SHIKLAH

MARVEL LEGENDS (HASBRO)

“Shiklah is the shape-shifting superhuman Queen of the Undead and former Mrs. Deadpool.”

Oh goody, today I get to review Shiklah.  She’s my faaaaaaavorite.  Ever since that time that…ummm…she did that very memorable…thing?  And then that other thing happened?  Wasn’t that great?  ….Okay, real talk, I’ve been fooling you this whole time.  Not only do I not remember either of those memorable things I mentioned, but Shiklah is also *not* my favorite.  I know, you’re shocked.  I’m very convincing with this ruse, right?  Okay, let’s just get to the damn review.

THE FIGURE ITSELF

Shiklah is figure 3 in the Strong Guy Series of Marvel Legends, and she falls squarely into the Deadpool portion of the assortment.  Woooooooo.  Deadpool-theme.  It’s automatically wacky and zany and off the wall and they don’t even have to try, right?  Well, that seems to have been the prevailing theory on this one.  The figure’s 6 inches tall and she’s got 27 points of articulation.  Shiklah is using the Lady Deadpool body, and it’s not really the greatest.  From the (admittedly brief amount of) research I did, the body seems rather skinny for how she’s usually depicted, so it’s not great standpoint.  Also, her joints are kind of warped, and she’s got the really high-heeled feet, culminating in a figure that can not stand.  At all.  The effort I had to put into getting her to stay standing for the few photos I have here was insane, and I couldn’t even actually keep her up for all of them, which is why she’s just on the ground for one, and totally absent from another.  Really frustrating and poorly made are the best terms to describe her, really.  She gets a new head, which is fine, but seem large on this body, and she’s got floating add-ons for her necklace and belt, which don’t really stay in place, so hey, there’s more frustration to look forward to.  Her cape is a “cloth” piece, in the same vein as Storm’s.  I use the quotations because I struggle to really call this material cloth.  It’s effectively just paper when you get down to it.  It doesn’t hang well, it doesn’t pose well, and it’s not going to hold up well over time in the slightest.  There’s no pose where it doesn’t look dumb, apart I guess from when she’s laying flat on her face.  How fortunate, then, that that’s the only pose she can actually pull off long-term.  Shiklah’s paint work is, at least, fairly inoffensive.  It does its job, and seems to match the comics alright.  It’s quite purple.  There are no glaring issues, which I suppose is a piece of mercy given the rest of the figure.  Shiklah includes two accessories, neither of which is actually hers.  The main one is Jeff, Gwenpool’s pet land shark.  He’s just an unarticulated figurine, but he’s a fun little piece, and certainly an enjoyable addition to the Gwenpool figure.  He’s got a nice little jaunty walking pose that’s fairly versatile, and he interacts well with Gwen.  There’s a bit of obvious flashing and join lines that are a little bit annoying, but they don’t ruin the figure.  The other extra is Strong Guy’s arm, for those that want that (which is, like, 90% of the people buying this thing).

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I do not care about Shiklah.  She’s far outside of the period of time when I still enjoyed Deadpool, and she just doesn’t seem like she’s got much going on.  Honestly, it doesn’t even seem like Hasbro cares about Shiklah, given Jeff was actually shown off before she was, and is in front of her on both the side illustration and the product image on the back of the box.  I was originally planning to be more jokey with this review, and have Jeff as the main figure and Shiklah as the accessory.  Then, in the course of getting my photos, I realized how actually phoned-in and terrible the figure is, and I felt the need to actually talk about her.  I loathe this figure.  Do you know how bad a figure has to be for me to loathe it?  I’ve bough Mattel figures that I didn’t loathe!  But boy do I loathe this one.  I loathe it so much that I’m getting rid of it.  Not selling: getting rid of.  At least Jeff and the Strong Guy arm justify the cost for me, but you can tell that Hasbro just needed a space filler for this set and didn’t feel like they should put out another Gwenpool just yet.

Not so mixed feelings aside, thanks to my sponsors at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure for review.  If you’re looking for Marvel Legends, or other toys both old and new, please check out their website and their eBay storefront.