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somebody please spare a thought for the children?
This is where tonight's figure comes in. Kin, from Spawn Series 23: Mutations,
is a brutal re-imagining of everyone's favorite Spawn character, Billy Kincaid.
For the uninformed, Billy had lots of thoughts for the children. He liked to
mutilate and kill them in his spare time, while not driving his ice cream truck
around, prowling for fresh meat. While Todd really can't sell a normal Billy
figure for fear of being burned at the stake by angry villagers with pitchforks
and a windmill, he's quite happy to make a demonized version, a twisted crouched
figure wielding a bloody axe and a child's severed arm, encumbered by a demonic
monkey thing on his back and face covered by a bloodied metal mask wired to a
bloodied pig's snout. What a wonderful world! We call him Kin, and he's
available in good toy shops across the country, without a hint of protest. Woo-Hoo!!
Kin is a lovely little figure to admire, with a beautiful sculpt hindered only
be weak articulation. He's restricted to crouching only 5" tall (an inch more if
you count his demon-monkey) because he has no leg articulation. Stuck in his
crouched-over pose, he looks ideally pained, but it doesn't help for any
playability. Kin moves at the elbows, shoulders, waist, neck and shins, and his
little monkey friend has arm articulation, which makes for no playability, but
why anyone would want to play with this in the first place is a question sure to
be studied by psychologists for years.
Moving on, assuming that Kin is a collectors piece, this is a wonderfully
demented figure. Clothed in steel-cap boots, torn brown pants and a pitiful
orange vest, Kin is dressed to impress, complete with all the little details you
expect before going completely over the line of insanity, to focus on his metal
cap and disgusting face mask. His face is reminiscent of the psycho-inbreds from
Wrong Turn, a nice effect, and his big lumbering limbs dwarf his considerably
small body - this is a really messed up figure. The monkey-demon on his back is
detailed simply but effectively, with a little bit of paint slop, but overall
quite good. Detail and sculpt is great on the figure, aside from some minor
paint issues, fortunately mostly ignorable because of the "dirty" appeal of the
figure. It's disgusting.
Accessories impress; first up, we have the great severed arm, the former owner
most likely a child. It's a nasty little thing, sculpted in warm soft rubber,
with detail to show it's been poorly hacked from the owner, complete with bone
sticking out. Lovely! The axe is Kin's weapon of choice, and it comes in two
parts so it can fit together in his closed hand via a peg. Dirty and bloody, it
looks a lot nicer than previous axes I've seen with figures, a great touch to
the figure. Although not technically an accessory, the monkey comes off Kin's
back, attached via electric skullcap and wire to Kin's head. The wire should be
removable so we can see the monkey and Kin detached from each other, but it's
not a big issue. Finally, the gross pig-snout thing fits onto Kin's face easily
with a couple of pegs, and looks utterly foul. The mouth open and shuts thanks
to that same warm rubber plastic, and the piece is well painted with glittering
blood. Kin also comes complete with a base, which spins to show off Kin's
sculpt, and also includes a cardboard backdrop to fit him into the Mutations
line.
Overall, Kin is a fine figure which no sane person should be caught owning. How
come there aren't people picketing this abomination all over the world?! The
kid's arm is really pretty sick, folks. I love it, and the rest of the figure is
fun too. Think Tortured Souls meets Spawn, and you've got Kin, fun for the whole
family. Not.
- Shocka
(September 21, 2003) |
