Tag Archives: gargoyles

June 25, 2025

NECA Gargoyles The Silver Falcon – Detective Broadway

By Joe
The gargoyle you’ve been looking for?

Recently I took a look at the NECA Gargoyles release “Vows” which featured Goliath and Demona repackaged with a small upgrade for Goliath and some new accessories. It was a purchase brought on by news that NECA had cancelled the Gargoyles line of action figures which motivated me to reconsider some releases I had passed on. Today is another such release and quite possibly the last Gargoyles release from NECA that I’ll ever buy. The only figures I did not purchase are the Steel Clan robot gargoyle and the video game Goliath variant. There’s also a toon variant of Goliath that was sold with a copy of the Sega Genesis Gargoyles rerelease on modern consoles from Limited Run Games and I have no idea if that was ever fulfilled or not (looks like it was as it’s available to order right now from their website). It’s also likely to be the most expensive missing figure so there’s little or no chance I’ll ever go for that one.

“I’ll trade you these snacks for those wings.”
“Done!”

This release, titled NECA Presents The Silver Falcon starring Broadway, is just the previous Broadway figure in a trench coat. The selling point is a new portrait and some new accessories as well as the much coveted caped wings. All of the other gargoyles to receive the caped wings accessory had them bundled with a new figure making Broadway the one and only gargoyle collectors were expected to re-buy in order to get this accessory. It basically went against how NECA had previously indicated these wings would be distributed when they said the wings would be packed with human characters and smaller ones like Bronx and Lexington. Lexington would eventually come out without any such wings. Perhaps he ended up costing more than originally thought? We were also supposed to get MacBeth who I am guessing would have come with Hudson’s wings. Instead, Hudson has to go without and so does Angela and Thailog while Broadway only gets them if you really want to see him in a coat.

If you want to use the old wings with this guy you certainly can.

Because of that, I initially passed on this one. I was hoping it would eventually wind up on sale somewhere, but NECA doesn’t clearance their items at Target and I couldn’t find this one on sale anywhere. It’s possible there are a lot of folks like me looking to buy now that the line is done. I also grew sick of the amount of opened wings on my shelf and felt like I just needed to tidy things up and getting these wings for Broadway would definitely help there as it leaves just Hudson and Angela (who I hope to actually outfit with Demona’s caped wings now that I have two sets) as the lone gargoyles with their wings extended on my “good guys” shelf. I also don’t hate the idea of Broadway sporting a trench coat on my shelf, but will he actually keep it? Let’s find out.

Those wings! Those are the style everyone wanted, but NECA never delivered.

This version of Broadway comes in an attractive box with a black and white interpretation of the figure on the cover. It is by Djordje Djokovic with paint by Emiliano Santalucia and features some nice, silver, embossed lettering. The profile shot of Broadway is the most toon-like illustration associated with this line and if I cared about packaging I’d probably hang onto this one, but I don’t. Broadway the figure is exactly the same figure as previously released a couple of years ago. The only difference is the default portrait is a new one where he has a closed, but full, mouth and looks pretty happy. It’s a good, light-hearted, take on a pretty light-hearted character and is meant to pair with the numerous food accessories included here and with the original release.

This new portrait is for stuffing his face.
The stitching on the coat is pretty sloppy all over.

The look here is inspired by the episode of the same name, “The Silver Falcon,” featured early in the show’s second season. In that episode, we see Broadway’s love for old detective, noir, type films manifest in this look. Elisa’s partner, Matt, has gone missing and Broadway has volunteered his services in finding the missing detective. The trench coat starts off looking rather sharp, but gradually deteriorates throughout the course of the episode until it’s nothing but rags in the end. He also loses the hat. For this release, NECA is using a plastic hat and a soft goods coat. The hat is shaped to fit in between Broadway’s ears and it has indents inside it that fit over the spikes on his head making it useable with all three portraits. The coat itself is pretty basic. There’s a wire in the collar which allows for some posing as well as a wire running through the sash. The wire protrudes from one end on my release which is annoying and something to watch out for. The coat is not very accurate to the show as it’s missing buttons on the back and a belt buckle on the front. It’s also poor quality as it contains numerous loose strings along the seems. I have soft goods trench coats from multiple NECA releases and this is by far the worst of them all. I’ve left them in place for this review, but I’ll probably try to clean this thing up with some scissors when I’m done.

“Did I ever tell you I love a gargoyle in uniform?”

The big inclusion is obviously the caped wings. They’re styled like Goliath’s where they’re molded together in both the front and the back so the only way to put it on is by removing Broadway’s head first. In the episode, the trench coat hides his wings until he needs them at which point they rip out the back of the coat. He never drapes them over his coat, but should you wish to NECA did cut out two holes in the back of the jacket to allow the pegs to slot into the wing holes. It’s more trouble than it’s worth as trying to find the holes in the coat followed by the ones in the figure is more than a little frustrating. You can just get away with dropping them over his neck if you want, but it’s probably just best to use them without the coat. And they’ll work fine in that fashion. The wings are painted to match Broadway’s other wings, though there’s some sloppy linework right on the front of mine which bugs me. It involves the teal bleeding over the black outer wing membrane and I can’t tell if that black is the base color of the plastic or not so I’m hesitant to try and remove it. I think it’s safe, but I’d need to test it.

You can count on Broadway to bring the snacks.
“Why are these jars impossible to open?!”

The other accessories included are the two original Broadway portraits we’ve seen already as well as some hands: open, fists, and a gripping left hand. The gripping hand is quite wide and seems to be intended to hold the sandwich he comes with. It looks to be a ham and cheese with some lettuce and tomato on wheat bread. There’s a bite missing and, as far as little plastic sandwiches go, this looks pretty damn good. Broadway also has a pot of chili, a takeout container with what appears to be lo mein, and a jar of jalapeno peppers. Everything looks pretty good. The pot has some nice dry brushing on it to make it resemble cast iron and there’s a ladle sticking out of the top. The contents are also molded like it’s boiling which makes me think it’s based on a specific shot from the show. The lo mein is convincing as well and the pepper jar is probably as good as it can be. There’s some paint spray inside of it that creates a cloudy appearance. I don’t know if it’s intentional or just a result of how the peppers were painted. He does not come with a lone pepper, but if you have Goliath then you’ll have one. My only disappointment here is I wish he had a biting portrait. NECA may have been able to get away with just doing eyeballs on the roaring portrait. Yeah, he still would have looked angry, but he could really use a head where he’s taking a bite and not just a mouthful.

“Hey Demona!” “Ugh, you repugnant ape!”

And that’s kind of it. The figure itself is exactly the same so it articulates the same only now he doesn’t have any open wings to get in the way. That makes him a little easier to pose, but he’s still pretty limited. I do think, out of all of the Gargoyles, this figure is the most toon-like as his face retains that look. As a result, it is one of the better looking figures in the line perhaps second to Hudson. From that perspective, I suppose if fans were expected to buy multiples of a figure then Broadway isn’t the worst one to have to rebuy, though it’s still unnecessary. I’ll probably just toss this in a drawer and leave my original Broadway on display with the updated wings. The trench coat looks like crap so I have little incentive to keep it on my shelf. The extra food accessories are fine, but hardly worth the asking price. As a result, it’s hard not to look at a release like this one and conclude that it was part of the problem with the line as opposed to a benefit. It’s a shame NECA never found a good solution for the wing issue and instead turned to low effort variants like this one. They set a bad precedent and discourage the fanbase. I doubt this specific release killed the line, but it certainly didn’t save it.

“Don’t worry partner, I’ve got your back!”

Does this conclude my journey with NECA and Gargoyles? Perhaps. As I mentioned earlier, the only figure I didn’t buy that wasn’t a variant is the Steel Clan robot and the only reason why I didn’t is because it’s more like an army builder. I have the armored Xanatos which is basically the same figure with only minor changes and a different deco. Perhaps I’ll go back and review figures like that as well as the others that I didn’t bother to post a review of. We’ll see. It’s a shame the line had to end though. I was looking forward to MacBeth and Coldstone, though I honestly didn’t need anything beyond them. It’s a solid assortment that we have right now, it just stinks knowing it would have felt that much more complete with those two (well, mostly MacBeth, but Coldstone is a kick ass design and the prototype looked awesome so it would have made for an interesting release). As for the future of Gargoyles – who knows? The comics from Dynamite are still going with the Demona mini series launching in July (after several delays thanks to the fiasco with Diamond Comics going bankrupt) and Mondo is working on their own figures, but in sixth scale. These figures are a chore to cram onto a shelf in 1:10 scale, imagine sixth scale? I’d love to see a company try Gargoyles again with a more toon aesthetic, but NECA giving up on the line probably isn’t tempting other companies to want to try their hand. As long as the franchise is still around and producing new content though, there’s always chance.

For more on NECA’s Gagoyles, see below:

NECA Gargoyles Vows Goliath and Demona

It’s been awhile since I last took a look at a Gargoyles release from NECA and there’s a good reason for that. While I was super pumped when NECA announced it had acquired the license for Gargoyles back in 2021, I found the figures to be a case of diminishing returns. Goliath, the first figure…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Elisa Maza

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a review on an action figure from NECA’s line of figures based on the Disney Afternoon animated series Gargoyles. That’s not due to me not getting any figures, it’s more just me not having a ton to say. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Broadway

We are getting oh so very close to assembling the original Manhattan Clan in action figure form! Disney’s take on gothic beasts originally included the following gargoyles: Goliath, Hudson, Bronx, Brooklyn, Broadway, and Lexington. The clan would grow from there, but those six are still the first that come to mind for me when I…

Keep reading
by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

June 18, 2025

NECA Gargoyles Vows Goliath and Demona

By Joe
Vows will be broken.

It’s been awhile since I last took a look at a Gargoyles release from NECA and there’s a good reason for that. While I was super pumped when NECA announced it had acquired the license for Gargoyles back in 2021, I found the figures to be a case of diminishing returns. Goliath, the first figure released, was promising, but had some notable flaws. The flaws would then be shared by just about every figure to follow and while fans practically begged NECA to address the main issue, the company failed to do so. Instead, it quietly cancelled the line after releasing over a dozen characters and a few variants. What was that issue? Wings. Big, honkin’, wings. These things came packaged with their wings spread wide open sucking up tremendous shelf space. The only solution NECA came up with was to include the caped or folded wings with other releases. To get Goliath’s, you had to get Bronx. Brooklyn’s came with Elisa while Demona’s were packaged with Xanatos. If you wanted Broadway’s you had to re-buy Broadway in his detective guise and if you wanted the same for Angela, Hudson, or Thailog, well – you were just plain out of luck as none of them received the wings they were looking for.

Is that why the line came to a premature end? I don’t know. Sales initially were said to be hot. NECA boasted that its Goliath was one of the fastest selling figures they ever had for a new product line. Things must have cooled following that. Perhaps momentum was stunted a bit when the second figure was Thailog, essentially a Goliath repaint. Demona and Bronx followed roughly six months later as part of the inaugrual Target Haulathon which made the pair perhaps harder to acquire than it should have been. They eventually made it to other retailers and by the end of the year we had Hudson. There was a pretty wide gap in releases between Hudson and Brooklyn/Broadway who arrived basically at the same time. Did that slow sales down? Maybe, only NECA knows. The property was untested in this collector space and it’s possible a lot of folks were just happy to get Goliath and didn’t necessarily need anymore. Maybe they didn’t like Goliath after they got him and dropped the line? There weren’t any drastic quality control changes and most of the figures turned out roughly the same. Deciding which figure was best ended up being a fairly subjective exercise. There were a lot of unique sculpts so it wasn’t a low cost line. The boxes were fairly large as well and swallowed up almost as much retail shelf space as they did collector shelf space. Allegedly, Walmart was the first to sour on the brand and stopped ordering it and I guess other retailers must have followed suit. This means the other figures shown off – Coldstone, MacBeth, and Gabriel, are likely to never see the light of day which is a shame.

If you were curious what a Best Buy Open Box item might refer to, this seems to be the extent of it.

