Frankenstein (Color) (Universal Monsters (Neca)) Review

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Frankenstein (Color) (Universal Monsters (Neca)) Review

Frankenstein (Color)
Universal Monsters (Neca) (Neca)It’s alive! Alive! …if you want to call it alive, since this is an action figure, not a living being.

A lot of people were excited about a year ago when NECA announced that they would be making Universal Monsters figures, with Frankenstein being the first one, mainly to coincide with the film’s 90th anniversary. He’s been out for a good long while now, with two different versions, one greyscale, and one in color. I saw that the color version was half off at Go! (which is good cause they like to charge $40 for NECA figures), so I grabbed him and managed to pick up the original movie at FYE. The perks of checking out malls outside of Maryland, I guess.

The packaging for this specific release makes use of the original poster on the front, and there’s photos of the figure on all the other sides. I will say it’s a lot nicer than the one the other version has. The plastic interior has a few twist ties that aren’t too hard to get out, and everything can be removed easily.

Talking about the figure itself, the likeness is the most important aspect when doing a figure of a real-life person. Boris Karloff’s likeness is near flawlessly recreated here. I feel that his brow should stick out a bit more, mainly the area right above the nose, but other than that, it looks great. We have three different heads here, too – a neutral expression, an open-mouth expression, and one going “rowr” from when he’s scaring the daylights out of a woman. Frank’s outfit is replicated great as well, with a coat made out of a softer plastic and lifts on his feet. The scars and stitches on his skin are sculpted as well. This is the color version, which gives Frank pale, greenish skin. The paint is clean overall, and it just looks great. Despite being in a 7” scale, Frank stands about 8” tall, but he’s supposed to be tall like that.

NECA’s usual articulation scheme is here, and it works great. Really great at that. The ball-jointed head-neck combo allows Frank to look up and down and all around, and the heads swap and fit on with ease. The swivel/hinge shoulders, elbows, and wrists allow for various arm poses, though the elbows don’t really bend beyond 90 degrees. The coat hides ball-joints at the chest and waist, and below them are ball-socket hips, swivel thighs, and swivel/hinge knees and ankles. None of the joints are stuck tight, and there’s plenty of poses he can take. Never again will one assume Frankenstein is stiff when it comes to movement!

There’s a good deal of accessories here as well. Aside from the three heads, Frankenstein also has three pairs of hands – relaxed, grasping, and gripping – and they all swap easily. The shackles are the big thing here, as it can slide onto the arms (you have to remove the hands first) and even has a metal chain. Two flowers are included as well, with both being different (one is a single flower, the other is a pair of them), and the gripping hands do a good job of holding them.

There’s been plenty of Frankenstein figures over the year, and this is the only one I have, but as far as I’m concerned, this is the best one to exist. While the black-and-white version looks cool, the color version fits with other figures much better on the shelf, and overall, it’s just a lot of fun. We got an accessory set coming out later this year, and that’s definitely something I’m looking forward to.

3/28/2022