I ended up reaching out to Super7 regarding Krusty. It was some sort of technical glitch so the figure should be part of the shipment. Unfortunately for me, and probably of no interest to anyone, my shipment hasn't updated since the label was created and Super7 wasn't sure what happened. All Simpsons figures are supposed to have been shipped already so mine is misplaced, lost, whatever. No idea when that problem will be solved, they just said they'll "check the warehouse." I paid for the wave over 2 years ago, so what's another month or two, right?
some nice photos of Series 2 here: http://www.mwctoys.com/REVIEW-031124a.htm
while I am hoping that the Jakks stuff is worth picking up, I am still bummed out this line is ending (even with all the issues related to Super7). these figures have a lot of improvements over the Playmates stuff and I don't know what the odds are of seeing a second 'collector-oriented' Simpsons line in the future. (I am not counting McFarlane's product as traditional 'action figures')
I'll hand it to them, it looks like these figures may have exceeded my expectations. The lack of waxy, semi-translucent plastic and the matte paint just class them up a whole lot. Glad Krusty has his smoking jacket, too. This is like a solid penultimate episode of a show that you know is canceled before the writers had time to give it a satisfying ending.
I'd definitely snag Bartman, Krusty, and maybe Duffman were it not for the JAKKS line, which is promising. What I grab from the S7 line will be figures that I think can stand as their own mini display, or be put on a shelf above the JAKKS line and stand out as their own thing. That are worthy of the underscore the scale difference will give them.
But I kind of want to see what cards JAKKS is holding before I drop hundreds of dollars on these guys. We'll see if these go on sale or clearance. If they sell out, well, it looks like another Bartman will be here in the fall. JAKKS is claiming to make "basic, deluxe, and premium collector figures." I'm really excited for the full reveal, to find out what that entails. Hoping the premium ones come with extra hands/heads.
I'll hand it to them, it looks like these figures may have exceeded my expectations. The lack of waxy, semi-translucent plastic and the matte paint just class them up a whole lot. Glad Krusty has his smoking jacket, too. This is like a solid penultimate episode of a show that you know is canceled before the writers had time to give it a satisfying ending.
I think it's more like a pilot that didn't get picked up for a full series order. Super 7 barely got started.
Wave 3 is in stock at EE. Wave 4 should be hot on its heels. I like Kang and Kodos, but I don’t 75 bucks a piece like them.
My set finally arrived today. I am happy to report that the smokes that come with the NECA Flasher Gremlin work just fine with Krusty. I would say these figures are generally pretty good. Duffman is pretty limited, but looks great. I wish one of the beer cans could pop out of the seven pack or off of his belt, but otherwise he's fun. Krusty turned out pretty well, though the added jagged, metal, Krusty-O is one of the most useless accessories I can recall. Bart is surprisingly the best articulated, though it does look a little odd. He resembles the robot Bart from a Treehouse of Horror segment because of all of the articulation cuts. I think his cape is a bit overdone and I wish he had an optional plastic one. And, of course, a head without a cowl. Scorpio is probably the most disappointing, but I expected that. He can't really wield the flamethrower in a convincing fashion and should have come with a happy portrait and soft goods coat. They even use an image of a grinning Scorpio with his jacket on backwards for the box image. Paint is applied pretty liberally though and none of the figures have that plastic look. There are some imperfections here and there, but they're the sort I can live with. I don't know if they were worth the 2+ year wait, but I'm content.
Got an email from bbts about Krusty. he will be processing soon. cant wait!
