Funko Mystery Minis Sci-Fi Series 2: Godzilla

Company: Funko

Series: Mystery Minis Sci-Fi Series 2

Year: 2015

Well, I actually picked this guy up about 6 or so months ago, but then promptly got sidetracked from reviewing him for various reasons. So let's recap about the character with some stuff I stole from the review I wrote of his 6" POP counterpart back in December.

Few movie monsters are as iconic as Godzilla. Debuting in the 1954 Japanese filmゴジラ(Gojira), he has since gone on to star in dozens of movies, becoming emblematic of an entire genre of films – and in some ways, of Japan – in the process.

      

There have been countless items of Godzilla merchandise released over the decades; Funko is just the latest in a long line of licensors to take a crack at him.

Back to present day, and I've since reviewed a few mystery minis on the blog. Perhaps most notably Cthulhu -- every time I post anything about that guy, pageviews go gangbusters for several days afterwards, so hopefully the mere mention of him here will set SEO results aflutter for the LBC. 

Nuclear Cthulhu vs Godzilla? Now THAT's a team-up movie worth making.

But Godzilla is the subject of today's review. You may recall that the POP was pretty cool, but I think this Mystery Mini is actually even better. Controversial, hey? Well, I'm not afraid to make the big calls here.

Though Godzilla's Mystery Mini incarnation can't expect to possibly compete on size, it has the edge in the style stakes. Specifically, the face -- I have some mixed feelings about the semi-squished face on the POP, but there's none of that here; Godzilla has a nice, elongated reptilian snout which does the character better justice than the POP did. 

Skin texturing is similar, with both POP and Mystery Mini resembling an avocado. As a food, avocados can mostly go in the bin, but the use of the similar skin texture is a nice touch that adds some essential but not aesthetic-ruining detail.  

Paint? Pretty good, not perfect. There's a shock for you. His teeth have a few gaps in the black paint, which I could easily fix but haven't, and there's been some scraping on the claws of one of his hands. Again, easily fixable with some Citadel paint, but I haven't gotten to it. Will I ever? Stay tuned and see. Some of the spines could do with slightly better coverage too, but they're mostly fine.

There's some good news and some bad news for those seeking to track one of these bad boys down for themselves. First, the good news: Godzilla seems to be the heaviest figure in the series, and so he's pretty easy to pick out of the box. But the bad news is that he's only packed 1/24 -- i.e. 1 per every two cases. Now that's nowhere near as terrible as Pinhead's 1/72 ratio, but it still kind of sucks, considering he's easily one of the more desirable characters in the series. Still, you may get lucky, as I did. Despite an interesting character mix, this series doesn't seem to have flown off the shelves at the same rate as Sci-Fi Series 1 or the two series of Horror Classics, so you may even be able to rifle through a previously untouched box.