This is an Iron Giant figure that came with the 1999 VHS release of the film, and I'd like to talk about it.
The year was, as mentioned, 1999 and my grandparents bought essentially every animated movie that came out. Not just for their grandkids to watch, I was the only one of those for a long time, they just liked buying movies, I guess.
This is the original figure that came with it, I played with it on occasion while I was over there and I was consistently disappointed by its lack of articulation.
That's it. That's all the articulation. His head turns, his arms and legs go back and forth. All the joints pretending to be joints are just molded in place. Not unreasonable for a free-with-purchase toy, but combined with his comically static pose, it's just sad. This original is also very sun-yellowed, something I didn't think could happen to grey plastic but here we are, he's got a fascinating patina on his chest, forearms and lower legs.
But as far as detailing goes it's spot-on, every little bit is molded in, his crest is even slightly off-kilter and the dent in his head is very accurate. I can't fault it for not looking like the Iron Giant, I just fault it for looking like a reference pose.
Now what if there was another?
Ohhhh, there's two of them!
This second figurine came with the special edition box set release of the film in 2016 which comes with a few neat art prints and a velvety case to keep the movie, which is otherwise identical to any other Blu-Ray release of the film, and this "premium figurine" and its box in. My copy is apparently number 3993 out of 15,000, if that means anything at all. It probably doesn't, seeing as I picked it up for thirty dollars at Half Price Books, just because I thought it'd be funny to own a numbered limited edition thing.
I didn't even pay anything for it, really, I'd brought in some other stuff that day, got it with store credit.
So I got it home, looked at the admittedly very nice prints, read the little boilerplate thank-you note from Brad Bird (probably not written by Brad Bird) and then opened the box;
quelle suprise, it was identical to the figure from
seventeen years ago. I keep them around because it's funny that Warner Bros. was so cheap to just re-issue the same old, not very good figurine and refer to it as
premium. Premium doesn't mean anything anymore, it just means more expensive. The entire box set, as nice as some of it is, isn't a premium experience, it's the same Blu-Ray as you could buy off the shelf at the time, with the same hideous menu and the same okay bonus features.
I'm not kidding, this menu is
terrible, look at those stock icons, that art just slapped behind some stock trees against a google-searched sky. This is why home media started to die off, it's only some special features and a commentary track away from being the VHS copy in terms of content, it's absolutely pitiful.
But even if they're crappy and barely articulated, stuck in their stock poses forever and always, I like these guys.
And the really important thing? They have each other.
That's what's premium.
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