Tag Archives: loosecollector

Aug 11 2023

Vampirella by LooseCollector

A few weeks back I started checking out the latest assortment of comic based 1:12 scale femme fatale figures from LooseCollector and Executive Replicas. The first figure to get the spotlight was Red Sonja and today I’m turning my attention everyone’s favorite blood sucker from Drakulon, Vampirella. This is actually not the first Twelth-Scale figure of Vampy I’ve looked at here, with the first being from TBLeague, who also produced her in a full Sixth-Scale figure as well. What can I say? I do love me some Vampirella.

The packaging here is the same format we saw last time with Red Sonja. You get a very attractive and colorful window box with some excellent character art on the front, back, and both side panels. The back also has a blurb about Vampirella and everything about the packaging is collector friendly. This is a great presentation, and it even matches the Coffin Comics figures that LooseCollector has produced. Line all the boxes up on the shelf and it makes for a nice presentation!

Vampirella comes out of the box wearing even less than Red Sonja, but if you’re familiar with the character, well that’s to be expected. I never know what to call her red strappy sling of an outfit. It’s kind of like a one-piece swimsuit with everything cut out but the edges. And those edges are strategically placed to cover her nipples and vampy hoo-ha. And yes, it must be pretty cold in the dungeon because her vamp-nips are at full attention. Also, I always get a good laugh out of the fact that this skimpy sling of an outfit has a collar. Of course, the outfit is sculpted as part of the figure, as are the boots, the bicep cuffs, right forearm bracer, and left wrist cuff. The crimson paint for the costume looks good, but doesn’t pop quite as much as it could have. The paint lines aren’t exactly razor sharp, but there’s certainly no slop to speak of. The gold painted cuffs and accents look nice and the boots are done in a matte black. I think they also did a nice job with the skin tone. This is a nice looking figure!

Vampirella has two head sculpts and these share one sculpted hair piece. The first head has a neutral and rather innocent expression, while the second has her in full-on fierce vamp mode. I dig both of these and the paint is very clean on each face. It’s cool how they changed her eye color for the vamp face from green to red. The earrings are sculpted as part of the hair piece, and the hair itself looks great and sweeps to the side. And while I do like both portraits, I’m probably going to display her with the vampy head the most. It just looks so much more dynamic and interesting.

You do have an option of adding a cape to the outfit if you like. It’s cast in plastic and it looks pretty good, but I think it’s a shame to cover up her back half. To put it on the figure, all you do is pop off the head and the cape hangs around the neck. I haven’t yet decided if I’ll display her with it or have her go capeless.

Now, unlike TBLeague’s seamless body Vampirella, this one does show off all the cuts and joints, which is to be expected, but can look a bit jarring on a mostly nude figure like this, but I’m not really bothered by it. The articulation here is identical to what we saw on Red Sonja, which means she’s using the single-hinged elbows with swivels in the biceps, and hey they work pretty well. Although, I do think the elbow hinges are the least attractive joints on the figure. The arms are rounded out with rotating hinges in the shoulders and hinged pegs for the wrists. There’s a ball joint in the neck and under the chest. The hips are ball jointed, the knees are double-hinged, the ankles have hinges and lateral rockers, and you get swivels in the thighs. The joints here worked perfectly right out of the box, with nothing stuck, which is a pleasant surprise these days. She’s lots of fun to pose and play with and she has pretty solid balance for a figure with high heels, but that balance goes out the window if you put the cape on her.

There are a total of three sets of hands included with the figure: One relaxed set, one clawing set, and a set for holding her daggers. The clawing hands are great and go perfectly with the vampy head. Each set of hands has painted red nail polish.

The matched set of daggers are also quite nice. These have bat-style crossguards and silver blades with black grips and gold pommels. The blades are jagged and hooked a bit at the tips giving them a creepy look. The grip hands work really well with these. I don’t really associate these daggers with the character, but who am I to argue with some bonus weapons.

Finally, you get a little bat buddy to perch on Vampirella’s finger. There’s a ring on the bottom of the bat’s feet that just slides into one of her fingers. It’s the same method TBLeague used for their Vampirella and it works great.

