Let’s Play! Super Mario! Figuarts that is!

Boo boo boo bo boo boop!
Super Mario.  The Chubby Brooklyn plumber from Platforming days of yore.  And now I guess.  He has somehow managed to lack rather nice action figure, which is fine as I need a fat guy to launch an assault on the poor animal/plant kingdom of Marioland and now I have one.  Hmm, makes me wonder what Marioworld was called before Mario invaded actually.

Anyway, slightly drunken musings out of the way, I have in sights my newly arrived Figuarts Super Mario figure made by the good people at Bandai.  I picked this guy from my Post box today and yesterday being a public holiday over east, my work was a little slow coming in and as a result, I had time to play.  Sadly I didn’t have my good camera, so here I have a special Work Desk Dodgy Busy Background and Phone Pictures Review! ™

In a crazy twist the figure of Mario comes in a much smaller box than his additional accessory pack(which you have to buy separately).  You see they made two accessory packs to go with the figure.  On the plus side though, Mario is fairly cheap.

There were two accessory packs initially released, I only got one as I wanted the  shell, Goombah and pipe more than more bricks which is what the other pack consisted of.

Below is a bit of box size comparison.

Mario comes with a mushroom, a question block and a coin.  Rather nicely the coin comes with a little stand and is nicely shiny!

The block, coin and mushroom are solid pieces whereas Mario is articulated.  They look really nice and the mushroom is spot on.  The coin has been chromed!  Enough of the set pieces, let’s have a look see at Super Mario!!

Mario’s articulation is pretty damn good.  On the bottom.  Up top is a bit different.  He has really great with excellent ankle, knee and SENSATIONAL hip movement. No waist though, hinged elbows, wrist swivels, a universal movement joint at the shoulder and neck.

These joints allow for some great movement, it’s just a shame that the sculpt hinders the movement of the joints on the upper half.  Having said that though, I had him on my desk for the day and found I couldn’t stop playing with and posing the little bugger!  You can manage to get him in quite a few poses that look pretty good.  He isn’t going to be  able to pull off that “after triple jump T,” but most other poses should be fine.

In a nice twist they have included a panel that covers the gap that would be there when you move his leg forward, essentially giving Mario a butt!  There is a panel in the middle of his back which I think is for plugging in a stand and you can see the panels slide in and out.  Clever.

On top of that the balance of this little figure is incredible.  One foot kicks, runs, even tip toeing poses are Super Easy to pull off!  Even typing this up at home, I have had him on a kick stance on the table and even a fairly good whack  on the table to make it wobble didn’t knock him over!!

The sculpt is pretty much what you would expect as it looks just like his 3D game model.  Yay.  Sadly this hinders the shoulders and despite them having a universal joint on there it’s limited to essentially a swivel joint which can move up and down, sure it can move in/out slightly but it’s so minor as to be negligible.  The sculpt of the hair and chin limit the movement of the head.  There’s a bit of left/right turn and pretty much nil up/down there.  A shame.

Luckily the legs more than makes up for his limited shoulders and neck.  The elbows and hands manage to cope fairly well.  Even with the limits of the toy in its neck and shoulders it’s still pretty good and I have found myself hard pressed to put the little fella down.  I would have liked to see the shoulders and neck designed a bit better and some faces that could be swapped.  A serious looking face would be nice for those Smash Bros poses.  I can see this being re-released in various colours, Fireflower Mario.  Even Mario with the winged hat for example, it looks like the hat is designed as a separate piece, but is stuck on the toy.

As you may have noticed and since I mentioned it I also got an accessory pack.  It came with a pipe, shell, extra coin and goombah.  A nice added touch is an extended stand, so you could simulate a coin popping out of the Question box

“I’ma gonna kill you Goombah!”

The Goombah is nicely sculpted with his prominent eyebrows and grumpy face.  I’d be grumpy too if Mario was going to jump me.  Although with my poor Mario Skills, I know that that first Goombah has killed me more times than I’ve killed him!!

“Oh No! here he comes!!”

It also comes with a Kooopa Troopa Shell that Mario can carry or throw to take out those hapless enemies!  to hold the shell, there is also some open hands.  The Goombah can also use his hands (with some help from blu-tac).

What I do find a little annoying though, is despite being provided with alternate hands for holding things you will still need to use some props for the shell to stay in the hands.  Two different sticks and plugs for holding sideways or straight on.  It just seems a bit excessive to me.   Surely they could have designed the extra hands for the shell..  The good thing is though, I found many more uses for those open hands.

I couldn’t be bothered using the sticks and he has trouble holding the shell.

Personally I think that the hands look a bit too large.  I prefer the fists myself.

The best accessory in this set though is the pipe set up.  You get one main pipe section and two pipe ‘'lips/entries.”  One lip is a deep one and the other is a shallow one, for various stages of pipe entry/exiting.  It’s actually really cool.  Best of all, the lips can be used without the pipe section as well.

    
Bwoop bwoop bwoop!

The shallow one works well for the Goombah too.   LOVELY

That covers all that I have.  I must admit I wasn’t expecting that much out of this figure and I just wanted an articulated Mario toy, but over the last day I have found myself just messing about with it quite a lot, which to me is a good sign of a fantastic toy, the balance is just so fantastic and even with his limited shoulder and head movement he’s a lot of fun.  I just WISH they’d given him better shoulder and neck joints (perhaps double-jointed shoulders like the Gokaigers, and perhaps a slight extension for the neck?) as that would probably make him perfect and the ULTIMATE Super Mario figure.

Now I just hope they plan a Luigi.  Which I think might be unlikely since GoodSmileCompany are producing a nendoroid version...  Sad as I'd like both Mario and Luigi as Figuarts and looking similar in design!

Just for fun!