Ah, yeah, the card has seen much better days, but that’s ok. We still get the point and I don’t feel so bad about tearing it open. The card proclaims Mercion as a Good Cleric Female, which gives her the distinction of being the only girly-girl in the poseable figure line. Check out the price tag… Bradlees! Holy shit, I remember Bradlees! For you young’uns, it was basically a forerunner to the big box stores like Target. You could buy all sorts of stuff there and they usually had some pretty good selections of toys and action figures. Mercion was originally ticketed at $2.97!

As we saw when we looked at the cardback for Melf, Mercion has a little bio about her race and class under her character art. I really dig the character art, even if it is a bit at odds with the actual action figure. What does disappoint me a little is that the blurb points out that the clerics’ main weapon was the mace or hammer, and Mercion comes with a staff. No biggie. At least they didn’t give her something as uncharacteristic as a sword. The back of the card is identical to Melf’s with some artwork displaying some of the other characters on top and some rather poorly composed photos of some of the PVC monsters on the bottom. Ok, let’s tear this baby open and bask in the funk of pure, unspoiled 80’s air.

The bubble may have yellowed, but the figure inside is minty fresh and that’s doubly cool because she has so much in the way of softgoods garb. Much like the wizards, Kelek and Ringlerun, you don’t get to see a lot of the sculpting on Mercion’s body because she has an actual belted tunic and a hooded cloak. You can see her boots and her plate armor covered arms and gauntleted hands. Her head sculpt is pretty solid, especially for a line where hardened, ugly faces are the norm. Mercion’s fairly attractive and has long sculpted blonde hair. If you peek under her tunic, she actually has a full set of sculpted armor. When I was a kid, I actually did a little custom work on my worn version by painting her hair and removing the rest of her tattered tunic. The result worked pretty well for a completely different figure.

I really can’t say enough great things about the softgoods outfit. The tunic is perfectly shaped and neatly belted at her waist and tied at the back. It looks better than it should on a figure in this small scale. The sparkly cloak hangs around her neck with a tiny piece of silver thread and is easily removed for when she needs room to move and put the smackdown on some evil.

Articulation? If you’ve been reading these AD&D figure features for the past couple of months, then you should know what to expect, but Mercion throws us a little of a curve. Her head and hair are all sculpted in one piece with her body, so there’s no head movement. You do still get ball joints at the shoulders, and the legs are ball jointed at the hips.

As previously mentioned, Mercion comes with a staff. In fairness, it does have a mace head giving it some potential as a bashing weapon. But based on the character art on the card, I think its intended to be more of a magical piece. She can comfortably hold it in either hand, but not really both at the same time.

  

Mercion may not be a major stand out figure in this line. She’s pretty normal looking, doesn’t come with a flash assortment of weapons, she’s just generally low key. I think the expertly crafted and fitted softgoods are definitely her strongest point and she does look great standing on the shelf with the rest of her good adventurer chums. She can be tough to find with her tunic and cloak in good condition, but even if you need to get her without any of her softgoods, the sculpted armor still makes for a decent figure or variant.