First off, the amazing 12" Abe Sapien.

Part Doug Jones, part CGI, part David Hyde Pierce, part fish, part man, part tactile telepath, and a few other parts that I won't even get into, but I assure you they're probably slimy. While we already have two picture perfect, glossy Abes from Mezco on the 7" scale, and one from the cute block figure universe, I don't think that one can ever have enough elegant fish people. They're just so classy. And aquatic! Like, if sea monkeys didn't so totally suck like the naked, pink, three-pronged bastard children of disappointment and eyestrain that they are, many of which have stained the run in my sister's old room. That room serves as an unmarked grave to many a mysterious derelict creature and / or hobo.

This 12" Abe figure has a very fitting body type - slender and tall, without overly visible musculature. He's just a sexy, fishy man. 75% of his blue-toned form is hidden beneath a solid black swimsuit made of a stretchy material, but it fits his body with a very realistic snugness. Usually, miniaturized clothes are baggy, with oversized seams and awkward assembly, but this scale swimsuit is pretty amazingly done. The outfit on the 12" Kroenen didn't seem to fit this well, but that could have just been the impression left over from the loosely fitting chestpiece and other strapped-on things which should have, technically, been a part of his body. Abe only has his belt as an accessory, which is kind of loose anyhow. This belt is similar to Hellboy's, and also has sculpted accessory packs all around the perimeter. It serves to cover up the pinching that happens around the ball-jointed hips, which is especially apparent due to the tight clothing. The wetsuit has perfect little straps and plastic buckles, appropriate aesthetic seams around the torso, a BPRD logo applied on the arm, and comes in two separate pieces. Technically, you can make Abe shirtless, but there are no painted details on that particular section of chest. His shirt is also held in place with an elasticized strap that passes over the groin and around to the back, which is something that would really keep me from getting bored at work.

Sure, all of this smooth black costuming seems boring. He even seems pretty drab and motionless in the package, laid out coffin-style behind the window box. In truth, every Sideshow toy I've ever seen has looked so terribly dead unattractive in the box. I probably would be too repelled to buy them if I actually saw them first. My purchasing method usually consists of 6 seconds of crucial decision making, followed by the quick typing of my memorized credit card number, a few mouse clicks, and a month or so of regret and impatience. The packaging on Sideshow toys is always beautiful and informative, but the figures are just strapped in, arms at sides, staring straight ahead, dull. I take on a very similar appearance after listening to 15 seconds of anything that isn't about robots. These figures come to life once they breathe, though, and their highly articulated bodies have room to bend. Perhaps some kind of active packaging poses would bring them to life, since the boxes are absolutely large enough to accommodate multiple positions. None of this makes a durned bit of difference if you plan on displaying the figure as it was meant to be seen, as a prime dust and spider magnet, but in-box collectors are bound to be disappointed. As they should be, creepy nerds.

Abe, like the Mezco version, comes with two alternate heads. One head is the naked ol' Abe head, and the other is the goggled, respiratored head, all sculpted together in one big HEAD. One head pops off with a firm tug, the other pops on. Where the abe details really get me, though, is their translucency. Abe's gills, the webs between his fingers, and fins on his legs are all translucent blue, and it's beautiful. Not only that, but the bubbling respirator that surrounds his neck has a deep, hollow, watery blue to it which the smaller version lacked. I was at first frustrated with the dry, stony texture of the skin, having been accustomed to the wet gloss of the Mezco Abe, but eventually, the figure became gently statuesque. The matte surface worked in a solid, displayable kind of way. I toyed with the idea of glossing it myself, but giving my penchant for utterly destroying anything positive in my life... I stepped off.

The eyes are silver and glossy, but that's the only moist part of the whole head. The skin details could not possibly be more minute and precise, from the softly pebbled surface of the forehead (matched with the speckled pattern of paint), to the striated surface of the face. I do believe that it's Sideshow's best likeness yet, and it's honestly even more detailed than human skin. The sculptor had a great opportunity in making an alien face to give it unusually detailed skin, and they ran with it. The paint details match these subtleties in their skill. The delineation of the stripes on his head begins to look a little drawn on, but it's clean and the tiny nuances of biological patterning are all there. So, right on. So what if the skin is dry? It still looks elegant. The translucency of the neck gills is due to a square slab of translucent plastic that has been glued under the chin of the figure. It leaves a bit of an odd seam, but the color matching is pretty accurate. The only other option would have been to make the whole head out of this material and paint over it - but given the laws of reflectivity and the quality of the materials, it just would have set the whole head awkward and ghostly.

The hands take this all-translucent approach, from forearm on down. It makes them a bit rubbery, and the softness of the material eliminates a lot of the fine detailing that is found in the head. The approach on the hands is a lot less delicate and reverses the Mezco 'wet skin, dry hands' philosophy of Abe. Here, the translucency of the webs 'tween the fingers finds itself on the palms of the hands, which are also clear and moist looking, and without much detailing. Their coloration is due entirely to the underside of the paint on the opposite section of the hand. It works in a watery kind of way. The rest of the paint detailing has clearly been done freehand with mini-airbrushes on a solid blue base. Some lines are hard edged, the symmetrical lines on the other arm are soft edged, there's no real pattern besides vague stripeyness.

