Mcfarlane Malebogia
Toy Line : Spawn
By : Mcfarlane
Year : 1997
Price : Got it bum cheap from a retiring collector. RM25
MALEBOGIA - The devil, creator and tormentor of Spawn and all round demonic asshole. One of the many rulers of hell, he serves as the main antagonist in the Spawn comics. I read the comics way back when but I never got any of the figures. Through luck, this and another figure found its way into my collection. So let's take a look at this "ancient" figure from 1997.
The Box
The box is fairly big with the figure in a kneeling pose with his staff in the back. The back shows the rest of the figures you can get from the Mcfarlane line. The logo and face of SPAWN from the 97 movie is in front. Malebogia here is a "deluxe boxed edition". I love seeing old school boxes like these, Now lets take him out.
The Figure
First a word of warning. This figure is known to be brittle and will crack and break due to its age. It's 25 years old now. While the main body is a bit more durable, the pin that holds the joints together are the most fragile part of this figure. The left elbow on mine broke as soon as I took it out of box. While not as terrible as Gold Plastic Syndrome more common on transformers. It's still good to be very careful when moving this guy.
Now on to the figure. Malebogia here is big, he's roughly 13-14 inches tall, I dare not push the joints too much so his actual height standing will fully extended legs will forever be unknown to me :P But still..huge. he has articulation on his jaw, neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, knees and ankles. Not bad for 1997 and something from Mcfarlane, a company famous for making figures with limited articulation due to Todd prioritizing sculpt.
Malebogia is primarily brown with some shading and green eyes. Dude even has hair!!
Now, since this was a deluxe figure back in the day. And back in the day when the word deluxe was used, it means premium features. It comes with sound. So if you press one of the spikes on his back he will do an evil laugh. Alas, the preview owner didn't know this figure had sound despite the box stating "HEAR THE VOICE OF EVIL"(insert creepy sfx here) in huge letters in front. So he never removed the battery and thus those things have melted in the battery compartment and probably corroded all the circuits. But I will try to see if it still works when I get fresh batteries and do an update. So I have since removed the 25 year old LR44 batteries. But because of the melted batteries and the type of plastic Mcfarlane used, the cover was stuck and it split in half when it finally came off (nothing superglue couldn't fix...ha ha ha.....sigh)
Accesories
Optimus Prime teaching Malebogia the meaning of "deep throat"
Malebogia comes with one accessory. His giant staff that's actually taller than him. it seems to be made of the bones of his enemies with a clear crystal ball on top. It is also heavily shaded and looks good. Unfortunately, he can't hold it since he doesn't have articulated hands or swappable hands or a peg hole of any kind to stick the staff in. So I just rest it on his arms and it stays there.
Conclusion
Back in the day, this would make you the coolest kid in the neighborhood and Mcfarlane figures were seen as "rich kids toys" as they were not available locally on retail and usually they were acquired when families go on vacations overseas or mommy and daddy would come back from a work trip overseas and they would buy these as presents.
The figure itself is big and I like big figures, to the great dismay of my shelf space and storeroom. The brittleness of the joints and perhaps the figure as a whole due to its age and the plastic type used definitely hurts it.
It's a highly detailed figure and and for what it is, its super good, my only wish was, it could have been made from more durable material. So my rating for Malebogia;
If I bought it 25 years ago when when everything was still sturdy and working - 8.5/10
The figure now with its age showing and fragile status - 6.5/10
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