![]() | Hello Guest - Sign In or New Account |
Reptile Mortal Kombat (Jazwares) (Jazwares)Mortal Kombat is one of those licenses that seemed tailor-made for action figures, given that it's an uber-violent fighting game with a wide cast of characters sporting unique designs and weaponry. Jazwares is one of the many companies who took on the license, having quite a long run with it. The MK9 figures were the ones I most knew, but they started with Deception and Shaolin Monks, and the figure I got here comes from the latter in their first Reptile. The cardback doesn't have too much to it, as it just has the logo, character and game name, and a cross-sell on the back. The graphics fit the license well, and the green motif is pretty nice, and somehow fits Reptile for obvious reasons. It's also easy to open, with no ties to worry about, and just a single piece of tape needed to hold in one of the accessories. Easy opening is good for younger collectors who don't like to hold onto packaging, but I do wonder what Jazwares was thinking when they were marketing toys from an M-rated game to kids 4 and up. The designs of MK characters have evolved with each game, and Reptile went from a lizard man disguised as a human to letting everyone know he's a lizard man. The head is covered in wraps, leaving only his eyes and mouth exposed. I will commend Jazwares for trying to make him look detailed, but it's not all that great. The head shape isn't quite right, and the eyes should be orange and more lizard-like, not white with red pupils. The paint is pretty clean, though, with good work on the texture and detail of the scaly skin. He also gets an extra head, something I believe was less common for figures back then, with an open mouth. It has more issues with paint, as why does the skin wash continue inside the mouth, and why is there a bunch of green showing through the wraps? Hey, this is 2000s-era Jazwares, quality was an alien concept to them. Reptile stands 6 1/4" tall, and the sculpt of the outfit and body is surprisingly decent. The skin has a scaly texture, with paint wash to bring out the details, the outfit has both wrinkling and a subtle texture, and the kneepads, while misshapen, look fine. Paint remains a major issue, as the colors are a bit off. The clothes need to be less blue and more black, and the skin is too green. Although the wash and edges are good, the paint still suffers from lots of slop, marks, and missing colors. Even for Jazwares, the paint is bad, but I'll give them a little bit of credit for trying to make it look high-quality. The articulation fares pretty well, with a good amount of useful joints. Reptile gets a barbell head, swivel/hinge shoulders and hips, hinged elbows and ankles, double-hinged knees, and swivel biceps, wrists, waist, and thighs. The head doesn't get much tilt, but at least you might not need heat to swap the portraits, though the loud click whenever I pop them off makes me fear breaking the joint. The swivels can be a little stuck out of the box, and will need heat and/or cooling to break them free. The hip swivels are surprisingly ratcheted, likely to avoid looseness like earlier figures, but the hinges are really floppy, and could've used ratchets as well. The joints work fine for the most part, but you'll have to work around the various tolerance issues. I've already mentioned the extra head for Reptile, but what I didn't mentioned was the hole inside its mouth. The hole is meant for his tongue, which a separate, much softer bit of plastic. You can plug it in both ways, so it can hang down or shoot out forward, and it adds a bit more to the character. He also has a big sword, and it looks fine, but the problem with it is that he can't hold it. The hands are too open, and there's no extra hands for it, so you'll have to use blue tac or some other adhesive to let him grip it. Lastly, there's a stand with the MK dragon logo engraved on it, and it's definitely useful given the loose hips, but most of the time he won't need it. Jazwares tried to make a great Reptile, but messy paint, floppy hips, and the sword being rendered near-useless due to him being unable to hold it ended up making him a weak figure that's not worth the sixty bucks I paid for him. The design is good at least, but unless McFarlane is willing to go back to older games now they're resuming their MK line, this is the best we'll get for a 2000s-era Reptile. - 1/20/25 ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() |
Cabal 3-Pack | ![]() | Submission Order | ![]() | Broken Tusk |
Noob Saibot | ![]() | Mortal Kombat (Jazwares) Series | ![]() | None |
Cabal 3-Pack | ![]() | Written by RMaster007 | ![]() | Broken Tusk |