I haven’t bought a figure from McFarlane in years, but I’m a big fan of Stranger Things and the SDCC prototypes looked nice, so I had to give these a try. The results for my taste are fairly mixed. Let’s take a look at Eleven and Chief Hopper!
The first thing that jumped out to me on the shelf with these figures is the fun blister card packaging with some great traditional poster artwork on the front. These look striking on the peg for sure.
Hopper’s sculpt is very nicely detailed with a decent likeness for the actor and good proportions. I like the little detail of the pen in his shirt pocket. The sculpt is actually marred a bit by some of the ugliest hip articulation points I’ve ever seen. I found myself wishing often that NECA had this line while messing with these figures and the articulation is one of the reasons.
The hip peg sheered off with very little force. I haven’t had one of these breaks on a figure in a long time. The articulation scheme is fairly clunky anyway, so I may just glue it back together.
Hopper comes with a coffee cup, a stand with the Stranger Things logo, and his revolver. The gun is sharply detailed and has a nice silver paint application.
The articulation is fairly limited with the following POA:
- Ball-jointed head
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, hips, elbows, knees, and wrists
It’s so odd to me that on a modern action figure there is no mid-torso articulation at all, and the shoes, while separate pieces, don’t move at all. The elbows and knees and wrists are ratcheted, so they hold position well but are fairly ugly.
The paint is nice and they utilize the face printing technology popularized by S.H. Figuarts to good effect on his beard.
Eleven comes with a stand, a wig, an Eggo waffle, four hands (fist, outstretched hand, Eggo gripping, and walkie-talkie holding), and a walkie-talkie.
One of the hands is designed specifically to hold the walkie-talkie and there is a peg that plugs into the hole in the device.
The Eggo is a cute inclusion, though I think I would have preferred a couple of boxes of Eggos to re-enact her Eggo theft scene in the show.
The articulation is also fairly limited with the following POA:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, and knees.
- Ball-jointed head, ankles, and wrists
Eleven also does not have any mid-torso articulation and the legs are completely stiff. The dress is a pretty stiff plastic, so any leg movement would have been restricted anyway. The ankles also don’t really move much at all.
The wig is a fairly stiff plastic, but it fits nicely on the head and works well for the most part.
The paint on the outfit is pretty great with a few different washes. The head sculpt has that printing tech and it’s slightly mis-registered on my figure. I saw quite a few of this figure in my town, and I could not find one with the eyes and hair all matching up onto the sculpt. The hair also has some scratches on it that I’m going to have to fix. Over all, I kind of wish I had kept these two figures on the card. They aren’t terribly fun to play with and are fairly stiff.
