Bilbo Baggins & Gollum 2-Pack

March 15, 2013 | By More


 

Manufacturer The Bridge Direct did a rather unusual thing with their 4-inch line of toys based on the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. They produced individually carded figures of some of the main characters, but most of these are also offered in 2-packs alongside characters that are not currently available in individual presentation. One such set is the one I’m reviewing today, the one with Bilbo Baggins and Gollum.

 

Let’s start with the titular hobbit, Bilbo Baggins. The figure is very small, as one would expect, but the level of detail is pretty decent despite the rather simple costume design. Bilbo wears pretty generic hobbit clothes with no texture in them, although some effort was made to add a few wrinkles here and there.

 

Surprisingly, a good deal of costume elements can be removed, like the torso jacket, the necktie and the front of the vest, although this last leaves two holes on Bilbo’s chest. The belt is not removable although it is a separate piece that can be rotated around his waist to accommodate the scabbard under his jacket.

 

The head sculpt is just slightly above average. The face doesn’t really resemble that of actor Martin Freeman, and in fact it is so generic that with different colored wig pieces it could be used to represent most of the hobbit heroes from the Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

 

Despite his small stature, Bilbo still has a fairly extensive articulation design, consisting of:

 

• Ball jointed neck.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Pegged hinge elbows.

• Swivel wrists.

• Pegged hinge hips.

• Pegged hinge knees.

 

With no narrow tunics nor long-flowing robes anywhere in the character design, all of these joints work remarkably well, although the lack of ankle movement does put a limit to the number of poses Bilbo can adopt.

 

Bilbo and his costume are molded in at least five different colors of plastic, thus greatly reducing the number of paint operations required. However, what little paint there is, it is very neatly applied.

 

Both the single card release and the 2-pack versions of Bilbo come with the same exact accessories, which are a traveling pack, a couple of water bottles on a cord and the elven blade Sting. And, from a certain point of view, one could say that Gollum also counts as an accessory.

Gollum is a noticeably less substantial action figure than Bilbo, starting with the fact that he is extremely skinny and almost naked. However, Gollum turned out o be a much better sculpted and painted figure than Mr. Baggins.

 

Gollum’s emaciated physique is captured very well in plastic, and the head sculpt is actually quite impressive, from the thin strands of hair plasted onto his skull to the facial expression that shifts depending on the light and the angle it is viewed from.

 

Since Gollum’s limbs are so thin, he ended up with a much reduced articulation count of:

 

• Ball jointed neck.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Floating torso.

• Pegged hinge hips.

 

The limbs are sculpted slightly bent and the neck and torso articulations allow for an interesting number of poses for Gollum, despite the very limited number of joints.

 

Even though Gollum is molded almost entirely in pale flesh-colored plastic, with a brown rubber loincloth, he is the most painted figure in this set. On the body Gollum received a shading wash that enhances every bump on his skinny, bony self but the really good part is his face, with the freakishly large blue eyes and the dark shades around them.

 

It kind of makes sense that The Bridge Direct decided against offering Gollum in the single card format, since he is such a tiny character and has absolutely no accessories that would have made sense, except perhaps a small boat of a dead fish. As is, it would have a single card release a very hard pill to swallow at retail, but I found myself liking Gollum a little bit better than Bilbo, which is also a pretty decent figure.

 Errex Score: Bilbo: 83/100, Gollum: 87/100 

Overall Score: 85/100.

 

 

 

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Category: Featured, Other Film, The Hobbit & LOTR, Toy Reviews

About the Author ()

I've been collecting action figures since the original Kenner Star Wars days. Nowadays, I still collect pretty much anything that catches my eye.

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