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Sad Gizmo

June 20, 2014 | By Errex More

I wasn’t really expecting to find Gizmo. After all, he was featured in Series 1 of NECA’s Reel Toys line devoted to the Gremlins movies. The first Gizmo figure was released a couple of years now, so I was fairly sure I would probably never find him in the wild.

However, I was not counting on NECA’s willingness to milk the license for all it was worth, and they came through in spades by releasing another version of the Mogwai hero with an alternate face sculpt. Not that I am complaining, mind you.

Sad Gizmo is essentially the same as regular Gizmo, only now his mouth is sculpted with the ends pointing down. The sculpture itself is actually quite nice, effectively conveying a sense of the fluffiness to the creature’s body.

By contrast, the areas of exposed skin look smooth and soft, sculpted with skin folds at the hands, a subtle dimple on the chin and some veins on the ears.
The overall sculpture looks really nice and movie-accurate, even though the articulation is rather limited by necessity. Gizmo has:

• Articulated eyes.

• Ball jointed ears.

• Ball jointed neck.

• Pegged hinge shoulders.

• Ball jointed elbows.

• Ball jointed wrists.

• Pegged hinge hips.

Overall, the articulation below the neck is very limited, as most of the joints are set deep into their respective sockets. On the other hand, the mobility at the neck, ears and especially the eyes really compensate with a lot of expression.

The eyes are mounted in a very clever way that allows moving them around using a concealed lever at the back of Gizmo’s head.

The eyeballs actually sit very loose inside their sockets, which makes it difficult for them to stay still when you move the figure around although you can always cram a small piece of paper into the lever to lock the eyes in place if you want them pointed in a specific direction.

The eyes also not quite perfectly aligned most of the time, which can makes it appear as if each eye could move independently from each other, not unlike a chameleon. This can be quite distracting at times but overall, I don’t mind it that much.

The paintjob on Gizmo is good without being spectacular. I could see no shading on the white fur parts, although the brown bits do have very subtle highlights applied to them. The skin colored paint applications are neat and the eyes are also cleanly painted.

In terms of articulation, Sad Gizmo is not that much of a step up from a Bobble Head, but all things considered, I do think it is a pretty neat collectible and I actually find the eye gimmick to be fun to mess around with.