The Hellboy madness continues! The Hellboy movies sucked me into the world of Mignola’s comic characters and, thus, I have now proliferated many a Hellboy action figure. In support of the live action films there have been two feature-length animated movies made. Gentle Giant picked up the license for the animated Hellboy property and they’ve put out a series of figs that includes Hellboy himself and Abe Sapien. Expand for pics and reviews.

First off, these are some neat little figs. They are in six inch scale so they’re a little smaller than the mezco HB stuff. Hellboy has a couple different variants with cigar chompin head and gritted teeth and what-not. GG also did a couple movie-accurate Hellboys, which doesn’t make much sense to me since Mezco already knocked that property out of the park. So, you won’t see those reviewed here!

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HELLBOY

Sculpt & Detail - Yikes! I know I use the “jumped right off the screen” cliche a lot, but I’ve seen the animated films, and I have to say, this is as good a 3D representation of that character as there could be. HB’s design, shape, musculature and expression are all perfect. His skin has a kind of rough texture that was a nice (and smart) touch by GG, otherwise he would have been all smooth red plastic and looked like a 90s toy. His belt is well detailed with lots of pouches and his his gun fits quite nicely in the holster.

Paint - If I scored on 1 to 10 this would be a 10. The airbrushing on his fleshtones is perfect and there is no bleed or slop anywhere on his detail work on his belt and boots. His right hand of doom has a nice dark wash and blacklining to pull out the grooves and recesses there and the brushwork on his gun is exquisite. The paint job is perfect for an animated figure.

Articulation - w00t! These GG animated figs actually trump the Mezco movie stuff for poseability. HB has a ball neck, ball shoulders, single elbows, swivel and hinge wrists, ab cruch, waist twist, ball hips, thigh cuts, single knees, calf cuts, ankle hinge, and toe hinge. Plus his tail has three points of articulation and his right hand of doom is a ball joint at the wrist. Swew! This is truly a superarticulated figure. Nice work on the artic, GG!

Accessories - Yikes! HB gets two swappable hands, a fisted RHOD and an open palm, plus a fist and a gun-holding hand for his left hand. He has his big ole gun, too, of course. And both of these figures come with display bases. I’m not feeling the display base too much though. It attaches to Red by plugging straight into the underside of his pelvis. Like, right up his taint. Ouch. His tiny little legs can’t hold him up so you either have to use the taint stand or just sort of lean him on his tail like a tripod. I’m going with tail tripod. No taint stand.

Value - Yeah, it’s pretty good. I paid 15 for this guy and I feel good about that. You get a well detailed six inch scale superarticulated fig with lots of accessories and tons of play value. This day in age, that’s about as good as it gets.

The coat - The little cloth coat you’ll see below is something of an enigma. GG packed these individually bagged coats in the cases sent to retailers as some kind of a dealer incentive. So, it’s kind of like a “chase accessory”. I got lucky and found an online site that was selling HB with the coat together for a little extra so I picked it up. But I’ve seen just the coat alone being sold online for upwards of 30 bucks. Yowzers. I wouldn’t spend that on a coat for myself…

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ABE SAPIEN

Sculpt and Detail - Abe is the same as HB in that’s he’s a perfect physical representation of the animated character. From the expression on his face to his body suit to his stubby fingers and tiny little ankles, he’s perfect. The highlights for Abe are the gill fringes on his neck and the angular shape of his head and cheeks. He’s really neat looking (and fun to play with!).

Paint - The paint on Abe is less flashy than on HB, but there wasn’t much GG could have done without straying from his movie accuracy. He has nice airbrushing on his arms and face to subtly blend two different shades of green and all of the detail is tight and crisp. His pant legs look plain to me, since they’re just unpainted plastic. I guess that’s all they really could have been, but maybe a very slight gray drybrush there would have helped things out. I dunno. He looks good. Sometimes less is more where paint is concerned (but that doesn’t apply to you, Hasbro!).

Articulation - Okay, I was really surprised when I got Abe opened up. He has marvel legends style artic. Everything HB has plus double knees, double elbows, a double ball jointed neck, and side-to-side ankle twist. This little guy is as poseable as they come. Outstanding again, Gentle Giant!

Accessories - Abe is chock full of fun. In fact, this might be the most ‘fun to play with’ figure I’ve bought so far this year. He has two swappable heads, the standard look and an intense ‘gritted teeth’ head plus two swappable hands. A fist and a gun-holding hand and then two “splayed fingers, I’m'a gonna come’n getcha!” hands. He has his little pistol (which, unfortunately, he doesn’t have a belt holster for.) and a strange little zombie egyptian mummy head thing. Um, not sure how else to describe it. You’ll just have to check the pics. Abe also has a stand, and his plugs into his ass. So… I’m not feeling the stand.

Value - This is kind of a ’small’ figure for 15 bucks. Not that he’s undersized; he’s perfect for the scale, but Abe’s just not a big guy. GG packed in tons of accessories and they really pushed the envelope on the articulation to try to give us the most bang for our buck, but, for as much as I love this figure, I think the value is probably better on HB just because you get more “heft” to the package.

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THE DARING DUO

Wait… Where’s Liz? C’mon GG! Make Liz!

Tags: abe sapien, hellboy

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