[scarrviper]

I picked one up yesterday at a local collectables shop as I got tired of waiting for this to show up at Target. As far as I know no-one has found a ghost face at a Target yet. After never finding Ripley last year, and other Neca figures either showing up late or never at all, I didn't want to take my chances.

The mask sculpts do look really good in person. The glow in the dark mask works perfectly and glows very strongly depending on the light source. I also like the material they chose for the robe. It does have a sparkle to it in the right lighting, like the movie robes. For the most part it is really well tailored too.

Now I was very cautious when opening this figure since there's been a lot of reports of elbow breakage right out of the box. As soon as he was out of the tray, I carefully removed the head and hands, rotated the arms up and removed the robe. Once the robe was off I warmed up all the joints one by one with a hairdryer before moving them. Thankfully that worked, and now none of the joints are stuck.

Speaking of articulation, this is my first Neca figure that has the new ball jointed hips. They function really well and have a nice range. The articulation in general on this figure is really good. I did not notice this before, but his arms and legs appear to be the same sculpt from the old Neca ghost face figure modified.

Now, my biggest complaint would have to be the hands, specifically the right hands. The two right hands you get appear to be identical. One seems to have a tighter grip than the other, but that doesn't matter much since both of them are far too tight to hold any of the knives, even the smaller buck style hunting knife. You can heat them with a hairdryer to get the knives to fit, but then after they have cooled you can't get the knife back out without heating the hand back up again. I hate it when Neca does hands like this with a fully closed grip. I really wish they had included a few more hands, some relaxed or grasping hands would have been nice. I've been trying to stretch out the right hands' grip with little success.

Also, watch out for scuff marks and paint errors on the masks, particularly on the classic white mask and the glow in the dark. I was able to compare 7 of these in the store, and most of them had very obvious scuffs all over, or black paint where it didn't belong. It was a little alarming how bad some of the looked, like the heads had been thrown around a bit before being packaged. I did not see this issue with the bloody mask or the zombie mask.

Overall I do really love this figure, but the issue with the knives not wanting fit in the right hands is driving me nuts.