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I was pleasantly surprised this week when I went by the local Media Play
and came across this new series of figures for the movie Enter The Dragon,
possibly Bruce Lee's greatest film. These figures are produced by a
new company called Play Along Toys (www.playalongtoys.com). New at
least to most of action figure collectors - they've also produced the
N'Sync marionettes, Xtreme Pets figures, and Mandy Moore doll among
others. There have been quite a few Bruce Lee figures in the last couple
years from a variety of companies. But this is the first time we've been
treated to other figures from one of his movies, and this provides the
collector with a much better display set up. The figures are
approximately 8" - very much in scale with the Sideshow Toys
Universal Monsters for comparison. They were $9.99 at Media Play,
but I have no idea what they may retail for at other locations.
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Packaging - **1/2
Decent art, including live pictures rather than just art work, decorate
the cards. The back gives a decent description of each character,
but not all the characters are pictured. The bubbles are very sturdy
though and should hold up to peg abuse quite well.
Sculpting - ***
The sculpting on the line is mostly hit, with some misses. The
bodies and uniforms are well sculpted on all the figures. Bruce is
surprisingly well done - I've perhaps grown jaded by the many poor
sculpting jobs in the past. While I wouldn't say he's perfect, the
likeness is fairly close. The likenesses of Han and Bolo are decent
as well, but poor John Saxon looks nothing like this figure. They
missed that head sculpt completely, and coloring the hair dark didn't
help. The other major problem here is one of scale. Each of
the figures is good, but stand them next to each other and you'll notice
that Bruce is too tall - he's the same height (or taller if you consider
that his knees are bent) than Bolo.
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Accessories - ***1/2
Every figure comes with an extremely nice display stand, with Enter The
Dragon on the front. Also, most of the figures come with swappable
hands, such as the hands that come with Bruce Lee - closed hands, open
hands, and hands wearing sparring gloves. These swappable hands pop
on and off quite well. Each of the figures also comes with other
accessories - Lee comes with a knife and apple, and a set of nunchuks.
They have a real chain connecting them, but unfortunately it's far too
short.
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Articulation - ***
Each figure varies slightly. Bruce Lee has ball jointed shoulders,
neck, waist, hips and wrists. That's ten points, but the figures are hurt
by a lack of elbows in particular. With that many points, you'd
assume that you'd be able to pose these in far more poses than is actually
possible. However, the figures do stand well on their own, always a
plus.
Value - ***1/2
There aren't too many figures at the ten buck range that actually give you
enough for your money, but these figures have decent sculpting, a good
license, and some terrific accessories. If these pop up at regular
retail outlets for eight bucks, grab them!
Overall - ***
These figures were a very pleasant surprise. Perhaps we'll see some
other interesting stuff come out of this unique company during 2001.
I hope that we see these figures make it to the larger retail stores as
well. The web site shows three other Lee figures, part of their
'Dragon Series', and in this Enter the Dragon line, they also show a
Williams figure which I did not find on the shelf. I suspect it
didn't get made, and the Saxon figure was made instead.
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Figure from the collection of Michael Crawford
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