Non-Bot Reviews: Jakks Pacific Samus Aran (Metroid Prime 2 ver.)

We all need a bit of Samus Aran in our lives. The heroine of the Metroid franchise is a favorite character of mine, which, naturally, means I go out of the way to grab whatever plastic replicas of her get made. I’ve talked about a couple of expensive Samus Arans (Samuses Aran? Samii?) figures over the years already, in the form of the Goodsmile Figmas of her as depicted in Metroid Prime 3 (reviewed here) and Metroid Dread (ditto). But not everyone’s got Figma money to spend on her (and I barely do, I’m just a bit obsessed). That’s where Jakks Pacific comes in. This toymaker’s made Nintendo action figures and merchandise for about a decade now. Initially, it was all under the branding of World of Nintendo, but lately, they’ve dropped the name in favor of releasing individual figures with the branding of the game series they’re from. One thing that hasn’t changed, though, is that the quality on them is known for being kind of iffy, mostly because they’re very cheap.

Their first attempt at making a Samus was back in 2015, based on the same Metroid Prime 3 design as one of the Figmas I’ve reviewed. I have it, and to be frank, it’s not a very good figure, the two biggest issues being that it can barely stand under its own weight, and it’s got bizarre articulation that makes it nearly impossible to pose in ways  that look good, unless you just do a neutral stance, like above. They also repainted it a ton of times, and I’ll admit, I still bought the Phazon Suit repaint (because it looks cool). I skipped out on all the other variants, though, which is how you know it wasn’t very good. But, last year, they finally gave her a do-over, releasing a new version in generic “Metroid” packaging, and I was over the moon. Or I would have been, had she come out in Canada at all. This new one’s supposedly a Wal-Mart exclusive in the US, and they love to not stock their exclusives up here. Luckily for me, an American friend hooked me up, giving me a chance to see if this do-over has produced a good, small, affordable Samus.

The Sculpt

So, this Samus is billed as her “Metroid Prime 2” design, and is wearing her Varia Suit from that game, which was her starting armor this time around, instead of her first upgrade, as was traditional. Really, though, this new figure being her Prime 2 look, versus her Prime 3 one is just a pretense for a do-over, since there was little to no change in the design between games. This is just the standard Samus look, giant football player shoulders and all, and she wears it well. It’s particularly impressive compared to the larger Prime 3 Figma, where you can see a lot of the same detailing, just scaled down.

Of course, there’s a bit less detailing, fewer lines, fewer greebles, more empty surfaces, but really, not by much, and it’s impressive how much of it she keeps. Really, the big drawback on this smaller figure’s sculpting is just how many highly visible joint cuts she has across her armor, especially on her limbs, where her arms, legs and feet each have circular pins cut out of them, to facilitate the figure’s construction.

On top of that, the double-joints in her elbows are extremely conspicuous, and pretty much any pose you have her hips in are going to show off her pelvis’s hollow interior, with its ball joints. It doesn’t look great, especially when compared to the older World of Nintendo figure, which had all the same detailing without the joint cuts.

On the other hand, that was because it had fewer joints, and at this scale and pricepoint, they’re not able to do the fancy kind of joint-hiding they did on the Figma. Speaking of scale, Samus is taller than you’d expect, towering over your average Star Wars or GI Joe figure.

I could scale her with my Star Trek Universe figures, but to be honest, Samus is supposed to be tall, so I kind of like her towering over the more standard 3-and-quarter-inch figures. 

The Colors

This is an area where the designers opted to take some liberties, even though they’re not liberties you’d immediately notice. To start with, this is a very nicely-colored figure. She’s mostly a kind of bright orange, and a sort of sandy yellow-brown, with red on her helmet, chest, and back, and a green arm cannon. Her accent colors are black, dark gray, and green, and she even has hits of paint that the older World of Nintendo figure didn’t, in the form of little green accents on her shoulders. One detail that I appreciate is the yellow gradient visible on parts of her arm cannon, meaning she has her starter weapon, the Power Beam, equipped. 

Comparing her to the larger Figma is where things get impressive, but you also spot the big difference. First, the big, impressive bit is that every single hit of color from the larger, super-expensive, high-end figure is replicated here. I think the only exceptions are some black around some of her joints, which was technically an inaccuracy on the larger model. Plus, as you’d expect, she doesn’t have any translucent green parts, just painted green. Still, it’s really impressive, especially in this day and age, where newer figures usually have less color, not more. Meanwhile, the big difference is, basically, they hue-shifted the new figure to have brighter colors.

The Metroid Prime sub-series of games, as befitting their aesthetic, had a more muted color palette, and Samus herself was more of a dull bronze, something the bigger Figma imitates, while this smaller figure opts for brighter shades of orange and red. It’s even a little bit lighter than the World of Nintendo version! 

