Red She-Hulk. Wait, there is a RED She-Hulk? Okay, yeah, I guess there is. After the really weird Red Hulk arc, I kind of lost interest in this gimmick, but I am all for gender equality, even if taking the good ideas with the bad. So, perpetual peripheral character, and sometimes girlfriend of Bruce Banner, Betty Ross gets her her time to shine in the light of a visage all in red. The thing is, even if a concept isn’t always great, it is always cool to get a good action figure.
It’s true, I don’t know much about the character, but that did not keep me from picking up this figure (and it was not just for the included primate parts) because with the run they have been on, Hasbro deserves my faith when it comes to female action figures. They have been doing a great job as of late, and while this body is not put together as well as the base used for Moonstone and Satana, it is still nice and makes their Red She-Hulk offering vastly superior to their regular She-Hulk offering from a few years ago.
Her articulation is pretty standard when compared to most Hasbro Marvel articulation these days, so that includes the ever-so-important double knees, rocker ankles, and one of my new favorite joints: their floating rib cage. I am happy to say that, with the exception of a couple of places, the articulation is quite functional as well. There are tons of expressive battle poses you can manipulate out of this figure, and since she towers over the rest of them, she will pretty much be able to stomp any of your other Marvel ladies figures. Her neck functionality is limited due to the giant pile of hair she has on her red melon, and her hips can be a bit frustrating as well. That is mostly due to the shape of the pelvis and the limited front-to-back movement of the ball joints. This limits sitting and crouching poses, which is a shame because you don’t really realize how important that is until you start posing your figure. If only someone could come up with a solution to this… if there was someone out there that could modify the joints to make them fluid… and if only a website could post the instructions… hmm…
I do wish that Hasbro would just drop the “elbrows” all together, though. Yeah, they work all right with sleeved arms, but when you have bare arms and biceps twists, it really becomes moot, and a standard hinge elbow would probably look better.
The good news is that, no matter the pose, this figure looks great. The skin plastic might be a little shiny, but the red and black (with a touch of purple, of course) color combination is a strong one, and I like her streamlined outfit. Sure, it is boobalicious, but she is a comic book character after all, and that not withstanding, her togs are actually pretty conducive to beating up people. I mean, at least she isn’t wearing heels; she is already tall enough. It fits skin-tight, so there are not a lot of sculpted details (save for the hardly-used zipper), so the interesting and fingerless gloves add some nice variety. I am kind of split on her head sculpt; I like the hair and red highlights, and while the face is aesthetically pleasing, it is kind of placid for a Hulk character. Her head might be a touch too small as well, but I wonder if design wasn’t erring on the side of caution with all of that hair.
Okay, so I like this figure. I am not sure what to do with it since I don’t really know much about the character (well aside from the Betty Ross part), but having a cool action figure is going to get me to pick up some books that highlight her and see what all the hubbub is all about. She is part of the “Hit Monkey” series, so she is still pretty readily available, so you stand a good chance of finding her out in the wild. Oh, and Lyra was supposed to be the variant for this figure, but I have no idea where she is going end up at this point.
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