NES Jason Ensures You And Your Friends Are Dead

NECA’s Comic Con exclusive Jason Voorhees is completely– delightfully– weird.

As soon as NECA announced their Comic Con exclusive NES Jason, I was sold– recasting their phenomenal figure of the cult classic slasher in his NES video game accurate purple and blue colors was cool to begin with… But on top of that, NECA went the extra mile by casting Jason’s blue parts– his hands, feet, mask and blades– in glow in the dark plastic.  And they rounded the figure out with an insanely cool box, featuring a riff on the NES game’s box, complete with game accurate images on the inlay tray and back panel.

I remember this image of Jason, hatchet in the air with a swirl of psychedelic colors behind him, from when I was a kid going to the video store.  Each week, Jason’s visage would tempt me, dare me, to rent the Friday the 13th game.  And I did, a few times– it was, as we all know, a terrible game.  But that box was so cool, it set a fire in my ten year old brain, and I reasoned to myself (and my parents) that it probably wasn’t as bad as I remembered, last time I rented it… only to find it was.

The Friday the 13th game was one of many that shaped my memories as a kid, and NECA’s figure, while cool in its own right, holds a special place in my heart now for bringing me back to that place where a preteen me argued with myself in the game section of my video store over how badly Acclaim could have screwed up something like Jason Voorhees.  In some ways, it was my first stab (get it?) at game-based criticism, which has ultimately lead me here, where I write reviews about stuff I love and stuff I hate and most importantly stuff I care about, every day.

Maybe that’s giving too much credit to one crappy game and one awesome action figure based on said crappy game… but having all those memories channel back to me as I opened this guy, pored over the details on his box art, and (obviously) held him under a lamp immediately to make him glow in the dark… it was a great moment.

Jason himself is fantastic, sharing the same incredibly detailed, very articulated sculpt as the recent Friday figures NECA released last year.  The new colors don’t offer much in the way of detail– he’s purple and blue that that’s it– but they are appropriately bold and bright and garish.  He’s packing an axe or his machete, and he looks great wielding either weapon.

There were many more complex and intricate exclusives available at this year’s Comic Con, but Jason is the one I keep coming back to.  He’s built on pure nostalgia, and the charm of that oozes through every aspect of this guy.  He’s fun, silly and made me feel like a kid again– which, I guess, is kind of the point of most of this stuff.  It’s only an added bonus that NECA, being the insanely cool guys they are, credited fan customizer Will Edwards with this figure, since their exclusive was inspired by his custom concept.  In an industry where bigger companies steal fan custom photos to solicit toys to potential buyers, it’s a breath of fresh air for NECA to go out of their way and give credit where credit is due on this figure.  It’s a classy thing to do, and it makes me feel proud to support this great company.  I couldn’t be happier with NES Jason, or the toymakers who released him.

Thanks to NECA for giving us the opportunity to check this great figure out for this review!