The legs and shoes are the final detail of this Abe. While the shoes are nothing more than finely detailed rubber things (complete with treads), the legs are actually the shiny base plastic of the generic body. It's good to note that the whole body is blue, as Sideshow has, in the past, left a 'whatever' colored body beneath the clothing of figures, inappropriately. Silver Screen Frankenstein has curiously pinkish skin peeking out from those shirt cuffs. Either way, the legs are suddenly shiny (with the same stripey details), but all that discontinuity is worth it for the leg fins. They're simply very pretty.

Put all of this together on the Hellboy base and pinchy-waist thing, and you've got a gorgeous display.

Abe is doubtlessly the numero uno rockin' the ass figure from the 12" Hellboy line. Totally keen, and the extra heads are beautiful enough to serve as displayable microbusts. See, this way, I can have the best of all worlds. One naked, ungeared 7" Mezco Abe, one wetsuit variant, supergeared 7" Mezco Abe, and one terribly undecided Abe, halfway into his wetsuit and runnin' out the door without his car keys, which will only make him more late. Abe in all of his many guises. If there's one figure from any Hellboy line to get, it's this one.

I don't do this to make you jealous. I don't do this to make you relive your memories of summer rage at Sideshow for releasing such a desirable item only to a select few, leaving the rest of the world with the simple Unitard Kroenen. I don't do this to elevate myself above you through pure ownership and materialistic devices. I do this because, man alive, this bastard is awesome. They're still floating around out there, these Nazi Kroenei, and here's the part where I tell you that it's just about worth the inflated second-market prices. This figure was certainly one of the hottest at the Con, and it completely blows away the previous Kroenen. One-piece bodysuits are so terribly limiting anyhow. Their pocketless expanses leave you to depend on natural body crevices to store things as simple as your change and business cards, and you might as well just hang a sign around your neck reading 'Genital Museum' with an arrow, because you'll have no secrets.

Speaking temporaneously, the three main Hellboy figures make up a good set, as they all exist in the same timeframe. Sure, a Liz Sherman would fill out any set to perfection, but the chances of that are slim to none. Nazi Kroenen falls some fifty years before the main action of the film, and for only a few moments, so it's natural to release him as an 'extra'. There's also the completely logical reasoning that retailers will very quickly shy away from most toys depicting a violent, hateful, horrific sect of people. They're not exactly homecoming kings. The Marvel Legends' Red Skull was shortpacked for this reason, and the 7" Mezco Nazi Kroenen will only be seen in wave 1.5 case assortments. In fact, the only one we've seen has been the Mez-Itz version, and that doesn't count for all that much. It's like the Red Skull Mighty Bean. The dangerous mix of genocidal insanity and adorability causes mixed emotions. When you catch L'il Kroenen with the rat poison and the motzah, you stop him of course, but youll also take a picture for the album marked 'Shenanigans!' in a flowery, embroidered script.

And don't YOU tell me I've gone too far.

Exclusive Kroenen is the full package. From the top down, he has a removable sculpted hat (which is blacker than the bluish tint that the photograph reveals), his WWII mask which attaches to his head with an elasticized strap (and hides the same scarred face as the regular Kroenen), and under all of that, a black hood. The elastic band on mine snapped, but it was esaily repaited with a needle and a stitch. Next down is a choker with a cross formeé (with a teensy swastika at the center) and a necktie atop a grey undershirt. Most of the underdetails are hidden by the rest of the thick clothing, which comes in a delightful number of strata, beginning with a leathery, hip-length coat that features working snaps, silver buttons, nonfunctional pockets and military insignia. Over THAT is the long black coat which falls to his ankles, minutely tailored and stitched, with more silver buttons and wide lapels. When I say stitched, I don't mean that it's simply assembled. It's not enough to wrap some fabric around the guy - there are lines stitched in where real clothing would have seams. It's bewilderingly fancy. How, you ask? Elves. Why, you ask? Because elves. Elves with tiny, spidery fingers stitch-stitching away with that legendary North Polish attention to detail and accuracy. Elves whose families are on the verge of collapse due to Wal-Martian price slashing, and elves whose children can't even get their daily candy cane and gumdrop rations. No, they have to settle for stealing those chalky things in the bowls by the cash registers at diners, and we all know where those have been.

At least two members of my family have taken the serving spoon from those bowls and served those after-dinner horrors directly into their waiting maws, and then quickly put the spoon back. We're contagious, folks. So pestilentially contagious.

K's gloves are sculpted on, and his neato arm daggers are on removable cuffs around his wrists. He also comes with a gun, which fits into the working holster on his belt, which is also, might I add, unbuckleable. Add on pants with those crazy balloon hips (also of the same material) and rubber boots slipped on over the whole lower leg, and there's Kroenen. Of course, he's wildly articulated, and the clothes don't get in the way of this all that much. Each article is a full article, and all can be removed, eventually leaving you with a naked guy, to be re-clothed to your choosing.

Here is where I let the pictures do the work. For those of you too timid to open your expensive toys, you may enjoy mine. I think that this has entered the gilded realm of 'prized possession', next to the ill-gotten left toe of that hot redhead named Ariana in my art history class. The plan was to covertly take her piece by piece and reassemble her mad-scientist style, but you know, complications. It was always either running out of thread, or the restraining orders, or the screaming 'oh my toe!' and blood on my good t-shirts, and eventually, it was just more trouble to secretly steal extremities than it was worth. Let her keep her dignity and whatsit... soft, pale virginity.

So, the truly spectacular Kroenen exclusive. Rare as all get out, but so totally stunning, really rounding out the line nicely.