Figura Obscura

My pleasure.
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"Eyyyy, Fuhggedaboudit", as the Jersey Devil would say.

I'm a day late, but I'm diggin' that Devil. It's a weird time for me money-wise, so not sure if I'll be able to quite swing it, but I'd like to if I can. Having a dedicated cryptid shelf would be a childhood dream come true. Otherwise, I'm sure it'll get re-released in the future for their retailer release thing they do, even if it'll be different. Those releases have all been rather mixed- most I don't like as much as the original releases, but some I like better.
 
ManOfTheLamb said:
Ooh. Looks rad. What's that head?
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It's from Planetary Dog Toys. Sebastian, the sculptor, was my favorite 3rd party modeler for Mythic Legions because he was so good at matching the same level of detail on the 4H figures. However, it seems like his freelance sculpting has really taken off after he sculpted the Plunderlings and several of the animal warriors for Furay Planet so he's slowly winding down his shop and most of his sculpts aren't available anymore.

The scythe is from Maoiway, who's undoubtedly a great sculptor, but can be hit or miss in his ability to match his level of detail to the existing line.
 
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If they had gone strictly by that newspaper illustration, that not only wouldn’t have been a cool looking toy, but it wouldn’t have been very functional either. Those skinny legs would never support the weight above.
 
I disagree that it wouldn't have made a cool toy. It definitely would've been hell to stand up, but they included a stand anyways, so it would've been fine.
 
I feel the final figure lined up with Jean St. Jean’s statue fairly well, with his incorporating the wings into the arms rather than separately like the FO being the biggest difference. It’s a goofy looking cryptid, no matter the interpretation. I think they did a great job making it look scary and cool rather than goofy and silly. I don’t feel the complaints they’re getting are fair as they had a tough description to work with and did a good job with it. Certainly not for everyone and that’s perfectly fine and kind of part of the fun of FO.
 
It's a fine figure. And I understand that they had a tough job. The thing is, with Bigfoot, and Mothman, there are certain things you need for them to be recognizable as that character, so people do different versions and think "hey! Thats bigfoot!" With the Jersey Devil, the original goofy drawing will always be my minds eye, and seeing something that isn't that will always be a dissapointment. Like, if anyone were to do Fresno Nightcrawler, there's not a lot to work with there. I'd still love to see one done though. I understand why they picked the Jersey Devil, but they still picked a tough one to start with. If the first one they did was Mothman, or bigfoot, or even the Flatwoods Monster, I feel like they'd have gotten a better response.
 
Yeah, I don't think it's a terrible figure or anything but at the end of the day it comes off as more Baphomet than Jersey Devil cryptid to me. I think there's a way to make the newspaper depiction more menacing and cool but also more recognizable as the Jersey Devil.

Myself, I was looking forward to something more monstrous than devilish.
 
A big part 9f it is probably that the original depiction of the Jersey Devil has no human in it at all. They added human features to a cryptid that didn't need them.
 
I can certainly understand why people wouldn’t like the figure, but it’s not the Horsemen’s fault… the Jersey Devil is not an appealing design. I don’t think anyone sitting this one out would have been tossing money at them as fast as they could if it was a one to one recreation of the news paper drawing (yes! except for you, strawman who will quote my entire rant to reply “Um, I would have have bought it if it was 100% accurate to the news paper drawing!”, you’re heard, you’re seen, but you also need to understand your purchase would be countered by the lose of all the people who would skip newspaper skinny horsie head freak because they like “generic demon” so it’s still a net lose) and at the same time, the more they lean into cartoon canned ham mascot for the design, the less it’s “the Jersey Devil” and just “the Debil!”… at least that would solve the accessory problem, give him a golden fiddle and reuse the peach, draw a map of a different state on the mug, and he’s the guy from the Charlie Daniels song!

It’s easy to make Bigfoot: you copy either Harry Henderson, that Jack Links Jerk, Chewbacca, or the Marvel character and change it just enough you don’t get sued and you’re done… it’s weird there’s a shift towards making them orange now, I know, Gigantopithecus was an Orangutan, but they’re not sculpting Gigantopithecus, they’re sculpting the beef jerky mascot with Chewie’s gentle smile, so just make em brown…

Yeti’s are white Bigfoots, they’re not white in the Tibetan traditional depictions (they also don’t live in the inhospitable tops of the mountains, almost as if they were describing regular apes and not video game bosses guarding the end of a snow level) but at some point everyone just decided “no, Yetis are white and live in the snow!” sometimes they got blue skin, sometimes they’re just albino, but just make a white repaint of Bigdoot and boom! Second cryptid done!

