Psycho Man is a gorgeous figure that takes a very involved design and manages to be mostly successful in translation.
Getting a Psycho Man back in the five-inch days was a big enough surprise. I managed to get that entire last wave of Fantastic Four figures for two dollars each at a Big Lots that was waging a singular battle to be the world’s armpit. It was not a place I would consider tidy, clean or even borderline reputable, filled with shady people scowling at the world around them while they piled bargain basement bullshit into their carts. To say I was both flabbergasted and ecstatic to see a wave of toys that I actually wanted hanging on those moldy old pegs is an understatement.
Hasbro is reliving those old days by slapping a Psycho man onto a retro card. And I didn’t have to go to Big Lots this time to get it.
With a basic white and green costume, the green does most of the heavy lifting. It’s all a beautiful metallic green that really sells the futuristic extranormal aspect of the design. The entire figure is visually stunning in both design and coloration.
Despite plenty of tubing and pipes and general bulkiness to Psycho Man’s unique “emotionaut” uniform, Psycho man is way more mobile than he looks like he should be. There are very functional double knee joints buried underneath those tubes, and the rubbery plastic of his skirt piece allow him to get a fairly functional range of motion to his legs. Even the thigh swivels work well, because the tubing there hovers over the articulation. The ankles work very well also.
He’s missing any torso articulation, but he makes up for it with a ball jointed waist that gives him plenty of motion. He can get a good downward crunch and he gets a full swivel.
The arms are less impeded than the legs, so the double joints and usual articulation there work well. Being a new sculpt, everything it pinless.
The weakest area—at least on mine—is the neck joint. Functionally it seems like it should work well, since there’s just a single ball joint…but either the peg is too short of the cup is too shallow, because his head just does not want to peg onto the ball well enough to stay connected. I can get it seated on there and it will hold a position, but any motion at all will just cause his head to twist off as if there was no connection. I’ve pushed it down as hard as I can and can’t get any more of a connective “pop” so I’m thinking it’s an engineering booboo. I’m not sure if everybody’s is like that, but it’s something to be aware of. When I took him out of the package his head basically just dropped off. I’m going to see if I can figure out some workaround, but it’s definitely an issue.
One “problem” that I’ve read that doesn’t seem to be a problem is his height. He is on the shorter side, but I don’t think he’s the kind of character that really needs to be towering over everyone. I think a little bit of height variance is fine, and since he’s an emotion manipulator it even makes sense for him not to be this giant bulky hulking thing.
His Control box is well done, and while he can hold it in his open hand, it is a bit fiddly. You have to position it just right for him to be able to grip it. His left hand is a fist, which works for gesturing and such, but I would have loved to get an alternate left hand with that signature widespread Kirby gesture pose, so he could hold his Control Box with one hand and gesture to those he was controlling with the other.
There are a few nitpicks to be had with the figure, and the head is the biggest downfall, but everything else about the figure looks and works great. It’s nice to be adding such a unique and classic FF villain to the collection.
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Source: Fwoosh
