Review: One:12 Collective Blade (Toy Fair Edition)

Blade the vampire hunter gets armed to the teeth at New York Toy Fair.

One of the next Marvel releases in Mezco Toyz’s awesome One:12 Collective is Blade, a great rendition of Marvel’s premiere vampire hunter which draws equal inspiration from his various comic book appearances, as well as the Wesley Snipes film series that helped kickstart the modern comic book movie era. But Mezco was kind enough to give us a sneak preview of Blade with a special edition figure only released at New York Toy Fair.

This Blade swaps out the standard figure’s black trenchcoat for a cool armor-reinforced t-shirt, and adds two unique headsculpts and a huge arsenal of weaponry to the mix. At first I was disappointed to see Blade’s signature coat missing, but once I unpacked this guy, I grew to love the street armored style of his costume– filled with texture from the leather-like pants to the red trim worked into the segmented armor on his back and chest– and actually prefer this look to the more traditional black coat clad hero.

Like every One:12 figure, Blade features a great range of motion which lends him to any number of dynamic action poses. The tailoring of his fabric costume is outstanding, with the pants wrinkling and resting naturally in relation to his pose, and the skin tight shirt moving fluidly with the figure’s articulation. All four of Blade alternate heads– two with hair and two bald portraits exclusive to this release– can also sport sunglasses to complete the vampire hunter’s look. The glasses total eight sets in all, so each head can sport either black or red lenses, and they fit with an uncanny level of precision I’ve never seen in a figure this small.

As if the multitude of heads and shades wasn’t enough of an indication, this Blade is armed to the gills with accessories. He features ten alternate hand poses, ranging from closed fists and martial arts poses for hand-to-hand combat, and a variety designed to hold his various weapons. Those weapons include everything a vampire hunter could ask for– six crimson red stakes (three of which can store smartly in Blade’s leg holster), two red folding throwing blades, which store on his belt, a pistol with extra clip, a submachine gun with firing blast effect, a shotgun with blast effect, and two black and red swords with sheaths that store on the figure’s back quite effectively via magnets.

Everything about this figure screams sleek and efficient, perfect traits for this character. One look at this guy and I have no doubt he couldn’t take down a whole army of bloodsuckers by himself. The use of variant heads baring Blade’s half-vampiric fangs is a smart touch, and I love that the Toy Fair exclusive heads pay homage to the character’s more modern, shaved head appearance.

While this version of Blade was only given away at Toy Fair, the standard edition Blade will be dropping shortly. Based on this edition, I can say with confidence he is one of the very best releases from Mezco’s stellar One:12 Collective. Look for the standard edition Blade at specialty retailers this March, or try your luck and join Mezco’s wait list here.

Thanks to Mezco Toyz for supplying us with this Toy Fair exclusive Blade figure.