For me, my number one issue definitely were those wings. The wide open wings were the most dramatic, but not practical. The caped wings solved the space issue, but their design really hinders articulation and posing too. What I really wanted were just some relaxed wings. Collectors started referring to them as the A wings since they kind of make an A shape when at rest. They didn’t have to be articulated, just more manageable. In addition to that though was the articulation in general. NECA rarely prioritizes articulation with its figures. They tend to have an acceptable amount of articulation points and styles, but NECA is very much an aesthetics forward company. And the gargoyles are basically big, naked, monsters so they don’t present too much options for hiding articulation as well. Even so, almost all of them have their necks at a forward angle that really limits how their heads can be positioned. The torso joints offer little and these guys can’t hit most of their signature poses. Plus you add in their anatomy which makes them hard to stand to begin with and you can see how we might have some issues. My collection is largely a bunch of characters in vanilla poses as a result. They’re not very fun to handle and as a result I kind of stopped wanting to talk about them. I didn’t even review every figure I have for that reason.

Goliath gets 3 new expressions with the neutral one being a holdover. The hair is also new.

With the line’s cancellation, it has me rethinking where I left off. When I found myself losing interest in the line it made it easier to pass on some releases, especially variants. I passed on the Steel Clan and instead just got the armored Xanatos. I passed on the video game variant of Goliath as well as the Detective Broadway. I also passed on the subject of today’s post (I swear I’m getting to it), the Goliath and Demona two-pack, but when a Best Buy open box option popped up I decided to grab it since it was nearly 50% off.

Demona also gets 3 new expressions, but sadly no new hair.

This set, dubbed Vows, contains the same figures we’ve already looked at before of Goliath and Demona, but with one change. That change rests solely with Goliath who has had his head replaced with two new hairsculpts that function like Demona’s. The original release of Goliath just had two portraits with the same hairsculpt: neutral and angry. This one makes use of swap-able face plates so you end up with four expressions and two stylized pieces of hair giving you eight total display options. It’s the approach I thought NECA would have taken from the start and I’m surprised they didn’t, but at least it’s been remedied here. And the expressions packaged in this set for Goliath feel a little more alive to me and more evocative of what we saw out of the character in the show. There’s a stern expression that’s pretty much the same as the one that came in the first release, a smile, a teeth baring expression, and an angry yell. The yell doesn’t feature the whited out eyes so he’s not on the attack rather he’s probably pleading with Demona to not do something evil. His default hair sculpt is the same as the original release and it’s basically his normal look. The second has the hair more spread out and over his shoulders. It’s not exactly wind blown, but it’s a little messy. I call it his sexy hair.

The Phoenix Gate is sort of the main attraction as far as the accessories go.

As for Demona, she is also the same figure as before. And since she already had the face plate technology, there’s basically no change to her. We don’t even get another hair piece. What we do get are more expressions. Her default one is the same as the default one from before, but she adds to it a surprised look, a smile where her teeth are visible, and an angry look that also has a hint of surprise to it. It sort of looks like she smelled a fart. I like them, though the surprised face features a right eye that’s not in alignment with the left. It’s a little higher and tilted which is a bummer because I kind of like this expression the best. Since it’s an issue with the sculpt I’m assuming they’re all like this too.

Demona! No!

The rest of the accessories contain the usual mix of hands and a couple of unique items. For both we get fists and open hands. Both also have a gripping right hand and a trigger right hand. Demona also has a clawing left hand. I think of it as a spell-casting hand or a gesture where she’s reaching for something. Goliath’s gripping hand seems to be intended to work with the mace he comes with. I’m assuming this is another throwback accessory to the original Kenner line since the first Goliath didn’t feature such an item (Broadway, Brooklyn, and Lexington all did), or it’s the mace used to smash the gargoyles in the first or second episode. That would truly be a morbid inclusion. Demona has a new laser rifle that’s mostly blue plastic with a little black paint. It’s probably a direct pull from the show, but I don’t recognize it immediately. I was hoping the effect part that came with Xanatos would work with it, but the opening is too small. They also come with two versions of the Phoenix Gate item from the show: one fully formed and one broken in half. That’s where the whole vows theme comes into play as they each took half of the magical artifact for safekeeping when the two trusted each other. My how times have changed.

Goliath gets a mace, even though he has no real need for one.

What I have not yet mentioned are wings and with this set each figure comes with the caped wings and that’s all. It’s an odd choice because this set came out so long after the single releases of each character. Why wouldn’t NECA include both wing options? It seemed like this was a way to get newcomers to the line to jump on with two of the most popular characters in the franchise, but to not include the other wings is an odd choice. I do realize I spent quite a bit of time complaining about those wings, but my issue isn’t with the wings themself, just that they’re the only default option for every character. At the time this set came out, both Demona and Goliath were still fairly easy to come by. It wasn’t like they had sold out and become sought after by newcomers to the line. NECA gave the fanbase that had been collecting this whole time little incentive to double dip here. The accessories are fine, I like the new portraits, but enough to rebuy the pair? Goliath’s caped wings also came with Bronx, a character I doubt many would pass on. Demona’s previously came with Xanators and I guess some collectors may have passed on him if they were only interested in the gargoyles. I didn’t review that figure, but I did buy it, so I had no need for either wings in this set.

Demona has some new firepower which is always appreciated.

Is all of that enough? Bare in mind that I didn’t even mention the MSRP on this set yet. This thing was $70. Gargoyles fans were expected to drop seventy bucks for a few new portraits and the Phoenix Gate. That’s nuts. I don’t know what NECA was thinking with this one. Yes, it’s reuse of existing molds so that naturally makes the cost lower, but who did they think would buy this? I got it for $40 and honestly that’s even too much considering I already owned both figures and the wing options within. I only was willing to do it for a few reasons. One, I did like the new expressions. I’ve never been satisfied with Goliath’s default expressions and these seemed much better. Two, my original Demona wasn’t great. Her wings were floppy and the factory didn’t paint the claws on her right foot. And, after a few years standing on my shelf, her shin has become warped and I was hoping this one would be less gummy. And three, we never got caped wings for Angela. She and Demona share the same body and can share the same wings. Of course, Angela is shaped like Demona, but colored like Goliath, so I’m going to have to try to paint a set of wings to match. I honestly don’t know if I’m up to the task, but I have two sets of caped Demona wings so I might as well try.

These wings should work fine with the Angela figure, provided they’re re-painted.

As for the figures themself, they’re exactly the same as before. Same pros, same cons. Goliath is hard to pose, but with his tail he’s not that hard to stand at least. The caped wings mean his arms can’t do much though so he’s just going to stand there. The open wings work fine as well, provided you have them. Demona is also the same. Her caped wings really don’t want to plug into her back, or rather, the right peg doesn’t want to. I can probably get it in if I heat it up, but I have yet to try. I didn’t have any issues with the other caped wings and my first release. Demona is still really frustrating though because she’s basically always looking down slightly. I wish NECA had given her a second hair sculpt with her ponytail up or articulated or something. The angle of her face just drives me crazy. She’s also hard to stand because female gargoyles in the show keep their knees straight and stand on their toes while the males bend at the knees, making weight distribution simpler. A stand for the women would have been nice. These figures also really needed a neck joint or alternate portraits that allowed them to look forward while flying gliding parallel with the ground. NECA got some great sculpts out of Djordje Djokovic, but they really needed their engineers to do something more with them. They probably thought they were doing him a favor by not cutting them up more, but really they did him a disservice since these things just don’t pose well.

And the old wings will work just fine as well.

Should you buy this set? No, probably not. If you have been admiring the line from afar and want to try and get into it before it disappears forever, then I guess, yeah, this is probably preferable to buying the figures individually. It’s $70 and Demona alone costs $36 while Goliath was $32, I want to say. I think NECA charged a little less with him on purpose to lure fans in. Right now on Big Bad Toy Store, you can get Goliath for $26 and Demona for $42. They also have the Vows set, but priced at $80 which is crazy. If that set came with both sets of wings then I could see going for that, but you can also find it cheaper. It mostly comes down to preference. If you prefer these caped wings then definitely go Vows. If you like the big, open, dramatic wings then get the individual releases. You’ll get more expressions with this set though. For Goliath, I don’t think anyone is really missing the book and jalapeno pepper, though the first Demona had two guns that turned out pretty nice plus her grimoire. She’s a bit more of a toss-up. Wouldn’t it have been nice if NECA just made this two-pack the ultimate release of both characters like the box suggests? There’s a balancing act to doing reissues like this where you want to put enough new in the box to entice existing customers, but also make it a good jumping on point for newcomers. I don’t think NECA satisfied either group here which seems like a shorthand way to describe the Gargoyles line in general – so close to being great, but oh so painfully short.

“How dare you turn our daughter against me, Goliath!”

If you’re curious what I thought of these figures the first time around see below:

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Goliath

It was nearly 6 months ago that NECA unveiled one of its newest licenses for 2021: Gargoyles! I was incredibly pumped at the time to see that NECA had acquired Gargoyles because the license had so much potential. The show was basically a cult hit in the 90s often characterized as Disney’s answer to Batman:…

by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Demona

When NECA launched it’s line of action figures based on Disney’s Gargoyles, it seemed to imply that Demona would be figure number 2. She was not. That honor went to Thailog, the Goliath clone, and that might have had something to do with the many factory delays and shipping woes that were impacting the entire…

by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Bronx

Well, here’s something different. Bronx, the good gargoyle dog, is NECA’s fourth entry in its relatively young line of action figures based on the beloved Disney Afternoon series Gargoyles. And not only is Bronx here all on his own, he’s also got something for his buddy Goliath that collectors of this line have been begging…

by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

March 6, 2024

Gargoyles – The Goliath Chronicles

By Joe

Over thirty years ago, ego and the dollar ruled. It was a world with a changing television landscape. It was the golden age for animation! On one side you had the CEO of The Walt Disney Company Michael Eisner who entered the world of television animation with one goal in mind: to make the best animation television has ever seen (and to make a lot of money doing so). As a rival there was Stephen Spielberg. He too wanted to create animation for television that didn’t look like it was created for television. Neither man was so foolish as to suggest that their output would be as good as a feature film, but it was going to be miles ahead of what had come before it. By the late 90s though, all that was coming to an end. The television boom in animation was over as networks were finding it cheaper to import shows already created. Kids would watch whatever was put in front of them and ego gave way to fiscal responsibility. Such can be seen in the transition from Gargoyles to The Goliath Chronicles.

Yup, we’re finally doing it. After spending years avoiding the third season of the Disney Afternoon show Gargoyles I finally decided to take a look and see what all the fuss was about. If you’re new to Gargoyles, basically the show aired as part of the syndicated Disney Afternoon in the mid-90s. It was one of the later additions to the programming block which started winding down in the years that followed. With that, came the end of all of the shows that were part of it unless they could find a home elsewhere. Gargoyles was one such show and given a stay of execution as it would be moved to ABC’s One Saturday Morning as Disney recently acquired the network. Going from syndication to a network show is a big change behind the scenes as it introduces a whole new round of standards and practices, those things viewers and television producers tend to hate. For reasons not entirely clear to me, basically all of the creative staff on the show was replaced including showrunner Greg Weisman. Some may have left of their own accord as a the third season was a mere 13 episodes and in animation writers like to seek out full-series orders, whenever possible. Weisman did contribute to the third season’s first episode as a writer and was a consulting producer for the third season, but he’s indicated his only contributions were essentially negations.

The third season came with a new intro featuring CG that has not aged well. Perhaps that’s why the Disney+ episodes feature the Season Two intro.

Nevertheless, the show must go on and it’s not like a giant company like Disney would let anything stop them from doing something they wanted to do with a property they owned. The third season was given the subtitle The Goliath Chronicles and ran for 13 episodes. The voice cast returned and each episode was given an introductory monologue by Goliath (Keith David), a mostly pointless addition, but not one without merit since more Keith David is never a bad thing. Carl Johnson returned to handle the music, but beyond that almost everything was different. Eric Lewald (X-Men, Exo-Squad) was brought in as the new showrunner and joining him in the writer’s room were a lot of folks also associated with Fox’ X-Men. Both shows were still in production with X-Men also receiving its own surprise final season order and it’s possible the writers were spread thin. As an added challenge, the new writers were completely new to the show from what was reported. If any had watched Gargoyles previously I couldn’t find confirmation. Perhaps not surprisingly, the third season of Gargoyles shares a lot in common with X-Men as the main, over-arching, plot concerns a KKK-like group called The Quarrymen introduced in the first episode. Taking the gargoyles to a more grounded world where they have to confront human prejudice doesn’t sound like such a bad idea on the surface, but of course it’s the execution that matters most.

