That has gone out the window for this review, for Kaiyodo has broken me.
(If this was the 90s, this would be a comic mini. Just saying.)
Some background on this purchase. I've found myself wanting a model of the queen from Aliens ever since 1994. I had already decided that xenomorphs had a great design, especially the queen, and were easily my favorite movie monsters ever based on the bits of viewing I had managed to sneak here and there, and when I saw the commercials for Kenner's Alien Queen Hive Playset? It looked awesome. A pretty alien queen and slime? Freakin' awesome.
Of course, I never asked for her, as Aliens was not a movie I was supposed to be watching (despite doing my damnedest when it was on TV; I don't even remember how old I was when I finally saw it properly) and so, I never picked her up. Xenomorph toys came and went. I collected other things in the meanwhile. I did hear of Revoltech, and that they'd done some nice scifi figures, including a model of the xenomorph queen. And on a whim this past weekend, I decided to start poking around for pricing and availability of the figure, and found that not only was she easy to find, she was also pretty reasonable, for a largish, imported toy.
So on Wednesday, I bought her. On Friday, she arrived. And that's when it began.
The packaging is, honestly, great. No tape, minimal twist ties, and some plastic sleeves, with three layers of the plastic to hold everything together inside the box. It's a big, colorful, book-style package that shows off the figure beautifully and highlights how the Revoltech joints move. I have no clue what any of the text says, but hoo boy there's a lot of it.
I especially like the cover piece, with its big block lettering and the moodily-lit picture of the queen. It's very reminiscent of some shots from the film and it's a nice preview before you open things up. And things are very easy to open-again, no tape, just slide it out, wrap, and pop things out, then slide everything back in. It's extremely collector-friendly, and this is one piece of packaging I intend to keep, because 1. it's nice looking and 2. it'll help protect the figure if I need to transport her.
Unfortunately, she comes with her left arm and leg detached, and they have to be plugged in. This is much harder than it sounds.
Much, much harder.
The problem is two-fold: Revoltech is made with ratcheting joints that, once pressure is applied, start to move in various directions. They can move like crazy, and this makes for great posing, but this also means that when you think you're finally making headway, you hear a 'click!'. And the joint slips. And you're back at square one.
The other problem is that the holes themselves just don't want to seem to work. I actually ended up lightly scraping the edge of one of my xacto knives along the inside of the arm, leg, and chest holes, just to see if there was any flash that was interfering with the joint. Nope. They're just really fucking hard to get in.
And this is where the swearing begins. This was the most miserable figure assembly of my life. The most miserable, fucking frustrating assembly of my whole goddamn life. It made me angry, because there was no good reason for the pieces to not pop in. It took an incredible amount of pressure to force these things in, and it was nerve-wracking, because I've heard Revoltech can also be fairly delicate, and I really didn't want to snap anything.
But they're in. The end result is that I'm not sure that the chest-supporting bit is ever coming out, and as of three in the afternoon today, my right thumb and forefinger still have limited feeling at the ends. Absolutely miserable, to the point where chucking her across the room in sheer frustration was tempting.
Speaking of Revoltech being delicate, I did have one sad surprise: it seems her one back spine came pre-broken, as I couldn't find any sign of it in the box or on my floor. It doesn't ruin things for me-it ever comes up in the comic, it's from a fight she won-but it's disappointing to get a toy pre-broken. But it could be worse; it could be a limb. I honestly don't know if it's possible to contact Kaiyodo about broken parts, because apparently trying to find Revoltech information is like trying to find unicorns. Little, poseable Japanese unicorns. Just looking for help on getting the limbs together proved to be impossible.
So, after all that pain, frustration, and anguish, how is the actual toy herself? Honestly, she's beautiful. And big. From snout to tail blade, she's about a foot long; foot to highest point on her crest is roughly seven and a half inches. She's not big enough to properly loom over a six inch figure like she ought to, but she's a good size anyway. She might loom properly over 3 1/4 figures, but I don't have any to try that scale out with.