This brightening of the colors isn’t really something I have a problem with, to be clear. Despite being styled after a specific game, this is really meant to be a generic Samus for the people who want one. And between Smash Brothers, non-Prime Metroid games, and official art, her base color has drifted more into orange plenty of times. And she wears it well. What I do have a problem with is a bit of smeared paint on her left knee, but you can’t win ‘em all when it comes to QC, I guess. Well, that and the really obvious product code on her inner thigh, but I guess it had to go somewhere. 

Articulation and Build Quality

This was particularly important to me, because of how poorly-executed the articulation on the 2015 World of Nintendo model was. Not to harp on that one too much, but, again, it was nearly impossible to pose her in any way that looked good or natural, beyond a neutral pose. 

So, is this version better? Technically, yes, but it’s still got some frustrating limitations. Let’s start with the big improvements: Both her elbows and knees are double-joints, giving them a huge range of motion, good for crouching, and aiming her gun.

Meanwhile, her shoulders are hugely improved, and continue the trend I mentioned in my Dread Samus Figma review of finding a different solution to articulate them each time. In this case, she has rounded shoulder joints with a clicky, ratchety, universal range of motion, that remind me of the “Revolver Joints” used by the Revoltech Transformers figures (reviewed here) so many years ago.

To give them more range of motion, the big football-player parts of her shoulders can shift inwards and outwards, in a funny-looking way that makes me think of how an animal’s ears expresses emotions.

That, and she’s got more joints in her pectorals, that let her bunch her arms up forwards. Considering how cruddy the shoulders and arms were on the old one, this is a huge improvement. For the rest of her, she’s got a wrist swivel on her free hand, a ball-jointed neck and swivelling waist, ball-jointed hips, and ankles that rock forwards and backwards.

When it comes to issues, the biggest problem here is simply the lack of any kind of swivels on her arms, which is funny because the old one had them, right beneath her shoulders. This is a problem because it means she can’t easily put her free hand on her gun arm, which is a common pose of hers whenever she fires her weapon, and something that ought to be a posing priority.

You can sort of get her to do it by scrunching up her chest, but it’s awkward-looking, and not at all what she does in the games.

It’s a strange omission. I’d have also rather had the ankles tilt sideways instead of front-and-back, her feet always come out of position when she crouches.

And while I appreciate the double-elbows, it’s very easy when handling her to have them come out of whack in a way that looks like her arms got horribly mangled. 

Finally, despite her neck having a ball-joint, it actually has a very small range of motion thanks to the sculpt bumping against her collar, and this includes barely being able to turn side-to-side.

But, on the upside, she’s stable enough to stay standing in most poses, too, which was something bizarrely difficult for the older one to accomplish. 

So, yeah. An improvement, but a bit frustratingly limited, since the old one had some of the joints that the new one could have used. 

Accessories

Really, there’s just one accessory here, the same accessory basically every Samus comes with: Her Morph Ball form, as a tiny orb.

This is a good a version of the orb as any, and, in fact, I can repeat everything I said about the main figure, when compared with the Figma: The ball’s got all the same sculpting as the Figma version, but shrunk down, and with ridges on the sculpting that kinda-sorta prevent it from rolling away when you set it down, as long as it’s a flat surface. Even a little bit of an incline, though, and watch out. It’s colored bright orange, with red accents in the ridges, and a green groove along the equator, copying all the colors the larger one has, but shifting them to brighter hues (and changing black to red).

It makes sense as an accessory, but I’d rather have had, like, an effect part or something for her weapon, considering that her arm cannon’s the wrong size to hold any Transformers ones. 

Overall

Y’know, she’s not perfect, but she’s pretty good for the price of about 10 American dollars. And this is definitely an improvement over the old model, in that you can pose her in ways that look decent, and she’ll stay standing.

It’s the few ways she falls short of perfect that stick with me, namely that she’s missing a few swivels that would have added so much to her articulation, as well as a general feeling of cheapness to the construction, mostly thanks to all the visibly pinned joints. Still, I’m not as fussy as I could be about it, save for the fact that I had to pay more than the cost of the figure itself in shipping to get it to my country. And, to be frank, unless you’re a Samus Fanatic like me, importing it for that amount of shipping isn’t really worth it.

But, if you see her locally for a good price, i.e. her retail price (I hear she’s still around some US locations), or a small (small!) markup, I say go for it. She has the all-important Samus vibes, which is what matters most.

It’s a decent little incarnation of one of Nintendo’s best, and, in my heavily biased opinion, everyone should have some kind of Samus, making this a good choice. Now, if they repaint this one into any variants (there’s at least two suits they can do), I’ll be down for those, too, or any other iterations of Samus, or other Metroid denizens that Jakks Pacific want to do at this scale and price. Just, maybe release them where I live next time, ok?

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