Walt Disney Animation Australia certainly tries hard, I guess that’s all we can ask.

Perhaps the biggest change for an animation lover such as myself is on the production end. As covered in the opening paragraph, by 1996 there was little appetite at Disney to keep raising the bar for what was being shown on television when it came to animation. Gargoyles was taken from Walt Disney Animation of Japan and handed over to Nelvana which in turn outsourced a lot of the episodes to Akom and Hanho Heung-Up Company, neither of which carries the reputation of some of the studios that worked on the first two seasons. The final episode of the season was given to Walt Disney Animation of Japan and it’s a noticeable improvement, though perhaps still not on the level of prior seasons. The penultimate episode, “Seeing Isn’t Believing,” looks over-animated with a lot of exaggerated character movements like someone was trying really hard to impress. That was done by Walt Disney Animation Australia so perhaps it was like an audition of sorts. Most of the episodes use simpler lighting, flatter models, and less demanding staging. The addition of network censors means you’ll rarely see a character throw a punch and instead there’s lots of pouncing and the old animation standby move of a character on their back flipping an adversary off of them.

Given the amount of censorship on this season, it’s a bit surprising they got away with this pseudo gargoyle crucifixion.

Censorship and lesser animation are but a disappointment, but not something that should necessarily doom an animated series. When people cite the third season of Gargoyles as being just plain bad, I have to believe it’s largely due to the approach being quite different. The first two seasons were, more or less, serialized. One plot beget another and during many chapters of the show one episode lead into another. Networks hate that sort of thing because one delayed episode can ruin everything. Many also believe it makes it hard for viewers to jump in and out of a series and if you’re alienating first-time viewers then you’re not growing your audience. Either there was a mandate to end that, or having a bunch of new writers necessitated lore taking a backseat to stand-alone episodes. And it’s not as if the show’s first 65 episodes were all bangers, it’s just that filler episodes tend to get lost easier when a show is airing on week days as opposed to week ends. Much of this third season feels like filler. Some of these episodes could perhaps slide into the first two seasons without much trouble, and some would still stick out as poor.

When it comes to the poor outings, most of them come back to scope. Take “And Justice for All” where Goliath actually gets captured and arrested and put on trial. The recent run of from Dynamite Comics undertook such a plot and it needed the better part of 9 issues to resolve it. The Goliath Chronicles tries to do it in one episode, and while I wouldn’t expect the show to get all of the legal system accurately conveyed in a children’s show, this one still turns out like a mockery of the whole thing. I have my issues with the plot in the comics as well, so in this case neither medium hit it out of the ballpark, but one is clearly inferior and it’s among the least enjoyable episodes of the season. Another episode I strongly disliked was “To Serve Mankind” where Goliath is brainwashed into attempting to murder a peace activist on an international visit to New York. He gets as far as yanking the man from his limo which leads to a rooftop showdown with the non-brainwashed members of the clan and the police. It’s all resolved in the end, but with absolutely no repercussions for the gargoyles and nothing carries over.

Most of the season just feels like it could have been filler, which is how you end up with plots like Broadway goes Hollywood.

There are other episodes that are fine. Lexington (Thom Adcox-Hernandez) taking an interest in the son of Xanatos (Jonathan Frakes), Alexander, leads to a somewhat cute story in the season’s second episode, “Ransom.” We also get to see Hudson (Ed Asner) deal with his own diminishing eye sight by seeking the help of his friend, Jeffrey (Paul Winfield), who also happens to be blind. He’s a returning character and there are other episodes dealing with members of The Pack, the clones, and Demona. Nothing is overly consequential though giving their appearances more of a “Villain of the Week” vibe as opposed to furthering character growth. There seems to be a deemphasis on the magical component of the show in favor of something more grounded. Again, I don’t necessarily find fault with exploring how the gargoyles relate to the humans and their chosen city, but perhaps this was too drastic a change for most.

We also need to talk about Xanatos. The chief rival and villain of the series was basically turned into an ally at the end of the second season. The new writers can hardly be blamed for that turn, but it feels abnormal to see how much of an ally is he is to the gargoyles in this third season. He is often relied upon to save the day and there are moments where I expected a return to the Xanatos of old, but it never comes. He is, as far as I can tell, completely earnest with his reform and consumed with being a father to Alexander and a husband to Fox (Laura San Giacomo), who too is completely reformed. I don’t know that I really wanted to see Xanatos pull another 180 and go full villain once again, but some nuance would have been nice. There’s really no conflict to speak of between he and the clan, though some distrust is still felt. There is a moment where conflict could arise in “Ransom,” but Xanatos squashes it immediately. I don’t love what the later stages of the show’s second season did with Xanatos, but this third season did nothing to rectify that either and instead represents a doubling-down.

The Quarrymen aren’t a bad addition to the show, but are perhaps too on the nose.

There’s a lot that doesn’t work with The Goliath Chronicles, but I suppose there is some time to say what does. I liked the approach of introducing a racist group of gargoyle haters and making that a season-long conflict. I wish there was something done to differentiate The Quarrymen more from the very similar Friends of Humanity as well as real world inspirations. It’s not as if X-Men is the only show that can utilize KKK-adjacent hate groups, but it does feel like there was some obligation on this show to find another way. I did enjoy the episode “The Dying of the Light” and it’s one I felt could have been transported to the second season with relative ease. “Ransom” was enjoyable, though perhaps misplaced as the second episode of the season, and I did like catching up with the clones in a meaningful way in “Genesis Undone.” The season finale does a good job of wrapping-up the season. It even uses a runaway train in much the same manner as the movie Spider-Man 2. Perhaps it was an inspiration? If it was, it’s probably the most meaningful contribution the show made to pop culture.

What drove me to finally watch The Goliath Chronicles after all these years was essentially the fact that there are only so many episodes of this show, of this cast, that it felt silly to dismiss some out of hand. Is the third season bad? In a vacuum, no. It’s a perfectly cromulent season of children’s television. Is it up to the standards of the first two seasons? No. I do think over the years the first two seasons have become deified to a degree because the high points are so high and the show is limited to 65 episodes. I’m not even sure if the show’s worst episode exists in Season 3, but I honestly haven’t given that particular subject much thought. Talented writers worked on this season and, in general, they delivered C-average work. It’s certainly not spectacular, but it’s hardly a trainwreck.

What fans seem to dislike the most is that nothing in this season feels essential. Subplots like Goliath and Elisa’s romance are stuck in neutral with no advancement. Broadway and Angela do get established as a couple though, so there’s that.

Does all this mean that I’m actually giving The Goliath Chronicles a recommend? Well, not exactly. It’s disposable television and there’s an abundance of that out there to the point where it feels like one doesn’t have the time to waste on anything that isn’t wonderful. I do think if you’re a Gargoyles fan who has never watched it and dismisses it as trash then you do owe it to the show to actually watch it and see for yourself. It’s probably hard at this point to not go into it with an objective mind, but for those that do I think most would come away with a half-hearted “It’s all right.” If you just want to know the main story of Gargoyles and are only interested in the aspects of the story considered canon, then you don’t need to watch this. Even if this season were considered canon, really nothing happens that would have made it difficult to jump into a hypothetical fourth season. It’s all pretty disposable. You can safely stick to the first two seasons, the SLG comics, and the current Dynamite run for the core story. If you just want some new adventures with a familiar cast then at least The Goliath Chronicles might have something new to offer if you’ve been ignoring it for almost 30 years.

Interested in more Gargoyles content?

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Goliath

It was nearly 6 months ago that NECA unveiled one of its newest licenses for 2021: Gargoyles! I was incredibly pumped at the time to see that NECA had acquired Gargoyles because the license had so much potential. The show was basically a cult hit in the 90s often characterized as Disney’s answer to Batman:…

by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Hudson

Happy Boxing Day! It’s been a minute, but we’re back with another figure in NECA’s line of action figures based on the 90s cartoon/property Gargoyles – Hudson! Hudson, who was wonderfully brought to life by the late Ed Asner, was always my favorite character in the show. He’s basically the old veteran of the group.…

by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Broadway

We are getting oh so very close to assembling the original Manhattan Clan in action figure form! Disney’s take on gothic beasts originally included the following gargoyles: Goliath, Hudson, Bronx, Brooklyn, Broadway, and Lexington. The clan would grow from there, but those six are still the first that come to mind for me when I…

by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , , , | posted in Television

December 30, 2023

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Lexington

By Joe
The littlest gargoyle finally makes his shelf debut.

It took a bit over two years, but the Manhattan Clan is at long last assembled upon my shelf. The last character to arrive is Lexington, the smallest and most unique from a design standpoint of the clan. This line was a bit unexpected when it was announced and it was like a dream come true for 90s kids who watched the show as part of the Disney Afternoon. NECA’s take on the characters may not be exactly what fans would have wanted if given the choice, but it has been pretty good. Visually, at least. There have been issues as well and the size of the wings packaged with each figure has been a point of contention. Lexington, being that he doesn’t feature the large wings of his brethren, is a different beast all together. He’ll take up less space on your shelf as a result, but he’s not without his own problems.

Lexington comes in the same five-panel box as the rest of the line, just a good deal smaller given his more diminutive stature. The artwork on the front by Djordje Djokovic (linework) and Nate Baertsch (paint) depicts Lexington in a rather fearsome pose and makes the little guy look about as ferocious as he could. The figure itself is sculpted by Djokovic who is apparently really into Gargoyles and has been given the honor of sculpting them all. Like the gargoyles before him, Lexington combines some of the characteristics of the cartoon with a more realistic approach. He’s very cut and muscular, but his face is pretty close to the show. Whether you like this approach or not, it’s consistent with the rest so you have likely already decided at this point, or just simply made peace with it.

He seems to fit in well enough with the rest of the clan.

Lexington stands at roughly 5″ depending on how bent you have his knees. He scales pretty well with the rest of the clan. Again, I think Goliath could be bigger, but the rest look pretty good. Lexington has a bit of a smile going on with his default head and I think it captures the essence of the character. The skin tone is an olive green with some black wash that looks rather nice and I really like the blue of his loincloth. He looks good, but then there’s the wings. Yeah, his wings aren’t a thing you have to account for space-wise on your shelf, but you do for the design and function of the figure. We’ll get into that part more when we talk articulation, but NECA opted to do his wings as two pieces of somewhat pliable plastic. They don’t have a ton of flex, but obviously aren’t the hard plastic the other gargoyles have. They peg into his back on ball-hinges and then are glued into his forearms and thighs. They don’t drape like the wings in the show, NECA would have had to go with more of a soft goods approach to get that look, and with his arms down they take on this wavy appearance. It exposes the gap between the torso and the mid-section of the wing and it’s not a great look. He almost looks better in a pose closer to what he’s doing on the box art, but that’s a challenge too.

“Stop complaining about the wings!!”

Is this the right approach? I don’t know. Lexington’s wings were always going to be a challenge as his are closer to actual bat wings in construction. When NECA first revealed a prototype for Lexington, it looked like they did his wings in pieces so he had a fin on his arms and another on his back or thighs. It’s similar to how S.H.Figuarts does capes where from certain angles it looks like one, continuous, piece, but in actuality it’s segmented. I didn’t love that look so I would say this is better, but I don’t like the material. I get why NECA chose this route because this is plastic they can sculpt and paint and the detail is consistent with the other gargoyles in the line. Had they gone with a stretchy fabric, it likely would have been one color, but maybe not? The movie Shredder figures have some pretty cool looking capes with designs on one side and solid colors on the inside. The Shadow Master Super Shredder that NECA did even has this faux leather material for the cape that would have made for an interesting solution. If NECA were matching the cartoon, that approach would have been a no-brainer since a solid color would have been fine. They’re not though, but I still think that would have been better and it makes more sense when we talk about the articulation. Probably the best solution would have been to do both and match the arms swappable. Hard plastic for flying poses, soft goods for casual.

