Tag Archives: Creature From The Black Lagoon

#3216: The Creature From the Black Lagoon – Glow-in-the-Dark

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , ,

THE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON — GLOW-IN-THE-DARK

UNIVERSAL MONSTERS (JADA TOYS)

Happy Halloween, readers!  In honor of the day, I’m erring slightly on the spookier side, as I like to do, settling in for another Universal Monsters review.  In something of a change for the site, my last Universal Monsters reviews were actually not last Halloween, but in fact were in February of this year, when I took a look at Frankenstein’s Monster and the Bride from Jada’s own Universal Monsters line.  Today, I’m taking a look at another figure from the line, in the form of Gill-Man from The Creature From the Black Lagoon.  Let’s see how he turned out!

THE FIGURE ITSELF

The Creature From the Black Lagoon is the first follow-up to the first four figure series of Jada’s Universal Monsters line.  He takes the standard Gill-Man from the first series and makes him Glow-in-the-Dark.  He was released as an Entertainment Earth-exclusive.  The figure stands just shy of 6 3/4 inches tall and he has 29 points of articulation.  As I touched on when I reviewed Frankenstein back in February, the articulation scheme on these figures is actually pretty impressive for a company of Jada’s standing; it’s on par with some of Hasbro’s best offerings, albeit perhaps a year removed from where they are now.  2022 was a good year for Hasbro on the articulation front.  That doesn’t undermine what Jada’s got going on here, though, and Gill-Man’s articulation is even better than the Monster’s, due to his slightly less bulked-up build.  The figure’s sculpt is another strong offering.  He does quite a nice job of capturing the film design for the character, right down to getting all of the texturing and everything down with quite sharp detail.  Additionally, all of the articulation is worked in pretty nicely to the aesthetics of the overall sculpt, and they don’t require his sculpt to be broken up too badly when he’s posed either.  For the purposes of this release, in order facilitate the glowing feature, he’s molded in glow-in-the-dark plastic, with the rest of the paint built on top of that.  The plastic takes a fair bit of time to charge up for a proper glow, but it does at least hold it for a while.  The accent paint works out pretty nicely, though, and offsets the general look of the plastic rather nicely.  Gill-Man is packed with an alternate head with the mouth closed, an extra left hand for gripping, a harpoon gun, a net, and the decayed creature hand.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

Creature has never been one of my favorites of the Universal slate.  It just always felt like the red-headed step-child of the group, and it’s really just never clicked with me the same way.  That being said, it’s hard to deny that Gill-Man has a killer visual, and one that makes for some cool toys.  This one in particular, in all of its glow-y glory, was one I definitely wanted to mess with, if perhaps not one I was dead set on owning.  One got traded into All Time a few weeks back, and they were kind enough to let me borrow it for the purposes of this review.  He’s honestly a ton of fun, and I look forward to the upcoming figures from the line.

Thanks to my sponsors at All Time Toys for setting me up with this figure for review.  If you’re looking for toys both old and new, please check out their website.

#1840: Creature From the Black Lagoon & The Wolf Man

Posted by Ethan Wilson in Reviews and tagged with , , , ,

BLACK AND WHITE CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON & THE WOLF MAN

UNIVERSAL MONSTERS MINIMATES

It’s Halloween, and I’m desperately trying to avoid opening yet another Halloween review with “Ooooo!  Aaaaah!  Scary!” lest I become some sort of cartoonish caricature of myself.  I have to hold to what little remains of my dignity, right?

On three of the five Halloweens for which I’ve written a review, I’ve focused on Diamond Select Toys’ ill-fated Universal Monsters Minimates.  It was a bold line, certainly well-received by the Minimates fanbase, but unfortunately hurdled by DST’s attempt to keep it a seasonal offering, thereby sentencing it to disappear from the public radar for about eight months out of every year.  Today, I’m setting my sights back on the first of the line’s three-year run, with a double offering of both The Wolf Man and The Creature From The Black Lagoon.

