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 well as 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 can be swaped pretty easy tough the finger nails are pretty soft and they were bend inside the blister but is not something that can 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 focused 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.

RYO SAKAZAKI

 When Storm Collectibles took The King of Fighters license years ago the possibilitys were pretty much endless for people who have been a fan of fight games since the 90s and little by little they been fullfiling some of our collectors dreams giving us high quality action figures of characters that never before had any kind of figure or merchadise at all, despite them belonging to SNK legendary digital story.

One of those legendary moments from fight game story was Art of Fighting, a game that was way too amazing to be belived back at the begining of the 90s, with gigantic spirtes, beautifull spirte art, battle damage in real time on the characters, taunts and for the first time a "super move" that used a power bar (long time before Street Fighter did it) as well as mini games and character interactions. And there it was born Ryo Sakazaki, the main character that spark the controversy over SNK recreating Ryu from Street Fighter.

While in fact Ryo was a very different character than Ryu and theyr only similarity was the karate gi they use, this sparked a lot of rivalry between Capcom and SNK. While Art of Fighting stays there in the 90s, its character has continue to keep active even now days in The King of Fighters: Robert Garcia, Yuri Sakazaki, Takuma Sakazaki, King, Kasumi Todoh, Mr.Big and for a good reason, since this characters pretty much inaugurated the very frst The Kinf of Fighters tournament along side a pretty young Geese Howards lonf before KoF 94 (this was the storyline of Art of Fighting 2).

After this long intorudction i must say i was pretty happy when Storm show the first images fo theyr Ryo Sakazaki figure based on his KoF 98 version, giving us a chance to finally have the poster boy of every single of theyr games: Ryo from Art of Fighting, Terry from Fatal Fury, Haohmaru from Samurai Spirits and of course, Kyo Kusanagui from KoF.

In the same size as Terry and a little bit shorter than Geese, Ryo scale perfectly with all other Storm character and he stands perfectly as well since his legs articulations are pretty strong. Of course, is still a shame they dont give him a base given the character nature but at this point i think is usless to expect a base in a Storm figure.

He is articulated on the neck, whoulders, biceps, elbows, wrists, chest, waist, legs, knees, ankles and half feet and just like always, the articulations are completelly flawless and with a huge range of movement, all of them ball joints and double joints in the elbows and knees and given the simplicity of his design, nothing get in the way of the articulations, nothing at all (unlike Genjuro or Geese thick pants that keep his legs kind of stiff). 

The chest part and the top of his uniform are made with soft plastic soo nothing at all keep him away from the most dynamic poses that could make any fighter proud and the articulations are strong enough to keep them.

The sculpt is very very very good, with his manly and handsome face fetures pretty sharply sculpted, specially on the mouth, his stoic face exppression and that hair, very very spiky hair almost like a hedgehog, and specially the front part is very spectacular looking!! He looks exactly like an anime man from the 80s and i love it!!!

His design is extremelly simple, the muscles on his arms are huge but not big enough to affect his movements, with veins and a realistic texture. The black shirt under this gi is sculpted and cant be removed  but it huge his chest pretty nicelly in a very natural way. 

The gi have a pretty sharp fabric texture on it that makes it look rough and old with pretty natural wrinkles that flows with his body no matter how you puse him and the black belts on his waist is also made with soft plastic tough unlike Ryu or Heihachi or Hohmaru, the belt cant be removed soo the gi cant be removed either wich is a shame because i really wanted to see the black shirt sculpt underneat.

The pants have the same fabric texture and the feet bare feet looks natural and realistuc, even the nails are painted in a little darker tone than his skin. The whole exposed skin have a very sexy tan that Terry dosnt have and the color matches that of the hands and face.

The mouth have a pretty discret paint aplication to make it stand out but the best part are the eyes, those big and penetrating eyes with brown pupils and thick eyebrows that makes him looks too much like the character from a manga from the 80s. The blond hair have a different tone than Terry´s and have a lot of darj washes and pinks that gives a lot of volume to the already sharp spykes.

