They're the first family of crazy space accidents. They've shown us that deadly cosmic radiation is actually HELPFUL and will totally cure your glaucoma and probably give you the power to reanimate the dead or spontaneously generate cheese or something. They're totally going to have a feature film come this July, which will hopefully completely obliterate the memory of their failed first film, and I've got me some 12" rotocast action figures of them here. They're the Fantastic Four, and while early rumours of the new movie have revealed some rather disappointing discrepancies between the comic book FF that we know and adore and the live action FF, I can't help but shower my premature love on them anyhow.

You may or may not know that we here at ANR, [meaning poor ol' lonely me], have been forced to tighten out purse strings and limit our disgustingly gluttonous buying habits, as well as our penchant for wearing purses. For this reason, my love of the FF is, for now, relegated to these rotocast figures, instead of the 3 waves of 6" figures that call to me so seductively from the pegs, which thrust like so many daggers into my fanboy heart. In related news, I came home today to find that a stack of DC Direct figures, once stacked taller than my own height, had collapsed and littered half of my room. If the preservation of my life and limb is not enough reason to reign in my collecting, I don't know what is. My love has not diminished, but my sense of responsibility has perhaps gained a tighter stranglehold on my conscience. Is this the end of a way of life? We'll see. For now, we have the 12" Fantastic Four, and ToyBiz rotocast has never disappointed me before.

All four come packaged in the traditional rotocast style, which is the dangerous 'open box' method. We've probably all seen enough LOTR Cave trolls on the shelves with their rubberized faces ripped clean off by vandalous children to know that the open box method doesn't do much to preserve the clean paint of the boxed figure, so it's probably best to pick these guys up before too much shelf time passes. While there's really no serious paint issues to worry about on the unpainted Human Torch and the roughly painted Thing, the skin tones on Mr. and Mrs. F will be the first thing to get scraped and marred with this exposure. The open box probably keeps the cost of the rotocast down to an amazing 8-to-10 bucks a pop, so it's worth the search for a clean figure. Wonderfully, these large figures are just as articulated as the small figures usually are, so there's no loss in detail or poseability, and all this at about the same price as the small figures.

First we have Mr. Fantastic himself, the man responsible for permanently mutating his family and friends. With his newly gained power of super stretchiness, and his already wildly superior intellect, Mr. F is the ringmaster of this particular group of freaks. The comic book Reed Richards has been known to invent just about anything imaginable, discover and create new universes to explore, and disappear into thought so deeply that he totally neglects his wife and kids for days at a time. The personality of the movie Mr. F has yet to be seen. It's unlikely that we'll see prince Namor usurping his sweet Invisible honey this early on in the history of the FF, but it'll happen. You can bet on that. All the stretchiness in the world can't save your wife from that Spock-lookin' sea prince, men. While the figure doesn't have the 'Neglect! Press HERE!!!' action feature, or even an Introspection Lever, one CAN extend his long neck from inside his body to represent his extending body, which is an excellent, non-invasive action feature.

In addition to that, his arms are also permanently elongated, and his hands are HUGE. None of this is rubberized, but those particular features are given to the smaller Marvel legends figures of Mr. F, and other various, normally proportioned and/or ridiculously proportioned Mr. F figures that are available in the 6" movie line as well. There's also a 12" scale stretchy Mr. F, so there's no limit to the permutations that you can display this guy in. With 26 points of articulation, you can compensate for the bizarre balance issues of having six-foot long arms. Three of these joints are ball-joints, and both the elbows and the knees have the lovely double-joint, allowing for maximum bendosity. While we do not have a waist joint, and the crotch is in the limiting V-style, there's till plenty enough to make a good figure even better. Bless those unstable molecules. His paint has a few open-box scrapes, but everything else is pretty clean. We can see that ToyBiz is going that treacherous Sideshow route when it comes to painting figure eyes, and giving them rims of red at the corners and edges. This can work for or against the figure. It takes a delicate hand, and by the end of the day, those hands which paint the figures probably ain't feeling so delicate.

The likeness to Iaon Gruffudd, who has the most supervillainous real name I've ever heard, isn't bad at all, but even better, the figure looks like a generic Mr. Fantastic, who never really stood out as an interesting looking hero anyhow. He is, along with Plastic Man and Elongated Man, one of the trifecta of shape-shifting, elasticized men, and perfect fodder for those aspiring comic artists who can't tell their asses from the elbows and need some leeway on anatomical accuracy. There's a bit of strangeness going on at most of the rotating joints, as none of them ever turn to a point where the figure is smooth, and there's always a slight overlap from one shape to another. One of the elbow double-joints came overextended, so it took some prodding and forcing to get it back into a groove in which it moved, but there wasn't much of a problem after that. Ultimately, you can't have the FF without him, mostly because there are no drunken grandmothers around to ruin the Richards family quite this irreparably.

After Mr. Reed Richards comes Susan Storm, the Invisible Woman, with the power to project invisible force fields, as well as render nearly anything invisible. Eventual wife of Reed, and sister to Johnny Storm, she'll be played by Jessica Alba on film. Why they've chosen a darker skinned woman of Mexican descent to play the queen of whitebread, I'll never know, but I bet there are two matching reasons that begin with the letter 'B'. All I'm saying is that I see her ladybug / daisy tattoo even ONCE during the movie, I'm totally throwing my soda at the screen. Still, we can't question ANYONE who had a supporting role on 'Love Boat : The Next Wave', can we?

Returning to the idea that ToyBiz had started painting the questionable 'Sideshow Eye' with red details, the Invisible Woman her has completely got the conjunctivitis. There wasn't much choice between various figures of her, though, as I've only ever spied one of her, and that include both this scale and 6" scale. Either she's very rare or Jessica Alba fans are adding her to their sad little harems. Note that there's also a completely clear variant to this figure to keep an eye out for. Without an invisible figure to switch her out with, she's got no action features to speak of. It's usually at least kind of neat to be able to see a bit of said superhero's powers in their figure. In a case like this, maybe a clear hand would have been enough, but as for now, her only superpower is being able to stand with a waist narrower than her head. I credit the unstable molecules, kinda the same way that I credit the force with keeping a limbless, on-fire Anakin alive. We can't doubt these things, people. Mini-chlorficans!

So, yeah, she's got the pink eye, and there's not much we can do about that. Aside from that detail, the paint is great throughout. It's mostly blues and greys that are similar enough in intensity to not stand out when there's any overpainting. Some joints are a touch lighter than others, but that's the nature of articulated rotocast.

26 points of articulation span her body, with the addition of a waist joint, but we have the same joints-not-matching-up issue as with Mr. F. There's so many sculpt and color differences between the two figures that if it weren't for the '4' insignias on them, I'd think they came from different lines. Invisible Woman's suit is a much lighter blue, and the black piping on it is braided and stitched, while Mr. F's is completely smooth. His '4' is sculpted, while hers is simply a decal. She has ripples in her costume, while he's as smooth as baby's unmentionables. She IS a bit shorter than him, though, so at least we have a scale thing going on. Does she look like Jessica Alba? Enough to pass as a figure that's supposed to represent a small, plastic Jessica Alba, whose acting resume is amazingly short to have warranted this kind of attention. Honestly, until 3 minutes ago, I thought that this was the same chick who played Elektra. They all look the same to me.

These figures are completely worth the ten bucks each, given the addendum that you'll be getting the two genuinely interesting figures in the line as well to complete the family. Humans are never as interesting as monsters and guys made of fire. While I'd completely prefer the clear variant of the Invisible Woman, this will suffice for now.

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