Recently, McFarlane came up with the license andstarted slowly cranking out their own SimStuff. Now, with the Simpson’s big screen debut just days away, McF is hitting the pegs with their movie themed figures. I have had some harsh words for the McF figures up this point based mainly on pictures and what I’d seen in stores. I thought the movie would be a great purpose to buy a McF Simpsons figure and check it out for myself. So, that brings us to this review of Homer and Plopper (the pig).

Appearance:

As with all McF figs, Homer comes locked away in a clamshell type package. After a little X-Acto work, I had the pieces free. Homer, Plopper and the base. Now, since McF didn’t put a a “Try it” hole in the package I didn’t think about the sound feature until I got the base out of the back.

Two things became obvious about the base. One, there were no batteries in it. D’oh, darn
fine print. Two, the tape used to hold the base in place left some adhesive residue in two places that required cleaning up to put on display.

At this point my attention turned to Homer and Plopper. They both appear to be fairly faithful
to their film versions. As always, McF figs rarely disappoint in sculpt and appearance. As to why Home has the goofiest looking pig I’ve seen in awhile, I don’t know. But from the TV spots you can tell he sure loves it. I wonder if he’ll end up eating it like Pinchy the lobster?

The figures are sculpted to fit together. I actually thought they might be one piece until I
got them out of the shell. There is a single post hole in each of them that matches up to the base. At least getting them in the right position isn’t a huge problem.

The base has a painted on rug. For the $15 price tag on these figures. I would have expected a base with a sculpted rug.

Homer looks like himself. I have to say I really like the way they did the two strands of hair
sticking up out of his head. Now the bad. I didn’t like all the black out lines in the pictures of the previous figures, and I have to say I don’t like it any better holding the figures in my hand. It’s just too much for my tastes.

Plopper suffers with the same extra dark extra thick lines. Compared to the package art the
lines just look too thick. Also there is a small sections of his (her?) snout that doesn’t seem to match just quite right. I thought it was an articulation point at first.

Now, I know this set is ripped from a scene directly from the film. But, couldn’t they have picked a more dynamic pose for Homer? My major nit with this set is that when it’s all on the base its so small that it looks like something is missing. A wall or something would have helped. After seeing the commercials I would have rather have seen Spider Pig. I think it would have made a much more
dynamic pose.

Fun:

Is this set fun? It could have been. First, the issue that plagues most of the McFarlane figures of the
modern era. Articulation. In this entire set, there is one point, Homer’s neck.

The second issue is with the “sound” feature. The set doesn’t come with batteries and at $15 that seems a little cheap. The batteries required are 2 AAA’s. I don’t normally keep those around as 90% of the stuff around my house takes AA’s. And last, there is exactly one sound clip. Major disappointment in the sound feature. The sound clip is Homer telling Plopper he’s a good little pig and some baby talk. It’s loud, I give it that. But, the sound quality isn’t as good as the Playmates sets.

The third issue is the pose. As I said above the pose isn’t the most dynamic. It’s also so specific
that neither of the figures look good on their own. Plopper has Homer’s finger prints on his belly and Homer is all bent over and on his knees. Unless he’s bowing down to a giant donut,
this pose isn’t good for much else. At least with the neutral poses the WOS figures had, limited articulation still looked good in a variety of displays.

Overall:

In general I’d say this is good as and of the other McF SimStatues have been. The ironic thing that came to my mind when I got this set together, was the resemblance to a Hummel figurine.

McFarlane has done some great figures over the years. The Shrek figures had a neutral pose and a good compromise between articulation and sculpt. The original Spawn figures were other good examples of the same thing. I remember rumblings on message boards a decade ago that McF should be allowed to create Star Wars figures just to get better sculpts and articulation. Yet today, the average Star Wars figure has more range of motion than most McF figures. If McF
wanted to make Mc statues, they should have taken a page from the Four Horseman’s book and made “Staction” figures that were in scale with the previous line.

Overall, not a great figure, but a decent likeness. I expect more, though, from the company that once was considered on the cutting edge and ahead of the pack.

Engineernerd Score: 70/100

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