The Hellboy II: The Golden Army action figures from Mezco are here and they are delightful! I was slow to warm up to the Hellboy franchise so I missed out on most of Mezco’s figures from the first movie, but I won’t make that mistake again. These are some outstanding figures! While they slack off a little in the articulation from what was done with the figures from the first movie there is certainly no drop off in sculpt or paint detail. Expand the post for figure-by-figure photogasmia and analysis!

---

HELLBOY

Yes. The big ole demon / paranormal investigator is a character that really lends himself well to action figure form. Let’s talk sculpt. Boo-yah! Mezco is a really underrated company, in my opinion, and I think Hellboy is the franchise that is going to push them to the forefront of specialty market action figure production. The sculpts on these figure are amazing! Look at Hellboy’s face. I can’t even describe how incredibly they captured the movie character’s likeness. It’s like they freeze-dried Ron Perlman and shrunk him down and shellacked him or something. It’s flawless. Moving on from the face, you’ll see the same incredible detail from neck to toe on this guy. His pants, belt, boots and hands are all exquisitely detailed and his ‘Right Hand of Doom’ in and of itself is a little work of sculpting art. I don’t really do number ratings with my reviews, but if I did this guy would be well over a 10 in the sculpt department. I couldn’t be more impressed.

Ok, so how about paint? Same as the sculpt, basically. It’s awesome. He gets tons of detail work done on his face and in his belt and the grooves of his clothes and the various buttons and patches and buckles on his coat. But where the paint really pops is in the shading on his big hand and on the detail to the weapons. His “Big Baby” gun has a little stamp deco that just looks great. Peep the pic. He does have a little slop here and there, like where his cigar meets his lips and a few places on his coat but it’s nothing distracting. Overall, really nicely done.

Articulation? He’s got it! It’s not quite old school Marvel Legends style, but it’s pretty close. Except for double knees and elbows, he’s got it. Ball hips (true ball hips, not double-disc joints), thigh cuts, single knees, single elbow*, ankle tilt and side-to-side rock, shoulder balls, bicep cuts, ball torso, waist cut, and ball neck. Shew! Yeah, he’s wicked poseable. And there are three POAs in his tail! Nothing overlooked here… *except… yeah, that “elbow” wasn’t a typo. His right arm has no elbow artic. That’s kind of a bummer. That POA was there in the figures from the first movie so I’m not sure why they cut it out. I guess since his forearm is so big on that hand that it doesn’t really allow for much range of motion anyway so they just cut it. Oh well. It doesn’t detract much from the figure.

Hellboy is also done up well with accessories. He gets both the huge “Big Baby” shotgun and the small “Samaritan” pistol. Both guns have hinging barrels that swing open and snap shut - an added detail that is totally awesome and completely unexpected. And the pistol fits into a holster on his belt, which is also very cool. Lots of neat stuff going on here.

How about value? I paid about 15 each for these and that’s pretty much the standard rate. And I think that’s a pretty good value given today’s market. I mean, you’re getting a very poseable, really nicely detailed 7″ scale figure with several cool accessories. Mezco is proving that you can deliver a product of this quality and keep the price in line even with the “rising oil costs” excuse that so many companies are using to jack their prices. (Ahem. Hasbro. Ahem.) Anyways, HB is a good value. Go buy him!

---

“RED” Variant

Hellboy actually comes in several different versions. There are two distinct releases, the shirted HB w/ cigar head and Big Bay weapon shone above, and then also a “Red” version of HB with no shirt, a sword, and a new “angry” head sculpt. TRU wouldn’t carry the cigar head version, and they wouldn’t have “Hellboy” printed on the package are. So Mezco gave TRU their own cases with “Red” labeled on the figure and both shirtless and shirted share the angry head. So, all told, there are like four different versions of the HB fig from this line. Here’s the second variation.

