Godzilla Roars To Life With NECA

The King of Monsters gets a great new figure from NECA.

This year, we will see several Godzilla figures coming from NECA, but they’re leading off with a toy version of the modern style beast as seen in the new (and really good) blockbuster.  NECA’s Godzilla measures 12″ head to tail, standing about 6″ tall, and does a fantastic job of capturing the creature’s current look.

I adore the updated design used in the movie– which stays quite faithful to the classic Godzilla we all know and love– and NECA really nails it.  The sculpt is incredible, featuring every detail that makes Godzilla who he is, from the scaly hide, to the keloid scars, to those iconic spiky plates.  The figure’s massive tail, chunky legs and smallish head get the proportions of this guy totally right, while the bottom-heaviness guarantees this Godzilla can stand up completely stable.  He strikes a mean silhouette… and speaking of mean, the angry snarl on the beast’s face is loaded with character, expressing the same grumpiness that I loved about the new Godzilla on the big screen.

Godzilla includes quite a bit of articulation– two neck joints, ball shoulders and hips, injection mold elbows, knees, wrists and ankles, an ab crunch and a four-point tail with a bendable wire tip.  Some people have said this articulation, while copious, doesn’t provide a great range of motion, but I was easily able to strike several poses with this figure easily.  The proportions of the monster mean he’s not supposed to be super-mega poseable, but the articulation pattern here is solid.  The hinged jaw and neck joints allow a good range of motion in the head, and the tail construction is fantastic– and SUPER fun to play around with.

Thanks to the movie design, Godzilla doesn’t get a huge amount of paint apps.  He’s cast in an avocado brown plastic which matches his cinematic appearance, with subtle lighter brown highlights, plus face paint.  What color we get here is well done, with the yellow eyes and white teeth really standing out against the dark, scaly skin and helping convey Godzilla’s expression.

While the figure looks great and has a nice, solid heft to him, he does feel a bit small.  What’s good about this is, he remains affordable– he clocks in at just under $20 at Toys R Us– and NECA’s other Godzilla figures will match this scale.  But if you measure him up to the Jaegers and Kaiju of NECA’s Pacific Rim series, this figure is definitely not in scale.  Based on this cool Kaiju size chart, I’m thinking the 24″ head-to-tail Godzilla, which NECA will release later this year, will actually fit just about right within the Pacific Rim collection.

In the meantime what we get is a cool, well made figure that still feels like a great value.  He’s light years ahead of the mass release Godzilla toys from Bandai, in terms of detail, articulation and overall fun, and I’m totally happy to have him as part of my collection.  I was really happy to discover NECA landed the Godzilla license back at Toy Fair, and this Godzilla is the latest proof that when NECA gets a cool property, they’re going to get it right.

Godzilla is in stock now at many etailers, as well as NECA’s eBay store, or you can preorder now at ToysRUs.com.