Krusty the clown has shipped 🤡 🤡 🤡
After a couple of weeks with these, I have to say the Bartman figure is just the perfect encapsulation for this line. The sculpt is solid, the paint is okay, but for a Simpsons fan there is so much to pick apart with this figure that it makes you wonder if an actual fan really worked on this thing. He's in his show attire, but the cape is in the style of the licensing art on the box where he's sporting his blue shirt so the cape has this bow on the front of it that looks dumb. It should be embedded in the sculpt like Duffman's, but Super7 probably wanted to double-dip on this body with a regular Bart so they made the cape wrong on purpose. Plus it's blue and doesn't match the cowl which is just dumb. My smiling Bartman head has the eyes misprinted so he's giving a side-eyed glance which, thankfully, appears to be a rare error since I haven't seen images of anyone else's looking like this. The shoes are missing the hits of white even though they're sculpted on. And then there's the portraits - grinning, worried, and...high? What is this third one where his eyelids are partially closed, but he's smiling? Why no angry portrait like basically every image of Bartman? Instead, we get a bird's nest. It's cute, and a reference to the show, but I'd rather another portrait, especially if it was a regular Bart one! And one could levy the same at Santa's Little Helper. Fun inclusion, but would be so much better if he had a second head so he could just be regular, old, SLH. Or, they could have made the heads swap between this SLH and the one that comes with Duffman, but that one has sunglasses as part of the sculpt. Have they never planned a toyline before? People who didn't want Duffman probably would have bought it to make a normal SLH. And peoply might have bought two Bartmans (Bartmen?) if it could be displayed as Bart.
For a figure that's pretty okay and fine, it's just incredible to me how bothered by it I am when I dig deeper into my thoughts on it. Super7 went out of its way to make sure we couldn't turn this figure into a regular Bart. And even though it's determined to just be "Ultimate Bartman," it still screws it up with the baffling choices in expressions and the errors with the cape and shoes. This line deserved to fail.
Thanks for the feedback, Misfit. I've been on the fence about getting him and a few others, but at $55 I think it's a pass until it's $30 or less, and if it never gets there, I'll try my luck with JAKKS. Reviews like this are helpful. When you said he's missing the white hits on his shoes, you mean his socks/shoe sole? Or does he have those little white round circles sculpted on? If so, I mean, can they really not afford to do a couple more white paint hits? So weird. So bootleggy.
The JAKKS has that stern/crimefighter face you mentioned—probably because it's an obvious choice. It's something I wanted, too, and/or just a normal closed mouth smile. Agreed, the portraits seemed like odd choices. I generally prefer a cloth cape, but you're right, that the bow looks off. My final note would be to make him blue shirted, even though in the episode he wasn't, the box art for this figure is blue and it justifies making this and a normal Bart. At least the two bodies would have been different.
Part of me wonders how long S7 has known about JAKKS and if they developed there's to be an antithesis or complimentary line. JAKKS will make angry looking blue Bartman, they'll make goofy looking orange Bartman. JAKKS will lead with vanilla interpretations, they will lead with niche interpretations. Who knows. Waiting to see if JAKKS announces a Disney lineup.
@hopethisworks the white circles on his shoes are sculpted on, but not painted. Probably not on the factory sample, but approved anyway because I really think whoever is approving these things doesn’t care much. Bartman is just one of those figures where if it had only one of the above issues it wouldn’t be a big deal, but instead is death by a thousand paper cuts.
I will say, in general, Wave 2 is better than Wave 1 because there’s more paint in use and everything appears to have been hit with a matte coat. Duffman’s arms being painted yellow on yellow plastic is something wave 1 would not have done. The line was improving, too bad it wasn’t fast enough for Disney.
Waiting to see if JAKKS announces a Disney lineup.
unless anything has changed recently, Mattel has the license to do mass-market Disney/Pixar figures.
And Mattel paid good money for it, so I would be shocked if Jakks landed that. I'm guessing part of their agreement for Simpsons may have even required Disney terminate the existing agreement with Super7. Per that Reddit post about the big shake-up at Super7, Disney was unhappy with how long it took Super7 to bring items to market. That could explain why waves 2, 3, and 4 are arriving right on top of each other (Super7 is currently shipping both 3 and 4, Entertainment Earth is already receiving wave 4) if Super7 tried to speed things up with Simpsons to save the relationship. Clearly, it didn't work.
I figured they might be speeding it up because of JAKKS– if 3 and 4 came out after JAKKS opens PO's for their larger scale line, it might drastically cut into their sales. I wonder if there's a gentleman's agreement there, I was surprised there was no larger JAKKS items shown at WonderCon.
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