Mainlining Christmas

To recap, I've been looking at several figures from the second wave of Fresh Monkey Fiction's "Naughty or Nice" action figures. Today, I'll be talking about the figure I was most excited about: Father Frost. Does it live up to the hype? Read the rest of the review to find out!  Wait. I hate when reviews pull that shit. The answer is, "mostly." The figure's pretty goddamn great, with a couple minor caveats. First, let's talk a little about who this guy is. Father Frost is a Russian midwinter figure best known to American audiences as the inspiration behind the Winter Warlock in the Rankin/Bass special, Santa Claus is Coming to Town , though the Russian film, Morozko , features a much more authentic version of the character. Both takes on the character seem to get nods in the accessories of this version, though it's fundamentally a new spin on the character. As you'd expect, the figure's body (and several of his accessories) are reused ...

I'm continuing my look at a handful of figures from the second wave of Fresh Monkey Fiction's "Naughty or Nice" line of holiday action figures. Today, I'm reviewing "Nasty Krampus," and I'm going to start with what's probably my largest complaint in the review: I'm not crazy about that name. Does that matter? Not at all! But still, it feels like a rather dull descriptor for what's a pretty exceptional toy.  Naming conventions aside, this combines the  Krampus head, hands, and tail from Wave 1  with the naked torso used on the Wave 2 Barbarian Santa (no judgement: creative reuse is the name of the game when it comes to action figures). I don't have much to say about the individual components I haven't said before: everything looks great up close. I slightly prefer the paint on the first wave face, where the horns were a lighter color, but that's personal taste (and I'm really stretching to find something to nitpick here). O...

Last year I looked at four figures from the first wave of Fresh Monkey Fiction's "Naughty or Nice" line of Christmas   themed action figures . As a reminder, these are 6-inch collectable toys in a similar style to the Marvel Legends or Star Wars Black lines. As someone who's quite literally been waiting decades for a toy company to realize there was a market for this sort of thing, I was elated. While those reviews were running, I was waiting on three figures I'd preordered the year before from the second wave. These were originally expected before Christmas, but their arrival got pushed back a few months due to issues shipping them overseas. Today, I'm going to be looking at "Barbarian Santa," the only Deluxe figure I picked up this year. In this line, "Deluxe" mainly means the figure comes with more or better accessories, though I'm not convinced that's really the case here, as I'll discuss in more depth when I get to that s...

Unlike the other figures I've reviewed in this wave , I didn't preorder Pirate Santa. But after receiving the other three, I was impressed enough with the overall quality and look of the figures, I wanted to see if there were any extras in stock. Turns out I was in luck. This one's actually a minor mark of pride for me, albeit for a pretty silly reason. When the Naughty or Nice line was initially announced, there was a period where preorder goals resulted in new figures being announced and made available. I predicted they'd have a Pirate Santa waiting in the wings because elements of existing figures implied they were drawing inspiration from EC Comics and I knew the company released a story featuring a similar character  from reading this article a few years back  (third paragraph down, but the whole thing's a great read if you have the time). So 10 nerd points for me, I guess. I should note this looks nothing like Captain Bigg from the comics, though it does bea...

I've recently been looking at several action figures I ordered from Fresh Monkey Fiction's first wave of "Naughty or Nice" line. The first two - Classic Santa and Zombie Santa - were absolute successes in my opinion. I'm going to ruin a bit of the suspense by telling you upfront my opinion of the figure I'm looking at today, Krampus, is a bit more mixed. There are absolutely aspects I love, but it's the only one of the three I'm not entirely convinced was worth the price.   Part of it comes down to what that price was: the other two ran me $37 each, which is steep for the scale but - between the quality of the figures and the great accessories - not at all unreasonable. Krampus is one of the line's "deluxe" figures, which means he came with a few extra accessories, including a fabric cape and sack. But it also meant the price tag jumped to $50, which is pushing what I expect high-end figures in this scale to go for. I should probably ac...