soft ligth reflecting on her muscles. She even have her fingernails painted.

Her brown hair have different dark and ligth browns to give shadow to the hair and her lips and eyes are perfectly paiinted, specially her eyes are really bautifull. My only issue are some hairs on her forehead, they are painted and nos sculpted but the brown used looks more red than brown, soo its very evident is just paint.

Her only accesory is a shortgun with a pretty old design, painted n black and brown. The shotgun fits on her hand perfectly and the trigger section is articulated. The other accesory is a black base with a bhihazard logo sculpted on it as well as "Physical Containment LEVEL P4 Biological Containment LEVEL B2" as well as the BIOHAZARD text painted in red. Pretty simple but elegant.

Drain Deimos is half a head smaller than Jill tough he have his back twisted soo in fact he is a pretty large creature and with the arms he manages to be taller than Jill. He is pretty heavy as well and can stand on his own perfectly thanks to those big feet. 

He is articulated on the head, jaws, fours shoulders, four elbows, in the hands/hooks, legs and ankles. The elbows are cut joints soo they only move in one direction but the rest are ball joints and that gives him an extraoirdinary freedom of movement and thats very helpfull to make him stand. Really he is much more versatil than Jill since he can even close and open his jaws/fangs.

In the game this guy is just a pixelated thing with four arms that walks on the walls and ceilings but Moby Dick Toys based this on the actual artwork of Capcom soo not only this is the only figures based on this creature to ever be produced, but this is the only way to see him in detail from every angle as well! Hollu shit!!!

The sculpt is exquisite! With his entire rib cage and stomach section lacking skin and having his internal organs exposed as well as open wounds revealing muscular tiisue behind, the rest of his body is insect exoeskeleton and his face is that of a fly, with two eyes in one side of his face. really, this thing is just a four leged giant fly with no wings.

Painted with metalic brown paint to give him a pearly armour look to his entire body that reflects the ligth nicelly as well as his giant hook claws being painted in grey metal, theres not a single drop of paint in the wrong place here. He is much more perfect even than Jill herself.

But perhaps the most impresive part are his hairs....he have this big and hard black hairs coming out from his back and legs, he is a fly after all, rigth? The hair gives it an incrediblly nasty look and make him disgusting to touch as well.

Aside of this the box also comes with a "build a figure" piece for Nemesis Type-3. I didnt take photos of the peice because i dont remember exactly wich peice comes with this two and theres not much point on focusing on it since i didnt manage to build this Nemesis.

ToyBiz let us waiting for Resident Evil 3 serires but this Moby Dick Toys were something else, totally different to anythign on the market back then and directly from Capcom´s hands. Sure Jill was pretty, but the Drain Deimos is soo crazy impresive from every angle even for now day standars.

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.