For a long time Figuarts were figures I admired without wanting to acquire any. It didn’t help matters that they were focused on properties I wasn’t really into. I’ve never seen any of the Kamen Rider shows, and I’ve never been interested in Dragonball Z or Power Rangers or some of the other masked Japanese shows. I don’t have anything against them; they’re just not my thing. And since I didn’t do any deep, in-depth research into Figuarts, I just assumed that they were super-cool toys of properties that didn’t do it for me.
That was then. I’ve since learned that Figuarts are a bit like jellybeans. Maybe you can eat one, but two is better than one, and three is even better … and four, five, six — okay, now I’m knee-deep in a Figuarts coma.
It doesn’t help that they’ve gone pretty deep into properties that I have a huge amount of interest in, like Star Wars. That’s gone way past jellybeans into heroin territory. Right now I’m twitching and itching waiting for my next sweet sweet hit of Star Wars Figuarts.
I’ve even … shh, I don’t want to say it too loud, but I’ve even done something I never thought I’d do. I bought … oh sweet plastic crack don’t lead me down this road … I’ve even bought a couple of figures from the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It was a whim! A sick, creaky old whim, but I picked up Captain America because he looked so damned nifty and poseable, and then of course I had to have an Iron Man to go with him, because da-doi, you can’t just have one dude without somebody for him to fight and or team up with. Now I’m a guy who only buys the cinematic figures if I need the BAF part or if they’re in the case. Comic-only up in this joint, bitch. Or so I thought.
That led to searching down that Tony Stark figure that looks so much like Robert Downey Jr. I just need a Batman Forever Bruce Wayne figure to put together a Kiss Kiss Bang Bang display.
If I end up putting together an entire Figuarts Avengers team, I will pull this car right the hell over, young man!
So yeah, Figuarts has quickly become one of my favorite things to collect. I feel like it’s been forever since the announcement of those Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Han and Chewie must have been announced at some point in the previous millennium. The extra heads, the hands, the accessories … price point be damned, opening a Figuarts box is like sweet sweet nirvana. Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson, and Bruce Lee all together? If that ain’t a super-team, then I don’t understand super-teams.
So all that leads me to wanting other figures to get the random surprise Figuarts treatment. Now, not every property is Star Wars, so I don’t expect to get that level of devotion, but the thrill of some of these one-off creations is getting that “perfect” figure that you never would have thought possible. Did I ever seriously think a fantastic Freddie Mercury figure would get made? Nope. But it did.
Here are five random figures I’d love to see from Figuarts, in no order:
Superman
Figuarts has done a Superman. But they’ve never tackled the iconic Superman. Fiddling with the recent okay-but-less-than-stellar DCC Icons Superman has left me in the same pickle I’m always in, which is still wanting a perfect Superman. Now, “perfect” is a flexible benchmark, and I doubt that I’ll see a “perfect” one, regardless of company. Perfection is easy to talk about but difficult to achieve. My expectations are set at “super-awesome.” I’m imagining a Superman with two heads, probably utilizing the swappable faces and hair of Jedi Luke. Maybe an angry heat-vision face and a passive, friendly Superman face. Windswept hair for flying would be great. Being able to look straight ahead while he’s flying would be … well, yeah, that would be keen. Flat-palmed flying hands, fists, grabbing hands, and if they want to toss in a pointing hand, that would be great. What is he pointing at? I don’t know, but a lot of these Figuarts figures point at things, so there must be some things that need pointing at. Luthor, you take your Warbot and go home! *points*
Maybe he could have an alternate cape that was slightly elongated for speed effects in flying poses.
And please, if this ever became a thing … light blue costume. Please.
If Superman were done and done right, maybe they could do a Batman as well. But do a Superman first.