I think this is how he’ll live on my shelf, I just wish we had something for the controller to go to.

We might as well jump into articulation now since I’ve already teased it. The head is on a double-ball-peg and it gets great range in all directions. That’s partly because NECA carved out a little section on the back of the neck to give the figure more range looking up. This means Lexington is actually the only figure in the line who could actually be displayed in a flying pose where he’s looking forward and parallel to the ground. That is good, but almost everything else is bad. The shoulders are incredibly tight on this figure. NECA seemed to really want to reduce any gaps to almost nothing because these are shirtless, hairless, beasts, but the shoulders sit so far in the torso that it kills the range. Lexington can’t raise his arms out to the side all the way, and worse, there’s little room for leverage to work the hinge. I have gone through two figures so far because I snapped a bicep peg trying to lower his arms. Even though I had my thumb right on the seem between the shoulder and bicep, it still snapped like a twig without much warning. I would later snap a foot off trying to put his alternate head on, so yeah, this one seems brittle. Thankfully, Big Bad Toy Store has a terrific return policy.

He can also pack some heat if that’s your preference.

The shoulders rotate fine and the bicep swivel works. The elbows are double-jointed, but hard to work with because of the wings and how they connect to the forearm. There’s just not a lot he can do because of that. Thankfully, the pegs on the rear of the figure where the wings go into the back are forgiving and will pop out if you try to do too much so there seems to be little chance of ripping the wings out of the arms or thighs, but this guy is just not fun to handle at all. The wrists rotate and hinge and the gripping hands have a vertical hinge, so that’s good. The diaphragm can rotate a little, but again, wings get in the way. The same is true for any forward and back motion. There is a waist twist and the hips are ball and socket joints with a thigh swivel built in. The knees are single-jointed and they peg in and hinge so you can swivel there. The ankles have a hinge and a rocker and the toes do the same. They’re pretty tight, but manageable. The tail pegs into the rear of the figure and has a hinge. It’s bendy, just like the other gargoyles, and can act as a support when standing the figure on a shelf.

The figure would have some limitations with or without the wings, just as the other figures in the line do. Lexington can’t, for instance, do his usual crouch where he has his hands on the ground. It’s like his default pose in the show, and the fact that he can’t do it in figure form is a bummer. Getting his arms up and spread like they are in the box art is also quite the challenge. If you rotate the shoulders over the figure’s head, carefully, you can get close. Introducing a NECA flight stand is a pain though since the wings get in the way of getting a grip on the torso. You’re better off with something that can grab the figure by the thigh. For most though, I’m thinking this is a set it in a basic pose kind of figure and then forget it.

I’m probably never going to display my figure with this thing, but I can admit it looks pretty cool.

Lexington does come with a solid assortment of accessories, but even here there is a bit of a letdown for one very specific reason. He has the slight smiling portrait and a yelling one with white-out eyes that looks pretty good. He also looks kind of funny with it since he’s so small, but that’s true even in the show. For hands, we get a set of open hands, a gripping left hand, a trigger finger right hand, and a set of fists. The gripping hand is for use with a remote control, which might be from the episode that introduced Coldstone, or brought him back, I forget. He also has a headset that slips onto his head without issue for communicating with Elisa. The trigger finger hand is intended for his crossbow, which is an homage to the original Kenner figure. Like Broadway and Brooklyn before him, Lex gets an updated version of his old weapon which looks really awesome. It has a thick, real, chain on it. I don’t know how well a chain would work on a crossbow, but it looks cool. There are also four bolts that can slot into it, though they don’t fire.

Well, they’re all here now.

That’s a solid spread that spotlights Lexington’s character traits with a techy set and then the homage, but what’s missing are another set of caped wings. NECA had specifically called out Lexington as a figure that would come with wings for another figure considering he’s a much smaller character, but none were included. Perhaps development costs on Lexington ended up being higher than expected, or it was more of a business decision. Everyone is going to want to add Lexington to their shelf, so why essentially give away a sought after accessory when it could go to another figure that could use a boost? As a consumer, I hate that mindset, but I get it. As of right now, Hudson, Broadway, and Angela are lacking another wing option. Broadway is getting a variant next year that’s basically the same figure, but in a soft goods trench coat. That one is coming with caped wings, which sucks and is annoying. We know MacBeth is on the way so it stands to reason he’ll come with wings for either Hudson or Angela. We also don’t have caped wings for Thailog, but I’m guessing he’s a lower priority. An armored variant could easily come with those. At least that’s a variant I’d have interest in.

In some ways, Lexington is one of my favorite releases in the line. He looks good, I think he’s properly sized, and I’ve just always liked the character. I don’t think it’s an overstatement to call him a fan-favorite. In other ways though, he’s the worst in the line. I don’t like handling him, and I think his wings look terrible in any pose that isn’t featuring them spread out. And even that’s a pain in the ass to get right. My pictures of this figure are so vanilla because he’s such a chore to work with. I basically don’t want to touch this figure ever again. I don’t really want to recommend it as a result, but the reality is, if you’ve been collecting this line you’re not going to stop before you add a Lexington. That would be silly. I guess just have low expectations and handle with care. Maybe one day we’ll get a better option.

If you’re interested in more Gargoyles reviews, check these out:

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Broadway

We are getting oh so very close to assembling the original Manhattan Clan in action figure form! Disney’s take on gothic beasts originally included the following gargoyles: Goliath, Hudson, Bronx, Brooklyn, Broadway, and Lexington. The clan would grow from there, but those six are still the first that come to mind for me when I…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Brooklyn

For the first time in a long time, we did not have a Turtle Tuesday post this week. We do, however, have a Warriors by Night Wednesday for you! It feels like NECA’s Gargoyles line is the most stop-and-start action figure line I’m into of late. The line has seen large gaps between releases and…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Hudson

Happy Boxing Day! It’s been a minute, but we’re back with another figure in NECA’s line of action figures based on the 90s cartoon/property Gargoyles – Hudson! Hudson, who was wonderfully brought to life by the late Ed Asner, was always my favorite character in the show. He’s basically the old veteran of the group.…

Keep reading
by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

December 27, 2023

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Elisa Maza

By Joe
Friend of the gargoyles, Elisa Maza, has joined the shelf.

It’s been awhile since I’ve posted a review on an action figure from NECA’s line of figures based on the Disney Afternoon animated series Gargoyles. That’s not due to me not getting any figures, it’s more just me not having a ton to say. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I wasn’t exactly excited to share my opinion. That’s primarily due to these figures being very fine looking figures, but they’re not the most fun to handle. The problems the first figure in the line had, Goliath, are still present in the most recent. I started to feel like a broken record as I kept saying “This figure looks great, but these wings suck and the posing is really limited as a result.” That’s been true of them all. Today’s figure though is different because we’re not looking at a gargoyle, but a human. And that human is none other than Elisa Maza.

New York’s only unarmed cop.

Detective Maza is the first human ally the Manhattan Clan makes in the series following the time-skip to present day New York. I suppose the crew thought their first ally was Xanatos, but he was never their friend. Elisa, being a detective and all, investigates a disturbance atop the skyscraper where the clan dwells and quickly runs into Goliath. It doesn’t take particularly long for the gargoyles to view her as an ally and once Xanatos’ deceitful ways are out in the open, she basically becomes their only friend. And along the way, she’ll become a romantic interest for Goliath because this property wasn’t afraid to go there. Love is love.

Maybe this should be the Cagney review with accessories.

As an action figure, Elisa is understandably less impressive than a monstrous gargoyle. She’s a plain clothes detective in denim pants and a red jacket. She still gets the same window box treatment from NECA with original artwork by Djordje Djokovic while the sculpt (and what NECA terms as fabrication) were handled by Thomas Rozejowski and Kyle Windrix. Elisa stands at roughly 6.5″ and is pretty well proportioned for the character. She has pretty long legs, and her coat is done with an overlay on the torso with the sleeves included as part of the sculpt of the arms. In other words, if you wanted to remove the coat you would need to find some new arms for her or else it will look silly. The coat does make her look a little frumpy, if you will, as basically all coats do in real life. She still has curves so I think there is a nice balance being struck here between the animated look and the realistic approach NECA has taken with the line when it comes to her body.

This old Toy Biz handgun doesn’t look too bad in her hand.

Where things get a bit murky is with the head. That’s not to say there is anything wrong with it, it’s just that the faces look very animation-inspired when the gargoyles have largely shunned that look. Her eyes are oversized like a cartoon would and her skin-tone is flat. Again, it’s not a bad sculpt and paint job by any means, but it isn’t consistent for the line. The gargoyles have all been sculpted and designed by Djokovic where as this figure was handled by a different team and it shows. I personally would have liked for this line to follow the animation, so I can’t say I dislike what’s done here, but I do have to concede that Elisa strikes a different vibe on the shelf when placed with the other figures. Even her hair more follows the show has it’s black with blue highlights as cartoons often do with black hair. This is likely something that is going to bother some more than others. Or maybe it will bother everyone since those who want that uniform look will obviously be irritated, while those who wanted that animated look might just be frustrated that the gargoyles aren’t done that way. I suppose this approach may end up pleasing few.

I also grabbed a third party gun for her. It’s not perfect, but will probably do fine.

NECA did provide Elisa with some accessories, though with one pretty obvious omission. Elisa has two styles of hair at her disposal: a neutral one and a wind swept version. Both fit on her head just fine and look nice. I do find myself leaning towards the wind swept portrait more often than not as it adds a touch of style. Elisa also has three different heads with three very similar expressions: neutral, smile, and a smile with a raised eyebrow. They all look fine, but are also way too similar. I would have loved some variety as even the neutral face almost has a hint of a smile to it. Maybe an angry expression? Or a startled one to reenact Goliath saving her instead of Demona?

Goliath’s inability to really look down comes into play here unfortunately.

Elisa also has an assortment of hands and accessories for her to handle with said hands. We get fists, trigger finger hands, a left hand with a pinching gesture, and a gripping right hand. The pinching hand is for her to display her included badge should someone question her credentials. It’s a small piece of plastic and the badge is rather neatly painted, but good luck not losing this thing. The gripping hand is for use with her flashlight which looks fine, but is just a flashlight. Her cat, Cagney, is also included, but not included is a hand for petting said cat. The cat looks fine though and has an articulated head. Just like the figure itself, the cat looks more cartoony than realistic. Also not included is something for those trigger finger hands. Yes, NECA did not include her sidearm. Why? Because they wanted to make us mad. No, obviously that’s not the reason and it was not an oversight because how could something like that be missed? NECA hasn’t publicly commented on it, but you can basically assume that Disney said “No” to Elisa coming with a gun. “But Demona, Thailog, and Xanatos all have guns?” you say, but I would counter their guns aren’t of the realistic variety. Elisa carries a standard 9mm that looks like an actual handgun and not some weird laser weapon. NECA gave us the hands, but we have to find our own gun. Even though this line is technically 1:10 scale, I find 1:12 weapons work pretty well. My old Toy Biz Deadpool handgun looked pretty good in her hands, and I also grabbed a generic one from Casting Cave. I haven’t painted it, though I really should, but it gets the job done for me.

Now Brooklyn can take up less space on your shelf.

Elisa does come with one other accessory and it’s one for a different figure. Like Bronx before her, Elisa comes with a set of caped wings for a gargoyle: Brooklyn. The wings work just like Goliath’s and fit over the figure’s neck and can be secured via pegs in the back. The plastic is soft, but not so soft that it won’t restrict the movement of the figure’s arms once on. It looks okay, but this look is still not the one desired by most which would be those relaxed, A-shape, wings for walking around. And I could be wrong, but I feel like Brooklyn went with the caped look less often than Goliath. I picture him in my head as often more crouched than the others and his wings more relaxed. At any rate, if your shelf is full because of those spread wings then this accessory is welcomed just to be able to squeeze more out of said shelf.

