Miniature Giants: Universal Monsters reissue figure

 

I'm getting a late start today, and I already had something planned that I could tell myself I can get you freely. It's been a while since I did a giant Marx figure post (apparently the last one was about this time last year), mostly because I haven't had any new acquisitions recently. As it happens, I finally got something around the start of the year that hadn't been on my radar until not long before I got one. Here's a few pics of the new guy.

"Why are you running away? They said you were here for an open house to sell the pyramid!"

Needless to say, this is a Marx figure based on the Universal monsters (see the Crestwood House post, if anything). There were 6 of them, the Mummy, figured here, Frankenstein, the Phantom of the Opera, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, the Wolfman and the Creature From The Black Lagoon, on consideration a rather random selection. (Was this an editorial about Bela Lugosi appearing in Ed Wood's movies?) The originals were made in orange and blue, followed by reissues that included green and glow-in-the-dark white. 

The present figure turned out to have a more complicated backstory. In the 1990s, a company called Uncle Milton made a reissue set that came with paints to add color. They can be recognized easily by the distinctive white, untextured plastic. From casual research, these account for many if not most on-line listings, and they still go for pretty high prices. I got this one with an uncontested ten-dollar bid, which is better than most of the offers I've seen. Here's a close-up detail pic. That really looks like Boris Karloff! (And why not see my Walking Dead review?)

Another thing you can see is that they messed up the hands on purpose. The obvious part is that the right hand is out of scale with the rest of the figure, presumably to make closeups like mine more dramatic. What's actually less apparent is the other hand, which you would assume is just broken. In fact, they're all like this. Yes, they molded this guy with fingers missing; hey, these are the guys who made the casualty figures. The funny thing is, a lot of Marx figures have unnecessarily delicate separate fingers, but the only original one I've gotten that had them broken off was the Daredevil figure. And here's another closeup. Forget the Mummy; this looks like the guy from Dawn of the Dead.

One more thing to talk about is the plastic, which is what's kept me obsessed with these things  If anything, the detail is sharper than on the originals, which I've seen before with the Mexican Japanese soldiers. Like the Mexican figures, it has a harder feel, though not quite as much, with a clicky sound when tapped. The bandages twang a bit, though again, not as noticeable as the officer's katana from the Mexican set. Now, here he is with the Truckstop Queen! I think she's taller, but not by much.

"Scared? Please, my boyfriend's a Wampa and my ex is King Kong..."

And here's a pic with the original Japanes soldier, who recently became the first one I had to fix. I don't think it was caused by bending the bayonet into a horseshoe, but I'll admit it probably didn't help.

"Just think this through, if the bullets don't stop me, what's the bayonet going to do!"

And how about a couple more pics just for fun?

"This town's only big enough for one Hollywood invention..."

"Yeah, fixing your own lawnmower is never worth it."

And with that, I'm calling it a night. That's all for now, more to come!