Pinocchio

2022 was the year of Pinocchio. Audiences were offered three different Pinocchio movies in one year, of vastly different scope and quality. First was the straight-to-DVD version starring Pauly Shore. No, really. Then came Disney's lastest boring live-action remake, and finally Guillermo del Toro's stop-motion version for Netflix. Imagine my surprise when I was walking through Walmart and found it had gotten toys! Oscar-winning filmmaker Guillermo del Toro reinvents the classic story of a wooden puppet brought to life in this stunning stop-motion musical tale. Sadly, no, this is not Part of NECA's Guillermo del Toro Signature Collection, though perhaps we'll get that in the future. For now we have to make do with this "Limited Edition Set" - from Mego, of all people. Carlo Collodi's Storia di un Burattino was first published in 1883, serialized in the children's publication Giornale per i Bambini - which may mean that Pinocchio is technically the first Shonen protagonist? Young boy, different from his peers, takes part in weekly adventures in which he's trying to achieve some far-off goal, any lessons learned seem to reset at the start of a new installment... now that I have said it, it must be canon! I mean, Astro Boy is almost literally a retelling of Pinocchio, so if nothing else, the roots are there. Rather than just making Pinocchio by himself, Mego has opted to do the whole gang, with Geppetto being the only standard figure in the set - it's gotta be a change for him to be the doll for once, huh? The toy is not wearing the outfit shown on the front of the box, to his detriment: the box art, with its dark pants and plaid vest, is a cooler look for him than these striped pants held up by suspenders. It's easy to understand why they chose this look for him - other than the fingerless gloves painted on his hands, it's what he was wearing when he sculpted Pinocchio - but I can personally tell you if he'd been wearing what the box showed, I wouldn't have waited for clearance on it. In the original book, Geppetto was a bad woodworker, but a good father; in GDT's take on the story, he's a masterful woodworker, but does nearly everything wrong as a father: in a drunken stupor, he creates Pinocchio as a replacement for his dead son, then both refuses to treat him like a son, and berates him for not acting like the boy he's replacing. Way to go, Geppi. This toy is a decent re-creation of the real puppet, though possibly the eyes should be a little larger. Or at least the irises should be painted larger. The advantage of doing Megos over regular action figures is the reused plastic body under tiny softgoods clothing. And thus, this geriatric handyman moves just like a werewolf mummy. Better, in fact: Mego introduced a new base body in 2022, with some slightly updated articulation. There's no more rubberband holding the body together, which should make for improved longevity, and now the ankles, elbows, and knees have a swivel in addition to their hinge. The head is on a balljoint, but the bottom of the neck is still flat, so there's not a ton of tilting there. Still, this is a good upgrade. Pinocchio is done in scale with his papa, so there's no way a normal Mego body would ever work for him. Thus, he's basically a glorified accessory. As opposed to every other incarnation of Pinocchio, who all looked like real boys, Guillermo del Toro's actually looks like something someone carved by hand. In a single night. While black out drunk. He's a mess, is what we're saying. Why, if I didn't know better, I'd say this del Toro guy was a fan of monsters! [The Guillermo Del Toro does what the Guillermo Del Toro do --ed.] The figure stands a little over 5⅛" tall, meaning he'll be able to interact with Chucky and Annabelle nicely. His round little body is rough, with large cracks sculpted into the surface and a handful of nails sticking roughly out of his shoulders. Something that happens in the original story that doesn't make it into many adaptations is Pinocchio accidentally buring his own feet off by a fire, but here we can see the bandages wrapped around the shins, repairing his spindly legs. The heart-shaped hole on his chest is here, but without any paint to bring it out, it just blends in with the rest of the body. While Del Toro usually designs his own creatures, this Pinocchio's distinctive style was based on a 2002 edition of the novel illustrated by the cutely-named Gris Grimly. While Disney's Pinocchio could pass for human at a glance, this one is a weird little goblin, with a smile that stretches all the way across his pumpkin-shaped head, "hair" that looks like broken bark sticking off his scalp, and only one ear. Despite being so little, Pinocchio still moves really well. He has joints at the head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, hips, knees, and ankles. Those are mostly tiny swivel/hinges, so be careful with them. The knees are at different heights on the legs, making him look intentionally weird when they're bent. The set's only accessory is an alternate nose for Pinocchio: in the movie, it doesn't only get longer, it actually grows, the way a tree would; so this is more crooked, like a branch, and has a couple little shoots coming off it. Finally, and not in scale with anything (except possibly real life?), we get Sebastian J. Cricket. There is a cricket in the original story, but he doesn't have a name, so "Jiminy Cricket" is purely a Disney thing. Good thing no one ever asks Sebastian what his middle initial stands for, I guess! The original talking cricket just happened to live in Geppetto's house, and was killed by Pinocchio on his first night home alone. GDT's is more like Disney's, being deputized by the Wood Sprite to oversee Pinocchio's development. This is an unarticulated piece, but it certainly does manage to look like an actual insect standing on its back legs. And it manages to stand very well, despite being soft PVC! Being in stop-motion, this is the first time Pinnochio has been played by an actual puppet. Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio is a great reimagining of a classic story, at once both closer to the original and more inventive than most adaptations. The first info about him working on the film was back in 2006, so this has been a long time coming. And look at that, the movie has now deservedly won an Oscar, too! We don't know whether it will be eligible for a NECA figure in the future, but hey, if you got that Mego-style Guillermo del Toro they did at SDCC a few years ago, he can hang out with these figures! Won't that be fun? Megos wouldn't be my first choice for toys, but Pinocchio is as close to a normal action figure as you can possibly get, so don't dismiss this set just because Geppetto has cloth pants. -- 01/21/24

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