Her sculpting is dead-on to the film; all those spines, spikes, and biomechanical details are there, including a tiny set of inner jaws that can be pushed or retracted, depending on the posing you'd like to do. The color is accurate as well; she's been cast in a sort of smoky translucent brown plastic that has a dark metallic blue overlaid on certain parts of her. The crest shows this off the best, and it's really pretty in good lighting, looking a lot like the shine you'd see on an actual insect. The other paint apps are pretty minimal, going off the fact that xenomorphs aren't known for being very elaborately colored. Her claws are silver and the protrusions on the back of her crest are painted a bone-white color, while the inner jaws are a mix of silver, light blue, and the bone-white.
Revoltechs are known for their poseability, and the queen is indeed a flexible beast-mostly. Her head and neck are flexible (including a bit that pops up as you flex her beck), and her two sets of arms all have jointing at the base socket, the elbow, and the wrist. Her jaws pop open, and the actual head piece can be moved into different positions beneath the crest. The three pairs of spines along the back are also flexible, weirdly enough, and can be fanned or or raised up together. (Given how I got one pre-broken, I suggest being super-careful here.) Her tail has a wire core that allows it to flex, and it's really nice for making her poses more dynamic-looking.
The problem area, articulation-wise, is her legs. Besides the issue of getting that left leg on, I find the articulation here to be extremely iffy. The hip joint flexes, as does the knee, but I'm still not sure what's going on with the calf. As you can see in the picture, the calf appears to be connected using a hinge joint, rather than a Revoltech joint. I've poked at it a bit, and those joints seem solid. I'm not sure if they're frozen or if they're not intended to move at all. The fact that they're not jointed like anything else makes me really question it, and frankly I'm a little too nervous about doing damage to try and heat and force the joint. If anyone can confirm the joint is made to move and tell me how to flex it safely, I would love to hear it. Otherwise, the only one leg joint is on the feet, and while it's good for posing, I'd prefer both calf and foot articulation.
The last articulation point...really isn't. The queen doesn't come with many accessories-a little box to hold things with, a nameplate, and then her stand. And trust me, she needs her stand. While you can do some laying down/kneeling poses with her without it, the fact of the matter is that her feet are too small and she's too top-heavy to allow her to actually stand on her own, in my experience. So the stand is necessary if you don't want a permanently-keeled over queen. It's a clear plastic rod with a Revoltech joint; the joint goes into the chest while the peg of the rod goes into a bit of deck flooring. I had the same problem with the stand joint that I had with all the others: it did not want to go in. And now that it's finally been forced in, I'm not sure that it'll ever come out-it's tight. In a karmic twist, the queen now has a chestburster of her own. One complaint about the stand-while it does support her well, and allows for a number of poses, I may need to try and find one with a joint in the middle to allow for positioning where her body is lower to the ground.
In summary: the queen is a gorgeous, nicely-sized, mostly well-articulated figure with a decent price point...and an absolutely horrible experience when you first get her. Now that I have her together (and my fingers are trying to regain sensation) I can admire how pretty and screen-accurate she is, and how neat she'll be to use for photocomics. But the experience was pretty well marred by how awful it was trying to get her in one piece, and the fact that one of her bits came pre-busted. It hasn't turned me off Revoltech entirely; there's some really neat figures there I'd like to check out. But the frustration in assembly and the utter lack of help anywhere for assembly issues has made me wonder if trying to buy a non-MIB one wouldn't be the way to go next time.
I do recommend the queen for Aliens fans and anyone looking to add a really impressive-looking critter to their collection...just with the warning that you're probably going to want some hard liquor at some point, and that you will be yelling "FUCK!" a lot.
Nice review, I have ordered my Revoltech Queen off of Ebay and She'll be arriving shortly by the next month. Excited to have her :)
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