Ladies and gentlemen, I was pretty confused when I pulled the Astro Boy package out of the box.
First off, some backstory. Astro Boy is one of those thing that has been around for much longer than my entire life, and therefore I know of it just on the basis of its saturation into a certain sub-sect of pop culture. However, at no point in my years and years of pop culture ingestion have I actually taken in any Astro Boy media. I have never read the original manga, I’ve never seen the cartoon, and I’ve never seen the movie.
In short, Astro Boy has existed in the periphery for me. I knew about it, but have never sought it out. But despite my ignorance, there’s no arguing that Astro Boy doesn’t carry a certain iconic weight behind him. When you’ve been around since the ’50s, your impact/legacy can’t be denied.
As a person that is attracted to icons and iconic representations of things in plastic, I knew as soon as I saw the solicitation images for MAFEX’s Astro Boy that I’d have to preorder him as soon as possible. And so, I did. Then I put it out of my mind, because the arrival date was a year away.
I didn’t check reviews when he started showing up, and at no point had I bothered to check out how big the figure itself was going to be. I assumed 1/12th scale, of course, but I also assumed that meant 1/12th scale relative to MAFEX’s offerings. He’s a boy. A robot boy, but a boy. So I was expecting a smaller figure.
So I pull out the package, and this giant grinning figure greets me. This is not a child-sized figure relative to other MAFEX figures. This is a full on, large, 1/12th scale Astro Boy, as you can see:
And that’s where my confusion came in.
To be honest, I was kind of disappointed at first. I wanted (and thought I had preordered) an Astro Boy that would fit in reasonably with everything else I have around this scale, so he’d look proportionate to…well…all the other 6-7 inch figures I have. I’m not someone who needs all of his toys to be the same size and all work together holding hands and all that, but it is nice when they cooperate. But this…this is a big boy. If you want him to be a real child-sized robot, it’s more like 1/9th scale or something.
But with that realization out of the way, It came down to the toy itself, taken on its own terms. It’s not going to be what it was never meant to be, I suppose.
On its own, Astro Boy is a pretty fun toy despite the whole size thing. It’s dead on to the source material and carries a lot of iconic weight. It looks like it hoped right off the page or screen. The articulation allows you to do quite a bit with him. He has:
Ball jointed head
Ball-jointed neck
Double ball-jointed shoulders, with a floating bal jointed butterfly-type joint
Single-jointed elbows (90 degree bend)
Ball jointed wrists
Ball-jointed waist
Ball joined hips with Drop-down feature
Double-jointed knees
Ball jointed ankles
Each articulation point does it’s job well, so you can achieve a lot of nice poses. I do miss some type of bicep swivel. You can approximate a little of that motion with the shoulder setup, but there are some limitations in crossing his arms. Also he has a little trouble raising his arms out to the side.
As you can tell in the pictures, there’s a noticeable seam where the two pieces of the head meet. You might be able to alleviate this if you squeeze the two pieces together harder, but as I was swapping back and forth I did not really force them together, because once they go together you really have to pry to get them apart.
Astro Boy comes with a ton of extras. I knew he was pricey, and I figured it was all the extra options, not knowing that he was going to be a full-sized toy on top of all he comes with.
His head features three removable face-plates. He has a serious face with a bit of a smirk, a happy, smiling face and a sleeping face. He comes with three different eye-pieces that can easily slot into either of the open-eyed heads.
His entire torso can be popped off and swapped with a second included torso that features an open chest plate, exposing his robotic innards. Even Astro-kids need a tune-up now and then. It’s not a feature I’d be using a lot but it’s a cool inclusion. He must have needed maintenance quite a bit in the original media for this to be included. The second torso feature more limited shoulder-articulation, with only a single ball joint.
He comes with a variety of extra hands, all of which can be swapped on to either body. They are: fists, flying, neutral, pointing, “halt” and what look like gesturing hands. One of them is doing that Bill Clinton thing.
Both of his feet pop off and you can plug in a pair of jet boot flames for when he’s flying. The included stand comes with a special adapter piece that allows you to stabilize him in a variety of flying poses.
The most important thing he comes with is his magnetic butt machine gun. Just hold it up to his butt and it will attach, firing away at who knows what. I don’t know how this plays into his actual adventuring, but “anal machine gun” is probably something that needs to be celebrated wherever it can be found.
The last accessory is a pair of searchlights that can plug into his empty eye sockets when the other optional eye-parts have been removed. I find this more disturbing than I can put into words for some reason.
If you’re an Astro Boy fan and are in the market for a toy, this is an excellent figure, and is a lot of fun to move around. If you’re wanting a smaller Astro Boy like I was, this will not quite do it. I am still pretty confused over the size choice made for this figure. If it were more in the size-realm I was expecting, I would unreservedly recommend it, but as it is I can only recommend it if you know what you’re getting going in. So if you want him to be a standalone figure and don’t care about size, MAFEX did a good job here, and I’m not sorry I got him.
You can preorder him at Big Bad Toy Store
Or get him from Amiami