Sharing the same body as the green creatures from the rest of this Gremlins line, the Bandit Gremlin
brings you a different figure - by most modern standards, anyway. My
sample had joints that moved without too much fussing, which means at
least mine was pretty great. The body is the same as the Cinema
Gremlin and Stripe, but the head and gun are unique to this release.
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Despite the frozen joints on the Cinema Gremlin,
I wanted to make it work - and thankfully, it's doable. Some figures'
limbs will not budge, so it's a gamble - this one paid off. The figure
shares the same basic body as Stripe and the Bandit Gremlin, but sports
a popcorn bucket and one of those most hilarious comedy props in the
1980s, 3-D Glasses. (See also: Swedish Chef in The Muppets Take Manhattan, Billy Zane in Back to the Future.) Add glasses to anything and it's automatically better.
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I wanted to wait to open the Gremlins
figures for Christmas reviews... maybe that was a mistake. The quality
of this line has been up and down, which resulted in my initial reaction
(oh wow! I'll buy every last one of these!) to apprehension to
disappointment. I had three Doc Browns break out of the package. A
Predator seemed OK, but it turns out the joint in the arm wasn't
actually turning - it was twisting and broke off. Boiling water helped
loosen some stuck joints, but the night I opened Christmas Gizmo,
I found he had a stuck right arm. I figured, well, let's try the
Cinema Gremlin - all five joints were stuck and couldn't move. Stripe
with Chainsaw had one stuck arm, but the legs were warped so he can't
stand. Since the Mogwai Stripe and Billy Peltzer
figures I looked at earlier were both good, this was really
heartbreaking. I'm going to see if I can boil or freeze the joints into
working order, but generally it just means something is going to break.
With that in mind, let me preemptively advise caution - Funko makes a
lot of neat stuff, but their return policies and CS on broken toys is
basically "take it back to the store." With that in mind, I advise
strongly on buying these figures to leave in the packaging if you plan
to buy them at all. This isn't meant to sound like sour grapes, but
when 3 of the 5 figures have assembly problems we've got real issues.
[ READ THE FULL REVIEW ]
Even though it's only September, I feel it's always time for my favorite Christmas movie Gremlins, because it's a good time. Funko and Super 7 teamed up with the forces of justice to bring me Billy Peltzer,
a Kenner-style 1980s figure which, admittedly, would have been pretty
retro were it released in 1984 along with the movie - the final days of Star Wars
were in 1985, and the influence of a 3 3/4-inch 5-jointed simple figure
would be gone shortly thereafter. As the only human in the entire
wave, Billy doesn't have to bring much to the table - and thanks to his
size, he's the only one that feels worth the ten bucks. A Mogwai is a
bit pricey at that price.
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