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Sculpting - ***
Now here's the first big surprise - the head sculpt is really quite
good! It might even be another half star better than this,
but
underneath the paint it's a bit tough to tell.
Below
the eyes is where it captures Ford as Indy the best. The crooked nose,
sly smirk on his lips, and shape of his jaw and face all are very well
done, particularly considering how difficult it is to capture Indy.
It's
in the eyes and eye brows that he loses it, and I'm not completely sure
if it's paint or sculpt. The eyes do look a little too wide set, and
the eyebrows might be better if the painter had actually followed them.
The eyes need to be a bit sharper too, with the actual balls set a bit
deeper. In this scale, they end up looking flat in person.
The
hair is nicely done, but the ears are a bit clunky as well. There's
some mold flashing on the right ear, and both seem a bit oversized.
The head is scaled properly for
the body, sans chapeau. I'll get to the hat in a later section.
The
hands are also little over sized, although they work well with the
accessories. He comes wearing the whip gripping right hand and relaxed
pose left hand, and there are two additional right hands included as
accessories.
He stands 18 1/2 inches tall
without the hat, making him fit in quite
nicely with other rotocast and hard plastic cast quarter scale figures
you might have on your shelf.
Paint - **1/2
This is
where it gets a bit trickier. I have a hunch that mediocre paint ops are
covering up a much nicer head sculpt than I expected.
The skin
tone is decent, and they did go the extra mile and paint the neck and
shoulders of the light skinned body to match the face. I wish they'd
done the same for the hands and wrists, which are much lighter than the
face.
The lips are quite realistic,
but the eyes, while
straight and clean, lack life. Combine the shallow sculpting of the
eyeballs with the flat paint job, and you get too much of a
mannequin appearance.
They eyebrows are the weakest
link, having
a very toyish quality. The difficult stubble is actually better than
usual, and the hairs were actually sculpted as a texture, and a dark
paint was used as a wash to bring it out.
I also had a very large
smudge of brown paint on the back right side of his head. Thanksfully,
it was hidden by the shirt collar for the most part, but sloppy is
sloppy.
Articulation - ***
Another
surprise was the underlying body. I had the impression that it would
have a few points of articulation, and I assumed this meant it would be
similar to a rotocast body. How wrong I was.
This is a full
fledged action figure body, just like any sixth scale figure, simply up
sized to quarter scale. Instead of thinking the usual rotocast quarter
scale, think more along the lines of that Men of Honor line that
was at Toys R Us a few years ago, only a little more realistically
proportioned.
He
starts off with a ball jointed neck that tilts side to side and
backward pretty well, but can't come too far forward due to the chin.
It's a decent amount of mobility though, and allows you to give some
life to most poses.
He has ball jointed shoulders
and hips, using
the standard peg and post. The elbows are pin/post ball joints as
well, giving them quite a bit of mobility, and there's a cut forearm
joint and a pin wrist.
The hands can be a bit tough to
pop on and
off, but better tough than falling off. In fact, the right forearm
joint tended to fall apart on me (it's just a post) when I was posing,
but not the hands. Fortunately, it was easy to pop the forearm back on,
but it was still a tad annoying.
The lower torso contains the
sound feature, but above it is a high ab-crunch joint, and below it is
one of those sort of floating ball waist joints.
As I mentioned,
the hips are ball joints (and clicky), and there's a cut thigh as
well as a unique double jointed knee, cut ankles, and a swivel joint
right in the middle of the shoe. Yep, the shoe has a joint that allows
the foot to tilt forward and back, but there's no side to side
movement. The shoes are the actual feet, and pop off easily enough at
the cut ankle joint.
The body doesn't look
particularly
attractive without the clothes on it, but it does wear them pretty
well. My only complaint in that regards is with the very thin lower
torso, where the sound box is. Even in clothes, this skinny part of the
body was quite obvious. You'll want to keep Indy's jacket on at all
times.
Most of the joints are tight,
and many of them are clicky.
I did find that the joints inside the boots, the ones that allow the
foot to move foreward and back, are a bit loose, making it tough to
keep him standing at times. But as a first release of a completely new
body, I was pleasantly surprised. I see an awful lot of customizing
potential for folks in this scale, and these figures are going to be
popular with the collectors of fashion dolls in this scale as partners.
I
do want to note though that because many of these joints are clicky
joints, you have to work with him a bit to start getting really natural
poses. Yank him out of the box and slam him down, and he'll just stand
there in an awkward way. But work with the joints for a little while to
get a feel for what they can do, and you'll get much better results.
Accessories - ***
The quantity of accessories and applicability is good - the quality is
a bit Hasbro though on a few of them.
Let's start with the hat. I'm
including that here, rather than in the Outfit section this time
around. Why? Because.
Rather
than go with the hat sculpted on the head, they went with the removable
hat. And it's no surprise...it's big. Since it's a sculpted plastic
hat, it's thick to begin with, and it has to fit on reasonably
realistic looking hair. It's not as oversized as some I've seen, but I
don't think he looks as good in it as he does out of it.
He also
comes with his gun, also oversized. He has some pretty big mitts as I
mentioned earlier, and the gun does fit well in the right hand designed
for it, but there's no doubt that it's a good 25% too big. The sculpt
is fairly basic, as is the paint, but it gets the job done.
It
fits well in the holster though, and that's were I'll be leaving mine.
Speaking
of right hands, he has two additional. There's a closed fist, and a
gripping hand designed specifically for the gun. They both
work
just fine for what they are.
There is not one but two whips.
