After a little over a year, I was starting to worry about this preorder, but Scrooge finally arrived!
As I’ve stated in previous reviews, I am always in the market for good Disney action figures, especially ones that revolve around either Mickey and his surrounding cast or Donald and his people. Unfortunately, they can be few and far between, and often some important main characters are left out. Fortunately, Herocross has been making the effort to shore up the duck side of the equation. Starting with Donald, they have since released the troublesome triplets of Huey, Dewey and Louie, and then Donald’s girl Daisy, and now the eldest member of the clan, Scrooge McDuck himself.
Created by Carl Barks, Scrooge McDuck has become one of the most important and well-written members of the Disney ensemble. From esteemed comic works by both Carl Barks and Don Rosa (and many many others) to crossover appeal in Mickey’s Christmas Carol and two variations on the Ducktales cartoon, Scrooge is just as successful in the real world as he is in his fictional life.
When Herocross announced Scrooge McDuck I was all over it. In the interim I picked up the Funko Disney afternoon Scrooge figure, so that briefly scratched the itch, but in terms of options and accessories, this is the Scrooge I was waiting for.
My personal leanings for Scrooge are rooted more in the comics, so my ideal Scrooge wears a red robe, where the Ducktales version opts for a blue robe. As that is the more popular and accessible version of Scrooge, his action figures tend to go in that direction, so this Scrooge is wearing his Ducktales blue. I can’t fault the logic behind that choice, even though it is a little bittersweet for me. I can deal with it, though, because of how much fun the figure itself is. Of course, it’s not without flaws, some of which I have come to expect with Herocross offerings.
Scrooge stands just under 6 inches and has a decent amount of articulation for the character. He has a double-ball-jointed neck, jointed shoulders, bicep swivels, single jointed arms and swivel/ball-jointed wrists. His hips are ball joints, he has single jointed knees and ball-jointed ankles. Additionally, there is a ball joint at his torso, underneath his robe, that allows some swivel and some back and forth there. It’s quite enough articulation for plenty of good poses.
The main con—and as I said these can pop up on Herocross figures—is some looseness to the joints. Here the primary looseness is at the shoulders, so if you put his arm straight out it will slowly start to drop downwards. This could no doubt be fixed by adding something to tighten the joints, but out of the box mine was wiggly.
The second con—and really the only other major one—is the magnet used for his top hat. It is extraordinarily weak, and barely held his hat on. I ended up placing a strong rare earth magnet between the connection of head and hat, and now the hat stays on each of the three heads without issue.
Scrooge comes with three heads. One is happy, one is angry, and one is happy with the inclusion of a pair of dollar signs in place of the eyes. While it’s not one I would use as his display head, I love love love the inclusion of the dollar sign head, because it’s extremely Scroogey. It reeks of Scroogeness. It’s as comic/cartoony as it gets, and is perfect for certain poses.
The head that was already on the body popped on and off easily, but the other two were a bitch to get on, sicne they hadn’t been loosened up. I ended up having to scrape away a bit of the inside circumference of the peghole opening so I could swap the heads easily for the photo shoot. Alternately, you could just heat it up and leave the head on for a while and it should stretch it out, but for the off/on I was doing I needed a better option. I wasn’t quite sure how the heat would react with his glasses.
Scrooge comes with several pairs of hands: gripping with extended pinky, neutral, flat, fists and a matched set of one grip and one cradle, for his blunderbuss. These all swapped off and on fine, with no issue.
For accessories, Scrooge comes with a pile of money, three single coins, a gold nugget, his cane, a blunderbuss (Scrooge is old-timey), a feather duster and his #1 Dime display stand. Outside of a fully-to-scale money bin that he could dive into (would I buy it? I might buy that. How much would it cost? Nevertheless…), these are the perfect accessories for Scrooge. Now I need Magica DeSpell and some Beagle Boys to try to steal his money. I’ll have to settle for his nephew for now.
Despite a few issues, I love this damn figure. I love him enough—and I am just stupid enough– that I would buy him all over again if he were released in a red robe, maybe with a few different accessories.