Skunk apes are starting to become more Orangutan-esque after the Myakka photos, which is weird since they want to say Bigfoot is the relic giant orangutan but he still remains an up right gorilla because that’s what PGF says… which I’m here for since I like the idea it’s not just another species of Bigfoot and if you’re gonna say Bigfoot exist in every goddamn state I want 50 unique versions, dammit, like they’re Pokemon! I’ve seen people try to push the idea they’re green, like covered in swamp moss, to explain the smell and tie them into lizard men sightings (Lizardmen?! Ridiculous! Bigfoot covered in moss? Now you may be onto something…) which as fan of MossMan I like, the idea God himself ran out of ideas like Mattel in 1987 and said “I don’t know… repaint Bigfoot and cover him flocking? Make him smell funny? Is that anything?!” But at the same time, it’s some real Mortal Kombat lazy bullshit to be able to recolor your Bigfoot/Yeti sculpt a third time and call it a new character (but not you Loose Collector! I’ll give you another $110 for a green Yeti/Sasquatch/Skookum, he might not be my Skunk Ape, but he’ll have fun with my other Moss Men!)

Nessie is a Plesiosaur (a weird outdated one who floats on the surface with a graceful neck as if they were swans not whales, but still) I know indie crypt toy lines usually don’t get to Nessie because “too big” but buy your favorite Jurassic World plesiosaur and you’re golden. Buy all your favorite JW Plessies and have the whole gang! Oogo Poggo! Champ! The only limit is your willingness to dignify claims “no that lake has a monster too!” with validation! I know there’s a growing group trying to make them giant eels or sturgeons, and all I gotta say is go sit the fuck down! No one asked you to “sensibly explain how Nessie could be real”, guess what! She isn’t! (Oh! We all agree Nessie is female right? Like cat=girl, dog=boy. Nessie is a girl, and Sasquatch is a boy, even though the most popular “real” footage of a Bigfoot is of a female) don’t take the magic out of looking for real monsters! Nessie is a dinosaur!

Chupacabras are either weird spikey grey aliens with bad skin and those little arm pit wings Spider-man has sometimes when they remember to draw them, or poor stray dogs some lady in Texas caught and tortured and the world played along and said “sure! that dead dog you’re waving around is the Chupacabra!” so now chupacabras are ugly dogs I guess… I’m glad Loose Collector is going for the classic 90’s era weird alien guy, but maybe the Horsemen could do that modern take as a way to preuse a devil dog buck or something… or maybe if you want a messed up dog chuppie on your shelf you could just use an MCU Dogpool! Peggy is best Chupacabra!

Mothman is going to run into the same problems as Jersey Devil, as the original drawing and the pop culture versions working off the name are wildly different… there’s something to be said about how cool an enormous shadow owl with glowing red eyes would look as a figure (Owls are absolutely terrifying) but there’s gonna be people who will argue “but he’s moth man, not owl man!” And want something more bug like, and while there’s probably a happy middle ground (there are after all big puffy moths), I still feel like you’re going to encounter purist on both sides who want the original drawing: fluffy, no antenna, and big bird wings, or who want the statue: antenna, bug wings, and big juicy ass. McF could really do the world a favor here and make a MegaFig of either Killer Moth in his giant Moth form (I know he has proper name in that form to distinguish him from stripy tights regular guy Killer Moth but I don’t want to look it up) or Mothman from Fallout, at least that way you can explain away how it’s not the exact version of the cryptid you’d want because it’s based on source material.

The ancient Mezco Jersey Devil figure is a generic demon figure, Jean St Jean’s statue is goat man doing a shoryuken, the mascot for the NHL team is a canned ham generic Lucy Fur, the WWDitS Jersey Devil is a Krampusnaucht costume with a bad dragon glue to the front for jokes, cryptozoology debunkers think the news paper drawing might be inspired by an African Hammerhead Bat… there’s no pop culturally agreed upon look for the Jersey Devil. The Horsemen did just about as good a job as you could expect from them given they’re not the most creative bunch and tend to think google image search as a free concept art machine. In Dork Lair’s video he compares it to Krampus… Krampus is a Mythic Legions figure with a new head and no other changes, all you had to do was put their red demon head from the heads pack on Retailer Krampus and he matched his Blue and Yellow brother’s perfectly. The Jersey Devil doesn’t lean harder into “debil” and is at least trying to look like a little like newspaper drawing is huge for them.

… although I do hope the retailer version goes full cartoon debil and is red. I have an extra retailer Krampus head from giving the Head pack demon a body, and it would probably look pretty good on this body.
 
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