He’s too short…ish
I wanted to address the bigfoot in the room right away and get it out of my system before anything else. Whether or not he is truly “too short” is apparently completely determined by your exposure to Sasquatch, and even then, it is up to that pesky thing referred to as “artistic license.”
In much of his original appearances, Sasquatch was portrayed as huge. Like, not a little huge, but really frickin’ huge. Ten feet tall. That’s a full story. Even now, he is still usually the biggest guy in the room. But then and now, his height has a tendency to fluctuate, again, depending on the artist. Hell, even in one of my favorite comics (Marvel Two-In-One Annual #7), Sasquatch is portrayed at various sizes throughout the comic. In some panels he towers, in other he is merely a big guy, but not the ten feet tall creature he should be.
And in fact, he actually looks close to the Build a Figure, which makes me like him even more.
Regardless, for my own biases, a Sasquatch that doesn’t literally tower over everybody around him by a wide margin is too short for how I ideally would like Sasquatch to be portrayed. Having Sasquatch and Juggernaut be similar in size edges close to heresy, which also has a lot to do with recent portrayals of Juggernaut, but that’s an entirely different ball of Cyttorak.
So my final statement on the height is, to me, he’s just too short by a handful of inches. I know a lot of people are warming up their “it’s no big deal” buttons, but it is what it is…for me.
However, I am capable of setting that aside and recognizing the differing approaches to various characters, and can keep from completely excoriating a figure based purely on a perceived flaw. In other words, height issues aside, there’s a lot of good here. And this Sasquatch blows away the previous ToyBiz sasquatch by a wide margin.
First off, let’s talk about his face. While the ToyBiz head could definitely be called dynamic, I didn’t love it, but this time around I do. I feel like there’s a time and a place for scream-heads, and that time and place is as alternate heads for Hulks. Sasquatch has always felt like a more reserved and stoic character (Walter Langkowski is a physicist and he, while he gets mad, he’s not constantly all “Sasquatch Smashquatch!” Like puny Banner) so I love the stoic, reserved expression here that is less “screamy angry” and more resolute, “I will kick your ass if I have to, and quite easily.” It’s very Byrne-esque. The way the hair flows from the head into the shoulders works much better here as well. If he looks down the hair still has a shelf-like quality, but overall it works better in a neutral stance. There’s really no perfect way to pull off the Sasquatch torso-to-neck-to-head look without having it all one solid piece, but this does as close as possible while retaining articulation.
The body is nice and wide, with longer than usual arms to really sell that slightly ape-like quality he has. He has a pwoerful barrel chest and looks solid and strong, where the TB Sasquatch was a little on the gangly side.
When Man-Thing debuted, people instantly though there would be a lot of reuse for a Sasquatch, but, as you can tell, that is not the case. Weeds ain’t fur, people.
As a Build-A-Figure, you have to put Sasquatch together. All of the parts snapped together easily. I don’t usually have this issue, but my figure’s right arm was very loose once I plugged it into the socket. If I put the arm straight out, it would flop down as soon as I let go, and wobble if I shook him. I had to wrap some tape around the peg in order to tighten it enough so it would hold a pose. The left arm is not as bad, but it is a tad looser than I’d like, so I might go back and add some tape to that peg as well, just so he can keep his arms elevated without them slowly drooping.
Otherwise, the articulation is pretty good. He has single jointed elbows and double jointed knees. Even with double joints, the legs do a good job of remaining powerful looking. His fur pee-pee flap does impede his ability to put his legs up as far as he would be able to without, but he can do a better split than the Pizza Spider-Man figure, so if you ever need him to do that, he can.
He has one fist and one gesturing/grabbing hand. While multiple hand options would have been my spoiled preference (swappable pairs of fists and grabby hands), this does a good job of acquiescing to mysingle stipulation for super-strong and/or gamma irradiated characters; must have at least one fist. A puncher without a puncher is frustrating at best. Sasquatch is going to have to make do with being a single-hand puncher for now.
Moving past my issues with the height, I was able to appreciate Sasquatch for what he was more than what he wasn’t. I wouldn’t turn down a larger one in the future, but as I don’t see that happening, this is a good, bulky, powerful looking figure that represents a version of Sasquatch. We have some Alpha Flight members, but the quality of those are so all over the place that I’d like to start all over again with Sasquatch and pretend he’s number one. Redo Guardian, redo Puck, and then release the rest of the original team, and hopefully not spread out over the next ten years.
