Sub-Zero

May 11, 2012 | By More


Jazwares made another of the more readily recognizable characters in the Mortal Kombat game, Sub-Zero into a 4-inch action figure in their 2012 line. While in the first games the character models for Sub-Zero and Scorpion were identical, except for the coloring, on subsequent games the character designs grew more distinct from one another, although still adhering somewhat to the ninja-look characteristic to these games.

Sub-Zero wears a very similar outfit to that on Scorpion, although he shares no pieces with the gold and black undead ninja. As far as detailing Sub-Zero looks slightly less busy, although he still sports ornate pieces of armor on shins and arms. The head sculpt is decent, although most of the face is hidden behind a fairly modern-looking mask.

Sub-Zero is well articulated, with joints at:

• Ball jointed neck.

• Hinged peg shoulders.

• Hinged peg elbows.

• Swivel wrists.

• Floating torso.

• Hinged peg hips.

• Hinged peg knees.

• Hinged peg ankles.

Construction follows the same model used by Jazwares for the other figures in this line, meaning that the only injection-molded joints can be found at shoulders, hips and ankles, with the rest of the hinges being of the kind that has the rotation pins inserted after the pieces had been removed from the molds. Usually this makes for rather loose articulation on those joints but at least on my figure, the friction is enough to provide Sub-Zero with good range and stability.

Sub-Zero is molded mostly in black plastic, with only the blue and flesh colored bits painted on. There is really no shading on these areas, although some detailing was afforded by applying a silver drybrush on the raised areas of the armor pieces to enhance the textures and some small details on the uniform were also picked out in light metallic blue paint. The overall color scheme immediately reminded me of the Kamakura version released for the G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra line.

Sub-Zero comes only with one accessory, a crusty blue sword painted to resemble ice or frost. The item looks rather crummy, as making it in some form of translucent plastic would have improved it’s appearance ten times better than what we got. Still, the one thing about the 4 inch scale is that I already have enough spare translucent bits from other figures that Sub-Zero can use.

So, leaving the accessory issues aside, Sub-Zero turned out to be quite a nice, versatile action figure, and what’s even better, these Jazwares figures are usually more inexpensive that comparable Hasbro stock, so as a whole my impression of this line is quite positive.

Errex Score: 80/100

 

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Category: Featured, Other Games, Toy Reviews, Video Games

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.

Comments (2)

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  1. Tom says:

    I have quite an affinity for MK so I have looked at these figures more then once, I had wondered just how well they’d match up with the Joes so thanks for the side by side with Kamakura, and thanks for the great review!

  2. Engineernerd says:

    I have to say thanks for that picture too. In the store I’d though they were more like 4.5 or 5 inch. Side by side picture really helped.