Super7 Disney Ultimates! Pinocchio

It seems I keep setting personal records this year for longest duration of a preorder and the new champion is Super7’s first wave of Disney Ultimates! These figures went up for preorder in August of 2020 likely closing sometime in September. At the time, the expected release was somewhere around June 2021, but a lot happened in-between. Super7’s relationship with Disney was just starting so perhaps there was a feeling out process between the two. I know for a fact that Disney had some revisions in mind for the packaging (they wanted the three figures to be unique in that regard) and it’s clear the figures underwent changes between the initial renders and final release. And then, of course, there were the shipping delays and factory closures to deal with all stemming from the COVID-19 pandemic. It feels like a perfect storm struck and thus the figures were delayed all the way until April of 2022! The wait is over though, and the first one we’re going to take a look at is Pinocchio!

Ask me what I think the highwater mark for Disney animation is and I won’t hesitate to say it’s 1940’s Pinocchio. Disney was riding high following the success of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs and seemingly in a bid to top that picture, a lot of money was sunk into Pinocchio and it shows. Every scene looks like it was meticulously crafted to be the best it can be and for a medium such as hand drawn animation, it’s possible we’ve never seen that kind of dedication since. In terms of plot and performance, other animated films from Disney certainly compare and likely exceed what Pinocchio, but visually? It would take a convincing argument from someone to make me change my mind.

For that reason, it probably comes as no surprise that I pretty much adore Pinocchio, and when Super7 made the title character part of its first wave I was over the moon! A collector line of Disney animated characters was a grail line for me, and to see Super7 embarking on that path and kicking things off with a beloved character was almost too good to be true. The initial renders did leave something to be desired (look these figures up on most retail sites and you can still see them) as Pinocchio’s head looked off-model, but I preordered with the hope that it would turn out better in person and it’s nice to see my faith has been rewarded.

Pinocchio comes in the standard Ultimates! box Super7 is known for, only the outer box is very glossy depicting a starry night with a silhouette of Jiminy Cricket descending from the clouds. The inner box is themed to fit the film and reminds me of the Pinocchio restaurant in Disney World in terms of color palette. There’s a write-up on the back with character art and the figure and all of the accessories can be seen through the window. Pinocchio comes with a quite a bit of stuff, but in a first for me with an Ultimates! release, he only requires one insert to properly store everything. And there’s a pretty obvious reason for that: Pinocchio is small!

Super7’s Ultimates! are a seven inch scale line, but it tends to be rather fungible across lines. They seem to prioritize certain lines to fit that scale, lines that collectors might display together or in close proximity of one another. Other, more stand-alone lines, seem to inhabit their own scale which is the case with Super7’s Ren and Stimpy. For Disney, they appear to be in the 7″ scale, though since we’re dealing with characters from different movies, there is a subjective element at play. Pinocchio himself is barely 3.5″, and since he’s a little, wooden, kid, I suppose that’s fine. It’s still odd to see him so much smaller than Mickey, and the third figure in the wave, Prince John, towers over him. And it’s not just the height, everything about him is just small. His arms, in particular, feel almost delicate as a result. And to Super7’s credit, he seems to scale well with the contents of his box. Should the company ever return to the film to produce a Geppetto or Honest John then I suppose we’d be able to evaluate the size further, but on his own I think he’s fine. Some will likely balk at the concept of paying $45 before tax and shipping for such a tiny figure, but if the scale is fine then I’m okay with it on principle. Especially since there’s still a lot of unique tooling here that likely will never benefit Super7 again and that’s where the biggest costs lay.

Aside from the diminutive nature of the figure, the overall look is pretty good. His default expression is a smile, and Super7 did a great job of translating the head into 3D. It would be easy to go overboard on the cheeks as Pinocchio is often drawn to get wider in that area, but as we saw with the original renders, that can just make him look like a fat head. Most of the features on his head are painted like the hat and the inside of his mouth and the only criticism I have is the shape of his nose seems off. It could be straighter and a touch more elongated, but he looks pleasant enough. The rest of the figure is mostly colored plastic. We have red on the torso with a big, blue, bowtie and red-brown down on the shoes. His hands are cast in white with sculpted lines on the back that Super7 declined to paint black. Part of the goal with this line is to incorporate soft goods into the figures and for Pinocchio that takes on the form of his black vest. It looks nice and it doesn’t hinder anything, though the faux velvet texture is sure to accumulate dust. It’s also not removable by nature. If one were to pop off the arms then it could come off, but I’m not willing to try. I do wish Super7 did something with the bare portions of the arms and legs to give them a less plastic look. It’s a bit tricky since the film didn’t exactly go for wood grain, but some shading might have done the trick. They did paint little, silver, nail heads into the joints which is a nice touch, but took it no further.

