The upcoming six inch-scaled Monster Force figures from Fresh Monkey Fiction got a bit of a preview at the recent Joe Fest last month in the form of translucent variants of their Dracula and Forgotten King figures. I’ve been patiently awaiting this line and patience has never been my strong suit, so I jumped at the chance to order these guys from Big Bad Toy Store after the con to get my first in hand look at the construction of these upcoming figures. Let’s take a look at the Blood Prince Dracula and Omen of Doom Forgotten King!
For a guy who works on figure packaging, I’m fairly uninterested in keeping it, so I appreciate this low-fi baggy approach to the figure. Easier to tear into and get at the figure itself. I wonder if this method saves the company a significant amount of money on the production side…
Both figures came with a good amount of stuff including stands, extra hands, blast effects, and weapons. Dracula gets an additional portrait along with two sets of grip hands, clawed hands, a stand, and a sword. The Forgotten King (going to abbreviate this as TFK) has a staff, two energy effects, four sets of hands (fist, grip, chop, and open), and a stand. The basic grip hands look like the same sculpting on both figures, but it’s cool to me that the open hands are different as Drac’s are clawed.
Stands don’t usually do much for me, but I dig these two, especially the pool of blood for Dracula since he looks like he’s made of blood and it kind of gives me the vibe that he’s emerging from a pool of blood from a sacrifice to resurrect him. The regular stand is neat because it can double as a tombstone when placed on its side and features a nice inlay of the Monster Force logo.
Dracula’s Sword and TFK’s staff both fit securely in the grip hands and feature cool designs with sharp sculpting detail. I like the dragon theme on Dracula’s sword as it harkens back to him being in the historical Order of the Dragon. TFK’s staff has an ornate skull motif on the top with a blade at the bottom. Those pieces can be easily popped off or replaced, so it might be neat to swap these translucent glow parts onto the regular figure when it arrives.
The extra hands pop on and off easily, but stay on securely. Dracula has clawed grip hands in addition to the standard grip hands that seem more designed for trigger weapons, but can hold the sword and can kind of look like he’s beckoning with his fingers. The chop and fist hands make me think TFK might be a bit more hand to hand fighting oriented than I was thinking originally.
The energy effects can pop onto TFK’s wrists if you pop his hands off. It’s very reminiscent of a lot of Marvel Legends energy effects. I also balanced it on the staff for a fun effect.
Dracula’s portraits give you the requisite duality of the character shifting between suave sophisticate and feral beast.
The two figures share a lot of parts, it looks like the majority of the body is the same with different torso overlays making the suits feel a bit more unique for each character. I like the different texture they’ve applied to the pants and the bodies feel like a nice middle ground between 100% realistic human proportions and the superhuman feel of Marvel Legends. It’s right in that G.I. Joe Classified wheelhouse. The heads also do a lot of work to differentiate the two with a very cool Egyptian themed vibe helmet for the Forgotten King and a not often seen Bearded Dracula portrait. The overlays are one piece, so while it looks like Dracula has a jacket over a vest with a cravat, that’s all one piece of thin plastic and incredibly flexible plastic.
The overlay is very thin so it allows for a lot of leg and waist movement, it does render that mid-torso articulation point moot, however the waist ball joint does get a very nice amount of tilt, so they don’t feel all that stiff to me. The thin overlay also combines well with the butterfly joints to allow for two-handed sword wielding, which I honestly did not expect. It’s a sadly rare thing in super articulated figures lately. The joint quality is pretty solid right out of the box, I didn’t feel like I needed to heat them up to get moving. I think the hips and the ankles could stand to be just a micron tighter, but they held poses fine. To be fair, it is hotter than hell in CA right now. I did end up loosening up the glue on Dracula’s vest when I heated him up and popped him apart to get a closer look at the joints, so you may want to keep that in mind if you are a customizer.
The articulation is as follows:
- Swivel/hinge shoulders, wrists, hips, and ankles
- Ball and socket head, lower neck, mid-torso, and waist
- Double hinged knees and elbows
- Hinged pectoral butterfly joints and neck
- Swivel biceps, thighs, drop-down hips, and boots
Paint on these two is minimal since they are mostly translucent with some popped in eye details, but the Forgotten King does have some nice bright blue glow-in-the-dark color to him. The blue works for me as a power-up and the red makes me think of Deacon Frost as the blood god in the first Blade movie, but I also just enjoy translucent figures in general. It was also nice to see how these guys scale with Legends and Classified as they seem like they will slot in great with a number of 6 inch-ish scale lines.
Overall I enjoy these figures quite a bit and they have increased my excitement for the regular figures that are shipping soon. Monster Force combines two of my current obsessions, G.I. Joe Classified and Universal Monsters, so I didn’t think I could be more hyped for it, but these did the trick. These particular variants are currently sold out on BBTS, but they do have the regular figures for order and the first wave is set to ship soon.
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