Belt, wrists bands and shirt are pitch black while the gi is plain orange with some soft yellow washes here and there to make it look used and old. The effect is pretty nice and keep it away from a very cartoony look.

This man is loaded with stuff as well, he have 7 pars of hands!!! Aside of the closed fist, he have relaxed hands, open hands, choping hands, claw hands....actually 3 pairs of claw shaped hands that at first i tough they are the same but in fact, the position of the fingers is differet....some of the fingers are more stretched than other in some pairs while other fingers are flexed...is hard to describe and the difference soo tiny it can only been seen by comparing each hand. This is testament of the amazing attention to detail from Storm Collectibles. All hands are made with softish plastic and they can be swap pretty easy.

Ryo also have two extra heads: one with a snarling expression and another one with an attack scream. Paint and sculpt matches the quality of the stoic base face expression and the paint job on the teeth of the snarking expression as well as the inside of the mouth on the screaming expression is excelent, but actually the hair in the front have also a different sculpt!!! The snarling expression show more his forehead while the screaming face have the hair moving to the side, in a motion of movement.

While the diffetent heads with unique hair sculpt are pretty amazing, by favorite part is the Zanretsuken effect part, one of my all time favorite accesorys from Storm and probablly my absolute favorite: a serires of punches up front in high velocity, pretty similar to Chun Li´s kicks. The effect consist on a wrists band with two forearms conected with a motion air effect, one above Ryo´s arms and another one under it, punching at the front.

After removing the hand and wrists band, exchange it with this speciall wrists band and add back the closed fist at the figure and you have Ryo doing the Zanretsuken, throwing a series of punches soo fast it looks like he have 3 fists. The looks is soo amazing and works soo good, this is Storm enginering and creativit at the max. The peice is made with transluscent white plastic with the first and wrist bands painted while the end section of the arms are transluscent as well as the motion effects that unite the whole piece.

It looks awesome, trully awesome and theres nothing more to say about it. My only concernt is that is made with hard plastic and put the band around Ryo´s wrists its kind of tricky and extra caution should be used while adjusting it.

Aside of having waths probablly the best effect on an Storm Collectibles figure, Ryo also have the Haoh Shoukou Ken: a HUGE blue enerfy ball that he sots from his hands like a Hadoken. This effect is really masive and took most of the box space tough the sculpt is really simple and comes in translucent and softish plastic with some hues of electric blue at the tips of the spykes. It consist in two pieces and the front piece that cover the ball have a white wash that makes it looks more dense and thick (i guess this is were the enerfy concentrate???).

The ball is hollow and the front part sometimes keep falling. I dont now why they divided into two, my only guess is that it can be stuffed with led ligths for some really amazing effects but i need to try it later. To keep the Haogh Shoukou Ken in the hair it comes with a round base with a pole at the center. The pole can be adjusted to make it higher or lower but even hollow, the ball is big and the pole tends to bend to the front soo i must be carefull with it.

And laslty theres the background, based on the Japan Tempe stage from KoF 98. This stage is really dark tough the contrast with the electric night sky and red pillars at the side gives it a rich contrast but sadly, this printed version is way too dark and the electric blue sky looks dark purple. I find it as an odd election for Ryo but given his vibrant color palette with orange and yellows, this dark brakcground makes him pop up pretty strongly soo i guess i cant complaing?

This figures show how much care and love feel Storm Collectibles for The King of Fighters; amazing articulations, great sculpt and paint, fantastic accesorys, lots of stuff to play with the character despite him being a fighter that only use his hands and nothing more and i am glad they are hadling this license, i really do and it mades me regret not getting the other characters rom the series (Kyo, Iori, Rugal, May, Blue Mary, Orochi) but i guess it may be too late by now and i am only picking my favorite characters.

Once you pass the "is a Ryu clone" thingy and know Ryo´s character as well as his evolution over 20 games, Ryo Sakazaki is one of the coolest and best men on the fighters universe and trully a legend and i always wished they make figures based on him, but for once, he was finally blessed with one that is also the very best figure they could do for him, an ultimate Ryo worth his legacy.