Good lord, that's a lousy picture. Sorry, guys. |
You
guys can probably guess that I wasn’t all that into a blue peacock
lady.
Except
for Light Hope. I’d still like to have him.
I
thought for sure that Peekablue was going to be the dumbest and my
least favorite of the PoP Classics but for one thing – Perfuma.
I’ll get into it more when I review her – which I will, despite
wanting nothing more than to put her on eBay the second the USPS guy
leaves her box on my doorstep – because goodness knows I’m going
to need some filler for that one.
At
first glance Peekablue was exactly as unappealing to me as I thought
she would be, but it’s entirely possible that by the end of this
review the figure had won me over. At least a little bit. Read on and
find out!
FIRST
GLANCE
Yep.
It’s a lady with a peacock tail. This is one of the girliest action
figures I have ever seen. It is not something that was designed for
me to like.
It
looks like it should look, it just is not for me.
PACKAGING
The
MOTUC blister card never disappoints.
Peekablue’s
bio is not bad – there’s nothing too ridiculous in here and it
even solves the problem of where to put her. I’m out of room on
several of my shelves and need to reorganize again. There isn’t
much room on my “Princess of Power and other stuff” shelf, but
there’s plenty of space on my “Masters of the Universe” shelf,
which is just for characters that are actual Masters. Thanks to this
bio, I can put Peekablue there next to Man-E-Faces.
LOOKS
Before
I could start taking pictures I had to get Penelope here out of the
packaging.
Side
Note: I will be referring to Peekablue by her “Real Name” for the
remainder of this review so that I don’t have to feel like a
complete idiot typing that awful name.
This
is not always an easy task with Masters of the Universe Classics, and
sometimes requires scissors. This one looked like a scissor job since
the figure and the tail were on separate sides of the insert tray and
the hole was not large enough to pull the tail through. But before I
reached for the scissors (I do not say “A scissors” because that
sounds weird) I noticed that there seemed to be an unreasonable
distance between the figure’s peacock tail and it’s body. I
grasped the figure in one hand and the tail in the other and gave a
firm pull because, quite frankly, I didn’t care if I broke this
one. It might hurt its eBay resale value, but if I broke it at least
I’d have something interesting to write in a review I was not
particularly looking forward to.
Fortunately
the tail popped right out and pretty much saved the figure, because
it turns out you can plug it in upside-down and make the ridiculous
peacock feathers into sort of a long trail for the skirt. Not only
does this change make the figure look not-stupid, it actually ends up
looking pretty cool.
Now
I can move on.
I
think I might be terrible at picking people that action figures (or
even other people) look like, but to me Penelope’s face looks like
Summer Glau. This gives the figure an advantage in the “eBay or
not?” process. The eyes and makeup on mine look fine, which is
apparently not the case with all of these. The hair looks great and
is actually my favorite on a PoP figure so far thanks to the sassy
little flip at the bottom:
It’s
a nice sculpt detail that adds character. Unfortunately, it also adds
a lot of body to the hair and required the peacock tail part to sit
even further away from the body. This resulted in a huge, unsightly
peg joining the tail and the body.
Penelope’s
gear looks good and has some peacock designs worked into it that not
only works with her motif, but also gives her a bit of a Greek look.
This makes her stand out from the rest of the Classics figures, as
for some reason that’s a design style we haven’t seen a lot of. I
particularly like her skirt with the longer portion hanging down in
the front. Many of the PoP figures look a little more disco than they
do fantasy, but Penelope feels a little more classical. I also like
the sculpted collar around her neck.
The
peg that connects the tail to the figure is ugly and huge and there’s
just no way around the fact that it looks like crap. Much like the
Sorceress, we’re just stuck with some fugly toy engineering. The
tail itself, however, looks pretty great. It folds out nicely and
actually maintains a slim profile when folded up. It consists of
three portions that line up when folded together. The sculpt is much
nicer than I was expecting, with plenty of detail on each feather.
The thing isn’t lifelike, but it does look good. The “eyes” are
a nice contrast to the rest of the tail, and there’s a wonderful
metallic sheen on the blue portions that add a lot to the overall
look.
Her
boots have the peacock motif worked in, but to be honest I think she
would have looked better with sandals. Her right ankle has a
noticeable paint issue:
It's
been a long time since I've seen something like this in the MOTUC
line. It's not a huge deal, but it's ugly.
I’ve
really got to compliment the color scheme of this figure. It’s
something different, but it looks appropriately peacock-y and it all
matches. The colors of Penelope’s clothing matches what’s on the
tail. The green hair is a bit jarring when put with the other colors,
but it is definitely within the range of what I consider to be
peacock colors.
ACCESSORIES
Penelope
comes with a fan and the PoP shield that has gotten pretty old, but
is nowhere near as irritating as the Snake Men staff.
And
technically her big honkin’ peacock tail, I suppose. But since
that’s a defining feature I covered it above.
The
shield is the same as all of the others, but in different colors. It
clips onto Penelope’s arm and looks fine.
The
fan is actually very cool, and I could see her causing some real
damage with the thing. She can hold it in either hand and it flips
around and can look cool in several different positions.
FUN
Penelope
has the same articulation as almost every other MOTUC PoP figure, so
I’m not going to waste time there.
When
her tail is in the upright position, her head does not move at all.
There probably wasn’t a good way around this. Thankfully, as I
mentioned above the tail can be flipped and the head has a nice range
of motion despite the thick, long hair.
Also,
that big honkin’ tail does provide a lot of play value. I don’t
know what kind of toy witchcraft Matty and the Horsemen used to make
this so, but I have had no problems getting Penelope to stand up. So
whether the tail is up or down or folded or out, the figure stands up
and can be posed just fine.
Between
the tail and the included accessories there’s a decent bit of
variety and play value here, so this figure turned out to be a good
bit more fun than I was expecting. Penelope is a good one to mess
around with and actually hasn’t elft my desk yet, despite the
plentiful space on the Masters shelf.
OVERALL
Matty
did a pretty good job on a figure I didn’t want. So good that not
only am I keeping it, I’m actually okay with having it. Is that
connecting peg butt-ugly? Yep. Would I have bought this if I just saw
it out in the wild? Nope. Am I shocked that I ended up mostly liking
such a dumb figure? Yep.
Penelope
had just enough of a goofy look and a fun design to win me over. But
there’s no excusing that awful peg.
4
out of 5
Buy
one from Amazon and help Needless Things pay the bills if you want,
but I bet you can pick her up cheap at a con.:
No comments:
Post a Comment