As with Red Sonja, Vampirella here retails for about $80 and yup, that’s definitely on the far end of premium for a figure like this. I really do love her a lot, but she doesn’t impress me quite as much as LooseCollector’s Sonja. Sonja felt like she came with more stuff, but I think when you factor in the second head and cape for Vampirella, it probably all evens out more or less. It’s also worth considering that TBLeague’s 1:12 seamless body Vampirella is still available at a lot of online retailers and averages just about $10 more. The two figures present a very different feel from each other, but if I were only going to buy one, I think I would stick with the seamless one. With all that being said, this Vampirella is lots of fun to play with, she looks great, and I am really enjoying this line a lot.

Jul 28 2023

Red Sonja by LooseCollector

This has been one of those months where several really, really, REALLY old preorders have finally started to roll in. Last time we checked out some of Cosmic Legions, which had a two year wait time, and today I’m starting in on a trio of 1:12 scale comic figures by Executive Replicas/LooseCollector that I preordered back in October of 2021. So yeah, a little less than two years on these as well. Executive Replicas seems to handle licensing in partnership with a few action figure producers. In the past they have been hooked up with Phicen/TB League to produce a number of Sixth-Scale seamless figures from smaller comic properties. while LooseCollector seems to focus on these One-Twelve Scale figures, and I’ve looked at a few of those here as well. This latest assortment of femme fatales included Vampirella, Purgatori, and Red Sonja, and I’m checking out Red Sonja today.

The packaging for these figures is pretty simple but very nice and totally collector friendly. The figure comes in a window box set in a clear plastic tray with her extras laid out around her. You get character art on the front and the Red Sonja logo up at the top. There’s more character art on the side panels, and still more on the back panel along with a blurb about the character and figure. LooseCollector hasn’t really branded this series with a name, but the figures and packaging match up perfectly with the Legacy Series figures they did for Coffin Comics.

Here’s Red Sonja out of the box and looking fabulous! The body has the same feel of the Coffin Comics figures, but there are a few changes, which I’ll run down with the articulation. The sculpting here is excellent, giving our girl a toned and muscular body. She’s wearing her iconic silver scale chainmail bikini armor, which is sculpted as part of the body. There’s some excellent detail to the boots, and I love how they are designed to have openings in the fronts, as if she weren’t showing enough skin already. You also get some sculpted thigh plates, gauntlets that run up to her elbows, bicep rings, and a framework gorget on her shoulders.

The paintwork here is very well done. There’s a deep chocolate brown used for the boots, gauntlets and various straps and belts. The silver used for the armor pops nicely, as does the gold, which is used sparingly. Finally, the skin tone is warm and even throughout.

I really do love this portrait, although I would have really liked to see a second head with a more fierce expression. The one we got gives her a, “Oh yeah, this is going to be fun” expression as she’s about to go into battle. I think it really captures the determination and beauty of the character. Her brow is downturned, there’s a little wrinkle to the bridge of her nose, and her lips are slightly parted to show a flash of teeth. Her eyes are perfectly printed and I love the high gloss red they used on her lips. The flowing red hair is also great, with wild strands flowing everywhere, and there’s a bit of a gap from the shoulders so that it doesn’t impede the head movement too badly. And I have to throw some admiration at that gorget again. It’s a pretty intricate piece for this scale, and I love how it turned out.

The articulation is nearly identical to what we got in the Coffin Comics figures, which is overall very good. The legs are ball jointed at the hips, have swivels in the thighs, double hinges in the knees, and hinges and lateral rockers in the ankles. There’s a ball joint under the chest and at the top of the neck. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders, swivels in the biceps, hinged pegs in the wrists, and single hinges in the elbows. Now, the Coffin Comics figures changed up the single hinge elbows to rotating hinges when going from Lady Death to Hellwitch, and I would have preferred they kept that change here, but it still works fine. All the joints work fine right out of the box, which is more than I can say for some of the figures being produced by the big boys these days. I should also note that this figure has some incredible balance, especially considering her high-heeled boots. I had very little difficulty getting her to stand in some fairly dynamic action poses.

Red Sonja comes with a number of weapons, as well as three sets of hands. The hand options are fists, relaxed, and weapon gripping. Honestly, that’s the right number of hands. I get hand fatigue from some of these companies that include a thousand hands. It’s enough with the hands!!! As for the weapons, first off we have her beautiful double-handed sword, and this is gorgeous. The stout, blade is painted silver and the hilt has a gold pommel and crossguard with a black extended grip. There’s some beautiful scrollwork sculpted into the crossguard.

The articulation works well to get the figure to wield the sword with both hands.

