Any of you remember Alyssa Milano when she was in those 1-800-COLLECT commercials? She'd randomly appear, in various stages of dampness, when some hunky dude was about to make the biggest mistake of his life, making a call without calling collect? No? Oh. Well, anyway, I'm surprised at how many actors and actresses donate so generously to charities and the causes they believe in. There are truly some incredible people on-screen every time you watch a movie, not just because of their acting talent, but because of their social awareness. They understand this world is a horrible place for some people and animals and they go, hey, I'm gonna help you poor schmucks out of the kindness of my heart. Just like that, they are wonderful people. I am disgusted with myself at how flippant I am when discussing their humanitarian deeds, shame engulfs me. I'm sorry, Alyssa Milano. Now that that's out of the way, flip the page and lets ogle some toys!
Name: Phoebe
Line: Charmed, Series 2
Manufacturer: SOTA Toys
Released: 2005
Price: Retail: $12.50-$14.99, Online: $13.00-$19.99
Scale: 6.00 in. (figure is 5.90 in. tall)
Accessories: Extra Set of Hands
Collect & Connect Piece: Step-ladder, Stone Wall, Floor-piece,
Bamboo Crate, Cushion, Chair
Sponsor Listings: Amazon-$19.99
It is a proven fact that Alyssa Milano is 2000% hotter with long hair. She's spunky as hell with short hair, but she is a Mona Lisa when it's long. She wore her hair short for the "Valhalley of the Dolls" Charmed episodes, the episodes these figures are based on, and this is an amazingly realistic sculpt. The hair (what is that, like 5 times I've said hair?) is finely detailed, the sculptor didn't just toss a blob, carve a few lines, and call it a day, it's well-done. The face is also spot-on Milano, though it seems whoever painted this figure's eyes was over-compensating for not putting enough white on Paige's eyes before! It's not too bad, Phoebe here just looks very alert, like she's had too much coffee.
Seems like these Charmed femmes all have the same arms and legs, though I'm hoping at least Piper is somewhere between the other two to be show-accurate...and life-accurate, I guess. Pretty sad when we start using TV fantasies as the yardstick by which we measure people, eh? I'm glad the torsos are different sculpts, Phoebe has Milano's tight abs and perky, uh, fingernails. She's also a little smaller than Paige, also accurate. The indent of the bellybutton looks fake, I must say. It's almost like they just shoved the head of a pin in there to creave a cavity, it's too perfectly-round. I wish the arms were more toned, Alyssa looked like a tough scrappy chick on the show (I wouldn't mind seeing her play Hawkgirl!), and not enough of that translates into this figure.
The clothing is as detailed as possible with natural folds and stitches and textures everywhere. The bra, again, is sculpted, and the skirt if very flexible, and even skimpier than Paige's! That's why she wears the slightly-extended flaps of armor over it, to cover her shame (much to the dismay of nerds everywhere). There is no sculpted underwear under there by the way, it's just painted-on. The SOTA logo is under there too, embossed on the skirt, a much-appreciated placement for it as opposed to having it be a nuisance on the back of a leg or something. Also, like her sister, the mold-lines are almost invisible in average lighting. I think it's worth mentioning that the tassles/ties on the figure are separate flexible pieces, to add some more realism.
Sculpt Score: 9 / 10
Again this is one of those hit-or-miss qualities of these figures, luck determines how good/bad of a paint-job you get. I noticed the paint flaked immediately off of the shoulder-disks when moved, that's because paint won't stick well to that kind of plastic. It also flaked-off of some of the elbow-pegs. The bare plastic is more noticeable on Phoebe than on Paige (who had the same problem) because Phoebe has a more tanned complexion while the plastic is pale. And actually, that's not entirely true, the one I still have packaged has skin almost as pale as Paige! So there were some funky happenings going-on at the factory when these things were being made.
The boots and skirt look neat and tidy, a little like wet leather, but the bra is more lazily-painted, with sparse dry-brushing. The reddish brown hues are all there though. The paint is smooth all over, no ugly clumps to complain about. I don't know why it is that adding 3 fine lines to the edge of an eye makes it so very feminine, but it works! Heh, those wide eyes remind me of Squirrel-Girl. And I don't know what's up with the nails, only the bases of them have a fine white line, is this some kind of fashion-thing? Please forgive my limited ruggedly-handsome knowledge of girly things...
Paint Score: 8 / 10
The skimpier skirt doesn't limit the legs much at all, so the only movement I'd like added here is some kind of pivot for the upper-body. The waist swivel is useful of course, but a pivot is much more dynamic. All the other much-loved SOTA articulation is there, including swivels in the foot to replace rocking-ankles. The elbows and knees are still a bit unsightly on the bare skin. It bugs me that the head can't face up, you have to pop the ball out of the neck socket a little to do it.
The hands aren't hinged, so they can't hold anything securely, you'll need some of those small clear rubber bands for that. I wish there were peg-holes in the soles of theese figures, but there's really no feasible place to put them because of all the nifty articulation. I'll also mention, these figures are fully collapsable because they're made entirely with soft plastic. A little heat here and there and you can start mixing and matching parts among them...for customs...of certain heroines, lol. Yes, even the skirts come off easily, but there's a small gap where the skirt tabs slip into for stability. The diorama pieces are painted just as sporadically bad as the figures, this wall-piece was more dull than the last one and the white dust at the base looked very fake.
Articulation Score: 8 / 10
Phoebe's skill-set of witchery includes things like levitation, clairvoyance, and hyper-empathy (later on as her powers develop). I would have loved to get little accessories that demonstrate these abilities! I thought for sure the first series of these figures would have something like that, but they only had a build-a-diorama type theme too. And that's not a complaint! The dio for that series was gorgeous, it was the entire attic set! This series 2 is based on specific episodes though, so I can't complain. You can build the cage-match set where Leo was forced to fight by the Valkyries, including the chairs and part of the cage (comes with Leo). If you want a full cage, you have to buy like 4 Leos, hah! He only comes with one "cage wall". Anyway, Leo sucks, enough about him (except when he was beating up that stupid-face white-lighter dude, I hate that guy!).
Phoebe has the same accessories Paige does (stone wall, crate-thing, chair and cushion, plus weird white clips used for assembly with the other sets I guess?), but also comes along with a small set of steps to climb onto the bamboo-crate-thing. The extra set of hands are fists, which can't hold anything, so they limit fun. But you can pretend Phoebe is sensing your rage at the lack of grippage and give her the fists to Hulk-out on everyone around her! If only they had made some of the Valkyries too...with some variant biker-chick gear they wore later on!
Fun Score: 7 / 10
Don't pay the inflated prices for these figures, especially when 1 out of every 2 figures I've seen so far have some kind of deforming paint-error. Not worth the gamble unless you get them on sale. The Diorama looks pretty sweet so far, maybe that alone will add enough value for your consideration.
Value Score: 8 / 10
9 / 10 - Same great sculpting as expected, though could use more muscles like the TV character it represents.
8 / 10 - Smooth but sloppy in some areas, the eyes are a bit goofy.
8 / 10 - Almost every useful joint you could want is present.
7 / 10 - Dioramas are great, but there's only so much you can do with them aside from assemble and break them, lol.
8 / 10 - Hard to justify the high prices demanded by stores for these figures now-adays, but great value when they were first released.
82 / 100 - This is a Great Toy
This is a fantastic figure for any fan of the TV series, and anyone who collects LOTR figures as well since they are in-scale.
-DrNightmare
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