Benelic Castle in The Sky: Robot Soldier Figure

The iconic robot from Hayao Miyazaki's beautiful anime, Laputa: Castle In The Sky is now available in action figure form by Benelic.If you watch anime in general, this robot should look familiar as being an anime icon and this figure really does live up to it.This particular version is classed as the 'Gardener' variant as it sports a dark brown colour scheme, with a gold eye-piece and moss on the upper body and shoulders. It lacks the arm spikes that the 'Combat' version has as well as the clean cut, light brown coloring.The figure is around 7" tall and has a good weight to it being mainly a semi-solid rubber material. The articulation consists of rotations with the neck, shoulders, waist, thighs and wrists being simple rotation joints whereas the actual arms, legs and neck itself are a stiff rubber with wires inside for bending. Unfortunately, as I said it's stiff rubber and it needs quite a bit of force to get them bending but you must also be careful not to go too far or you'll break the rubber coating and possibly the wire inside. Special care must be taken with the neck as it's so small so you have to watch out for white plastic appearing around due to stress.This figure comes with a simple stand and bass sporting a waist cradle and the base itself has the Laputa emblem raised on it.Overal this is a cool figure but there are also kits available for the robot that come in both the Gardener and Combat variant. They may be a safer option due to having actual joints and not the wire system. Also the Combat variant in the kits is about £25 which is what this figure generally costs but the Combat version by Benelic (the same as this figure here) are rare and go for so much more.Overal this figure only really wins out in detail and that it's an actual figure an not a kit but it's still a great buy to get an awesome piece of anime on your shelf.

Excellent toy for my son who loves the robot from the movie. I thought it may not get in time but just got there before Diwali. Now our son takes it everywhere.