Next up is a pair of crude fighting knives. These have dark, curved blades with a primitive hammered finish and the grips are sculpted to look like leather wrappings. I had completely forgotten that these were going to be includes, so they were a pretty cool surprise.

And finally, you get a pole-axe, which is a wonderful looking weapon. You get a single blade with a spiked back, a spiked pommel, and sculpted leather wrappings along the length of the shaft. It’s definitely an attention getter!

Red Sonja was definitely worth the wait! Granted, I had a good idea what to expect from my experience with Lady Death and Hellwitch, and I’m glad to see LooseCollector delivering on quality and consistency. And above all a figure that is an absolute joy to play around with. She looks great, the joints all behave the way they should, and there were zero QC issues, which sadly seems like an extra bonus these days. Sure, at $70 this figure clocks in at the far side of expensive, but that’s literally the price you have to pay for these smaller batched figures from smaller companies. LooseCollector has already put up some more figures for pre-order and I’m in on all of them. In the meantime, I’ll be showcasing more of this assortment in the very near future.

Dec 30 2022

Coffin Comics (Legacy Series): Hellwitch by LooseCollector

It’s FFZ’s very last review for the year and I decided to go with a figure that arrived only a couple of days ago and one that I was pretty excited to open! Last year Coffin Comics debuted their first 6-inch scale Legacy Series action figure with Lady Death and it turned out to be a damn nice figure. The back of the box teased a number of possible future releases, and here we are a year later with the first on that list, Hellwitch! And with Coffin Comics publishing their Wargasm event comic this year, pitting Lady Death against Hellwitch, this figure couldn’t have come at a better time! But before we jump in, let me warn you that this review will get R-Rated by the end, so if the sight of nekkid plastic bewbs offends you, you might want to dip out before that happens!

Hellwitch comes in the same style window box as Lady Death, making for a very slick presentation. The front window shows off the figure nicely, while still managing to conceal the optional R-Rated piece. The side panels have some excellent character art, while the back panel shows a shot of the figure and has a little blurb about the character. The bottom teases four possible figures in the series, although we already got Lady Death, and I even picked up the crimson variant of that figure which I’ll check out here sometime in the near future. The figure is produced in partnership with Executive Replicas and LooseCollector, and I’ve expressed my confusion about what these companies actually do in the past. My best guess is that Executive Replicas secures the licensing and LooseCollector actually makes the figures. They have a number of other indie comic figures in the works, and they were the ones who gave us Taarna and Avis from Heavy Metal. Hellwitch comes out of the package with her wings off, so you’ll just need to plug those into her back via ball joints and she’s all ready to go.

And boy does she look great! The body style is extremely similar to the one used for Lady Death, but as near as I can tell the only recycled parts are the feet. Hellwitch winds up showing off even more skin than Lady Death, and every bit of her skimpy outfit is incorporated into the sculpt, rather than just painted on. That outfit includes a black top with silver studs, a black bottom with some silver accents, black boots with silver tops, silver bracers on her forearms, silver claws, and a studded choker collar. I really dig the slight orange tint to her skin and it looks a lot better than it did in the solicitation photos. I especially love how they did the wings. These are cast in a relatively thin plastic and beautifully painted. They connect with ball joints, which hold them in place very well and allow for some different posing options. They do make her a bit back heavy, but thankfully they can be used to stabilize her by resting the bottom tips on the ground.

The portrait is gorgeous, and includes her various silver piercings as part of the sculpt. There’s a ring in her bottom lip, a stud running through the bridge of her nose and two studs over her right eyebrow. The paint work on her yellow pupil-less eyes, lips, and eyebrows is all immaculate, and you get a little touch of eye shadow above the eyes. Her brown hair cascades out around her and two segmented silver horns protrude from the top of her head. I love everything they did here!

The articulation is similar, but not identical to what we saw with Lady Death. The biggest departure is in the arms. The rotating hinges in the shoulders and hinged pegs in the wrists are the same, but where Lady Death had bicep swivels and hinged elbows, Hellwitch has rotating hinges in the elbows. Despite being different, it doesn’t really change the poseability of the figure. The legs are ball jointed in the hips, have double hinges in the knees, swivels in the thighs, and hinges and rockers in the ankles. There’s a ball joint under the chest, and the head attaches to the body with a swiveling peg and a ball joint up top. Just like Lady Death, you get two sets of hands, one relaxed and one set capable of holding her weapon. And yes, Hellwitch’s chest is removable, but we’ll save that for the end.