THE FIGURES THEMSELVES

Each year of Universal Monsters Minimates focused on two entries in the Universal Monsters catalogue.  2010, the debut year, chose Universal’s two most prominent in-house properties.  Specialty stores got two boxed sets, one based on each movie, while Toys R Us got an assortment of four two-packs.  Three of the packs were just re-packs of the boxed sets, with the fourth set being the TRU-exclusive re-colors of the main monsters in black and white.  That’s the set I’m looking at today.

CREATURE FROM THE BLACK LAGOON

“The Creature from the Black Lagoon was originally released by Universal pictures in 3D in 1954. Before the days of high definition color movies, the cinematographer and lighting crew had to work much harder to convey emotion and detail in their subjects. This paint variation attempts to pay homage to those past masters.”

I have a confession to make: I’ve never made it all the way through the original Creature movie.  I’ve tried, but it just never grabbed me the same way as the others.  I did, however, love Del Toro’s throw-back to it in The Shape of Water, so maybe I just needed a take with a little bit romancing?  The Gill-Man’s rather distinctive design made him one of the more complicated translations to Minimate form.  He’s built on the usual body, but gets new hands and feet, as well as a head piece and a chest cap.  Its success in capturing the design from the film is kind of mixed.  There’s no denying that a lot of effort was put into these parts, and the detail work is definitely top-notch.  In fact, I’d say the hands, feet, and even the torso cap, do their job pretty well.  The biggest failing, really, is the head piece.  If they were willing to do fully molded pieces, I think the Creature was definitely a design that should have gotten one.  In the movie, its all one slick piece; here it looks like he’s wearing some really goofy headgear.  The paintwork is respectable.  Obviously, it’s monochromatic, but that’s kinda the point.  The subtle detailing of his scales on his arms and legs works surprisingly well, and his face is as decent a rendition as we could have hoped fore.  The one slight drag is how dull the black detail lines are; these sets were produced during one of the worst periods of time for QC on Minimates, and while this pairing mostly escapes unscathed, this is the one lingering sign.

THE WOLF MAN

“The Wolf Man was originally released by Universal pictures in 1941 and was actually the second Wolfman picture they released. Before the days of high definition color movies, the cinematographer and lighting crew had to work much harder to convey emotion and detail in their subjects. This paint variation attempts to pay homage to those past masters.”

Man, there was some serious copy-pasting going on for those bios, wasn’t there?  I guess after writing three bios each for these guys, even DST was at a bit of a loss for words.  I’m more familiar with The Wolf Man than I am Creature.  It’s still not my favorite of the Universal stable, but I can at least appreciate it for what it is, and I do like the main Wolf Man design.  His slightly more humanoid appearance does lend itself slightly better to the Minimate style.  He still gets a unique set of hands and feet, as well as a full-mask cover for his head.  The hands and feet are respectable pieces, and have seen plenty of subsequent re-use. The head-piece…less so.  While they didn’t give Gill-Man his own head, Larry Talbot apparently warranted one, despite the fact that a hair-piece seems it would be far more appropriate here, since there’s a clear distinction between hair and face.  What’s more, the choice of a slip-cover mask instead of a fully-sculpted head is another baffling one, as none of the three versions of the Wolf Man available has anything but a blank head beneath it.  So many questions, and no real answers.  The paintwork on Larry is okay for the most part.  The details on the body look fine enough, though that shirt seems a fair bit on the light side for what we see on-screen.  The face/hair also doesn’t feel quite right; a number of people have commented that he gives off more of a Teen Wolf-vibe than a Wolf Man one.  He’s packed with Larry’s wolf-headed cane, and while I’m hardly one to complain about extra pieces, I’m not certain what he’s supposed to do with it without any sort of alternate Larry pieces.

THE ME HALF OF THE EQUATION

I was excited by the prospect of Universal Monsters Minimates when they were first shown off, but I’ll admit that after waiting the better part of a year for the actual product, and then finding out that the first two offerings were both films lower on my list of wants, my general interest cooled a bit.  It didn’t help that both boxed sets included unnecessary variants of the main monsters, and the civilians weren’t much to write home about.  So, I ultimately only picked up this one set, as it allowed me the opportunity to get the main monsters without any of the excess.  Neither of these two is really winning material.  The sets that followed definitely out-paced these greatly, but I think the line as a whole was always kind of stunted by the soft opening assortment and the long wait to see if anything better came of it.