Toy Review: Pumpkinhead 1:10 Scale figure by Syndicate
It's a great Pumpkinhead, Charlie Brown
Syndicate made quite a big splash as a new toy company at Comic-Con a couple years ago, with a whole host of impressive license reveals from True Romance to Ghoulies 2 and Kickboxer. Featuring the creative work of longtime toymaker and movie special effects guy Jerry Macaluso, formerly of SOTA and Pop Culture Shock, along with the business sense of Toynk, it was poised to become a new competitor to the likes of NECA and McFarlane. I interviewed Macaluso at that first show (no linkage here to ex-employers), and he was delighted to be back on the creative end without having to worry about the business part. He also said the pricing would be competitive with similar companies.
Two years on, the initial enthusiasm has been downsized a bit. They’re still predominantly a statue company, because action figures are more complicated. One of the action figures they did make, a werewolf from The Howling, was promptly one-upped and undercut in price by NECA. Macaluso has always had the inside track on the Pumpkinhead license, though, at every company he’s had. McFarlane made the first Pumpkinhead figure way back in Movie Maniacs, but ever since then, it’s been a license grabbed by Jerry, who has access to the original props for scanning and replication. So one thing Syndicate has done right is get him out there, as a 1/10 scale figure, a 1/6 scale figure, and a statue.
The package says it’s 1/12 scale, which is what Marvel Legends and Star Wars Black series are. It’s really not. It’s closer to 1/10, which is what most NECA and McFarlane toys are, which is to say humans are 7-inches and other characters scaled relative to that. Pumpkinhead is meant to stand around eight feet tall — here he is with a 7-inch McFarlane Batfleck figure. You be the judge.
Is it competitive with NECA in pricing? Not so much. It’s $65, which is more than twice a standard NECA Ultimate, and still more than the oversized NECA Ultimates that hover around $50. I was fortunate enough to get it on the last day of Comic-Con, when Syndicate had everything marked half-off at their booth. (I was so tempted to buy the 1/6 scale one for $150, but I had spent a lot already.) So I got this Pumpkinhead for about $37, which is more reasonable, and in line with NECA horror characters.
That said, Trick or Treat studios do a Pumpkinhead figure in the same scale, with more limited articulation, and charge $80. Next to that, it’s a good deal. Besides, if you want a Pumpkinhead in scale with most of your other horror figures, with an equivalent amount of detail and poseability, this is likely to be it for a while. That said, the McFarlane one is pretty easy to find for cheap on eBay, like $30 or so. It’s less articulated, but not entirely unposeable, and the same scale.
Pumpkinhead comes with two extra heads, an extra right hand that can hold accessories, and a “wooden” cross accessory, which I won’t be posing it with because we have too many Christian friends who would take that overly seriously. I know that extra heads tend to add a lot to the cost, but it’s interesting that the difference between them all is just different degrees of open eyes and mouth. I can imagine other toy companies hiding a hinge on the jaw so that it could make those expressions with one head. Maybe that would be cheaper. I’m not sure. I personally am the sort of collector to pick my favorite head and just stick to it. If you’re not, this adds variety, and might allow aspiring stop-motion animators to let it “talk.”
When it comes to articulation, most of his joints are ball joints of some variety. The neck joint is a barbell/double-ball, the hips are true ball joints, and the waist and mid torso also seem to be. The rest are all disc-and-pin: shoulders, elbows, wrists, knees, mid thighs, ankles, and base-of-tail, with a bendy wire in the tail end of the tail. He’s verry poseable, but you might want a waist stand for him. Though his left foot has a hole for a foot [eg, and it fits McFarlane stands, the joints are not super tight and he could fall without middle support.
The sculpt is impeccable, covering for the joints where possible, and properly capturing the creature that one could call one of the best Alien ripoffs of all time. The paintwork is nicely subtle, with blue veins and texture shading that could be mistaken for lighting effects, but are actual coloring. Up close he really does look a bit like a fancy costume, while properly lit, he is terrifying.
To get the closest to what the figure actually looks like, a neutral gray backdrop and flash worked the best.
But who can resist real cobwebs? Not this toy photographer!
At the price I got him for, he’s a great value and a nice asset to the collection, though I’ll probably lean him against something to ensure he doesn’t shelf dive. The coloring is impeccable, the articulation more than functional (though some joints could have been slightly tighter or clickier), and the resemblance to the original prop as exacting as it should be given that Macaluso had access to it. Obviously I would love it if he could finally make those last characters SOTA prototyped but never got to — Herbert West, Leprechaun, and Anubis. Knowing Jerry, I’d say he’ll try to do Killer Klowns figures again. I hope he can actually get the prices down a bit to be competitive — I don’t think anyone paying $65 will say, “This sucks and I’m disappointed with the product,” but many casual buyers might consider it too steep.
Still, what can I say but that it’s a great Pumpkinhead figure, Charlie Brown? Hell some of the pictures above creep me out, and I took them. It’s everything it needed to be, at that price or otherwise.
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