Toys: Leaders of WWII - Adolf Hitler

Drastic Plastic has been involved in the action figure business for years. You'd be amazed at all the various companies and toy lines they've worked with, but they're names have never been the headliners. Now they've started putting out figures with their own name, designed to be museum quality and historically accurate.

The first line of figures are based on the Leaders of World War II. In series 1 is Adolf Hitler, Franklen Roosevelt, and Stalin. The second series will include Hirohito, Mussolini and Churchill. They have a western line in the works, with a General Custer and Crazy Horse in the first series, and a number of military figures as well in various lines planned.

The figure sells at the web site for $49.99, with free shipping right now. There will only be 10,000 of each figure produced.

I'm not going to get into the political or social implications of an action figure of Hitler. Believe me, I've seen the subject debated endlessly, and you can make a case either way. Remember that these figures are designed to complete a historically accurate representation of World War II. It wouldn't make too much sense to make Churchhill and Roosevelt, but leave out Hitler. I'll say the same thing that DP says on the inside of the packaging - all figures in this series are for historical purposes only and do not endorse any ideological or political views. Likewise, my review of this figure has nothing to do with politics or ideology, only how good this figure is in terms of quality and accuracy.

This will be a pretty in depth review, since the guys at DP let me ask any questions I had and pump them for information before finishing the write up.

Articulation - ***
The Hitler package claims 33 points of articulation, and I don't doubt it. I stripped him down to check out the new body.

DP is going for the same level of poseability as the other major players, like Dragon, bbi and Sideshow. They've put together a similar, yet quite different approach.

Adolf has a cut joint neck (the heads can be popped on or off the bodies pretty easily, and there's a neck post underneath), interesting ball jointed shoulders (see the close up of the floating joint inside the chest cavity), cut joints on the biceps, ankles and thighs, double jointed knees and elbows, ball jointed waist and chest, wrist joints, and even a jointed foot.

Adding to the articulation, the hands are a soft rubber with wires running through the fingers, allowing you to pose each finger individually if you'd like. I don't know how well they'll hold a weapon over time, but they worked really well for posing the fingers.

umm. wtf? -preach

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