Robocop has been enjoying a renaissance of attention lately, with a brand new remake that puts a new spin — and color — on the partly metal/partly real police officer. While the new movie may have merits on its own, there will never be another shock-to-the-system punch like the original 1987 masterpiece. Very much a product of it’s time, the original Robocop movie was a deservedly R-rated, nastily violent slice of action movie mayhem with a dark wit simmering just under the surface. And while the star of the movie has received many action figures, collectors had long been denied a good figure of Robocop’s main inhuman counterpart.
Despite Robocop’s slick action-movie values, with ready made one-liners and standout performances, ED-209 stole the show even with the briefest of screen times. His — or its — stop-motion-animated creepiness (which made him even more terrifying in the same way the original Terminator endo-skeleton’s herky-jerky movements made it more frightening) and unyielding adherence to a fractured, warped, and glitched version of the law provided the movie a note of true horror.
Thankfully, NECA was able to deliver a toy that brought all of that screen magic to toy form.
From a design perspective, ED has always been top-notch, and NECA’s translation delivered a ton of detail in this bipedal nightmare’s deluxe-sized figure. The sculpt is terrific, with sleek metal plates and exposed wires, guns, rivets, paneling and all the mechanized detail one would expect. His right arm features a trifecta of missiles housed in a missile rack that slides out into a ready-to-fire position.
Just from a static viewpoint he looks great from every angle, ready to pump ammo into you because you didn’t comply. He’s covered in little tech details and looks machine-stamped out in some Old Detroit factory somewhere.
Sculpt alone is one thing, but as an articulation whore I wouldn’t have been satisfied with the bare minimum. Thankfully they filled ED with just enough articulation personality so he can pull off the main poses that you’d want him to. He features the following:
- swivel hips
- swivel knees
- swivel torso (just under the main upper body)
- swivel shoulders
- hinged elbows
- rotating forearm-guns
- extending legs
The extending legs raise his full height so he properly towers over Robocop. The legs are ratcheted so that they don’t slide back down once fully extended, and they can be left at any height between neutral and full extension. And due to his chicken-legged design he maintains perfect balance regardless of his height.
His paint is not over done, featuring a nice metallic sheen with deep grays and blacks and highlights of red where appropriate. The paintwork is all very clean. I’ve never had much of an issue with NECA paint jobs and this is no exception. A nice little bonus is the small warning signs in key areas here and there.
ED features several audio clips that can be activated with the push of a button. This is the only area where ED falls a little short. It’s obviously not a deal-breaker at all in that they didn’t have to be included, but, as usual, the sound is exceedingly muddy. The featured sounds are:
- Machine gun barrage
- Mechanized walking sounds
- The infamous “Halt. You are trespassing on private property. You have 20 seconds to comply.”
- Followed up with “You have 15 seconds to comply.”
ED-209 was long-awaited and pricey, but well worth it for any Robocop fan, and the best part is that he’s big enough to be anything from a Doombot or robotic creation of Ultron for your Marvel Legends, or something Lex Luthor built to fight Superman for your DC figures. The only limit is your imagination.
