Sometimes you get a shot at something that you didn’t think it was possible to get a shot at, and it ends up being pretty damn cool.
I have to be honest; I had no idea that little bug thing that Mezco uses in its logo had a name. I just thought it was a random bug, the reasons for which I was in the dark. I have since learned that the bug’s name (obviously) is Gomez, and a Gomez figure even had a previous 1/8th scale exclusive a decade ago. I obviously didn’t pay too much attention to Mezco until they began their one:12th endeavor.
When I first saw promotional images of the one:12 Gomez, I immediately wanted one. One of my personal favorite themes in toyland is “normal looking things with weird heads.” I don’t really know why and prefer not to examine it too closely. But it should not be a surprise that a suit-wearing dude with an insect head fits into that specific slot with ease. Then I learned that Gomez was goingto be a Toyfair exclusive, meaning you’d actually have to be at Toyfair to get him, and that ended my excitement. No problem, I figured. They’d have to release another one at some point.
However, Mezco did those of us who don’t do the whole convention thing a favor and put up a limited amount of Gomez figures on their site right after Toyfair ended. You had to be pretty quick, and I admittedly got super-lucky. Right after I got the notification email I sweated out a hasty ordering process—wherein my paypal info was declined about three or four times—and managed to secure an order. In less than ten minutes I already had a shipping confirmation—even before I received the order confirmation email. By week’s end, I had a Gomez sitting in my hands. That is uncanny service. Big thanks to Mezco for giving us non-Toyfair goers the opportunity.
I was expecting “cool toy,” but Gomez goes above and beyond. While I love the superhero stuff that Mezco is doing in the One:12th line, it’s the outlying stuff that has really excited me, and Gomez is no different. This figure not only improves on some issues I’ve had with previous figures (the Joker), it gives me hope that some upcoming figures (John Wick) follow this figure’s lead.
Let’s start off with what is, to me, the most important part, and that is the articulation. Gomez eschews the Star Trek body with the single-jointed elbows in favor of the Spider-Man body, which features doule jointed elbows and a heightened level of articulation across the board. That immediately elevates the play value of Gomez beyond the sometimes frustrating limitations of the older-style body. Gomez can move. He can bend. He can touch his own head. His only limitations come about from the bunching of the fabric itself, and not from the joint range. I hope with this figure we’ve seen the last of the single-jointed elbows.
The suit is excellent. It’s well-tailored, lays right, offers plenty of give for mobility (to a point, of course) and scales well. I know the detractors don’t like how fabric looks at this scale, but I think this looks about as good as it can possibly look without magic shrinking cloth.
The color scheme is muted, with black and gray being the primary colors, but I like the simplistic nature of the color scheme because it allows the heads to do the heavy lifting of visual interest, and gives him that ominous, monotone hitman look.
The faux-leather jacket is a black version of the purple jacket that came with Joker, and it gives Gomez and increased aura of cinematic badassery that no bug has ever enjoyed before. Like with the Joker, the belt is wired for extra poseability.
Gomez ditches dress shoes for comfortable and stylish Converse. Well…they’re clearly meant to be Converse-esque, but if you zoom in you can see there’s a Mezco M right there on the shoe, so…Mezverse? Sure, that sounds about right. The ankles have an okay range, although as with most, it is the weakest articulation point.
Gomez comes with four heads. Three of them are bug heads, and they run the gamut from cartoony to disturbing to just plain creepy. All of them have their merits, and I can’t decide which I will be using as default. The eyes on each are the best part, with a quasi-translucence that heightens the insect-ness of them. The antennae on the cartoonier of the heads feature a small ball joint at the base, allowing you to pose the antennae slightly.
The fourth head is a simple black skull. While it doesn’t fit in with the insect theme, it does add an option for those who want their Gomez to be a little less “anthropomorphic insect” and more “dude wearing a black skull mask that kills people.” The black skull paired with the black jacket and black suit really does edge him more into the territory of someone that the Punisher would be hunting. Or someone who would be hunting the Punisher. Or Batman. Or Popeye.
Mezco has always done a good job of providing plenty of extra hands, but this time they outdid themselves, offering up a plethora of hand varieties, from fists to splayed to pointing and beyond. You’ve got cradling hands, gripping hands and more. Take a look at the pictures to get an idea of all the hand option. Whatever you need him to do, he can more than likely do it. All of the hands pop on and off easily, but stay on securely.
He needs all those hands for all of his accessories. First, there’s his main rifle, which can be broken up and stored inside what may be the coolest accessory he comes with, his Boom box. The box opens up and has two different foam inserts for storage of the various parts. The rifle can double as a shotgun or some other variations depending on what parts you choose to leave off. He comes with a wider gunshot effect and the familiar gunshot with single bullet at the end that I believe first came with Punisher.
The Boom box snaps shut and can be carried or placed on the shoulder for proper Boom box attitude. You can almost hear the Eric B. and Rakim from here. There are stickers included if you want to personalize your Boom box, but I’ll be leaving mine unadorned.
In addition to the rifle, Gomez also comes with a weird, stunted little pistol thing that you can attach the muzzle flash effects to as well.
For further methods of killing, Gomez comes with a sword and scabbard that features an adjustable strap. The sword is a mean, sleek looking thing that he can hold nice and tight with his grippy hands. His final weapons are a pair of large grenades that he can hold in the included wide-grip hand.
As this Gomez is called the “Agent edition,” we can be sure that we’ll be seeing other variations down the road. What those versions may be is anybody’s guess, but hopefully more people have a shot at getting some iteration of this figure. While company mascot isn’t something that you might think would jump out and scream “cool toy,” this insect-man assassin-thing was definitely worth the money.
