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Manufacturer: Sideshow Toy, Inc. (www.sideshowtoy.com) |
Kroenen
Time to bring on the bad guy. Evil minion and one-time Nazi Kroenen has been released by Sideshow in no less than three different incarnations. First we'll take a look at the mass-retail version.
Like Hellboy and Abe Sapien before him, Kroenen's package art shows off the
character in a dynamic bluescale image on a black box against a smoky backdrop.
There's something a bit illustrated-and-Photoshopped-looking about Kroenen in
this picture. Maybe it's the smoothness of his mask and costume. Or maybe it's
the fact that someone forgot to draw in the bottom half of his right arm. And where the heck is the handle of that left-hand sword attached? Seriously,
it's not just me, is it?
Once again, the figure's name appears at the top left, with nary an actor credit to be seen. Photos of the figure and film character reflect the other Hellboy boxes in the series, and we get some new backstory on Kroenen on the back. Inside the flap is the standard Hellboy image and movie description.
Now this is one creepy dude. Kroenen's design is very simple, but there were
plenty of ways that a company could have screwed it up. Fortunately, Sideshow
has done a great job. Kroenen has the normal Sideshow body, and on him the
skinniness works. They've packed some impressive articulation into the body,
and with the aid of the included stand, you can put Kroenen into all sorts of
ninja-like action poses.
Most of Kroenen's outfit is a form-fitting black unitard. It's thin and stretchy, has what I take to be a fake zipper running up the front, and snaps in the back in case you ever have a hankering for a nekkid "autopsy scene" Kroenen (hey, there's a disquieting variant we haven't seen yet!). Not that I'd recommend taking off Kroenen's outfit - given the sheer number of straps and buckles, plus the difficulty of getting the pants tucked back into the boots, there's no guarantee that you'd ever be able to get it to look this good again.
The unitard has a hood that covers the back of Kroenen's head - and what a noggin it is. Not being a big horror buff, I'll be displaying this guy with his mask securely in place. Kroenen's schtick is that he's big into performing surgery on himself, but this is one facelift that's gone terribly wrong. His skin is shrunk tight against his skull, he's covered in scars and stitches, and raw flesh peeks through around his lidless eyes and lipless mouth. Unsettling.
Of course, Kroenen's face design isn't Sideshow's fault, and they've done their usual great job in capturing his nightmarish appearance. The sculpted detail is sharp and painfully accurate, and the exposed eyeballs and flesh glisten moistly. Sculpt, colors and paint lines are all dead-on. Literally.
In the movie, Kroenen's chestplate is an elaborate Victorian life-support system (or unlife-support system, as the case may be). I'd have loved to see a removable clockwork heart for the undead assassin, but it was not to be. What we do get is an intricately detailed chest- and backplate, painted and weathered to look like antique brass. The sculpt detail here is amazing, capturing all of the elaborate curlicues and scrollwork of the film costume. The plates are made of soft plastic, helping them to flex with Kroenen's torso, although a little residual stiffness prevents them from being quite as form-hugging as they might be. The plates are held on by a pair of simu-leather straps at the top, complete with working plastic buckles, and by a soft plastic harness that wraps around the figure's ribs. Sculpted and painted to look like leather, the harness is stitched up at the sides with real thread, adding a great touch of realism to the figure.
Unlike Hellboy and Abe, Kroenen has a molded plastic belt, and it's a lot more durable because of it. The belt is impressively rendered, with separate straps and buckle that make me suspect that it could be removed by someone with very deft fingernails. Attached to the belt by short lengths of elastic are a pair of hard plastic sheaths for Kroenen's baton-swords, with additional elastic straps holding them onto his legs. Thanks to the elastic, the figure retains full leg articulation despite the long scabbards. A smaller pair of knife sheaths are strapped onto Kroenen's upper arms, and like the first set they seem to be fully removable. They don't include the movie's buckles and straps for the knife handles, which is understandable at this scale but does make them look a little less realistic.
Kroenen's hands are sculpted as gloves, with fingers shaped to hold his array of bladed weapons. The detail is once again excellent, and like Kroenen himself, the gloves look as if they've been stitched together from random strips of leather. They're painted matte black (no weathering on this guy), with a shiny strip across the knuckles where a different material is meant to be peeking through. They hands are great sculpts, but the grip on one is a little tight, making me worry about scraping the paint off the weapon handles. Still, I've put them in and taken them out of his hands a few times now with no ill effects.
Kroenen wears a pair of knee-high military-style jackboots, as modeled by all ex-Nazi clockwork assassins. They're nice and shiny, but they do cut his ankle articulation to nil.
He also includes a pair of masks. The first is his standard battle mask, a
smooth, flexible shell with simple lenses and an apparatus around the chin
to help him breathe. It attaches to Kroenen's face with an elastic strap
and stays securely in place. The paint and detail work here is excellent,
and although I'm not sure why the eyepiece lenses were made matte black,
they add a nice element of zombie soullessness to the figure.
Kroenen's second mask is by far the more visually interesting, although he wore it for only a short period in the film. It resembles a stylized human face, with intricately inscribed patterns. The breathing device is more ornate and delicate-looking, and overall you get the impression that this is Kroenen's off-duty mask, the face that he'd wear around the base or to formal evildoer functions. Paint here is again superb, with tiny brass and silver details flawlessly picked out and weathering on the metallic parts of the mask. It attaches to Kroenen's face with two elastic straps, and unlike the battle mask, there are designs inscribed on the inside of the mask to match the exterior.
What I really love about the masks is that there's genuine play value here. They're not fragile (although you wouldn't want to stretch the elastic so far that the glue came loose), and they pop on and off without difficulty. Kroenen isn't a toy for children by any means (even ignoring the subject matter), but it's great to see a collector-aimed item that can still be fun.
Speaking of fun, what could be more fun than whirling around a couple of double-bladed baton-like swords? Quite a lot, possibly, but Kroenen certainly seemed to enjoy it in the movie. He includes four weapons: a pair of knives and his two signature swords. The knives fit perfectly in their arm-mounted scabbards, and although they hang upside-down, the fit is tight enough to keep them in place. They're well painted, with a black handle and silver blade and pommel. They're also quite sharp at the points, and while there's a bit of flexibility in the blade, there's definite potential for breakage.
Kroenen's double-bladed baton swords are also somewhat flexible, which is
a good thing because they'd snap in an instant otherwise. They're very long
and thin, and when they're sheathed in their leg-mounted scabbards, the
exposed short ends of the blades tend to bump up against the figure's torso.
Moving his legs to the side when the swords are sheathed would be impossible
if the blades were any stiffer. You'll encounter the same issue when you put
the swords into his hands - because of the angle of his fingers, the rear
blades bump up against the forearms if you have the figure hold them straight.
Fortunately, you can just angle the swords a little for more clearance. The
swords seem a lot smaller than the ones on the box cover, but given how
much of that image seems to have been digitally tweaked, I'd guess that
they're scaled properly to the actual props.
Like Abe, Kroenen is a fairly simple design with some standout details and no major critical issues. I don't love him quite as much as ol' fish-face, but he's a perfectly fine figure. In fact, he's three perfectly fine figures, because now it's time for...
Hellboy | Abe Sapien | Kroenen | Final Battle Kroenen | Nazi Kroenen
You can see all our pictures of Kroenen in our Gallery!