Hellwitch comes with her magic demon blade, which is cast in translucent green plastic and looks amazing. I don’t know what kind of plastic they used for this accessory, but it catches the light better than any effect part I’ve seen in other action figure lines. She can wield it in either hand, and the hilt is long enough for her to grip it with both, but I think it looks best as a one-handed weapon, especially because of the knuckle guard. And that brings us to the final accessory in the box, and that’s her swap out chest.

The chest piece is held on by magnets, which do a pretty good job keeping it in place and makes switching over to the bare breasted look quick and easy. The skin tone on both chest pieces match the rest of the figure very well, and you even get fully painted demon nipples! I do not remember this feature being advertised, so you can imagine my surprise when I opened the box and found this to be a display option. No, it’s not the way I’ll be regularly displaying her, but as I’m fond of saying, it’s always nice to have options!

Because of the niche market and probably small production runs, these figures sure aren’t cheap. Hellwitch weighs in at about $70, which is the same as her nemesis Lady Death. But here’s an extra kick in the teeth… I pre-ordered Hellwitch with Coffin Comics early last year. I moved since then, and I’m sure you can guess where this is going. Coffin Comics did send out an email saying they had started to ship the figure, and I quickly replied asking them to update my shipping address. I got an email back saying the figure had already been delivered, and who knows what happened to it. As a result, I wound up pre-ordering it again through an online retailer, so I pretty much wound up paying double for her. Ouch! Still, the Hellwitch comics have been absolutely killer over the last couple years, and I’m very happy to have the character represented as an excellent action figure.

And that will wrap up my reviews for the year! I will stop back on New Year’s Day with something, and then regular reviews will continue with the next Marvel Monday!

Aug 24 2022

Heavy Metal: Deluxe Taarna & Avis by LooseCollector

I have a tremendous amount of nostalgia for the 1981 adult cartoon anthology masterpiece, Heavy Metal. It seemed like it was always being shown on Cable TV and I must have watched it every damn time I came across it. It was like some kind of mystical taboo treasure that I knew I shouldn’t be watching, being as young as I was, but it sparked my imagination (among other things), and it was probably the very first time I discovered that cartoons weren’t just for kids. I don’t think I fully understood it until way later, but man is it a wild ride! It definitely left its mark on me and hell, I even own a UMD copy of it for my SOny PSP… so there’s a bit of humble bragging for ya! Sadly, there hasn’t been a whole lot of decent merch for this flick, which is a shame, because there are some amazing character designs. The far inferior sequel Heavy Metal 2000 or FAKK 2, or whatever the hell it calls itself, did get some action figures and a video game, but nothing great. So naturally when Executive Replicas revealed they were doing a proper 6-inch scale Taarna figure with her flying mount Avis, well I was excited! The Taarna figure is also available to pre-order, without Avis, as a limited exclusive.

The set comes in a very nice looking window box with some really iconic artwork on the back. I can never work out exactly what kind of company Executive Replicas is, but best I can tell they partner with sculptors and toy producers to release licensed product. LooseCollector is also credited on the box, and I think they are the the actual producers of the figure. I’ve featured some of Executive Replicas’ work with Phicen’s Sixth-Scale figures, but their one previous release that relates most to this one is their partnership with Coffin Comics and the 6-inch scale Lady Death figure. That figure established a cohesive line of sculpting and articulation that continues on to this release, as well as future releases which will include several more Coffin Comics and some indie comic characters. And yes, I have virtually all of those on pre-order, so they will turn up here eventually. Anyway, the packaging here is collector friendly, and while Avis requires a little assembly, everything can go back into the box with no worries. Let’s start with Taarna!

Taarna comes kitted out in her skimpy Taarakian battle armor… ah, who am I kidding? This ain’t armor. It’s barely a bikini. Either way, part of it is sculpted and other parts are just painted onto the figure. The combination works pretty well and the paint lines are reasonably sharp. There’s a little gold applied to the buckles and a gold bicep band on her left arm. Taarna also has her sculpted red boots as well as a gauntlet and shoulder armor for her sword arm. I really like the wash given to her boots and gauntlet, as it’s somewhat evocative of some of the panel art in the comics. I’m not as keen on the red blemishes scattered over her body. I’m assuming this is supposed to be bruising from battle, and in fairness Taarna takes a lot of abuse in the film, but I think I would have preferred her without these marks.

