Batman by Jim Lee
Today we are taking look at a bit of an oddity in the landscape of Chogokin toys these days. Batman by Jim Lee is the first die-cast metal release in the SUPER ALLOY ⅙ Scale Collectible Figure line from Singapore manufacturer, Play Imaginative. You read that right, this is a twelve inch tall, posable, diecast metal Batman figure. How much diecast? About two pounds worth.
I’ll be honest, I had never heard of Play Imaginative until I saw the press releases and images of this guy start to go around a few months back. Looking over their site it appears they have been primarily making designer and art vinyl toys and this is their first “high-end” Chogokin release.
Based on Jim Lee’s redesign for DC Comics “New 52” reboot, Batman is given a more obvious armored looking suit, thus the heavy diecast metal content for this figure. I have to be honest, I’m not sure who they made this for…
The packaging is very nice and akin to other high end gokin and collectible releases. The package features a sketch by Jim Lee that the figure is based on on the outer sleeve.
Magnets and a metal bat logo await you on the front of the box.
Inside a bio for Jim Lee and his art again decorate the inside of the covers.
It’s a nice presentation, but the slipcover on mine would not slide off no matter what I did and I ended up having to cut the seam where it was glued together to get it off.
The figure does indeed weigh two pounds. The only plastic is the head, neck, shoulder pads, elbow joints, knee joints, and feet. All the rest is diecast metal.
The cape is cloth with magnets to hold it to his shoulders and wires in the border to pose it as you see fit.
The magnets do a good job of holding it in place on display, but when you pick it up and handle it the cape does tend to slide off.
The sculpt and paint detail is all very good with everything looking neat and clean
The head sculpt looks very nice as well. I like how the skin looks like flesh peeking out from under the smooth lines of the mask.
Soft vinyl makes up the pants and groin area, leaving you enough give to pose the legs.
The articulation is fairly good, allowing some decent Batman-like poses out of the guy. The spec sheet for the figure lists “50 points of articulation” which would include all the usual joints you expect as well as articulated fingers on the hands.
The elbows, however, are not so hot. They honestly feel a bit cheap and appear to have a lot of slack in them as well as only two clicks of motion.
This amounts to barely any movement in the elbows. I am not sure if mine is mis-assembled, or if this is by design, but it really stands out on what is an otherwise decent figure.
The knees have some nice, thick, heavy racket joints in there so they feel much better than the elbows.
He is pretty sparse on accessories. Batman includes two batarangs and a grapple gun. These can not be stored anywhere on the figure and are all very sharp. Like, draw blood sharp.
The last part in the box is this very nicely sculpted Chinese looking dragon/gargoyle which features magnets in the base, giving you the option of posing Batman securely to it. His feet only stick to the spots sculpted for them, however, so the range of poses you can do securely is limited.
Overall it’s a pretty impressive piece of Chogokin whose fit and finish is right at home amongst the most high end of robot toys and certainly sports a price tag that belongs there.
At $275, however, I think it is priced way out of the range of the average comic-book superhero/Batman fan and I think most robot/Chogokin collectors find Batman too far out of the wheelhouse to add something like this to their collection. I’m really not sure who the intended audience for the figure is, but it is a good first entry by a new Chogokin maker. Worth considering if it has caught your eye.