This doesn’t look like a fair fight.

Since Elisa doesn’t have wings like the others, I expect her to be a little easier to handle. She is, for the most part, though this is still a NECA figure and articulation is a lower priority than it would be with other companies. The head is on a double-ball peg, but the hair is going to restrict her a bit. You can rotate, tilt, and she looks down pretty well while looking up is tougher because of her hair. The shoulders are ball-hinged and she can rotate just fine and the arms raise out to just about horizontal. There is a biceps swivel and the double-jointed elbows bend well past 90 degrees. The wrists swivel and all of the hands feature a horizontal hinge which is lame as the trigger hands, at least, should have vertical hinges. There might be a diaphragm joint on the figure, but the coat makes it functionally useless. The waist twist is just a waist twist, though it feels like a ball peg so you get a tiny bit of nuance to it. The ball and socket hips go out to the sides nearly to a full split. Be careful with the diaper piece over the crotch as I have seen instances of the paint cracking which is unfortunate. The legs can kick forward almost to horizontal, again you probably don’t want to force it since it will stress that crotch piece, while the thigh twist works just fine. The double-jointed knees bend past 90 degrees and the ankles hinge and rock side-to-side and work fine. Her feet are a bit small relative to her body, so she’s harder to stand than you may expect. This one was often falling over on me overnight when I had it on my desk, but once I found a solid stance she’s been fine.

I’m starting to wish she came with a new head for Goliath that was a bit warmer of an expression.

One last thing to talk about with this figure is how she looks with the others. I already mentioned the style clash, but more important to me is that her scale is off. Or perhaps more accurately, her sizing really makes it apparent that Goliath is just too small. She looks fine with Bronx, Hudson, and Brooklyn while Goliath and Broadway clearly seem undersized to me. I’m thinking the idea here was to fudge the scale a bit. Goliath should be the largest, but he doesn’t need to be that much bigger than Hudson as he was in the show. And I guess that kind of works, but it starts to look bad when Elisa is introduced. Goliath being already out for quite some time and the pillar of the line, Elisa probably should just be smaller. Even though she’s probably perfectly in the realm of 1:10 scale being 6.5″ herself. On my shelf as I type this, she’s at Goliath’s shoulders which is just too tall. In the show she’s more at his chest. Part of the issue is the unique anatomy of gargoyle legs and I will admit that Goliath’s knees are bent more than I’d like, but it’s hard to have him standing otherwise. Also more of an issue with Goliath than Elisa is that he can’t look up so it’s really hard to do flying poses with Goliath carrying Elisa, nor can he look down at her. I’m starting to wish we could just get a Goliath redo at this point.

Despite the fact that she’s a human, Elisa looks like she belongs. I have Goliath about as tall as I’m comfortable with him (and I’m still expecting a shelf dive at some point) standing to mitigate any scaling issues.

Is Elisa Maza a worthy addition to your Gargoyles collection from NECA? At the end of the day, I think so since she’s a pretty integral character in the show and the comics that followed. The execution isn’t perfect, but some of the issues are definitely not the fault of the figure when it comes to scaling and accessories. It is a shame we couldn’t get her gun in the box and I doubt that could be fixed with a Gargoyles accessory set. It would have to be a generic weapons pack like what McFarlane does to get around DC not allowing guns with its figures. It sucks, but I’m obviously not mad at NECA and I’m not really even irritated with Disney as I get why these companies make these choices. It’s not the end of the world and anyone who collects action figures can probably source a gun from another figure without much problem. And if you can’t, there are plenty of customizers out there who can. On its own merits, this figure is just fine. It’s not extraordinary in any way, but anyone familiar with Gargoyles will know who that is on your shelf which is probably good enough for most.

If you’re interested in other figures from this line then check these out:

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Goliath

It was nearly 6 months ago that NECA unveiled one of its newest licenses for 2021: Gargoyles! I was incredibly pumped at the time to see that NECA had acquired Gargoyles because the license had so much potential. The show was basically a cult hit in the 90s often characterized as Disney’s answer to Batman:…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Brooklyn

For the first time in a long time, we did not have a Turtle Tuesday post this week. We do, however, have a Warriors by Night Wednesday for you! It feels like NECA’s Gargoyles line is the most stop-and-start action figure line I’m into of late. The line has seen large gaps between releases and…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Bronx

Well, here’s something different. Bronx, the good gargoyle dog, is NECA’s fourth entry in its relatively young line of action figures based on the beloved Disney Afternoon series Gargoyles. And not only is Bronx here all on his own, he’s also got something for his buddy Goliath that collectors of this line have been begging…

Keep reading
by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

May 31, 2023

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Broadway

By Joe
Broadway’s here and he brought snacks!

We are getting oh so very close to assembling the original Manhattan Clan in action figure form! Disney’s take on gothic beasts originally included the following gargoyles: Goliath, Hudson, Bronx, Brooklyn, Broadway, and Lexington. The clan would grow from there, but those six are still the first that come to mind for me when I think Gargoyles, and with the release of Broadway we’re just one figure away from having the entire crew in place. Broadway arrives hot on the heels of Brooklyn, or in tandem, depending on where you got your figures. For me, it was basically simultaneous and the arrival of both was very much welcomed by me after only getting one Gargoyles release over the past calendar year. And like virtually all of the rest in this line, Broadway is pretty much as expected. That’s not to say it’s all good, but it is mostly good and I do think that today’s figure will be the favorite in the line for some folks out there.

Broadway arrives just like the others in an oversized NECA Ultimates five-panel box with new artwork by artist and sculptor of the figure Djordje Djokovic with paint by Emiliano Santalucia. I was a little critical of the design of Brooklyn’s box as I felt he didn’t mesh with the background, but for Broadway, it looks terrific and there’s even a little easter egg in the background. As nice as the box is though, I couldn’t care less as I’m interested in what’s inside the box. Broadway, in his neutral stance, is about 6.5″ tall give or take. It’s an inexact science considering the gargoyles always have their knees bent to some degree and that’s true of how I have Broadway. Like the other releases, there’s influences from the cartoon series present in Broadway’s design as well as some added realism. It looks fine in some respects, but maybe not so much in others. His headsculpt is pretty damn close to the show as he has his underbite and there’s a nice roundness to his features. The proportions look great to my eye between the size of his head his fin-like ears and the head is well-painted with some nice shading to help bring out his features.

Broadway is usually pretty cheerful, but he can get angry with the best of them.

Below the head, I have some issues. Broadway is the chubby one of the bunch as seemingly all 90s cartoons needed a fatty who loved food. I don’t recall many jokes at his expense in regards to his weight, and it’s just a feature of his character. NECA did include his rather rotund belly, but they also made Broadway look pretty well-defined when it comes to his muscles. In some ways, it reminds me of 90s Marvel cartoons where seemingly every male character was jacked, even the more portly ones. This wouldn’t bother me if NECA stopped at just the limbs, but it looks like they tried to sculpt some definition to his abs which is weird. And it’s made more weird by the shading along the sides of his belly and a random stripe across his pectorals. It strikes me as a case of just overdoing things. We love our chonky-boy Broadway, just let him be himself, NECA. Not every character needs to be absolutely shredded.

I’m not sure this guy needs weapons to look scary.

Beyond that, the figure does look pretty good. I may disagree with the approach subjectively, but objectively this is a well-sculpted figure. I also think NECA nailed the color of Broadway which is basically a pale teal. There’s more green to him than Demona and I like how his flesh blends with the more saturated blue of his loincloth. The inside of his wings has a lot more yellow applied to create a grassy looking green that’s shaded well. There’s a nice gradient to the membrane with the rear being a dark blue. Unlike Brooklyn, Broadway likely shares some parts with Goliath and Hudson, but it may only be limited to the hands and feet. If they are reused, it’s appropriate reuse and Broadway is going to make up for it with quite a few accessories to pick through.

“What is this?! Vegetables?!”

And those accessories include a bunch of hands, some weapons, food, and a secondary portrait. Broadway has a set of open hands, a set of fists, a tight gripping right hand with vertical hinge, and a loose gripping left hand. His secondary portrait features an aggressive, open-mouthed, pose with the eyes whited-out, which is what we’ve come to expect in a secondary portrait for the line. It looks good, but I always think of Broadway as the most light-hearted of the group so I doubt I’ll make much use of this head. For weapons, we get more Kenner homage stuff with an axe and a morning star. They’re styled and painted in a manner similar to Brooklyn’s lance and they also fit together to form one, long, super weapon. It’s a bit of a bummer that he doesn’t have two, tight, gripping hands to properly wield it with two-hands. Then again, sort of like with the head, I’m unlikely to pose him with random weapons when he comes with food! There’s a turkey leg with a big bite taken out of it that feels right at home with a comic-relief, food, monster. He also has this piece of green sludge, or moss, or algae, or whatever it is which is from the first episode of the show and was consumed by Broadway in the rookery. Best of all though, is the container of popcorn which is well-sculpted and lovingly painted. Yeah, that’s the one going into the display for me.

“Hey bro, let me have some of that popcorn.”

Articulation hasn’t really been a homerun for this line of figures and Broadway is basically more of the same. His more rounded proportions make him feel rather similar to Hudson in some ways, but since he lacks clothing he has a bit more freedom of movement. The head is on the customary double-ball peg which will allow for plenty of rotation and nuance posing. He can look down pretty well, but lacks much range going up as all of these figures seem to have their necks at a bit of an angle coming forward, and without any independent neck articulation they can’t really look up. Which is a shame considering the wings, which peg into the back and are hinged. They’re ratcheted, so you get a handful of positions and they do swivel, but are so damn big and cumbersome. They’re essentially flight wings, but the gargoyles always have to look at the ground since they can’t look forward when flying. Yeah, I’m as sick of complaining about the wings as you probably are reading said complaints, but it’s going to be out there until NECA comes up with a better solution.

“BACK OFF MAN I’M STARVING!”

At the shoulders, we have the usual ball-hinge setup that allows for full rotation while limiting Broadway to a less than horizontal position when trying to raise his arms out to the side. The biceps swivel works fine and the double-elbows will go past 90. At the wrists, we get swivels and hinges with at least one gripping hand having the preferred vertical hinge. In the torso, there’s what feels like a double-ball peg in the diaphragm. It really doesn’t offer much in the way of forward and back, but the figure can rotate there pretty easily and there’s some side-to-side tilt as well. At the waist, we get another twist. For the hips, good old ball and socket joints which allow Broadway to kick out to the side to a position quite close to a full split. Kicking forward works better than it did with Brooklyn, though like the rest in this line, his leg tends to want to go out to the side the further forward you push it, but it can get up to waist level and a little beyond. Kicking back works pretty well too, if you value that. The single-hinged knees bend about 90 degrees, though these monster types are intended to stand with knees bent, though it can go straight if you would rather that. They do swivel, and below that we get ankle and toe articulation where both feature a hinge and rocker. The ankle rocker works pretty nice, while the toe rocker forces you to fight it a bit due to the shape of the sculpt, but it works. At the tail, the usual hinged peg plus bendy wire provides for some freedom of movement. It’s nice and tight on my figure, better than it’s been with most of the rest, so it works like a third leg if needed. Funny enough, Broadway is probably the easiest for me to stand so far and I haven’t really needed to rely on the tail for much help.

Broadway is basically as expected for those who have been collecting the line. I think he’s a little better than average though as I like his sculpt, for the most part, and I think both portraits turned out well. He probably articulates the best out of all of the male gargoyles, understanding he still has his limitations. I do kind of wish he had an articulated jaw since he has lots of food accessories, but I do like how the neutral head turned out. Maybe they could have scrapped the extra weapons most will never use in favor of a third, eating, head. Where he could have been improved is with a softer approach to the torso and more focused shading. The sculpt preference is more subjective on my part, but the shading is a bit weird. And, of course, the wings remain an issue. Especially for Broadway who many are likely to pose snacking on their shelf. He doesn’t need his wings spread out in an aggressive posture when chowing down on popcorn. He, more than perhaps the rest, would have been better served with something more casual.

