Let's rock.
With a body made of nearly indestructible rock, Ben Grimm is a formidable member of the Fantastic Four. Ben can punch through walls,
lift cars, and defeat villains using his impressive super-strength.
The Thing was basically Jack Kirby's self-insert character. "Benjamin Jacob Grimm" gets hs middle name from Jack and his first name from Jack's dad, he famously grew up on Yancy Street (the in-universe equivalent of Kirby's Lower East Side neighborhood of Delancey St.), Kirby was a rough-and-tumble little tough guy who ended up working with a big talker prone to fits of exaggeration... it was not common in comics to mention the characters' religion, but Ben being Jewish was sort of an open secret, similar to Northstar being gay. Ben was the outsider, always a little insecure around the rest of the team, and the movie plays that up subtly.
Back in 2005 Fox considered using CGI to create their version of The Thing, but Michael Chiklis argued in favor of doing it as a practical
effect, and eventually the studio agreed that the technology wasn't there yet. Well, a lot can change in two decades, so MCU Thing is fully CGI. Waiting was the right choice, because there's no way he would have looked this good 20 years ago. The design is straight out of the comics, with the big brow, the deep-set eyes, the small nose, and large mouth. That they were able to so perfectly capture the comic styling in live action is impressive, and this toy duplicates it wonderfully.
Once it was confirmed that Thing was Jewish, a lot of parallels were drawn between the guy made of orange rocks and the golem of legend, as though that had been part of Kirby's inspiration. It seems like a logical connection, right? Well, it might, if you forget that Kirby didn't originally draw Thing like he was made of stone. In fact, for a long time Jack refused to draw Ben like stones! If you look at the first couple years of the book, he was drawing Thing like he had some sort of
dinosaur scales or something - definitely an organic texture, not mineral. The inkers had trouble understanding what Jack was going for (which is why the first handful of issues make him look "muddy"), but then Dick Ayers and George Roussos gradually moved away from "lumpy" to "rocky," and when Joe Sinnott took over in issue #44, he just continued what it looked like the others had already been doing, and suddenly Thing was hard rocks. Sinnott may have been the tenth inker Fantastic Four had, but he was also one of the most respected artists in the business, so while Kirby had previously kept drawing the skin the way he always had, no matter how it got inked, when he saw that Joe thought something needed to be changed, he changed his style to match. If Joe was gonna ink rocks,
then Jack was gonne draw rocks! And that's how we got the craggy guy this toy represents today.
This toy shows Ben in his version of the team's uniform: a pair of pants and nothing else. He does appear like this in the film, very briefly, but his usual look includes boots rather than bare feet, and a sweater that made him look fairly unique among Things. It's a shame the First Steps action figure doesn't give us that look, but maybe Hasbro will do that version later. This one does have the advantage of being able to better show off the sculpt. There's no wash or anything on the body - any shadows or highlights you see among those rocks is entirely natural.
Articulation is pretty average for a character the size of Thing: barbell head, swivel/hinge shoulders, swivel biceps, swivel/hinge elbows, swivel/hinge wrists, a balljointed chest, swivel waist,
balljointed hips, swivel thighs, double-hinged knees, and swivel/hinge ankles. They could have put swivels in the shins where the legs emerge from the pants, if they weren't blatantly cheaping out on those joints now. Having the waist immediately below a balljoint was kind of unnecessary, why not cut that out and give us shins instead? Plus, the bicep and elbow joints are so large and so close together that the upper arm can just spin independently without turning the arm. We've seen issues like that on Super7 figures, but this is the
first time it's hit Hasbro.
Benji's only pack-ins are alternate open hands you can use if you don't want him to have fists. Be careful when swapping his right hands, because the wrist communicator he wears is a separate piece. If you've seen the movie you'll know that they could have given him an alternate head, but it's possible that was created too late in production for the toy to include it.
Honestly, we do hope Hasbro does a second version of Thing. Give him his alternate head, give him his sweater, and then, because 50% of the toy would be reused molds, give us a cute little HERBIE, dang it! The 2005 live-action Thing was good, considering the limitations of the era, but getting a somehow comic-accurate version today is even better.
-- 11/09/25
Shirts or skins? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.
|
