There’s no better endorsement for a first purchase than following it up with a quick second. I had Phicen’s Mercy Dante in hand for just a few hours before I found myself clicking the Buy It Now button on another release in the Zenescope-Phicen partnership. I’ve had this figure for a while now, allowing myself some time with her and also waiting until I had enough time to do her justice, and I’ve finally been able to set aside enough time to do just that. So let’s dive in and check out Robyn Locksley, aka. Robyn Hood! But first… background!

Robyn Locksley was just your average everyday baby that was saved from a satanic ritual in a fantasy realm called Myst, portal-ed to another world called Earth, and left on the doorstep of what might as well have been a crack-house. Needless to say, Robyn had a rough upbringing, which included selling illegal drugs for her foster father to pay for her ailing foster mother’s medicine, getting kicked out of the house after her mother died, and then beaten within an inch of her life and having her eye slashed out by an underprivileged jock who’s father basically runs the town. OK, she did steal the guy’s car and total it, but that’s hardly an excuse! And just as things couldn’t get much worse for her, she was summoned back to Myst, where she adopted the guise of Robyn Hood and helped the downtrodden people of Bree overthrow their asshole tyrant of a king. She bounced between Myst and Earth a couple more times, but eventually she settled down back on Earth and opened up a detective agency/vigilante service, where she investigates weird doings and serves up justice at the point of an arrow. Robyn Hood is a fun read. The first three collected trades take you through her adventures in Myst, but her ongoing book, on which today’s figure is based, sees her plying her trade on present day Earth. She’s also appeared in quite a few of Zenescope’s crossovers and one-shots, but I better not get ahead of myself…

Like Mercy, the figure comes in a generic shipper box with the character’s name on it. Inside, you get a colorful, high quality box with a deco designed to match Mercy’s should you wish to line them up on the shelf. There’s colorful character art on the back and side panels, the character’s name on the other side panel, and a nice logo for The Grimm Universe on the front. Unlike Mercy’s box, which featured a wrap-around magnetized cover, this one has an illustrated sleeve and an opening front flap for the box. I really love the presentation here and I’d actually rate it higher than what we’ve been getting out of Hot Toys these days. Inside the box, the figure is nestled in a cut foam tray with a second layer beneath with more goodies hidden below.

Robyn comes out of the box wearing most of her outfit (hey, clothes are not something you can take for granted with Phicen!), but she does require a little bit of work to get her look complete. The base costume includes her stylish, midriff revealing top, tactical pants and high, buckled boots. The top and bottom garments are beautifully stitched and consist of a mix of the camo cloth and a black pleather material, which does a great job recreating the modern outfit that she wore in Legacy and her ongoing comic. She also has a very soft cloth hood that hangs down off of the back of her top.

The boots are actually boot feet and they look really great. They feature some nice, clean stitching, silver buckles running up the sides, and treads sculpted into the soles. The bottoms of the feet include chunky peg holes that work with any of Phicen’s stands, but more on that later. The ankles joints are pretty strong and capable of holding her in just about any pose I could think of.

Robyn’s outfit is rounded out by a belt and a pair of bracers on her forearms. The belt features a sculpted belt buckle and has four brown leather-like pouches on each hip. The bracers are basically pleather sleeves, which slide on the forearms and mate nicely with the painted, finger-less gloves that are sculpted as part of the hands. Each bracer is also fitted with a plastic armor plate with sculpted straps. Another extras includes a strap for her right bicep, which holds four throwing daggers. This is an amazing accessory, but oh boy is it flirting with danger by putting those sharp daggers near her skin. Care is recommended whenever manipulating that arm so as not to puncture anything!

Robyn also comes with an rig of hip pouches that clips into the rings to the left and right of her belt buckle, and again on the back of her belt. These pouches have opening flaps, which secure with velcro and can be used to hold all her extra arrow tips or whatever else you might want to throw in there. Extra bow string? Magic crystals? Sure, why not?

The beauty of her outfit is that it doesn’t restrict her movement hardly at all, and that’s a wonderful thing when dealing with the Phicen body, which is based off a stainless steel skeleton that claims to mimic 90% of human flexibility quite. The ultimate test was being able to get her down on one knee without fear of pulling any stitches in the clothing or popping any joints. I don’t know of too many of my Hot Toys that could do the same. Keep in mind that the only seams on this entire figure are at her wrists and her neck. Truly a work of art!

