Figure Review: Kiss-o-Gram Amy Pond

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Doctor Who

Amy Pond – Kiss-o-Gram Outfit

5 Inch Scale

By: Character Options

$13.99

Hey kids, remember when people thought Leela’s costume was too revealing? Well forget all that, it’s time to review Amy Pond: The stripper.

Alright, technically speaking she was a kiss-o-gram girl, but even in interviews Karen Gillan said Amy was a stripper, so we’ll go with that. Either way, I got this figure free when I purchased the Doctor with fez, so I thought I’d do a review of it too. You may remember that I reviewed the basic single card Amy Pond just a week ago and now it’s time to look at the second incarnation.



Packaging :

Amy comes in the new display box format that all of the 11th Doctor figures are being displayed in. I’m not a huge fan of these new boxes. Personally I liked what they did for the last two Doctor lines, with the Tardis shaped blister, but these windows are nice and show all of the characters and accessories well, so I can’t complain too much.

All of the figures in this release come with an audio CD, which can be placed together to form your very own Pandorica. To highlight this, the back of the box is a big display of the completed Pandorica, but does not have any info about the character to speak of.

Sculpt :

So the sculptors were trying to duplicate this:

And we get this:

As with the first Amy figure, it is not a bad likeness. The uniform is fairly detailed, and the face is ok, except that my figure has some real problems that I will address in a minute.

We’ll start with the good:

This figure reuses the same head as the previous Amy, but has changed the makeup slightly. They eyes have a liner around them, and the lips seem to be a slightly different shade. Of course, that might not have been intended, but that is how it looks.

The majority of the rest of the body is new, although some parts are clearly taken from the previous figure, including the head, upper arms, hands, and upper legs. The Torso and feet are brand new.

We dabble a little in the bad, though. Look at her right foot! I know it’s not super easy to see, but the right foot is kind of bent inward a bit. I’m sure I could straighten it, but it is annoying that I have to.

Articulation :

The bad comes in the articulation. There are a number of problems with this figure, some of which I am sure are specific just to mine, and some of which affect all of them. For one thing, as with the previous figure, Amy’s hair prohibits any kind of real movement. Why this is annoying is that they could have easily added her hat and tucked up her hair for this figure.

The second problem, again, the same as the first Amy figure, is the fact that the skirt is very stiff and tight, making it difficult to pose her legs. Of course, this is show accurate, in that the real Karen Gillan spends more of the 11th hour trying to keep her skirt from flying up too.

Paint

For more of the bad and the down right ugly, we have to go to the paint department.

This figure also has a strange something going on with the paint. In the photos of Karen Gillan, it is obvious she is wearing nylons. Now look at how this has been reproduced on the figure…

Yep, just an odd line that kind of makes it look like she has problem veins or something. Very odd. Why not just paint her legs grey and the strip black? It seems odd that with a figure that has so much attention to detail, this is done so poorly.

My figure also has a number of problems that I believe are just on it, but I will wait to hear what others say. First, there is a ton of paint slop on this figure. There are splashes of pink on the shoes, overlap on the arms, and then there is the face. Not only are there splashes of red pain on the face, but look at the odd gash running down her left cheek. This should have never gotten by a quality inspector, and I am really disappointed it did.

Accessories :

Like the Doctor with fez, this figure comes with a Pandorica piece CD, which the back of the packages encourage children to collect all of. The problem is that it does not say which figures come with which CDs on the back. You’ll have to hunt through boxes to find the match. Since my Doctor Who shopping is online, that is kind of annoying, if I wanted to collect and listen to the CDs.

Value :

This figure runs between $11-$15 online depending on the retailer. Right now it’s easier to find that the regular Amy Pond figure. It comes with the CD story, which is a nice bonus, but the QC on mine in particular might make one worrisome about blind purchases online.

Score Recap :

Sculpt 8/10 (mine 6/10 for face gash)

Paint: 7/10

Articulation: 5/10

Price: 8/10

Quality 7/10

Overall: 7/10

My Verdict:

This is a neat figure, but mine has a number of really obvious flaws that should have been caught before it was boxed. Also, it seems lazy to just reuse the same head for this figure instead of fixing the hair issue. This could have been a much cooler collectable, but instead it kind of feels slapped together to sell, and is not the quality I have come to expect from Character Options. I’m not going to recommend that people skip buying this, but I would encourage people to check their figures closely before purchase.