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Engineering perfection with a mysterious twist.
Jules is the daughter of an international crime boss
who refuses to live in her dad's shadow. Left to fend for herself, she learned how to rebuild the world the way she wanted to see it and is on track to be one of the greatest inventors of all time.
See, the nice thing about these Fortnite figures is, even when companies making them don't bother to say a single word about who they are, the game itself offers at least something, whether it be a single jokey line from the Item Shop or, in cases like this (where the skin in question was also an in-game character), a more substantial biography. She's got all this lore, invented a perpetual energy generator at age 12, and is one of the few characters who gets to particpate in the ongoing story, but apparently doesn't warrant a mention of any of it.
Midas, as a character, looked fairly young - definitely not old enough to have a daughter as old as Jules. She was first hinted at as a photo in Midas' private quarters during Chapter 2 Season 2, then a reflection in a loading screen, then finally appeared in Season 3, once Midas had been eaten by a shark. But it wasn't until three seasons later that she confirmed their relationship: "Were you around during my dad's whole Device thing? I can't keep track." Until then, it was a popular assumption that she was his girlfriend or sister. Because they look almost the same age.
Jules definitely looks like someone who would spend her days working in a garage lab. She wears brown boots, old blue jeans with
attached kneepads, a heavy toolbelt, thick gloves, and a tank top she's tied into a knot on one side to make it more fitted. Her hair is pulled into two braids that fall over her shoulders, and a pair of goggles are pushed up on top of her head. Her abdomen, arms, and neck are covered with tattoos, with only har face remaining unblemished. Their purple, paired with her black lipstick, definitely make her goth-coded, even if she's wearing bright colors.
Hasbro failed to keep the Fortnite Victory Royale Collection alive long enough for there to be any appreciable difference
between the articulation at the beginning and now at the end, so Jules' articulation is good, but mostly unsurprising. She has swivel/hinge ankles, swivel shins, double-hinged knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips, balljointed waist and chest, swivel/hinge wrists, swivel/hinged elbows, hinged pecs (way inside tye torso), swivel/hinge shoulders, and a balljoint head. Her shins are slightly gummy, meaning they want to flex before the ankles do, which is annoying. You might expect the strap around her left thigh to limit the movemet of that leg, but it was done in a very clever way: rather than being attached to the belt's pocket, as it appears to be, it's molded as part of the hip; therefore the thigh can turn inside the loop with no touble, and the entire thing shifts with the leg as it's raised. Someone did something really creative here, and yet it will almost never be seen.
There is one super weird choice, and it's her shirt. In a normal case, you would expect the shirt to be sculpted as part of the upper torso, with the chest balljoint hidden underneath it; it's worked fine for decades, no need to change now. But instead, her shirt is a
separate garment slipped over the figure's body. Which only leaves us to ask: why? What benefit did that provide over the traditional style? What happens if this material degrades in a few years, as similar things have done? We can't even imagine this appealing to perverts, because her boobs are part of the shirt, not the chest inside it. She's supposed to have the Shadow faction logo on her shirt, but mine doesn't; did they skip that app, or did the paint just not stick to the rubber? Overall, this is an odd choice for the figure that we don't understand.
This is a deluxe set, but instead of including a cannon, a weight bench, or a weapons rack you didn't ask for, she's got a bunch of accessories, including her inimitable mechanical owl, Ohm. Two versions, in fact! We'll get to that. Some Back Blings are more than just a backpack, with these having some little animal sitting there and being cute while you play. Ohm the owl is one of these Pets, turning their head to look all around as you play and flapping their wings when you jump. Though unlike most Pets, Ohm does more than just look decorative.
Jules' actual Back Bling is Ohm's personal perch. It looks like a giant orange canister, though the blue bars on the front definitely suggest a large battery or something - you know, like she's going to power all her inventions with it. There's a thick grey bar curving out from the base of it, which is where the bird stands... most of the time. When you crouch, they move up to the bar on top of the backpack for a better view, and things really get wild when Snoop Dogg makes the scene you deploy her glider.
In addition to being a Pet,
Ohm is also technically Jules' Glider. They leave their perch, swoop up above her, and she produces a gigantic monkey wrench that Ohm holds onto to drift her safely down to the ground before swooping back to their perch. The set includes that massive wrench (aka the "Big Lug"), which doubles as her Harvesting Tool. But there's no way Ohm would actually be able to support it, right? That's where the second Ohm comes in.
The upper jaw of the wrench is removable, and can be replaced with an alternate version that has Ohm permanently attached, meaning you can use this single accessory as either a weapon or a glider. Nice! Both Ohm bodies are the same, with articulated wings and heads, it's just that this one has part of a wrench growing from their feet. A massive pair of spread wings are included in the set, because how else are you going to glide? The neat thing is the wings on each Ohm are removable, meaning you could have Ohm sitting quietly on top of the Big Lug if you wanted, or have them trying to fly on the backpack.
Unfortunately, I'm about 100% certain the two Ohms' tails have been switched: it's supposed to be flat when they're perched and flared out when they're flying, but the toys are the other way around. No way to fix them, either, short of cutting them off and regluing them.
While Jules doesn't include a flight stand of her own (sadly), the set does include a adapter to plug Ohm onto any you might have.
It's hard to spot, but there's a hole on the back of the wrench head (hidden by Ohm's tail) where the adapter plugs in, and then the whole thing can be used with a stand. There's also a second clear piece, a little ring that fits onto the other end of the adapter, but you don't need it: it's a duplicate of a piece that already exists inside the flight stands, so what the heck is it doing here?
The Big Lug is just one of two forms Jules' Harvesting Tool can take. You can also choose to make it a pair of smaller twin torque
battle wrenches, the "Wrenchers" mode. Not content with just one form, Hasbro's given us both! The Wrenchers keep the grey and orange colorscheme, and both her hands are molded to hold the vicious-looking little things. All these extras may be why she doesn't include any guns - a particular oversight, since defeating the character as an NPC boss gave players Jules' Glider Gun, which shot farther than usual and allowed anyone who found it to deploy Ohm. We know Hasbro already had a Grappler mold, so why not reuse it here? It would just need a gold paint app for the spool and black for the plunger.
We're still not done with accessories yet! Jules was a Battle Pass character, which means completing challenges in the game unlocked new styles for her. Complete five challenges from Week 5, and you got Welder
Jules, which gave her green coveralls and a red welder's mask pushed up onto her head - very thematic for the engineer character. This set does include the mask, though there's no way in game to have the mask without also the rest of the outfit. It's molded to sit down over her face, like happens when you're aiming a weapon while wearing it, but you can also rest it on the back of her head for the way it's more often seen. This is a really nice extra to have even if it doesn't technically go with these clothes.
I've been waiting for this figure to show up, because it's a cool set with a lot of cool pieces. It was only while writing this review that I found out it was an Amazon exclusive. This is like Roadblock all over again. Come on, guys, you need to actually publicize this stuff! Of course, if Hasbro actually had any interest in their Fortnite line, it wouldn't be ending after just its second year.
-- 09/15/23
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