Astronaut Ben Grimm Review!

Toy Biz's Fantastic Four movie Series Four Astronaut Ben Grimm with Face Change action figure.



Sculpt
Very good. I don't recall if it's accurate to the design in the movie but it looks really good as it's intended design: a spacesuit. I've wanted a realistic-looking 6" scale Astronaut figure for a long time and Toybiz delivered here. The likeness of Michael Chiklis as Ben Grimm is very good, on par with the better face sculpts of the other characters. The alternate side with the Thing face is okay, not the best sculpt but far from the worst in the line.



Paint
Below average. There's not a whole lot of paint apps on this figure so it's not terribly apparant, but what there is pretty poor. Nothing distractingly bad, but nothing I can honestly call decent. Passable at best.



Construction
Excellent. This is a new category, meant to judge the durability of a figure. Basically, can you handle it without fear of it breaking? Can it be thrown against the wall and come out intact? Well, depends how hard you throw it, but I imagine it'd fare pretty well. It's a real "toy" toy, meant to be played with. I can see a kid getting a lot of use out of this figure before damaging much more than the paint.



Articulation
Excellent. An action feature doesn't marr the articulation in this figure in the least. For this, kudos to Toybiz. It'd have been quite easy to get away with minimal articulation on this figure due to the spacesuit, but Toybiz took the opportunity to pack it on. He has ball shoulders, bicep swivels below the ball, pin elbows, pin wrist, pin knuckles, waist swivel, ball hips, thigh swivels, double-hinged knees, pin ankles, pin toes. Not counting the action feature neck swivel because it's not adjustable other than switching the heads, I count that as 27 points.

Accessories
Good. He basically just comes with this matching gun/missile launcher thing. Toybiz wasn't stingy here either, giving us three missiles.



Overview
Very Good. It's a minor dream come true to have an articulated 6" scale NASA-style astronaut, and Toybiz really delivered with this figure. Is it the be-all end-all? Nah, but for $7 and tax it's a lot more fun than you'd think. I'm glad they managed to work this into their line plan, I've been generally pleased with Toybiz's Fantastic Four movie line. There've been some silly variants but they've given us good versions of all four main characters, and variants like this are both legitimate variants and just plain cool to own.