Jackie Chan
There are several cinematic kung-fu heroes I could ask for here. I can imagine a Figuarts Shaw Bros. Line and get all toy-drunk thinking about Pole fighters and Gordon Liu and Flying Guillotines, and I’ll just stop myself right there. But since they’ve already delivered the single most iconic martial artist ever, then I have to go with the second most cinematically thrilling, and that is Jackie Chan. Jackie Chan’s movies — and I mean his original movies before Hollywood scooped him up — are balls-to-the-wall insane. I don’t know how he’s not held together by duct tape and staples at this point. I don’t even know exactly how I’d want a Jackie Chan presented, or what he needs to come with, I just know that it would make a great figure. He needs a surprised face (as in, “Oh crap, am I going to live through this or die on camera?”) and his slightly less surprised face (as in “Did I really just jump off this? What the hell was I thinking?”) and maybe a third determined face (as in “I’m insured, right? I think I’m insured.”). He’d need a ton of extra hands. Fists, choppy hands, grabbing, clawed — the works. Did I like the Jackie Chan Adventures cartoon, nobody asked? “Yes I did,” I responded. “Yes I did.”
Inspector Gadget
I think, if Inspector Gadget were ever to be done juuuust right, he’d have to be a Figuarts figure. I may be the only person that wants a totally amazing Inspector Gadget figure, but I really want a totally amazing one. And he’d have to be a deluxe. I’d pay a pretty decent premium for a fully decked out Inspector Gadget figure with all the Go-Go Gadgets one could snap on. Figuarts figures with all their swappable hands and poppable architecture are practically begging for something like Inspector Gadget to go nuts on. Every part of the figure would have to have a certain level of swappability in order to do him right, and obviously Figuarts is more than capable of handling that.
The figure itself would be a fairly standard cartoon-faced dude in a trench coat, but the accessorizing would make him. Mallets and helicopters and stretched out arms and legs and extra neckpieces that lengthened his neck and all the other odds and ends. When you add in a couple of different faces and a host of different hands, you can imagine the package starting to get quite filled up. Figuarts also makes accessory packs for some of their figures, and Inspector Gadget could make use of that as well.
James Bond
The obvious question is: which one? Connery? Moore? Craig? Some of those guys in between?
The answer is none of the above. I mean, yes, I absolutely want a full James Bond line with decent representations of all the Bonds and all the main adversaries. But for Figuarts, I’m thinking more along the lines of a basic, generic Bond fashioned more after the literary Bond. Less “actor as Bond” and more “James Bond as James Bond.” He doesn’t have to or need to look like any actor’s portrayal but he still needs to be a James Bond figure that looks like what the literary version of James Bond would look like if he were an actual person. In theory, you’d end up with a figure of a generic, dangerous-looking dude if you don’t have any specific likeness to pin on him, but that’s not the worst thing to have anyway. If you are the type who would like a James Bond not tied to an actor’s portrayal then you get your wish, and if you want a generic guy that looks like he means bidness to use as a thug or whatever, then this figure would be great for that as well. Load him up with all the Bond standards and I think it would make a fantastic figure.
Okay, so we’ve got Superman, Jackie Chan, Inspector Gadget, and James Bond. The likelihood of any of these actually getting made is … well, that’s why they call it a wishlist. Jackie Chan is the one on the list who might have an outside chance. Superman is a maybe, but James Bond and Inspector Gadget are probably getting a bit left field. But then I didn’t see Figuarts Turtles coming, so maybe there’s hope for anything.
In our final slot, I felt like I should come up with a female so the list wasn’t one giant hot dog stand. Despite the overwhelming amount of chicks in schoolgirl costumes from such properties as Sailor Moon and the like I don’t have any figuarts females — at least until they pump out a Leia or Rey or something. But the Fwoosh review of the Injustice Harley Quinn showed me that they do females just as well as (if not better than) males.
And yes, I have seriously considered buying a Sailor Moon figure, just because they look like fun toys. So don’t make me buy a Sailor Moon figure, universe.
So with a single slot left, I’m going to continue the left field streak and go for Lady Snowblood.
Lady Snowblood is a 1973 Japanese revenge movie. It has inspired a host of movies, chief among them Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Plot synopsis: woman goes a’killing for revenge. Bam. Done. This is hardcore, take-no-crap stuff, and if articulated just right, she’d make a kick-ass figure. She’d need her short blade, umbrella and hateful sneer. Dead bodies sold separately.
So that’s it. Five random figures I’d like to see Figuarts take a crack at. This leaves off a veritable host of figures, from musicians to other properties to one-offs like Indiana Jones. Figuarts delivers. I need more.