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From the awesome minds of Accoutrements, those ripping lads who brought us figures of Einstein and Jesus comes an incredibly genius idea that is The Cubes.
The concept is simple but amazing; mini-figure scaled people, regular office joes, in their tiny office cubes. No super heroes, no movie monsters,
just regular people sitting at their desks surrounded by charts and memos and those amusing photocopies we send each other at the office, in a tiny scale, so we can build our own office! Sound cool? It just gets better!
Each Cube is an individual with a name, a desk, a PC, parts of their wall which click together to make their cube, plus accessories and stickers which you can use to create their official position and personality. It's great fun and the kind of thing even non-toy collectors can get a kick out of - Poe's already done his take with Ted and today it's my turn with Ann.
This is Ann. Everyday she goes to work and sits at a desk surrounded by four grey walls and stares at a computer monitor for 8 long hours with a half hour unpaid lunch break. It may not be the
most exciting job, but it pays the bills. But things are changing in upper management. There's a new boss in charge: you! That means you control the fate of Ann. Will you make her job satisfying, boring or unbearable? Will she be your lackey, your scapegoat or your best pal? It's all up to you, because in this office, you're the boss!
Cleverly enough, each Cube comes packaged in - a cube! The packaging is bright and colorful with an awesome little image on each side, one displaying Ann in her office, another with a "profile," a shot of a lot of cubes together making a proper office maze, and finally a shot of all the accessories in color. It's extremely well done and opening the package even has an amusing quote written on the tab.
Ann herself has a great little mini-figure body that breaks from the mold to assert her as part of this series - she looks exactly like a tiny,
square-headed business woman, complete with the executive white top and the executive black skirt, just above the knee.
Highly articulated, she has a joint below the skirt with separate movement for the legs, a slightly accentuated breast-area and a square head. The paint is all perfect and simple, thus simply perfect. Her lipsticked lips, the collar on her shirt and her little pearl necklace [not what you're thinking, sickos --ed.] are all excellent - Ann rocks.
I don't own many mini-figures, but Ann is one of the best articulated minis I've ever seen. Everything is awesome, from the semi-balljointed shoulders to those impressive skirt/leg joints I mentioned before (which allow her to sit nicely on her swivel chair, even with the skirt) it all works perfectly. Plus Ann can hold some accessories from other Cubes with her open hands, it's all perfect.
Considering her square office cube as an accessory,
plus all of her other bits, Ann is loaded, and this is where the Cubes get their identity. Ann includes three wall pieces and one half-wall, which link together with several connectors to make the office cube, or to join on to other office cubes for one big office. They snap together easily and are nice and durable, a perfect little workplace for our little drone here.
Inside the cube fits Ann's desk, filing cabinet (with opening drawer), a swivel office chair (that really swivels!) an In/Out box, a telephone and an awesome little computer, with a mouse and
mousepad attached. It's all very cool, and you can fit it into the office however you want - you're the boss! All of the accessories are made of the same grey plastic, which looks a little boring without...
...the stickers! To decorate the office, Ann comes with several office decor sticker sheets. The first shows a group of Job Titles, which you can put at the entrance to the Cube to give Ann her official job title for the job she's slacking off in. Then, her decor sheets include amusing print-outs and "inspirational" quotes to put around her office, as well as an adorable kitten calendar, several charts and figures, and finally a selection of stickers to put on Ann's PC screen, similar to the Zim figure stickers. Or my favourite, a screen playing Solitare. Tee hee!
The Cubes are genius - a great idea with great execution. Lots of fun, fully customizable and your very own office, everyone loves the Cubes.
-- 09/30/10
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