Where Pinocchio is not likely to impress at all is with his articulation. We know Super7 prioritizes neutral posing with its figures and shuns complicated joints, but even this is pretty underwhelming for a Super7 release. Pinocchio’s head just sits on a rounded ball peg. There’s no hinge or secondary ball below it so the head just kind of rotates there and can tilt a little. There’s very little range looking up or down, and given that the bowtie provided an easy way to hide a double ball peg, it’s a shame Super7 didn’t go for it. The shoulders are ball-hinged, but he can barely raise his arms out to the side. Inside the sleeve is an elbow joint that can swivel, but the plastic is thin and kind of gummy so bending the elbow really seems to stress it. The first time I tried to work the joint I couldn’t tell if it was working as intended or if the plastic was just bending. The fact that little, rough, pieces of plastic started to protrude from it gives me little confidence in utilizing it for much. At the hands, we have rotation and horizontal hinges. There’s no torso articulation, and the hip joints just rotate a little so that his legs can go out a bit, but not really forward or back. They feel pretty useless. Because of the odd shape of his knees, Pinocchio gets very little range there, maybe 45 degrees, and the ankles are very loose. I think if not for the fact that his shoes are rather large I’d have a hard time standing him. He’s really only good for the most basic posing. I’m assuming his small size is partly to blame, but other aspects just feel poorly engineered. With Super7, I always get the impression that when they run into a tricky spot they just choose to not address it rather than figure out a more creative solution.

In terms of stuff, Pinocchio comes with a lot, but also a little. He has two additional heads he can swap to: elongated nose, and super elongated nose with bird’s nest and birds. Neither head is a surprise, though he doesn’t have the cage to be placed in to truly do the iconic scene justice, but at least they look nice. He has a shocked expression on his face, and there is a subtle difference between the two so Super7 didn’t just sculpt one head and two noses (though that might have been a better approach). He also has one set of extra hands. He comes with gripping hands attached and can swap to open ones. He also has a trio of mini figures: Figaro, Jiminy, and Cleo the goldfish. Of the three, Jiminy is the most on-model, but being a tiny figure, Super7 had to use a lot of paint on him and it’s pretty messy. They also positioned him with his umbrella poking out below his feet so he’s pretty much impossible to stand on his own. He’s a soft plastic, so I found I have to hook that umbrella onto something in order for him to stand. Cleo is placed in her fish bowl and Super7 filled it with transparent plastic. I do wish they added a touch of blue to the water somewhere, but she looks fine. Figaro is the most off-model as his head is just too big. It’s the one thing I wanted to see changed from the prototype that didn’t happen. His head can rotate and he looks okay, but he could be better. Pinocchio also comes with his school book and an apple for his teacher and both look fine. Lastly, there’s an axe, which I initially thought was Stromboli’s, but it’s actually the axe Pinocchio is seen holding for all of 3 seconds on Pleasure Island. Are people really going to pose Pinocchio wielding an axe? It’s also just plain, brown, plastic for the handle with no sculpted wood grain. I could definitely do without.

That’s a fair amount of stuff, but it feels like Super7 just could have done better. Why not more hand options? Fists, or maybe a pointing finger on fire and the candle to go with it? That would have been nice to have and I definitely would have traded that axe for such. I’m guessing Disney wouldn’t let them do a smoking head or a drunk one, which is too bad as both would have been visually amusing. What I think most though are surprised to not see included is a donkey head. Pinocchio with big donkey ears and an optional tail would make sense and even encourage a second purchase. Maybe Super7 will do Lampwick and figure out a way to get those accessories for Pinocchio into the release, but he lacks a hole for the tail to go into so that would certainly be a challenge. Also, it’s highly unlikely that Disney lets Super7 do a proper Lampwick as he definitely needs a cigar and a mug of beer. I also would have loved a second Jiminy that featured a frowning face so he could admonish Pinocchio. The hand waving and smiling one we got feels more like licensing art Jiminy as opposed to the character from the film.

I do have a lot of nitpicks with Super7’s Pinocchio and part of that is certainly coming from a place where I’ve seen this movie a lot, I love it, and I have a lot of opinions on what the best scenes are for the character in it. It’s likely that Super7 could not have totally satisfied me with the accessories, but that doesn’t mean they couldn’t have done better. The issues with the articulation are less nitpicky though as this figure is pretty poor from that aspect. There aren’t a lot of points of articulation here, and what is here isn’t of the best quality as we have floppy joints or joints that don’t seem to work as intended. As a result, I don’t know that I can give this figure as strong of a recommendation as my heart wants to. As a Pinocchio lover, I am happy to have this, but if I allow myself to be objective I have to acknowledge that this figure does have problems and it doesn’t feel like a premium, collector, figure. The quality doesn’t feel far removed from a Jakks figure you can find at Target for 10-12 bucks, except this one costs $45. The soft goods vest is nice, and the packaging is flashy, but the figure doesn’t really measure up. Only get this one if you’re a big fan of Pinocchio and are willing to accept its flaws.