OK, here’s the weird part. The figure comes with two different heads, and I’m not sure what they are each supposed to signify. The obvious answer is one has regular hair and one has windblown hair. But the hair pieces are actually removable and can be used for either head. The eyes are different colors, the purple eye makeup is more pronounced on one, and there’s more color in the cheeks. But why? I can understand a second head with a different expression, but the differences here seem more like a minor paint variation. Even the solo Taarna exclusive only has one head to share the two hair pieces. Either way, I do prefer the first head over the second, but I don’t think either one does a great job of capturing the character likeness. Taarna often looked a lot more pissed off, and I wish at least one of these portraits portrayed that. They’re fine, but just not spectacular.

It’s not easy incorporating a lot of articulation into a figure that shows a lot of skin, unless you’re going with something like a Phicen seamless body. All in all, I think they did a nice job here. The arms have rotating hinges in the shoulders, single hinges in the elbows, swivels in the biceps, and hinged pegs in the wrists. The legs are ball jointed up in the hips, have swivels in the thighs, double-hinges in the knees, and hinges and rockers in the ankles, although the sculpting in the ankles does curtail the range of movement there quite a bit. There’s a ball joint under the chest and the neck is double ball-jointed. This is a fun figure to pose and play with, and the joints all feel great.

Taarna comes with her gold sword with a red scabbard. The sword doesn’t sport a lot of detail in the sculpt, but it looks pretty close to the design in the film. Her relaxed hands can be swapped out to allow her to hold the sword as a lefty or a righty, and the scabbard hooks onto the belt off her left hip. The sword is fine, but the scabbard has a few little issues. For starters, the blade is a very tight fit, and I don’t feel comfortable inserting it all the way up to the hilt for fear of getting out again. The scabbard is also a curved a bit, so that might be the problem. Attaching it to the belt works OK, but I would have preferred a peg so the scabbard could be angled while she is wearing it. As it is, it can be a bit awkward and as a result, I tend to prefer to display her without it. OK, let’s move on to Avis…

Out of the box, Avis requires her wings and tail fins to be attached. The wings socket in with ball joints, which offer a bit of articulation, while the fins simply tab into place. I actually expected this to be a mostly static figure, but in addition to the wings, there’s a little bit of movement where the legs meet the body, and a decent amount of movement in the neck. Make no mistake, there isn’t a lot of poseability here, but what we get is still plenty cool. Now, it would have been really cool to get a second set of legs and a clear stand to put her into flight mode, but no doubt that would have added a lot to the cost of the set. Either way, Avis is a very solid and substantial figure with some really nice texturing all over her skin and some fine shading bringing out the details in her otherwise pale orange hide. You also get some great sculpted detail in the leg muscles and in the feet and talons.

She’s got an adorable head sculpt with big green eyes and a prominent beak. The reigns are permanently attached and are cast in soft rubbery plastic. Yup Avis is just adorable and I still find the scene where Avis gets wounded hard to watch.

Some really nice attention went into the sculpting and paint on her saddle and gear. You get a green bedroll, a pair of saddlebags, and a round thing, which might be a canteen or something. The saddle is textured to look like worn leather, and you get some nice hits of gold paint on the sculpted buckles and snaps.

Taarna can mount Avis pretty well without any assists, like a peg up her butt. Indeed, there aren’t even any stirrups for her feet, but I don’t recall there being any in the movie, nor are there any on the poster art. Her sword holding hands work perfectly for taking the reins, and she looks damn great atop her flying steed! Yup, this is surely the way she’s going to be displayed!

It feels like part of me has been waiting almost four decades for a figure set like this, and I’m mighty happy to have Taarna and Avis on my shelf, despite a few nitpicks here and there. It’s not a perfect set, but it’s still a pretty damn good one. The MSRP is $129, which feels about right for something from an old movie and a fairly small production company. Still, I really wish Executive Replicas would have gone the Phicen seamless route on this figure. Had they done her with their 6-inch scale body, they could have still included this Avis, and I think the result would have been pretty spectacular. Hell, I’d still be down for picking up a Phicen/TBLeague release of Taarna in either the 6-inch or 12-inch scale. That would be a perfect marriage! Back at the beginning, I mentioned that the Taarna figure is up for pre-order all by herself, but for whatever reason that figure is priced at $85, which is batshit crazy, especially considering this set is still pretty widely available, and you get Avis included for only $50 more.