The Dungeons & Dragons cartoon was short-lived, but made an impact on my generation of nerdy kids. It’s a perennial on most-wanted figure line wish lists and any time any D&D figures have been announced in the last few years, I often see people wishing that it was a cartoon based line instead! I’ve been looking forward to these figures, so I was glad when they hit a little earlier than I was expecting. Let’s take a look at Bobby and Uni!
The box is plastic free and features nice illustrations of the characters on the front and the side of the card. The front of what would normally be the bubble has a render of the figures and so does the back. It is nice to see a cross-sell with Hank and Diana on the back, but man do I wish Presto, Sheila, and Eric were on there too. We know they are coming, but it would be nice.
The sides makes a sort of mural with the background illustration of the Dungeons & Dragons ride that sends the kids to the realm, but sometimes the figures cross the line from their box to another box and sometimes it doesn’t. For example Hank’s foot and bow are on Venger’s box, but Diana’s foot isn’t on Hank’s box. I think I will keep these until at least the other three kids drop to see the completed mural before I toss the boxes.
Bobby comes with Uni the Unicorn, his magic club and a 12 sided die. It was kind of fun to see a bunch of these dice again since I haven’t played a role-playing game since my teens, but it’s not really useful to me. I get why you would include it for theme and to celebrate the game, but I’d rather have something else. I really wish Uni came with another expression since the poor thing was frightened out of its wits most of the time.
Uni is a very nice slug figure with limited articulation and paint, but the eyes have a perfect cartoony look. The ball joint in the neck gets decent movement, but his mullet stops him from looking up too much.
The club has a nice exaggerated wood grain texture in the sculpting and looks appropriately sized. It fits well in his hand, but the plastic on his hands is a little too soft to hold it solidly. He can manage a two-handed grip, but it’s not very natural.
The sculpting on these figures is quite nice and I feel like Bobby captures the cartoon charm best out of all of the D&D figures released for this line, especially his pugnacious expression. There was a style guide posted on twitter for Bobby and I think I spotted the exact reference they used for this face on that guide. He looks ready rush in and start handing out beatings. The belt never quite sits right on my figure, leaving a bit of a gap between it and the furry shorts. The articulation is decent, but not great. He has:
- Swivel/hinge neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, wrists, and ankles
- Ball and socket head and waist
- Double jointed knees
- Boot swivels
First, I ought to mention all the limbs were frozen right out of the box and the belt was even more askew than you see here. Since I had heard some horror stories about breakage, I dunked the figure in some very hot water for 30 seconds before moving the joints around and that got them all sorted. The neck gets good looking down motion, but looking up is hindered by the hair and tilt is really limited. The swivel/hinge elbows do get more than 90 degree bend. There is no thigh swivel, but there is a slight thigh rotation at the ball. Unfortunately the furry shorts plastic is a little hard and blocks forward movement there which makes the double knees a little useless. Bobby is a little top heavy with his huge noggin and helmet which makes him tricky to balance. I do like that the right wrist has an up/down hinge and the left hinges in/out. The waist doesn’t get much tilt, it’s mostly swivel.
Paint is okay, he’s mostly cast in the appropriate colored plastic, but there are some nice metallic silvers on the helmet, bracelets, and rivets. He’s missing the string detail on his boots, but I think the faceprinting is very nice with great big clear blue cartoon eyes.
Overall I like the figure, but some engineering materials and articulation choices keep it from being great. It’s frustrating that he tends to drop the club easily and the articulation is clunky in places and it really bugs me that I can’t get him in a neutral pose with the belt looking good. There is always that gap. I wish he had some butterfly hinges to help with two-handed holds and softer materials on the shorts.
That said, I love the little display of the kids, Dungeon Master, and Venger and I imagine it will look even better when the other three kids hit. I can’t help but wishlist a bit and hope they can add a cartoon version of Warduke to go with them. I also think the cartoon version of the Bullywug is very cool and would love a figure of that.
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Source: The Fwoosh
