|
Packaging - **
The box art is good, and follows the usual World of Springfield style that
Playmates does as well. You can open it up and get everything out
without too much effort, and you could save the box for re-use later.
The big issue I have with the
packaging is that it sells this set tremendously short. Since you
can only see the figures, you may not realize how many cool accessories
are included, and not realize that it's actually a pretty good deal.
It's never a good idea to not promote one of the better features of your
product with your presentation.
Sculpting - *
This is where the line fails. While some of the painted faces
are okay - Smithers or Apu are good examples - others are just down right
awful, like Mr. Burns.
If you like the Kubrick's
style, you won't mind the blocky bodies, but I'm not a big fan. The
big problem though with the bodies isn't the style, but the scale.
Bart is far too large, and poor Lisa looks like her future self when she
thought she was going to end up stupid and fat, living in a trailer park.
I would have been much
happier with these if they were styled more similarly to Playmobil.
Accessories - ****
While I might find fault with the style and sculpting, I can't complain
about the accessories. There are a ton, and you can mix and match
all kinds of things.
Since the arms, heads, hair,
and legs all pop off, you can swap body parts around if you'd like.
I can't imagine that being too useful, but it does make the accessory possibilities
much better.
There are various hats, some
clothes, and extra set of arms for Smithers, and a variety of standard
items that we'd expect to see these characters carrying. In all I believe
there are around 27 extra pieces along with the basic 9 characters.
And yes, the skirt on both
Marge and Lisa is removable, if you'd like to give Homer or Smithers
something else to wear.
Paint - ***
The paint ops were all good, with the crucial paint work on the faces
cleanly done. I'm not thrilled with all the faces, and Mr. Burns,
Homer and Carl are all good examples of where this doesn't work. But
there's no sloppy lines or unevenness.
Articulation - ***
If you have bought Kubrick's, you pretty much know what's going on
here. There's neck, shoulder, thigh and wrist joints, and as I
mentioned you can also pop off the hair on those characters that have it.
It's pretty good articulation
for something done in this style, and pretty much the max that you could
expect.
All of the figures come apart
at these points of articulation too, so you can remove the arms, legs,
torsos, heads and even hair to mix and match the various characters.
|
