Naturally Bionic Six had a toy tie-in, or was that the other way around? LJN produced a short-lived line of 3 ¾” scale action figures. Included were all the Bennett family and all of Dr. Scarab’s evil minions. Sure, there were a few major omissions (What? No Dr. Sharpe???), but for the most part everyone was represented and there were even a few vehicles and a playset. The figures were rather unusual for the time as they featured the use of both plastic and die-cast metal, and some translucent parts to emphasize the Bennett’s cybernetic nature. Today we’re going to start with one of my favorite bad guys of the series… Glove! He was Dr. Scarab’s second in command and basically the Starscream of the Bionic Six universe. Every week he’d try to overthrow Scarab and become the leader, and every week it somehow backfired on him.

And there’s the packaging. The figures came under a coffin-shaped bubble on a standard cardback. Their accessories rattle around in a little compartment above the figure, and as you can see often drop down into the figure compartment. Honestly, I was never fond of the packaging LJN went with here. The crazy black psychedelic pattern on the white card just looks cheap, and not very relevant to the cartoon. On the other hand, I like the use of the Bionic Six logo and Glove’s character art is quite good. The back of the card shows photos of all the figures that were available. It’s a serviceable package, but nothing that makes me feel bad about tearing open this 27 year old figure. Mwahahahaha!

Out of the package, Glove is sort of like a mix between a vintage GI Joe and a Micronaut. He’s a pretty heavy figure for his size, due to the die cast metal used in his torso and legs. He’s not a bad representation of his animated counterpart. The head sculpt isn’t quite there, it looks more like his fellow bad guy, Chopper, to me. Still, overall this sculpt and deco hits all the main points of Glove’s animated design. His green military-style helmet, crisscrossing bandolier straps, and belt of grenades are all spot on, as is his one torn pants leg. I also really dig the translucent scarab emblem on his chest. The legs do feature some unfortunately ugly seams down the fronts, another recurring issue with some of this line’s figures due to the use of die-cast.

One of the problems with LJN’s Bionic Six figures can be the paintwork. Sure, part of the problem is that these figures suffer a lot of paint chipping when played with, but some had issues right out of the package. In this case, however, Glove is actually quite neatly painted. He’s a colorful fellow and I really like the two-tone purple used for his shirt and skin and the way the red and yellow contrasts with his black pants. There’s some slop around they yellow on his grenades, but nothing too bad. Detailed paintwork and die-cast metal don’t usually mix well, so I’m not going to nitpick Glove’s paint too much.

Glove’s articulation includes a rotating head, ball jointed shoulders, hinged elbows, ball jointed hips, and hinged knees. He can also swivel at the waist. He isn’t exactly super-articulated, but he sure beats the standard five points that some figures of the time utilized. Some bicep swivels would have helped a lot.

You get two accessories with Glove, one of which is… well… his glove. It clips on over his left hand and holds on pretty well. It’s a fairly detailed little piece, although I would have been perfectly fine if it were permanently attached to the figure. The other accessory is a black wrist gun that clips onto his other arm. Again, there’s some nice sculpting here for such a little accessory.

All in all, I think LJN’s figure does Glove proud. The personality of the character is well represented here and he’s definitely a colorful and attractive looking figure. Did he really need the die cast parts? Nope. While it sort of makes sense for the members of the Bionic Six, Glove’s character doesn’t have any bionics so the use of metal is just a continuation of that gimmick that does little to benefit the figure other than giving him a nice heft. Still, this is one of my favorite figures in the Bionic Six lineup and I’m happy to have a fresh, straight out of the package example for my display shelf to replace the loose-jointed and paint chipped version from my childhood.

Hail, Scarab!!!