They look pretty good together, but damn these wings.

If you want to add Broadway to your Gargoyles collection he can be found in various places online and at local comic shops. He is likely to head to the big box retailers in the near future as well so if you primarily get your figures in those places just keep an eye out. He may also run a few dollars cheaper when that happens. MSRP appears to be about $37 or $38 with some retailers charging over $40. He’s a solid enough value at that price considering he does feature plenty of unique tooling and a solid assortment of accessories. I think this one is likely to be a favorite among those who collect this line, and if you are collecting it, well you have to have Broadway in your display.

Looking for more Gargoyles reviews? Check these out:

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Brooklyn

For the first time in a long time, we did not have a Turtle Tuesday post this week. We do, however, have a Warriors by Night Wednesday for you! It feels like NECA’s Gargoyles line is the most stop-and-start action figure line I’m into of late. The line has seen large gaps between releases and…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Thailog

One of last year’s biggest announcements in the world of action figures was NECA’s acquisition of the Gargoyles license. It had been decades since Gargoyles figures occupied real estate at the toy and hobby shops of America and fans of the series were eager to see what NECA had cooking. It being 2021 though, collectors…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Bronx

Well, here’s something different. Bronx, the good gargoyle dog, is NECA’s fourth entry in its relatively young line of action figures based on the beloved Disney Afternoon series Gargoyles. And not only is Bronx here all on his own, he’s also got something for his buddy Goliath that collectors of this line have been begging…

Keep reading
by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

May 17, 2023

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Brooklyn

By Joe
There’s a part of me that wants to just call him “Firebrand” whenever I see him.

For the first time in a long time, we did not have a Turtle Tuesday post this week. We do, however, have a Warriors by Night Wednesday for you! It feels like NECA’s Gargoyles line is the most stop-and-start action figure line I’m into of late. The line has seen large gaps between releases and we’re basically on a 2-1-2 release schedule with gaps of 6+ months in between. Today’s figure I think went up for preorder with an estimated ship date of last September or October, but here we are in May and it’s just now arrived, but with another figure! Are these supply chain delayed figures or is it merely NECA having to prioritize other releases to either hit a certain window with them or are events like Haulathon mucking things up for our beloved warriors of the night? I’m not sure, but the release calendar for Gargoyles is looking uncharacteristically crowded for 2023 and I’m curious to see how much product eventually sees release this year. As for today, we’re taking a look at the latest member of the Manhattan Clan and his name is Brooklyn.

Scream for me, Brooklyn!

Brooklyn arrives in the same Ultimates styled box as the rest of the figures in the line boasting original artwork by Djordje Djokovic and Emiliano Santalucia. It seems to appropriately place Brooklyn at the bridge from which he took his name, though it almost looks like that was a thought that came after the image of Brooklyn himself was conceived since he’s hovering in a crouched pose which is a bit odd. Djokovic is the sculptor as well for this release with paint by Geoffrey Trapp and Jon Wardell. Brooklyn is unmistakably based on the character from the animated series, but like the other figures in the line, the realism is dialed up a notch with him. He’s very lean and very cut, and unlike the other humanoid gargoyles we’ve seen so far, he has a visage that’s very much animalistic in form as opposed to the more human features of a Goliath or Hudson. That’s Brooklyn’s defining trait for me, his rather large beak, as well as the red hue his skin features. It’s a muted crimson and he boasts simplified wings that are more like large kites than bat wings. He also has the claw like tips on his wings similar to Demona. And despite being another male character, he does feel a bit like Demona due to his more slight appearance.

He comes with a lance, like the old Kenner toy, in case you feel like he needs one.

Brooklyn in his neutral stance, which does involve some bent legs, stands at around 6.25″ to the top of his head and a great deal taller if you factor in his horns. He seems to scale well with Goliath and the others and he certainly fits in stylistically. His default portrait is pretty similar to his animated appearance, but with an added paint wash over the flesh that makes his eyes stand out a bit more. He translates rather well and so far I think Goliath has been the one to look the least like his animated counterpart. Of course, the added detail of the muscles here really sets this version of Brooklyn apart from the show. He does not look bad by any means, but the musculature does feel a bit overdone. He must have less than 1% body fat as he is absurdly cut. His entire body is cast in the same red plastic, which reminds me of a red crayon that’s melted in the sun, but also hit with a topcoat of paint for some added definition. The claws look like they’ve been hit with a red-brown shade of paint, though it’s not evenly applied. The toes look great, but the right, open, hand he comes packaged with on my figure almost has no paint on the claws. The interior of the wings look like they’ve been hit with a wash in a similar shade that oh so slightly darkens that area from the bone structure of the outer wings while the backside is far darker. They’re almost purple, and the light shines off of them and creates a more vibrant range of colors like a soap bubble might do. The hair appears to be sculpted in white, but with a pearl coating and some light blue to give it a nice luster. He’s also sporting the typical loincloth the gargoyles all seem to be fond of and it’s a pale blue which contrasts nicely with all of the red. This is an overall strong looking figure that compares favorably to the others released so far. He’s not knocking Hudson off the top of my personal list of best in the line, but I think he’s ahead of Goliath.

The clan so far. Yes, obviously, there is a fifth on the way that may already be here, just off to the side.

Brooklyn has a fairly typical arsenal of accessories for this line, but with some surprises. For hands, he comes with two open hands in the box plus a set of fist hands and a set of gripping hands. The width of the grip on each hand is different so one is a bit tighter than the other. The tighter of the two works best with his included lance weapon. I don’t recall a lance in the show which makes me think it’s a tribute to the old Kenner figure which all featured weapons. It looks pretty cool though and is painted with a gun metal finish and I suspect many will display Brooklyn utilizing it. He also has some show accessories in the form of a pair of sunglasses that can fit over his eyes reasonably well and a page torn from Demona’s grimoire, something the sorceress would like to get her claws on in the future. It’s not an amazing accessory by itself, but it’s a fun inclusion since Demona’s grimoire was sculpted with the page torn out so it pairs well. It’s also very well done for what it is boasting more paint than your typical Marvel Legends action figure. Lastly, we have a second portrait which features the jaw permanently open and the eyes whited-out. The hair sculpt looks to be exactly the same, but it looks nice and it will work if you want your Brooklyn ready for battle on your shelf, or hanging from your ceiling, or wherever you ultimately place him.

“Looking for something, Demona?”

Brooklyn’s articulation should also feel familiar as he basically follows in the same footsteps as the other figures in the line. He’s very similar to Goliath, but with a little extra range by virtue of his more slender build. His head is on a double ball peg, but his movement is pretty well restricted by his hair. He can only look so far in either direction and has basically no range looking up. He does have some tilt and can look down. I should add, I’m rating the articulation with his wings on. They do come off, but he’s a gargoyle and they’re a part of his body that he can’t actually remove. If you were to take them off, you’d get a little more range out his head, but why would you display a gargoyle with no wings? He does have an articulated jaw on his standard portrait and that works just fine. He does have a joint at the base of the neck, but it doesn’t really do anything. I’m not sure if it’s supposed to, or if it just exists as a way to connect a neck there and allow for some future reuse down the road. It seems like a missed opportunity though since the cut is already there. The shoulders are the standard ball-hinges and Brooklyn can raise his arms out to the side to a horizontal position. They will rotate as far as the wings will allow, though they do rub a bit on his pectorals which stick out a bit. They’re the same color, so there’s not a lot of danger here, but it’s something to be considerate of. He has a biceps swivel which works fine and double-jointed elbows that will bend past 90 degrees. The wrists swivel and hinge and the tight, gripping, hand has a vertical hinge which is much appreciated.

In case you wanted to try reading it for yourself.

In the torso, we have a ball joint at the diaphragm that mostly exists to allow the character to rotate there. There’s some forward and back and a little tilt to either side, but it also feels a little on the loose side which worries me a bit going forward. So far, it seems fine. There is a waist twist below that which feels like it’s just a twist instead of a ball joint which would have added some more forward and back, but oh well. The thighs are connected via ball and socket joints and Brooklyn can rotate there. His loincloth rides up and over his left thigh, but covers more of his right thigh, so the left has more rotation than the right. The left one also has some paint rub on the thigh which is unfortunate, and the loincloth restricts Brooklyn’s ability to kick forward to about 45 degrees, which is disappointing. He can kick back pretty far though, if that’s something you value. The knees are single-hinged and can bend to about 90 degrees. They also swivel. The ankles are hinged and have okay range and they also feature an ankle rocker. The toes hinge and rock as well as these creatures are designed to essentially stand on their toes. They’re nice and tight which is needed for their normal stance. The tail is affixed via a hinged peg and it’s also bendy. It works fine and the hinge is tight enough that it can act as a support limb for stances, though it could be tighter. The wings connect via the same mechanism and can be adjusted up and down as well as in and out. The hinges are very tight and like the other figures in the line make horrible clicking noises that will have you thinking you’re about to break the figure. So far, I have had no such breakage from any of the Gargoyles figures and Brooklyn’s are nice and stable, unlike Demona’s which were way too loose.

“Check out the shades, bro.”

Brooklyn’s articulation is basically in-line with the rest: good, but not great. The range at the head is an issue for him as NECA declined to include any articulation in the hair. This means you have these big, open, wings for flight, but Brooklyn can’t look forward in a flying pose, something that was an issue for Goliath as well (and really, all of them so far). The range in the torso and hips is also not suitable for crouched poses which is a bummer since these are gargoyles, after all, which typically are crouched when in stone form. I wish we could get these guys into a three-point stance, but it’s just not possible with or without the wings. And then there’s those wings, those gigantic, rigid, wings. You would think we’d be used to them by now, but it seems they just become more of a nuisance with each successive release. They’re really only good for very dramatic posing which doesn’t lend itself well to the more neutral portraits each figure comes with. Brooklyn’s wings are also just plain huge as his wingspan is about 22.5″. I always thought of him as one of the smaller gargoyles, but evidently I was wrong. He’s the first release in the line that I just can’t fit onto my shelf, which already includes Goliath with the caped wings. It’s a problem for this line and NECA’s solution of packing caped wings with the non-winged characters isn’t the best solution. What we really need are relaxed wings, and at this point I think NECA just needs to suck it up and offer a wing set on their website or something. And just package future figures with options. If it raises the price, then so be it, because it’s a consistent complaint I see online about this line.

Brooklyn must be the “cool” one.

In short, Brooklyn is very much as expected. If you’ve been happy with the releases in this line so far then you’ll be happy with him. If you have been displeased, or annoyed by the wing options, then expect the same. I want to love this line, and the paint and sculpt work have been very good. It’s clear that NECA has done its homework given the episode specific accessories we’ve seen so far, but something has to be done about those wings. Then again, it’s an issue that hasn’t stopped me from buying these so maybe that’s all that matters to NECA, but I’m actually seeing people sharing images of their collection and they’ve just taken the wings off which is insane to me. They just aren’t gargoyles without wings, so I’m continuing to try and find a way to work these things into my collection, which now will require a second, dedicated, shelf. If you’re interested in adding Brooklyn to your collection, he’s currently available online and can be found at specialty shops. He should also arrive at Target any day now where you’re likely to find the lowest price available (around $36, if I’m not mistaken). If you’re in on this line, then you probably need him. If you’re out because of the wings, well he’s not going to change your mind. Hopefully, relief is on the way.

Interested in more Gargoyles content?:

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Goliath

It was nearly 6 months ago that NECA unveiled one of its newest licenses for 2021: Gargoyles! I was incredibly pumped at the time to see that NECA had acquired Gargoyles because the license had so much potential. The show was basically a cult hit in the 90s often characterized as Disney’s answer to Batman:…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Hudson

Happy Boxing Day! It’s been a minute, but we’re back with another figure in NECA’s line of action figures based on the 90s cartoon/property Gargoyles – Hudson! Hudson, who was wonderfully brought to life by the late Ed Asner, was always my favorite character in the show. He’s basically the old veteran of the group.…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Demona

When NECA launched it’s line of action figures based on Disney’s Gargoyles, it seemed to imply that Demona would be figure number 2. She was not. That honor went to Thailog, the Goliath clone, and that might have had something to do with the many factory delays and shipping woes that were impacting the entire…

Keep reading
by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

December 26, 2022

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Hudson

By Joe
We’re coming out of Christmas with a figure of the year candidate.

