Finally, at long last, I stumbled across the Playmates Toys Godzilla 2016 on a routine trip to Wal-Mart. And man… Well, let’s begin.
Details
Well, Shin Godzilla fits your typical six inch line of figures. He’s mostly made of hard plastic with his head, arms, spines, feet and last section of his tail a soft rubber or vinyl material. His tail comes in two separate parts that needs put together and then attached to the main body, a feat that isn’t hard to do at all. Sculpt detail here isn’t all that bad. It’s not good, per say, but it is a lot better than what we got from Playmates’ SpaceGodzilla and Destoroyah releases. The whole figure has plenty of bumps, ridges and general non-smooth parts. I like the spines as well. One complaint can be done that the tail’s face doesn’t appear to be sculpted.
So, let us address the biggest elephant in the room with this release. Is this based on the NECA Godzilla 2016? Well, it’s honestly hard to tell. Because there are a lot, and I mean A LOT of similarities in the sculpt. The tails are exactly the same length; the spines are the same, feet, etc. Almost everything seems to be identical, in sculpt, to NECA’s. You can easily see some of the same sculpt detail in parts of the figure. I have included several close up comparison shots of what would be minor details to show just how similar each sculpt is.
The head, however, does seem to be a bit different. However, this could be because Playmates’ eyes are painted larger and more apparent than most Shin Godzilla figures. Additionally, Shin lacks the “chest spike” and “thigh spikes” that are so apparent on NECA’s. Additionally, the shoulders are wider on this release than the NECA’s and it also stands a tad bit taller.
It is my own belief (and only that until proven true or not) that Playmates’ Godzilla 2016 IS based on the sculpt from NECA, thus with some modifications. Unfortunately then, whatever complaints one has with NECA’s sculpt, you will have with this. This includes the proportions not looking accurate, the mouth too elongated, and the tail not able to loom overhead and being too short.
Articulation
Shin’s head and arms can rotate a full 360 degrees while its legs can pull 180s. Each tail section (mid and end) can rotate, with the end able to do a full 360. Like SpaceGodzilla, for some reason, they also made Shin’s feet able to rotate fully around.
Accessories
None.
Paint
Paint is a bit of a hit and miss, but it does look a lot better than their Destoroyah and SpaceGodzilla. Thankfully, Shin is pretty simplistic when it comes to colors, so the red applied throughout his body looks simply okay. It could use some more red here and there, mainly on the limbs, torso and spines, but it isn’t that bad. I admit, I also really like how they did Shin’s eyes here. The teeth here, however, are just bad and ruin the face of the beast. Once again, instead of even trying, Playmates just slapped white stripes across the upper and lower jaws so now it looks like the horrifying monster took a break from destroying Tokyo and started gnawing on a giant container of cool whip. The claws of the monster are cleanly painted a grayish color, not unlike that of its NECA counterpart.
Overall
So, yeah. It’s not the worst of the original four Playmates toys, but isn’t the best either. I’d still say that honor goes to their Gigan. However, for a $12 kid’s toy, it isn’t half bad. Sure, it’s most likely based on the NECA sculpt and that alone is pretty lazy, but it’s not like we haven’t seen toy lines reuse prior molds and base figures on other lines. Honestly, if it wasn’t for the horrible teeth paint, I’d award this figure a solid 3 instead of a 2.
This figure is a kids toy. If you’re a collector and looking for a typical six inch figure, I’d definitely go with the movie monster series or NECA.
**Below are a number of bonus images of the figure.**
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