There's a coiled whip that fits on Indy's belt in a leather loop, and
looks great doing it. The coils aren't quite as distinct as I'd like
them to be, but it fits well on the belt.
And speaking of this extra
belt, it's made from pleather, with a movable holster and a movable
loop for the whip. Both of these 'containers' use metal snaps to hold
their items in place, and are very sturdy considering the material. The
buckle works well, and even has pre-punched holes in five or six places
so you can adjust the length of the belt to your tastes.
The
uncoiled whip has a bit of a soft sculpt as well, but the length is
decent, and there's a wire running through the first couple thirds,
allowing you to pose it.
He comes with the fertility idol
as
well, also pretty well scaled. The sculpt seems slightly off to me, but
we've had so many versions at this point I'm starting to get fuzzy
around the edges.
My big disappointment here is
the lack of his shoulder bag. That's an extra that Indy just
has to have.
Outfit - ***
Another big surprise for me was how good the costume was in general,
once I had him out and had a chance to adjust it. There's still a few
issues, but I was very pleasantly surprised.
The jacket is the most important
article of clothing, of course. This one is made from a material very
similar to the Sideshow 12" Indy, the very thin leather-like but not
really leather material. It worked great in that scale, and it works
even better here. I'm not an expert on Indy jackets, but this one looks
more Last Crusade to me than Raiders, but go back to my review of the
earlier Sideshow version for my explanation as to why these jackets may
not look exactly like they did in the first film.
The jacket also has real pockets
up front, a very nice nylon liner, and a perfectly scaled working
zipper. The small belts in back are even the same color
material, doing Sideshow's jacket one better.
The jacket does have some
weathering, although it doesn't show up well in photos. It's very
minor, which was a wise move, since weathering is something so easy to
screw up during production.
Now, the jacket isn't the right
color. It's too close to black. The wear does show that it's
a brown jacket...just a really, really, really dark brown, so dark that
for most folks it may look black. Had they gotten the color more
accurate, this outfit could have scored another half star higher.
The shirt looks good, but
doesn't have any wear. It does have small metal snaps holding it closed
though, and the buttons are perfectly in scale.
Both the jacket and shirt also
need *slightly* longer sleeves. It's not as big an issue for the jacket
as the shirt, and it's not a deal breaker for either, but it's obvious
enough to be worth mentioning.
The 'boy scout' belt works
really well, and the buckle is a huge improvement over the one Sideshow
used in the smaller scale. The pants look alright, although in person
they seemed too tight and thin on the legs.
Finally, there's the sculpted
boots. These look great to me, although again I'm not quite the Indy
outfit expert. The sculpt and paint give them a very realistic look,
even with the weird joint in the middle.
Sound Feature - ***
This line will feature sounds from the films, built into the torso.
The
button is actually a large chunk of his waist, with the speaker right
above it. Press the button and you'll hear one of three phrases:
"Snakes. Why did it
have to be snakes."
"Marion, don't look at it...shut
your eyes, Marion...don't look at it no matter what happens!"
"I don't know, I'm making this
up as I go."
These
sounds are clear and crisp, right from the movie soundtrack. I was
hoping for more than three, considering the number of potential quotes,
but perhaps we'll see more with future figures.
It's important to
note that in the box, he's set to a 'try me' feature where only one
sound plays. There's a small black switch on his left side to turn that
to full function. It doesn't mention this anywhere on the box, and I
had to strip him down to find it, but once you know where it is (as you
now do), you can switch it through his shirt.
Fun Factor - ***
This
is a very sturdy figure, and with the exception of the pleather belt,
could hold up to just about anything a kid throws at it. Considering
that there are plenty of "kids's toys" that run up to $100 and more
these days, it's not too far fetched to pick this up for an 8 - 12 year
old fan who is still in that play-to-collect conversion.
Value - ***
The Men of Honor figures were about 24" tall,
but even 6 years ago they started out at retail at Toys R Us for $80.
Yea, they had to clear them out closer to $30, but they were unlicensed
and much more toy-like than this Indy.
Most rotocast figures in
this scale are running $60, and this figure can be had for as cheap as
$65 from some of my sponsors. Considering that he is NOT rotocast, but
a fully articulated solid action figure, includes sound, and has an
excellent costume, that's a great price.
Now, get the paint quality up
there, as well as slightly better looking accessories, and this score
gets even higher.
Things To Watch Out For
-
Take
your time handling the pleather belt of course. This material can rip
if you get a bit too rambunctious. Otherwise, you should be good to go.
Overall - ***
I had not expected this figure to be this well done. It's not perfect
by any stretch of the imagination, but it is a solid head sculpt, a
very good outfit, some decent accessories, and a well articulated body,
all in a quarter scale at a decent price.
Now, it's not going to replace
the Sideshow Premium Format figure as THE Indy to have in this scale.
But it's only one fourth the price. This figure has me very
interested in the upcoming releases, especially the Han in Hoth Gear.
Score Recap:
Packaging - **1/2
Sculpting - ***
Paint - **1/2
Articulation - ***
Accessories - ***
Outfit - ***
Sound Feature - ***
Fun Factor - ***
Value - ***
Overall - ***
Where to Buy -
Options include these terrific sponsors:
- CornerStoreComics
has him listed at $65.
- Alter Ego Comics
has him for $68.
- Urban Collector
has him at $72.
- Entertainment
Earth has him at $72.57.
- or you can search ebay using
the sponsor MyAuctionLinks.
Related Links -
Oh, there's PLENTY of Indy
stuff I've reviewed:
- the most recent was the 12" Indy from
Sideshow.
- there was the recent Medicom Professor Jones Sr.
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