Happy Boxing Day! It’s been a minute, but we’re back with another figure in NECA’s line of action figures based on the 90s cartoon/property Gargoyles – Hudson! Hudson, who was wonderfully brought to life by the late Ed Asner, was always my favorite character in the show. He’s basically the old veteran of the group. A bit surly, and at his happiest in a comfy chair with his TV and pal Bronx at his side. Though don’t mistake that for Hudson being some useless old geezer. When he’s called upon he’s still a ferocious warrior. Armed with his curved sword, he may not be the warrior he was in his youth, but he won’t back down from a fight. His biggest contribution to the Manhattan Clan though is his wisdom as Goliath often seeks his advice before rushing headlong into a confrontation. There’s no doubt about it, Hudson is pretty damn cool and I’ve been looking forward to this release for awhile. I just had to wait, because he was originally scheduled for release in September, which became October, and you get the idea. I actually ended up finding this guy at an FYE. At first, I was turned off by their inflated price, but eventually I came back and wound up walking out with him. The damage was $47 plus tax, probably close to $10 more if I could have found him at Walmart where he showed up in very small quantities weeks ago, but it’s only $5 more than the preorder I had secured so I figured the extra five bucks was worth it to have the figure now and not have to ship later.

Good doggo.

Hudson comes in an oversized Ultimates styled box since he’s a pretty big boy. The cover of the box features some impressive artwork of Hudson by Djordje Djokovic with paint by Emiliano Santalucia. Hudson looks like he’s striking a ferocious pose or emerging from his stone state and it’s actually a bit festive as there’s snow falling around him. The rest of the box contains product shots of the figure plus a cross-sell of the rest of the line which includes headshots of the unreleased Lexington, Broadway, and Brooklyn. Once out of the box, Hudson feels pretty similar to the other figures we’ve seen in this line, except for Bronx, obviously. Posing him in a natural, gargoyle, stance puts the figure at about 7.5″ with his knees bent and standing on his toes. Some assembly is required, as was the case with the others, as both the tail and the wings need to be attached to the figure. Neither is particularly hard. I had to work the tail in deliberately, but once in it felt secure. The wings just snap into place and it can be done with the figure’s head on or off. The hair gets in the way a little, but it can be flexed out of the way without much trouble.

This guy looks frikken’ amazing!

With the figure assembled, I will just come out and say that this is the best release in the line so far. Hudson looks fantastic and, like Bronx, retains a lot of his animated look. For Hudson, I attribute that more to the fact that he wears more clothes so there was little where the NECA sculptor (Djokovic) could freelance by adding more musculature like we saw with Goliath. The default portrait is a stoic, or neutral, expression for Hudson. His eyes have visible pupils, with the left eye being blinded and colored yellow, and his mouth is set in something close to a scowl. It is undeniably Hudson and the quality of the sculpt is impressive. Equally impressive is the paint as it’s all nice and clean. His beard and hair are sculpted in white but have been brushed with gray and a hit of silver in places. The crispness of the ridges on his brow, around the nose, the lines under his eyes, are just awesome, for lack of a better word. And the rest of the sculpt is just as good. His clothing has a nice texture to it, the paint is really clean all over. There’s shading, the straps on his calves are nice and clean, the buckles and studs are all painted, and it just looks like no expense was spared. The wings are unique to Hudson. Yes, they’re still spread wide open so the shelf space needed to display him is immense, but they do look good. There’s shading on the wings and he has some tattered parts of the membrane with some holds in there to reflect a long, hard, life. If I’m going to nitpick the presentation at all, the tail is still bland looking as they do the tails in rubber with a bendy wire. There’s no texture or anything to it, but it’s also positioned behind the figure at all times. And the feet don’t look as good as the rest of the figure because there’s no paint wash on them. They just stand out a little as looking flat, but like I said, it’s a nitpick. This figure is gorgeous and once again makes NECA look like an outlier in the toy world right now, but in a good way. Hasbro is an outlier in a bady way as their prices seem rather high and the quality of the product low compared with their peers. Meanwhile, NECA is out here with prices not much different (I paid $47, but this guy should be $37 or $38) selling figures with mostly new tools, tons of paint, and plenty of accessories. They are the best deal in town right now.

Most stands are going to struggle to hold up this big boy.

And we should talk about those accessories. Hudson isn’t loaded, but he has enough. He comes with fist hands in the package, but NECA also includes a set of open hands, a loose gripping left hand, a tight gripping right hand, and a tight gripping right hand with a vertical hinge. That last hand is to be used with his sword, which like the figure, is gorgeous. The blade has it’s unique shape we’re used to and it’s nice and thick and sturdy and comes to a point, safety measures be damned. There’s some intricate carving on both sides of the blade plus some sculpted weathering and damage to the blade customary of one that’s seen use for centuries or however long Hudson has lived. The texture is great and the paint has a silver finish to it to go along with the brown hilt with gold handguard. It looks perfect, and Hudson even has a loop in his belt to store it when he’s not brandishing the weapon. Lastly, we have an alternate head which is customary for this line as we need a neutral face and a battle face. The gargoyles all see their eyes go white and glow when they’re in battle and that’s what Hudson’s secondary face reflects. His mouth is open and both eyes are white. They have a pearl finish to create the illusion that they’re glowing and the quality of the sculpt and paint is every bit as good, if not better, than the default portrait. Talk about a homerun. And all of these parts are easy to swap so there’s a lot of fun to be had with the display options here.

“Hello, old friend. Care to borrow this one when I’m finished?”

This figure feels damn near perfect, which means we’ve saved the worst part of it for last and that’s the articulation. Articulation hasn’t been a strong point for this line so far, and Hudson can be categorized as more of the same. The head is on a double-ball peg, but because he has long hair and a long beard, it’s pretty locked down no matter which head you use. There’s some flex to the hair, but that’s more for positioning the wings than anything. He can basically look left and right a bit, but not much more. The shoulders are ball-hinged and they’re limited by his shoulder pads which are a very, hard, plastic. He can only rotate as much as those will allow, but he can raise his arms out to the side just about horizontal. There is a biceps swivel and the double-jointed elbow works very well, though is a little unsightly when bent past 90 degrees. The wrists rotate and hinge and I already mentioned he does have the correct hinge direction for his sword hand, so that’s great. In the torso, there’s a diaphragm joint that mostly allows for some rotation. He can go back a little there which is good for some lunging and flying poses, but he can’t really go forward and there’s not much tilt. There’s a waist twist below that and the hips are the standard ball and socket joint. Hudson can damn near hit a split and he kicks forward pretty far and back pretty far. There is a thigh twist and the knee joint swivels and bend, but because of the unusual gargoyle anatomy, the range isn’t terrific. There is an ankle joint past that which contains a ratcheted hinge which is nice because they need to be strong. The joint also has a rocker and past that is the toe hinge which is what the figure is supposed to stand on. That hinge works fine and it has a little rocker action to it as well. The tail is on a ball hinge like the shoulders and it’s bendy so you can move it around a bit and also utilize it to support the figure in a stance. The wings are ball-hinged too so they can rotate and flap. They still make that scary, loud, clicking sound, but I’m happy to report no looseness like we saw with Demona.

I surprised myself by fitting another gargoyle onto this shelf. There won’t be another without some smaller wing options.

Hudson’s articulation is limited, but I think it’s probably good enough. NECA clearly prioritizes the aesthetic of its figures and Hudson is certainly proof of that. His biggest posing limitations are the shoulders and what the wings bring to the table. It’s been said before, and it will be said again, that the things are an issue. Each figure just takes up too much room and packaging caped wings with other figures is too slow a delivery method. And if a character ever called for those wings, it’s Hudson. I wish he could assume a proper seated pose, but the legs kick out a bit too much. He could sit in a recliner, but not with these wings. I don’t know what it would cost to add a secondary pair of wings to each release, but whatever it is, I’d likely pay it because these guys are really hard to fit onto a shelf together.

Hudson may not be the most dynamic release, but he’s still a damn good one. He’s easily my favorite in the line so far and I am absolutely floored by some of the aspects of this figure. The sculpt is as close to perfect as I think NECA could get at this price point. The paint is terrific and is an area so many companies (charging more for their figures) skimp on, but NECA seems pretty insistent on painting every inch of their figures and they look great as a result. I don’t know if they’ll top this one, I don’t think I can even expect them to, but I am excited to see more and I am definitely excited to one day have the entire Manhattan Clan assembled on my shelf. Though right now, it’s looking like I’ll need multiple shelves to fit them all.

Check out more of NECA’s Gargoyles line of action figures!

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Bronx

Well, here’s something different. Bronx, the good gargoyle dog, is NECA’s fourth entry in its relatively young line of action figures based on the beloved Disney Afternoon series Gargoyles. And not only is Bronx here all on his own, he’s also got something for his buddy Goliath that collectors of this line have been begging…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Demona

When NECA launched it’s line of action figures based on Disney’s Gargoyles, it seemed to imply that Demona would be figure number 2. She was not. That honor went to Thailog, the Goliath clone, and that might have had something to do with the many factory delays and shipping woes that were impacting the entire…

Keep reading
by Joe

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Goliath

It was nearly 6 months ago that NECA unveiled one of its newest licenses for 2021: Gargoyles! I was incredibly pumped at the time to see that NECA had acquired Gargoyles because the license had so much potential. The show was basically a cult hit in the 90s often characterized as Disney’s answer to Batman:…

Keep reading
by Joe

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , | posted in Television, toys

May 5, 2022

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Bronx

By Joe
The good doggo has arrived!

Well, here’s something different. Bronx, the good gargoyle dog, is NECA’s fourth entry in its relatively young line of action figures based on the beloved Disney Afternoon series Gargoyles. And not only is Bronx here all on his own, he’s also got something for his buddy Goliath that collectors of this line have been begging for. Unfortunately, he also arrives as part of NECA’s Haulathon event, a gimmicky collector event taking place at Target that should be over by now. Unlike his line-mate, Demona, Bronx appears to have shipped in rather large numbers. Also unlike Demona, he was never put up for order on Target’s website so those who want him have been forced to trek to the store in hopes of catching him on a shelf. Or, you get a friend like I did in @JoePoppingOn who came through for me again with a Bronx! That’s three figures he helped me acquire so a very, hearty, “Thanks” are in order for him. Give him a follow on Twitter, especially if you’re located in the US north east.

Articulated jaws are cool.

Bronx comes in NECA’s standard Ultimates styled packaging with artwork on the front and product shots throughout. The front flap opens to reveal the figure inside and showcase the accessories, with one accessory displayed about as prominently as the actual figure. We’ll get to that, but first we need to talk about Bronx. Bronx, being more like a dog than human, is a quadruped who gets around on all fours. He’s also wingless, so at last he’s a release in this line that’s relatively easy to fit onto a shelf. He scales well with Goliath and the others when placed beside them, and because his form doesn’t showcase giant pectorals, he’s probably the most on-model release when compared with the show. NECA is obviously not going for a true on-model look with this line, so for Bronx, it’s more like a bonus for those out there who wish the company was aiming to do just that.

Yup, that’s Bronx all right.

The sculpt for Bronx is essentially what one would expect of NECA where the character is concerned. He’s a lovely shade of blue with a pale gray on his underside reserved for his lower jaw and belly. His eyes are all white and always displayed in that fashion, unlike the other gargoyles who only go all-white when trying to intimidate others. I like how the paint is applied to give them an almost glowing appearance as the white is soft on the edges and more stark in the center. His body has the usual gargoyle anatomy with spikes here and there. Not only does Bronx lack wings, he also features a far shorter tail giving him a really compact appearance. He’s all front end too with a smaller backside. He looks awesome, and even though the Bronx design from the show was never a particular favorite of mine, I find myself really liking the look of this figure because NECA just plain nailed it.

He’s a big boy.

