Sunday 4 July 2010

Enterbay's Bruce Lee as Kato (Green Hornet)

Had this model for a while now and for some reason just never got around to taking some pictures. Sooo for no apparent reason, here's my review of Enterbay's Kato from the very short lived TV series The Green Hornet. 

SCULPTING: ****
The sculpt is undoubtedly the master that was Bruce Lee. I love all the Enterbay - Lee sculpts and if I could afford it I'd own them all! Bravo Enterbay, bravo.
(BTW I stopped buying them once I spent out on the hugely expensive Fist of Fury box set!).
Of course the sculpt is based on a slightly younger, slightly fresher faced Bruce Lee. You see "The Green Hornet" came early on in Bruce's career and was his first crack at making it big in the west. Enough said though about the TV series, I'm not gonna crack into the whole history of The Green Hornet 
(go wikipedia it ha).
A hidden feature of the head is that the hair pops off revealing the movable eyes, admittedly it's not done as well as Hot Toys' movable eye system but meh its a nice simple addition that really makes the eyes stand out from the face.  I really like the hair sculpt too, the colour and overall look doesn't translate too well on photos but in the flesh it's much darker and really does look very much like Bruce Lee's hair.


He also has an alternate hair piece that fits with the Chauffeur hat that he comes with. I'm very happy with both looks and I'm really chuffed that they went with a moulded plastic hat instead of a material one. Something that should be said about the sculpting is that Enterbay actually sculpted his entire body to reflect Bruce's unique physique. It manages to balance aesthetics with practicality well, stay tuned for a more in-depth look at this body sculpt when I review the Fist of Fury box set.


OUTFIT: *****
Enterbay always do a smashing job with it's outfits, and this is no exception. The material they use for his suit is so thin and yet durable. It allows for a wide range of movement and does not restrict his movement at all. The tiny detailing and stitching is well done and there's barely a loose thread in sight. I also like the simplicity  in that it's all done using small velcro strips and not actual buttons. As I've touched on before with my DID reviews, real working buttons are nice n all but in this scale and with jumbo sausage fingers, it really does annoy me. Of course he also has his mask that simply just sits on his face. It looks really cool and works great. He comes with an alternate white dinner type jacket and bow tie but to be honest I prefer this look much more so it's still sealed in its original packaging (NERD ALERT)


ARTICULATION: ****

Not perfect, yet pretty close. As I said earlier, Enterbay balanced looking cool with out and out articulation. While he does look cool with his shirt off, he doesn't quite get into as many deep poses as say a True Type body can get into. So the good: He holds poses like a rock, even better than TT. The ankles work great and have a full range of movement. His head also works great and is held in place by a magnet attached to a peg joint. His hands also just pop off with no fuss and are replaced really easily. 


Now the bad :( 
So first his hands, they aren't articulated at the wrist at all. They pop off just above the wrist joint and are moulded as one piece. It looks great but reduces the amount of movement. They do, however, get around this by supplying him with lots of hand sculpts. As I mentioned before, he holds poses like a rock, but this is due to a snap into place type mechanism. It's really sturdy but when I'm posing him up I'm always a little bit worried, all that snapping and cracking makes me sweat ha. Overall I can't be that harsh on it though. It does what you want it to do and that's pull off all the trademark Bruce Lee like poses you could wish for. One thing I will quickly mention is that this figure comes on the later released 3.5 base body, sadly it took Enterbay several attempts to finally perfect the Bruce Lee body, the earlier attempts having ankle problems and various minor niggles such as the weirdly sculpted neck etc. Kato and then the re-released Fist of Fury set were the only versions to come on a 3.5 body, so if you're tempted by the insanely priced Game of Death or Enter the Dragon figure then make sure you get your hands on a 3.5 base body (also sold separately).


ACCESSORIES: ****

He's not exactly overflowing with extras but having said that I was really pleased with what he did come with. He comes with multiple sets of hands, both gloved and naked. He also has 2 throwing darts, his alternate jacket and his hat + mask. I'm not really sure what else they could have thrown in to be honest. One thing that is worth a second mention is his stand which is made completely of metal and is really clever. I'll post some pictures of it when I do my Fist of Fury Review. If you're not tempted by this figure then at least ebay yourself a stand, here's a link to Enterbay's site, check out the stands features:
http://www.enterbay.com/web/productInfo.php?f=shop&id=316


OVERALL: ****
Yeah yeah another 4/5 stars ha, what can I say, I tend to buy the figures that I love. Enterbay are a great company and I wish they would produce figures at a more constant rate (it's been ages since they released anything, even news for god's sake) Everything they release has an adult collector feel about it. The packaging is always well done and the materials used throughout are of the highest quality. I'm hotly anticipating their future IP man release and even the Bulma from Dragonball Z Evolution.
If you love Bruce Lee as I do then it's simple, you must own one of these figures!!
Keep scrolling for lots more pictures.









I have to say, thank you Hot Toys for your Parallel Eye Rolling System, Bruce's eyes are movable independently of each other and take forever to align. I always make my Bruce look cross eyed or lazy eyed haha, trust me it's harder than you'd think. If you notice, in the below picture his eyes are ever so slightly out of alignment, something I hadn't noticed until I took the photographs.



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