Tag Archives: loosecollector

Dec 30 2022

Legacy Series: Hellwitch by Coffin Comics

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 Executive Replicas

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.