Even though Bronx stands on all fours, he’s articulated in a very similar manner to his line-mates in some ways, but he’s also different in others. For one, Bronx has articulation at the jaw so he can open and close his mouth and look a bit more fearsome, if need be. His head is on a double ball-peg and it’s reinforced with another ball peg at the base of his massive neck so he gets terrific range looking to the side as well as up and down. He also has plenty of tilt and he’s very expressive in that area. His front legs are joined to the body via ball-hinges and he has “elbow” joints, ankle joints, and toe joints. His legs can spread out wide and kick forward and back. The torso has a rubbery overlay, indicating that NECA intends to do more figures in this style down the road, which does kill whatever torso articulation is hidden underneath that. His rear legs are affixed via ball joints just like the other gargoyles and he has knee joints that move very little as they’re always intended to be bent. Past that, his feet are done in the same fashion as the front ones with ankle hinges, rockers, and toe hinge and rocker. Because of his design, Bronx isn’t going to be super dynamic, but I think NECA did a good job here of getting articulation into this figure without sacrificing really any of the aesthetic. And I wish they’d add neck articulation to the other figures.

Check out the range on that neck!

Bronx doesn’t fly, or use weapons, or even have hands, so he doesn’t have much in the way of accessories. For Bronx, there’s really just two: a second head and a hunk of meat. The second head features a wide open mouth and is a touch more fearsome looking than the standard one. It would still feel a bit unnecessary if not for the big slab of meat he also comes with. I don’t know that I’ll really incorporate it into my own display, but the meat can fit into the mouth of the second head so he can hold it, or it can be placed at his feet. The meat looks fine and it’s painted, but at the end of the day it’s just a piece of meat.

The alternate head features a jaw that’s sculpted open.
He deserves a treat.

What collectors are really intrigued by is the last accessory: Goliath’s closed wings. Also referred to as caped wings by the fandom, these are for the Goliath figure and are posed as the character often did in the show by hooking them below his chin like a cape. This is a casual, walking around, look for Goliath and has the bonus of reducing the amount of space he takes up on a shelf. To put them on, you need to pop off the head and wings from the Goliath figure and then just drape it over the shoulders. They’re a soft, flexible, material, but still feature the same paint and detailing as the open wings. There are two pegs on the rear to slot into the figure and these basically just keep things together. Once the head is replaced, the look is complete and it’s…okay. Goliath’s body was sculpted to be in attack mode, so his head isn’t really positioned in a casual manner making it look a bit awkward. If he had a joint at the base of the neck, this could be worked with, but alas he does not. The head is also even more locked-down than before as his hair keeps him from really being able to turn his head. He can look down a little, but that’s it. Still, now that the display is four figures, the extra room is welcomed so I’m probably going to stick with this look, but what I really want are just relaxed wings.

A more studious look for the clan leader.
They do go well together.

Bronx is a terrific entry in this young line, and he might be my favorite. I’ve mentioned how the other figures are so cumbersome that they’re not very fun to mess around with, but Bronx doesn’t suffer from that at all. He’s a joy to play with and pose, and while his accessories do nothing for me, the actual figure is great. The caped wings for Goliath are certainly a welcomed addition, but I am lukewarm on the end result. It’s okay, and maybe I’ll like the look more with an Elisa to pair him with, but it seems clear to me that the figure wasn’t really sculpted with this look in mind. I think NECA is generally very good at balancing aesthetic with articulation and function, but with this line I don’t think they’ve been as successful. Hopefully we see some improvement going forward and that these extra wings which are sorely needed aren’t few and far between.

Even with Goliath’s new wings, I still feel this shelf is maxed out. Good thing the next release isn’t slated until the fall.

As mentioned before, Bronx was part of Haulathon at Target. He was up briefly on the Haulathon website, but I literally know of no one actually receiving the figure via that site as seemingly all, or most, of the orders ended up cancelled. He seems to still be shipping, so check your local stores if you’re after this one. He has since gone up for pre-order in the usual places with an expected June delivery, so while you may have to wait, you shouldn’t have to go to the secondary market to add to the clan.

Leave a comment   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys

April 26, 2022

NECA Gargoyles – Ultimate Demona

By Joe
Demona is here to prove Tuesday isn’t just for turtles.

When NECA launched it’s line of action figures based on Disney’s Gargoyles, it seemed to imply that Demona would be figure number 2. She was not. That honor went to Thailog, the Goliath clone, and that might have had something to do with the many factory delays and shipping woes that were impacting the entire industry. It’s a lot easier to pivot from Goliath to a figure like Thailog at the factory when almost all of the molds are the same. The other promise from NECA was that none of the Gargoyles figures were slated to be sold as exclusives. They were all general release and collectors could expect to be able to preorder them from their preferred retailer. Well, that went out the window with NECA’s Haulathon event which was split between a website for Halloween costumes and Target stores. And as you could probably have guessed at this point, Demona ended up falling into that event.

Sadly, flight stand not included.

Demona is the rogue gargoyle from the show. Goliath’s former lover, she’s basically the Magneto of the series as she has a justifiable distrust of humans, but turns that mistrust into all-out hatred. She doesn’t want to live alongside humanity, she wants to crush it. Armed with advanced weaponry, magic, and a wealth of knowledge given her extreme lifespan, she’s a formidable foe for Goliath and company and a worthy third figure in the line. Since she’s not a Goliath repaint, she’s also just the second, unique, sculpt we get to experience. With Goliath and Thailog, I had some nitpicks, but was generally satisfied with the finished product. With Demona, that’s pretty much still true, but she does introduce a new problem that I really hope isn’t one going forward.

Like Goliath, she brought reading material. Unlike Goliath, her book can actually open and close.

Demona is sold in the standard NECA Ultimates five-panel window box. It’s a bit smaller than Goliath’s since Demona is a smaller character. Not only is she shorter than her former beau, she’s more slender as she has a very feminine physique that mixes with the gargoyle anatomy. She has a big tuft of red hair that looks quite nice and the pale blue-gray of her skin lines up well with her appearance in the cartoon. Like Goliath, she’s inspired by the cartoon, but has added detail to make her look a bit more “alive.” It’s a bit less pronounced as she doesn’t need giant, rippling, muscles and it’s mostly seen in the texture added to her clothing. She basically just has a top and loincloth with the bottom piece being separate while the top appears to be part of the mold. Either that, or the torso is cut-out to fit it so it can be glued down. It’s interesting as I suspect NECA will want to reuse much of this mold for Angela at some point, but her top is different. Maybe Disney just didn’t want people sneaking a peek under Demona’s top? Which does raise the question: why do female gargoyles have breasts? They’re an egg-laying species, most of which don’t nurse their young, but they are fantastic beasts so I guess they can follow different rules.

Good luck deciphering that.

Demona has a very striking appearance, and one thing I rather like is that NECA used actual metal hoops for her earrings and her anklet. This could potentially make her more fragile, but they seem secure and fine. Her proportions look nice, and like Goliath, her wings are painted in a two-tone fashion with a purple shade used for the membrane. Also like Goliath, the wings are huge and made of ABS so there’s no give to them. They’re going to take up a lot space, and there’s nothing that can be done about it. Aside from that general complaint, my only other issue with her is that her face looks just a little off. I feel like her face should be longer and more narrow. Instead, it starts off rather wide and quickly comes to a point at her chin giving her a slightly scrunched appearance. It’s not terrible or anything, but I think she could look a little better.

Your kids probably won’t like this face.

Demona comes with more stuff than we’re used to, and she even has a new feature that I wish Goliath had. And that feature is she uses faceplates instead of swapping an entire head. Bandai has been doing this for years with its figures, and I’m surprised it took NECA this long as it would have been easy to do with Goliath. Her face pops off easily and she has a screaming, red-eyed, face to go in its place. It’s appropriately unsettling, so much so that I almost don’t like looking at it, but it definitely works. Demona also has various hands including open, clawing hands, fists, a trigger-finger right hand, and a modified gripping left hand for her book or gun. She has two, giant, guns. One is a bazooka while the other is some kind of laser canon. The bazooka has a trigger and a more conventional design that’s easy to get the character to grip, while the other gun is more cumbersome with no actual trigger. I’m assuming it appeared that way in the show so I’m not faulting the toy here, just pointing it out for review. She also has her Grimorum Arcanorum which is really cool. It’s well-sculpted and the paint looks awesome as it has this distressed look to it and it can even open. It’s also sculpted to have a page torn out and that missing page will come with a future figure – a nice attention to detail.

The laser canon is a bit awkward with no actual trigger leaving Demona to wonder how she’s supposed to hold it?

The accessories are certainly appropriate, and the only thing missing is what’s missing from all of the figures so far and that’s a flight stand and additional wings. The wide open wings are essentially gliding wings so a flight stand is almost a necessity, but obviously would add cost to the figure. I’d happily take an increased cost if it meant alternate wings though. I know I sound like a broken record, but these things are too much to manage now that we have three figures.

That’s the best I could do.

Demona may be smaller than Goliath, but she essentially articulates the same. The head is on a double ball-peg, but her hair keeps her from being able to look up which is unfortunate for flying poses. NECA could have fixed that with either a second hairpiece or with a hinge in it, but chose not to. She can look down, tilt, and swivel. There’s no lower neck joint and her shoulders are ball-hinges. She can raise her arms out to the side without much trouble and has a biceps swivel, double elbows, and wrists that swivel and hinge. All of the hinges are horizontal, which is unfortunate for the trigger hand. Demona has a ball joint in the torso below her bust and a waist twist below that. Her hips are the standard ball joints and she can kick forward and back, since she doesn’t technically have an ass. There’s a twist there as well and she has single-jointed knees since the gargoyle anatomy only requires that much. The ankles are hinged and can rock a bit with another hinge at the toe that also has a rocker. The tail pegs into the rear of the figure and is bendy plus there’s a hinge at the peg. At the wings, she has hinges and they’re on pegs so they can rotate up and down and also swing out.

The rocket launcher, on the other hand, is quite easy to work with.

It’s with the wings that a new problem emerges for Demona. In many respects, I think she articulates better than Goliath as there’s less bulk to maneuver around, but what kills her is the tolerance of the wing joints. They are far too loose and are downright floppy. Her wings immediately slump to the table and posing them on their own is impossible. I’ve had to prop them up on Goliath and Thailog or just let them hit the shelf to pose her. She’s a challenge to stand, so I guess the wings help in that regard, but it’s a problem and it seems to be rather widespread. I’m going to have to try to remedy this somehow, either with super glue, tape, or something that can be added to that peg to tighten things up. It’s a problem that the figure really can’t have since the wings are so huge and it’s something NECA needs to tighten up now. I’ve refrained on trying to remedy it for the time being so that my images with this review are true to what the figure is out of the box.

I think three, winged, gargoyles is the most this shelf can handle.

Demona is a figure that is largely as expected. She looks the part well enough and has essentially the same articulation as Goliath, just with a new problem in the form of the wings. If not for that, I think I’d find her a little more entertaining than Goliath, but instead I find this figure to be rather frustrating as I try to pose it on my shelf. That’s also true of the other releases in this line as they’re so cumbersome that they’re really not a lot of fun to handle. They look pretty great when placed in a pose that looks nice, but they make you work to get there. NECA plans to include extra wings with the non-winged characters in the line, but that’s not going to do it. We really need options right out of the box, or else I think a lot of people will drop this line after a figure or two. Maybe I’m wrong, but despite this figure being overall a solid release, I’m finding my enthusiasm for this line waning which is hard to believe given how excited I was a year ago when the line was announced.

Demona was part of the Haulathon event and some stores are still receiving stock of her and she should set you back around $36. The distribution appeared poor to start, with some stores only getting one unit or none at all, but Target did make her available online so hopefully those who wanted her got her. I never found this figure in stores, so a special shout-out to @JoePoppingOn who helped me in tracking her down and the next figure in the line. The figure is also now up at various online retailers, some with a mark-up so it pays to shop around. Those figures are presently slated for a June release so hopefully that holds true and everyone who wants it can get one.

2 Comments   |  tags: , , , , , , | posted in Television, toys