The articulation on this figure takes quite a few steps back from what we saw on Flash and Barin, but it isn’t terrible. Klytus’ neck appears to be jointed, but because of the sculpted hood, it doesn’t really turn. He does have rotating shoulders and a hinge in his right, gold arm. Lastly, his legs rotate at the pelvis. The fact that he doesn’t have any knee articulation doesn’t bother me, since his robes would really make them useless. I am disappointed that BBP didn’t add a hinge to his left elbow. They may have felt it would have interfered with the sleeve sculpt, but I would have preferred it. A ball joint to the right shoulder would have been welcome too. Ok, so I take it back… his articulation is pretty terrible.

Klytus doesn’t come with any accessories, but I still love him. This figure captures the character perfectly and its obvious that BBP tried to work with his sculpt to add a decent amount of articulation. The variant of this figure featured his eyes and tongue protruding from his mask during his death scene when he was tossed onto a platform of spikes. Its a cool variant, but I’ll stick with this one, thank you very much.

And that brings us to the big baddy himself, Ming the Merciless. Now Ming was issued in both red and black robes, and I have to admit it was a real trying decision on which one to go with in order to complete my collection. Ultimately, I will probably hunt down the red one, but for now I went with his black garb, just because I really liked how the black and gold looked and I thought he matched Klytus better. This figure is also considerably easier to find than the red one.

The first thing you should know about this guy is that he is a statue, not a figure. His head will turn from side to side, and he does actually have the ability to rotate his arms at the shoulders, but that poses two problems. The first is in the design, where the sculpt has the long sleeves hanging down so that if you move his arms, it looks like his robe is defying gravity. The second problem is, granted, unique to my figure, as his right arm broke clean off as I was removing him from the package and had to be glued back on. Normally I would be furious with BBP at what is clearly some shitty quality control, but honestly, if it had to happen to any of these figures, I’m glad it happened with Ming as his arm articulation was useless to begin with. I’m not going to be all that critical about the articulation on this figure, because any time you have to fashion a figure with sculpted plastic robes, you have an uphill battle when it comes to articulation.

With all that out of the way, this is one fantastic looking figure… er, statue. Not only did BBG capture the likeness of Max Von Sadow perfectly, the combination of sculpting and gold paint apps on the robes is just awesome. The pre-pose is really effective as he has his right arm held up with his hand forming a powerful fist. His left arm is held close to his chest and shows off his ring, which was showcased so prominantly in the final scene of the film. Once again, BBP makes use of the sparkly flakes on a few appropriate parts of Ming’s costume. The fact that I am raving about this guy even with his crap articulation and the fact that he actually broke coming out the package should tell you a lot. Its a downright amazing sculpt.

And that wraps up my look at Biff Bang Pow’s Flash Gordon figures. I’m really glad to own this set, even if they aren’t what I hoped they would be. I think the biggest problem with this little series is the inconsistancy. They are mostly great sculpts, with the one albeit big exception being Dale Arden’s face. But they really run the gamut on articulation from great to practically non-existant. They look damn nice on the shelf, though, and they gave me an opportunity to try out the products from a toy company that was previously completely unknown to me. For a company that seems to mainly makes bobbleheads and novelties, this was a good early effort into the realm of licensed action figures.

Sorry, I don’t have any in-package shots, but I’ll note that the packaging on these figures was all over the place. Two of them were packaged in full blister packs with printed inserts, while the others came on crappy and horribly bent cardbacks with enormous bubbles. I know some of these figures were exclusives, so maybe the ones in blisters were the exclusives. I just don’t know. The only point worth stressing here is that if you are a MOC collector, you may be hard pressed to find good cards, because the figures are so heavy.

Of the five figures, Flash Gordon is without a doubt the best action figure as he has both a fantastic sculpt and fairly good articulation. This figure was released three times with three different t-shirts and three different weapons. Of the three, this one is my favorite because of his signature “Flash” shirt and he’s holding the conveniently football-shaped alien artifact that he used to brain a bunch of Ming’s incompetant soldiers with before taking one on the noggin himself. The “football” is pegged to fit securely into a hole in Flash’s right hand. Sure, when you get down to it, this is just a dude in khaki pants and a t-shirt, but it really captures actor Sam Jones’ likeness very well. The paint apps on the sneakers are nice, and the “Flash” logo is applied to his shirt with crisp precision. I like this figure’s sculpt enough that somewhere down the road I may pick up at least one of the other two variants.

As for articulation… Flash has a ball jointed neck and shoulders, hinged elbows, swivel cuts in the biceps, swivels at the waist, his legs rotate at the pelvis and he has hinged knees. Lateral movement in the hips and a few extra swivel cuts in his thighs would have been nice, but all in all the articulation works fine for me.

Prince Barin comes up second in terms of sculpt vs articulation. Truth be told, this figure’s overall design doesn’t do a lot for me, but he is a good likeness of Timothy Dalton and he is the only other figure in this set that BBP actually tried to make a bonafide action figure and not just a statue. Barin’s outfit is nicely detailed, especially the weave patterns in his tunic and the ornamentation on his belt. Without his laser cannon, he looks like he belongs in a Robin Hood film, which is fitting, since he was the Prince of a moon of forests and swamps.

Barin has the same basic articulation as Flash, with just a few differences. His ball jointed shoulders are inhibited by the sculpted flares on his tunic, so they can pretty much just rotate and not really move laterally. He’s missing the swivel in the waist, but he does have additional hinges in his ankles.

Prince Barin comes with a laser cannon that he grabbed off a tripod before going all Rambo on Ming’s forces. This figure’s variant was a battle damaged version with a whip depicting his fight with Flash at the Hawkmen’s city. The cannon is a nice accessory, although it does feel a bit delicate, like the ornamentation on the back might snap off at any moment.

Dale Arden comes up bottom of the barrel. This figure depicts her in the wedding gown for her pending and non-concentual marriage to Ming. BBP did a fine job sculpting her costume and body, but they really flubbed it on the face, which looks nothing like actress Melody Anderson, and isn’t even remotely attractive either. To be brutally honest, it’s a man face with make-up on. On the other hand, the detailing on her headpiece and her shoulders is really nice as is the sparkling flakes applied to her gown. I was pleasently surprised to see that these sparklies don’t come off on my hands either. Crappy face sculpt aside, at least the rest of this figure is really nice looking. The variant of this figure features a white wedding gown.

Unfortunately, Dale is also the worst articulated of all the figures. Part of the problem is that her tight fitting gown acts like a teepee and inhibits whatever leg articulation she might have had. It appears as if her shoulders have rotating joints, but the joints on my figure won’t move at all and I’m not willing to force them. Her right arm has an elbow hinge, which allows only a small amount of movement. Her left arm is preposed to place her hand on her hip, and despite the elbow hinge, it just doesn’t move at all. This, folks, is a statue.

All three of these figures retailed for around $16.99 but eventually made it to the clearance bins at many E-tailers. I know that Toys R Us carried these figures and has recently began unloading them for around half of that. I picked up Flash and Barin back when they were full price and based on their scale, articulation and sculpts I was pretty happy with my purchases. Fortunately, I waited on Dale until she hit the bargain bins. Truth be told, she probably wasn’t worth it other than just to complete my set.

Next time, we’ll look at Ming the Merciless and General Klytus.