---

LIZ SHERMAN

Behind every strong man demon there is a sexy, petite brunette with the ability to telepathically control fire. Apparently. Okay, so I think Selma Blair is about forty different kinds of hot so getting an action figure of her is kind of a dream fulfilled.

Sculpt - It’s Selma! Well, okay, it’s Liz, but it looks well enough like her that I can catch the resemblance. I give the face sculpt high marks though, because, traditionally, female heads don’t turn out so good on action figures. But this one works for me. It’s simple, yet also stern and feminine. I dig. From the neck down, Liz is beautiful. Her uniform is excellent, and they really captured the shape of her torso pretty nicely. The detail work in the pockets, wrinkles, folds and buttons is all top notch. Her boots are also a high point of the sculpt, more great detail there in the tread and buckles. She’s also kind of cocked back in a little bit of a contrapposto pose that gives her a lot of character and personality.

Paint - Fabulous! I tried to get good close-up pics of Liz’ torso and belt. She has some amazing paint detail going on and she looks really really good in hand. Her belt is the highlight, with tons of paint detail there (all these figures have cool belts) and also the buttons and zippers on her uniform are well pinned with gold accents. She has a nice soft drybrush of grey all over, pulling out the detail of the folds in her clothing. She looks great.

Articulation - Gah! Liz came so close to being perfect but Mezco short-changed her in a few key areas. She has a ball jointed neck, ball shoulders, single elbows and knees, swivel wrists (well, forearms), waist cut, ball hips, and ankle tilt with side-to-side artic. The glaring POAs missing are bicep cuts and thigh cuts. She has true ball hips that really rotate around well, so that makes up some for the lack of thigh cuts. But no bicep cuts is a real bummer. I don’t understand why those points were missed. Drat!

Accessories - Mezco really likes to try to pack in a lot of bang for your buck. Liz comes with two swappable hands, one holding a gun and the other lit up with a flame effect. Both are really neat and look good. And I usually don’t care for swappable limbs because I’m always paranoid about the pegs breaking or the joint getting loose, but the pegs on these are long and thick and kinda rubbery and they feel like they’d be pretty durable over time.

Value - You get a lot less with Liz than you did with Hellboy. But, female figures are always more sought after than males, so I guess I’m just happy that they made her this time around (had there been a Liz from the first movie I probably would have collected that line!). Anyways, 15 probably isn’t that great a value for Liz. She’s more like a 12 dollar fig, in my opinion. But if you drop 15 on her I doubt you’ll be disappointed.

---

ABE SAPIEN

Abe is a neato character in my book. Who doesn’t love a super-intelligent, mild-mannered fish guy that pals around with a big red devil fighting ghosts and monsters? That’s just awesome! Abe gets an action figure here that’s pretty worthy of his character with only a couple of tiny flaws.

Sculpt - Another knock out of the park here. There’s nothing on Abe that’s not great as far as sculpt is concerned. His head, face, lips, goggles, gills and ears are all excellent. His body is sufficiently lithe and lean like a swimmer and his hands are particularly nice with their webbing and big fingernails. All good stuff.

Paint - Abe is hit or miss with the paint. The detail work is nice, especially in the pattern on his head and his flesh parts are nicely painted and shaded too, although he lacks that glossy, wet-looking sheen that the Abe figs from the first movie had, and that was what really set those figs apart from a paint standpoint. This abe looks kind of dry and plain. For some reason he didn’t get the same kind of grey drybrush work on his black wetsuit that Liz got on her uniform, and that leaves him looking just a little flat. Not bad, but nothing really jumps out at me here.

Articulation - Abe makes up for what little paint detail shortcomings he may have by coming stocked up with all the necessary points of articulation. He has the same basic model as Hellboy, with an additional point at the base of his neck to allow his head to swoop and swivel around quite a bit. Really neat. Abe’s by far the most poseable of the figures from this series.

