Ghost Face Returns

Pretty pointless to be a phonecall-based killer in an age when nobody answers unknown numbers. Someday we hope NECA will begin updating their website again. The last toy the company actually announced was a Mego-knockoff Jack Skellington, with a planned release date of January 2024, meaning it's been two and a half full years of every single product they released being an absolute surprise you can only learn about by finding it on the shelf. Yes, that's surely the best way to market figures that are nearing $40 apiece. Anyway, here's a GhostFace that just showed up at Walmart one day. We've said this before, but we'll remind you again (mainly because having enough text to take up space next to the photos when a qualitative review of this figure could basically just be a list of its accessories is difficult unless we just start rambling stream of consciouness) that none of these toys are based on any Scream movie: Dimension Films licenses the "Ghost Face" design from Fun World, the costume company that owns it, so making toys based on the movie would require NECA to license both the movie and the design separately - that's been true ever since the Movie Maniacs days, when McFarlane Toys got slightly in trouble for initially including a Scream movie poster in their marquee. So while NECA's figures may reference the films, they don't outright represent them, and the toys just have generic names. Like, the last release had a flamethrower accessory, based on a joke in Scream 5, and so the toy was called "Ghost Face Inferno" - very evocative and easy to identify. This one is "Ghost Face Returns" (or "Ghost Face Retur Ns," going by the lettering on the box logo), which really doesn't tell us anything. NECA says it's because this "reimagines [the] original Ultimate Ghost Face with a fresh update," but it's still an unremarkable name. We did review that Ultimate figure at the time, so we can confidently tell you that this one is better. For one thing, the body beneath the softgoods robe is fully sculpted, rather than just being vague shapes. Like, this one uses the same legs, but the butt they go into is sculpted like jeans - seams, pockets, belt loops, all that - instead of being smooth. Similarly, the chest is sculpted like a sweatshit. So even if you choose to remove the robe, you'll still have a decent human figure to show off. Or use as a nice, simple base for a custom. The articulation is more plentiful, too. The legs are the same, of course (swivel/hinge feet, swivel ankles, swivel/hinge knees, swivel thighs, balljointed hips), and the arms still get the double-swivel/hinge elbows in between their swivel/hinge wrists and shoulders, but now we get a balljointed waist in addition to the balljointed chest, and the neck has a balljoint where it meets the body and a barbell where it meets the head, so he's a lot more poseable, even inside that big cloth robe. The robe itself is slightly stretchy, so it will let him get into some really big poses. The figure includes two heads, which doesn't sound like much, but bear with us for a bit. The original Ghostface masks were not just a "mask," but a mask with a built-in shroud; that is, a cloth "hood" piece that held the mask in place, rather than, like, an elastic band that went around the back of your head or whatever. You get the idea. So this toy gets the same thing, but it gets two versions of it: one plain, like we think of it being today, the other with two little flappy-doodles hanging down from it, like Goofy's dog-ears. Those were present on the original real-world masks, but often get overlooked in Scream versions. So you get your choice of how you want this to look, of which type of Ghostface you want it to be. One feature carried over from Ghostface Inferno is alternate versions of the mask done not as separate heads, like they used to be, but as simply alternate face plates that all plug into the same head. Either of the same heads, though you do have to tuck the forehead under the molded hood on the "ear flaps" head. The faces we get, in addition to the plain one that's sort of mandatory to include, we also get one with blood splatters across the eyes, a "bling" mask that appears to be entirely covered in silver rhinestones, and one that's Wicked Witch green, which may be a reference to the blacklight-reactive "fluorescent" masks released back in the '90s pre-movie? It doesn't glow or anything, it's just inexplicably green. And then there's... this is going to take some explanation. You kids may not believe this, but before we had memes, one of the most popular things to do was quote beer commercials at each other. That sounds insane, but I'm not lying. In 1999, Budweiser introduced a new ad campaign in which a group of friends on the phone start by asking "what's up," but end up just screaming "WHASSUP" back and forth. And this was the greatest goddamn thing any of us had ever seen. Apparently. "Whassup" became a bona fide cultural phenomenon, and the truly mad thing is, that wasn't even the first time a Budweiser ad campaign blew up like that! (IYKYK.) Anyway, the gag got so popular, it was copied for the original Scary Movie, with the masked killer getting pulled into the routine when he tried to call his victim. As they all go back and forth, we see a shot of the mask with its eyes squinted and its tongue sticking out, and even that became so popular, Fun World licensed the design from the movie and sold "Scary Movie"-branded versions of their GhostFace mask with that expression! Good lord! There is no modern equivalent we can point to to give you an idea of how big this got. Consider that path: company makes a Halloween mask, movie licenses the mask, second movie parodies the first movie, company licenses the parody movie to sell a mask. And now company gets NECA to include a WHASSUP mask with this figure. My brain is melting! The figure has four pairs of hands: two for holding various accessories, one "call me" (with the thumb and pinky finger extended), and then the set he's got in the package, with the right hand ready to hold something, and the left... pinching? Kind of? The pair of them are designed to do the iconic "knife wiping" thing, where he cleans the blood off his blade. Neat! The set includes two knives - one chromed, one bloody - plus an axe, a bonesaw (reference to the Scream TV series), and a little round voice changer as seen in Scream 3. But just like we said last time, it's dumb to release a Ghostface without a phone! Giving a Ghost Face figure swappable faceplates is a wonderful idea, and the fact NECA made them the same style as the Ghost Face Inferno figure, for maximum swappability, is even better! It's clearly the WHASSUP face that's the #1 draw of this release, but this honestly is an upgrade over the first Ultimate GhostFace in nearly every single way. -- 06/21/26 Is there any recent ad that's been as big as WHASSUP? Tell us on our message board, the Loafing Lounge.