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Packaging - **
The packaging has terrific graphics, although you've pretty much seen the shot
of Beckinsale on the roof top a million times already. It's not the
graphics or text that's the problem here, but rather the massive size.
While some of it is necessary because of the display bases, I don't think the
package had to be this big. With a little more creativity, they could have
fit it all on a bubble a third smaller, and the card back itself could have been
smaller as well. All the extra die cut edges just add to the bulk, and
this is packaging that takes up far too much space.
Sculpting - ***1/2
I picked up only Raze so far, and the sculpt is extremely good in this
scale. There's a ton of gory detail, and the face is expressive and scary.
The design of the werewolves is a little
different, being more dog like than wolf like, and being more of a hairless dog
at that. You can't fault Mezco though for the design in the film, and I'm
assuming they've stayed faithful here to the character.
Paint - **1/2
The paint ops on the figure itself are better than this score, with good detail
work, although there's not a lot of it. The figure is predominately dark
colors, with a nice wash to highlight the sculpting. It's not perfect, and
a lot of the facial detail is lost in the dark colors of the head, but if I was
just going based on the figure this score would be higher.
The paint ops on the base are a bit
disappointing though. I'm clueless as to what the two large, light colored
circles on the brick section are supposed to be, but they couldn't be any more
obvious. And the red paint, obviously meant to be blood, simply looks like
bright red paint, slapped on by hand with a brush by someone in a hurry to get
home to a bottle of saki.
Articulation - ***1/2
The entire line appears to have better than average articulation, particularly
Selene and Raze.
Raze has neck, ball jointed shoulders, elbows,
wrists, waist, ball jointed hips, knees, calves and ankles. The joints are
all tight, he can hold plenty of various poses, and he stands just fine on his
own. The joints don't hurt the overall sculpt, and add to the playability.
Accessories - ***
Each figure comes with a diorama style base. Raze has a chunk of brick
wall (a corner to be exact), rough floor, and two loose pieces - a barrel and a
crate.
The sculpting on the accessories is extremely
good, with tons of detail. Mezco does diorama work extremely well.
I've already mentioned the weak paint ops though, and that's the biggest reason
these take a slight hit.
Value - **
It's pretty easy to see that $13 is too much for these. Ten bucks
would be great, and I'm betting that the new Winston stuff will be very similar
to this scale and style, and will be in the ten buck range. I'm hoping
it's just the overpriced Media Play that's jacking these up, but we won't be
sure until we see them at some other retailers.
Overall - ***
Raze is a good looking figure, with a pretty nifty diorama. The scale
works alright for me, although I'm sure lots of folks will complain that these
don't mess with the 7" scale of something like the Movie Maniacs.
Mezco has to work on the blood paint application, but overall these aren't bad.
Now, I did give them a bit of a break. I
picked the one out that I thought was the best of the bunch. Viktor was
fairly cool looking in the package as well, but Michael and Lucian didn't do
much for me. And poor Kate Beckinsale should avoid seeing her figure - the
likeness isn't bad, but the expression isn't tough, or cool, or even sexy.
She looks like she was just slightly surprised, not shocked, as if the waiter
brought her onion rings instead of French fries.
Where to Buy -
I picked this one up at Media Play, and they had the entire series on the pegs.
KEEP SCROLLING DOWN FOR A SCALE COMPARISON!
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