Nostalgia is a hell of a drug. And, really, that’s all there is to the appeal here. For those of us who grew up with the original Star Wars toys Kenner cranked out in the halcyon days of ’77-’83, soft sculpts and 5 points of articulation still carry a lot of weight. Even though “action figure technology” left this sort of figure in the dust long ago, there is still a certain pull to it. Evidently Funko knows this very well and has released a dozen or more popular TV and movie properties in the style of those old Star Wars toys — because we seem to be eating them up. The ones that hit me the hardest in the nostalgia gut were the monsters, both the Universal classics and the more modern “slashers.” As excited as I was to have them, my brain kept fixating on who was missing rather than who we got, as is often the case with collectors. Most notable among the missing was this guy — Leatherface fromThe Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the character who basically kicked-off modern horror as we know it.
The presentation is a huge part of the appeal because all the figures in this line look cool in their blisters against the backdrop of their license-specific artwork. And it’s a good thing I’m an opener because when my box arrived from Amazon, the blister was completely detached from the card and was knocking around separately in the box. I mean, really? Use some better glue, Funko! That aside, what the card maily serves to accomplish is making me wish Funko gave us Leatherface’s entire family, especially his brother, the hitchhiker. But Leatherface will do for now.
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is my favorite horror movie of all time, so I am thrilled to add Leatherface here to my ReAction horror shelf, and this figure will fit right in among his slasher peers because, well, it’s such a crappy figure. But the point here isn’t to make the best figure possible — it’s to create something so fundamentally rudimentary that it could stand next to the old Kenner, say, Han Solo and fit right in. And I do think that if I still had any of my old Kenner Star Wars figures, Leatherface would not look out of place in a Cantina display, for example.
The paint job is adequate, which is about the best one could expect from this type of figure. Mine suffered some paint rub on his elbows due to knocking around in his blister, but otherwise everything looks clean and sharp.
All the details here are as soft as can be, but it’s still recognizably “Leatherface.” The mask, the apron, the tie, the crappy striped shirt, the blood splatter — all of the character’s defining traits are here, and they all make for one adorably strange-looking figure. The mask just barely looks like a “mask,” and it actually kinda looks like he’s wearing a pancake or cake batter on his face. I guess that’s totally fine here given the context, though. Maybe the pull of nostalgia makes it too easy to give stuff like this a pass, but I do think that’s okay.
For accessories, Leatherface comes with his trusty chainsaw — which he can only hold with one hand. It’s small for what it’s supposed to be, but it works well enough, and somehow his holding it with just one hand makes him seem all the tougher.
His articulations is exactly what you’d expect — limited. But, again, that’s part of the charm. He has swivel joints at the shoulders, hips and neck — and that’s it. No fancy posing will be taking place here. Like all of these figures, they’re build for display purposes, either carded or in the most vanilla poses possible because, well, that’s pretty much all they can do.
It’s a Kenner-style figure and it’s easy to tell who it’s supposed to be, so I guess I would call that a success for a figure in this style. And evidently I prefer my Leatherface figures to all be of the throwback variety because in the above pic I have this guy posed with NECA’s Mego-style release, but I completely skipped the “Ultimate Leatherface” figure that came out this year, which has a more modern sculpt and articulation scheme. Or maybe in order for me to appreciate a figure based on a character from the ’70s, the actual figure also has to be a throwback to the ’70s. (That said, where are my Mego-style Star Wars figures, Neca?)
I’m happy to have Leatherface in my ReAction modern monsters display, but I do think he’s ultimately the least satisfying figure of the bunch. When displayed with the others, his head sculpt just doesn’t work as well as some of the others do. Maybe some sharper details sculpted into the mask would have helped, but it’s clear he needs something.
Leatherface is too important a character to not be included in this line, so even if the figure comes up a little too soft, I still think he’s essential — mainly because of character draw and nostalgia.
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