The portrait is very nice, although it’s worth noting that Phicen is still a ways off from reaching the mad head skillz of Hot Toys. That having been said, I think this is a great likeness for the character. Her left eye, which I’m pretty sure I mentioned was gouged out by an asshole with a piece of glass, has the mystical eye that she um… grew? in the Realm of Myst and helps her to see what her bow sees. Her remaining real eye has something pretty close to that spark of life that we see in Hot Toys’ figures, and the paint for her eyebrows and lips is immaculate. Robyn features long blonde rooted hair, which can be difficult to get under control. A little touch of gel helps, but I feel like there’s always going to be one or two fly-away strands.

The cloth hood is capable of holding all her hair inside it, or you can snake some of it around and off her shoulder. Again, the more you play with it, the more you can get the hair under control and tucked away. Either way, I think the hood looks great on her and I really dig the soft material they used for it.

Robyn comes with a nice assortment of hands, and here’s where one of the figure’s main flaws comes into play. These are an absolute bitch to change out. The sockets in the hands tend to grip tighter than the sockets in the skeleton, which means the ball joint is more likely to come out of the arm than the one in the hand. On a Hot Toys or Sideshow figure, this is no big deal, but on a Phicen it’s incredibly frustrating to get the ball back into the arm socket, because you have to be careful about stretching or damaging the skin. The alternative is to have a hair dryer handy to heat up the hand enough so that the ball joint is more likely to pull out of the hand. I’ve had success with this in the past, but I currently don’t own a hairdryer. As a result, you’ll note that all the pictures I shot use the same two hands. I got those in and I’m sticking with them for now! Anyway, the ones on her are designed for holding the bow and knocking an arrow. You also get two tight holding hands, and two pairs of hands in slightly different relaxed states.

Of course it wouldn’t be Robyn Hood without her trusty bow and quiver of arrows. The quiver is plastic and is slung over her shoulder with a belt and working buckle. The arrows all feature interchangeable arrow heads. You get standard heads for each one, plus a few specialized types. These include a bullet arrow and a syringe arrow. She even comes with a length of string to tie around a grapple hook arrows, although i haven’t messed with that yet. One issue here is that the arrow heads tend to fit loosely on the shafts. This makes it super easy to swap them out, but they also have a habit of dropping off in the quiver if you put them in with the quills up. Which is why you’ll see most of the pictures with the arrows stored in the quiver with the tips up.

The bow itself is a beautiful piece. It’s sculpted with sensual curves and cast in a beautiful pearlescent green and gray plastics with the fixtures painted gold. Phicen’s boxed figures can sometimes be a little lacking in the quality of their accessories, but that is certainly not the case here. Indeed, my only complaint with the bow is that the string doesn’t have enough give to pose her with the string drawn back. Seeing as how some sellers piece these figures out, I’m tempted to try to get a second bow for her and re-string it with something a little more pliable.

While I’ve had almost nothing but praise for this figure, there is one big oversight that’s pretty hard to swallow. Robyn Hood comes with no stand. Zip! Now, luckily I have a healthy supply of the generic Sixth-Scale stands that you see her resting on above. Indeed, the stands that came with my other Zenescope Phicens aren’t much to get excited about, which is why I swapped them out with these better ones. But still, it takes some balls of steel to release a Sixth-Scale figure at this price point and not even toss in a goddamn stand! It’s a good thing I’m so smitten with her, that I’m willing to overlook those kinds of shenanigans.

While Phicen’s generic figures still tend to be pretty affordable, the boxed and licensed figures are slowly creeping up there in price. Previous Zenescope Phicens like Mercy Dante and Van Helsing ran around $159, while Robyn here jumped to $179 and quickly sold out at most retailers. Oh, I’m not complaining, mind you. She’s still clocking in at well under even what Sideshow is charging these days. The fact that someone is producing high quality collectible figures based on my beloved Zenescope books is reason enough to get me to open up my checkbook before even asking “how much?” And besides, there’s a lot to love here and it’s pretty easy to see where the money went. The body is killer, the head sculpt is solid, and the costume and gear are both fantastic. Sure, there are a few little design hiccups here and there, but it’s sometimes easy to forget that Phicen is a pretty small fish in a big ocean of accomplished Sixth-Scale figure companies. I’ve still got one more release in Phicen’s Zenescope partnership to look at, so probably sometime next month I’ll swing back and check out Liesel Van Helsing!