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Saturday, August 09, 2008

Heroic Efforts?

I'm only reviewing and photographing Mezco's first series of Heroes toys in the package at this stage, because for reasons I'll discuss I'm just not entirely sold on these, and I'm keeping them MIP in case they eventually go the eBay way.

Series One is comprised of five figures: Claire, Hiro, Peter, Suresh and Sylar. The packaging is tight - I quite like the compact style, the way that all of the accessories and extra parts are visible and the simple but effecive use of the Heroes logo and familiar fonts.

The potential killer of this line for me is the headsculpts. My initial reaction when I saw them solicited was real disappointment, because they just seemed to look nothing like the actors. In person, some of this improves. Suresh's headsculpt is the best likeness, while Peter Petrelli looks like a horse man and nothing like the actor. Claire comes with an extra damaged head which looks far much more like Hayden Panettiere than the normal head which is a bummer. I want my Hayden with no blood!

Paint apps are solid across the line, I didn't detect any flaws in the five figures. From within the packages they look well in scale with each other, altho Peter and Sylar's heads are too big for their bodies. Did I mention Peter looks like a Horse Man? It is really, really awful.

Despite this, Hiro is the biggest disappointment for me. His headsculpt is just generic Asian dude, his glasses look oversized and the whole approach to his outfit just makes him look a bit shrunken inside too-big clothes. The figure is also generic in body type and doesn't reflect the actor's build.

The accessories are a mixed bag...... quite literally. Some are winners: Claire comes with a damaged head and arm, Hiro has his sword, Sylar has a hand shooting powers and a brain (yum!), but then, there's the bags. Peter, Hiro and Suresh all have these oversized bags that look like they belong in a Barbie collection rather than in an action figure set. Bizarro world. Each figure also comes with a card with one of Tim Sale's paintings that were central to the first series.

While Mezco seems to be committed to the line in terms of rounding out the cast with another two waves announced, I'm going to wait to commit to loose display until I see the next wave and see if the headsculpts have improved.

You know, maybe those bags are for putting over Horse Man's head......





4 comments:

Unknown said...

Me, I like Hiro's "Too Much Cheese" face.... the one that looks like he's trying to pass a soccer ball. HA!

Anonymous said...

Yeah - I'm not sold either. I haven't picked them up yet - I'm not worried either as they have hit pretty hard around here (even Toys R Us has them - I'll keep checking and maybe I'll get lucky and catch them on clearance). From what I've seen, the paint apps are pretty spotty and the sculpts are off - especially, like you said, Peter; and the big headedness of some of the characters... I was pretty excited about this series considering the great work that Mezco has done on the Hellboy series.

Anonymous said...

Mezco's headsculpts are generally pretty weak. Maybe it's likeness issues or something. Maybe it's that their sculpters aren't as good as others.

Still, even NECA and McFarlane have had hits and misses. There's just something "cartoony" about Mezco's efforts (even when they aren't doing the stylised kind of figures).

Jakks Pacific has the best head sculpt specialists (I know they real scan alive wrestlers, but some of the deceased ones they've done have been spot on).

I picked up Claire and Hiro. Claire looks like Hayden from certain angles. I was disappointed that I couldn't remove Hiro's glasses. I would have given him the pair from the WWE Teddy Long figure (actually a decent pair of glasses... not expected by Jakks).

Still, not too bad. I'll pick and choose. You're right that Mohinder looks the best... trouble is, he's my least favourite character (well, maybe just in front of that little girl who has dreams about crap).

We'll see how the next lot turn out. I'll be very selective with these.

Rob'em Steve-Dave said...

I got Hiro, Claire, Peter (flying exclusive), and Sylar.

Hiro doesn't look like the actor, but he does look like a comic book character, so I'm fine with him.

I hate how the Claire actress looks in real life, but I love her comic book look from the web comics. The figure is obviously modeled after those. Because of that, it is beautiful. She stands proudly on my shelf.

Peter flying doesn't stay on his flying stand, but I did buy him just so I can fly him around like I was six years old playing with an airplane.

Sylar is very stiff and I'm kinda disappointed in his figure. One of his accessories is a brain, which I thought was just sick.

They all come with a painting from the show, those make great bookmarks.

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