Accessories - Abe also gets hooked up with the most accessories. He comes with a little BPRD tracking/scanner device, a swappable gun-holding hand, and a two-piece clip-on breathing apparatus. All his accessories fit on nicely and look really cool. They definitely add to his…

Value - Yeah. Abe’s worth 15 bucks. His accessories put him over the top. This figure has a lot of playability and plenty of display value. If you already have earlier versions of Abe from the first movie there’s nothing here that really warrants picking up this one, but if you don’t yet have an Abe figure this one won’t leave you wanting another. He’s a really nice toy!

---

JOHANN KRAUSS

So what’s the deal with Johann? I guess I should have checked his wikipedia page. He seems to be some kind of ghost that resides inside a containment suit or something. Either way, he looks wicked cool. He’s got a real steampunk vibe going on.

Sculpt! Johann is probably the neatest looking figure from this series from a design standpoint. His suit is exceptional with all its folds and wrinkles and tubes and dials and rivets and details. He has cool boots and gloves too and it all just looks… well, great.

Paint - Same as sculpt. Johann has a pretty simple color pallet, but there is a lot going on in terms of detail here. He has a grungy wash to kind of “muck” him up a bit and the metallic finish the piping and segmentation of his body suit is all extremely well done.

Articulation - Boo! Johann is the least poseable of the group. He, like Liz, lacks bicep cuts or thigh cuts, and he also has no side-to-side ankle artic. That’s a real let-down because this would have been a “must have” figure if he had those POAs.

Accessories - Johann is hooked up with swappable “gas hands” that seem to be spewing out some kind of white cloud of something. There’s no character description on the back of the package so I’ll just have to assume that that’s magic ghost dust that turns people into giggling frogs or something. Anyways, he also has a cracked dome that swaps out for his full clear dome, and that’s pretty neat too. Although I’m guessing it’s a spoiler for the movie, given that we now know at some point Johann gets his head cracked. heh.

Value - Meh. Johann was initially a figure I had planned to pass on just because I had no familiarity with the character but once I saw how neat looking he is I had to get him. The articulation shortcomings make him not so great in the value department. For 15 bucks, I expect more. At least bicep cuts. Come on, Mezco!

---

WINK

Oh man! Okay, I’m gonna make this one short and simple, since Wink here is probably up for some “toy of the year” awards. Sculpt and paint? Both off the charts. This is a big, gorgeous figure who doesn’t fail to impress as far as any of the aesthetics are concerned. From the three different shades of browns and grays in his drybrushing on his flesh to the rubbery texture of his big back hairs to the dirty metallic finish on his hand and armor bits, this guy is beautiful.

Articulation is solid too, minus the glaringly omitted bicep cuts. Everything else is there though. And you’d think with a figure this big (Wink is about 10 inches tall and probably weighs 2 or 3 lbs. This is a MASSIVE figure) that you wouldn’t get much in the way of accessories, but that’s not the case. Wink comes with a neat looking box type thing (haven’t seen the movie yet, so my knowledge lacks) with a strap that he can sling over his shoulder. Plus he has an interchangeable fist hand on a real metal chain that plugs into his “armored” arm. Super-neato!

Value is off the charts with this guy. You won’t get more bang for your 15 bucks this day in age. An absolute must buy! - Oh, and a special note. Winks comes with a mail-away form in his package to send off for a new head. Apparently the character design changed for the movie after Mezco had gone to production so they went ahead and sculpted a new, more accurate head and they’ll send it to you for free if you mail in the card with the UPC. Amazing! Way to go the extra mile, Mezco!

---

PRINCE NUADA

Say what? Okay. Sorry, but this guy just looks lame to me. Maybe I’ll feel differently after I’ve seen the movie, but for now my fifteen bucks is going to be spent elsewhere. Pass!

---

GROUP SHOT

Well, Johann is missing… but here’s the BPRD trio!

And, for a special treat:

MY SHELF!

Tags: hellboy, hellboy II, mezco

Trackback Post