The Man of Steel focus continues with a look at the armored version of General Zod. Who else is looking forward to seeing Man of Steel this weekend?
Accessories
This Zod does a little better than his wave-one counterpart in the accessories department. He comes with a removable helmet and the standard shield-shaped stand.
The helmet is interesting in that it is partially clear so you can actually see Zod’s head through the it.
His eyes don’t exactly match up with the eye holes in the helmet sculpt, so it’s not exactly a perfect representation from what I can tell from the very brief glimpses I’ve seen of this design thus far.
The helmet itself also feels a bit larger than the design looks in the film, but I suspect that is due to the removable feature.
This brings up an interesting question. What do people prefer: a removable helmet for both looks or swappable heads? I’d prefer swappable heads like they do in the Masters of the Universe Classics line, but the way the toy industry is going right now, I’m pretty sure they’d make me pay twice for two different heads.
Due to the design of the helmet, there is pretty much no neck articulation when he is wearing it.
Sculpt
Zod looks like a brand-new sculpt and his armor is extremely well detailed and sharp. His cape has a cool, tattered look to it and hangs naturally.
The Michael Shannon likeness is again dead-on here. The helmet is a bit off, like I mentioned above, but I can forgive that due to the design issues inherent.
Articulation
Here is where we fall down a bit again. I’m not sure why they decided to cut the ab crunch for these figures, but it is very detrimental to the overall poseability of the figure.
Did that start back with the Green Lantern Movie Masters? Especially when you factor in the typicallly restricted neck ball joint from Mattel. I’d like them to bring back the Movie Master ab crunches for sure.
The shoulder articulation is hindered by the shoulder pads, so he cannot raise his arms very high. General Zod has the following articulation:
- Ball-jointed neck
- Swivel Hinged hips and shoulders
- Swivel wrist, waist, bicep, and thigh
- Hinged elbows, knees, and ankles
Paint
Paint on Zod is pretty good, though I have a bit of a masking error on my Zod’s hairline, but the 5 o’clock shadow effect is subtle and effective here. The metallic quality of the armor is quite nice as it’s a shiny black plastic with some silver drybrushing that works pretty well to sell the metallic nature of the armor.
Overall
Overall I’d say, as with the previous Zod figure, this guy is a decent on-the-shelf vanilla-pose figure. His playability is a little better than the other Zod just because he is wearing the massively bulky, cool armor.
The bulk and the accessory and the cheaper Wal-Mart price ($14.95) makes him feel like a better deal than the wave one Zod I picked up at TRU. Again, I bought a figure from a film I haven’t seen, but it looks like this might be the better Zod to have due to his prevalence in trailer action shots. I’m not sure at this point, though.
