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Figure Review: Doctor Who Classics Leela from The Face of Evil

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Doctor Who – Classics
Leela Face of Evil
5 Inch Scale
By: Character Options
$25.99

Another Who figure for me this week. I must get back to DVD reviews, although writing these does make me feel justified for paying the money to get the figures. This week I am looking at the new Leela figure, part of what I hope is a great new line of classic companions. Fingers crossed we might get a Sarah Jane, or Romana, or, hope of hopes, a classic Susan Foreman? Time will tell.

But that is for another day. Today we have Leela.

Packaging:


When I first saw the new package design I was less than impressed. Mainly because I am tired of CO changing the packaging as much as they do. I am a display guy at heart, and my figures do get displayed in their original packaging. It annoys me when they all look like they are from different things instead of maintaining some uniformity. Sigh, such is the plight of the nerd :-(

Upon getting my hands on this package, though, I find I am really digging it. The plastic is nice and clear, and displays everything very well. The backer board is really vibrant and not full of crappy blurbs like the River Song figure I reviewed last time. And the Doctor Who logo is raised, which just really looks nice overall.


The back is also nice, giving a mini bio of who Leela is, and how she came to be a companion to the Doctor.

Sculpt:
It might be picky to complain about the lack of accuracy on a toy of this scale, but when you look at how closely they managed to match all of the Doctors it seems a bit rushed.


First, I have no idea which face they were looking at when they sculpted this, but it darn sure wasn’t Louise Jameson. She looked like this:


It might be picky to complain about the lack of accuracy on a toy of this scale, but when you look at how closely they managed to match all of the Doctors it seems a bit rushed.

And that’s not the only thing rushed. From top to bottom this figure feels like something they slapped together in a weekend. Many of the body pieces have paint slop on them, and a number of the joints feel loose or painted stiff.

And if you think I’m just being picky, look at these:


The pic on the left shows two instances of really sloppy work. The lines down the back, which I assume are the strings that are supposed to hold up her top, are really poorly painted. And her shoulder not only has a massive slop of black paint, there is even a fingerprint smudge underneath it. The pic on the right shows the shoulder socket, and as you can see, the first time her arm was raise the socket basically stripped all the paint off the joint right down to the plastic underneath.

This is really crappy quality control, and really bad design work. Again, I have to call on Character Options to work much harder on their quality control, and really rethink how they do paint on these figures. This has been a common problem for me, and I think it is time they consider plastics that are colored the right color instead of trying to paint on the details with such slop.

For something that costs around 20-30 bucks each, a lot more time should have been spent on at least making sure that slop like this was not passed on to packaging. I actually picked up two of these figures and was pleased to see the second one did not have this smudge on the shoulder, but I wish this one had been caught before it was shipped.

Articulation:


For a figure that bills itself as poseable, this figure has some problems. Like the Amy figures, the hair prevents the neck from turning at all. Also, the legs go into the hip joints in such a way that they can barely move more than a few centimeters forward and back. To make up for this, I guess, the legs rotate at the boot, although I’m not really sure of the benefit of this. Yet another female figure from Character Options that cannot sit down. Good thing there are not a lot of seats on the Tardis.

Accessories:


Leela was a warrior, and so it is nice that she comes with a lot of weapons. The problem is when you try to get her to use them.


She’s OK as long as she is always attacked from her left!

Her knife fits nicely in its holster, but not in her hand. The gun just barely fits in her hands, and when you twist it to face forward the armrest pushes it out of her hand. The crossbow has a strap to go over her shoulder, but because of her hair it has nowhere to rest and slides off, and when she does hold the bow, the arrow just kind of lies there, waiting for a stiff breeze to knock it off.

The Verdict:
If you only plan to buy this to display it in the box, then I would encourage you to consider picking it up. In the package it looks great, and none of the problems I mentioned will be an issue. If, however, you have the audacity to take it out of the box to actually pose it or play with it, then you will be fairly disappointed. Character Options seems to be getting better and better at making figures that look great on display, but fall apart once you look closer at them. I really hope they get things back on track over there, or we have a lot of garbage to deal with in the future.


Listen, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’ve found a new Leela, and her gun doesn’t fall out of her hand when she moves. Best of luck to you though!

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