Daft Punk

Special Thanks to Bluefin Tamashii Nations for providing advance copies of these figures.

The enigmatic French electronic duo consists of musicians Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter. The band were initially human after all like the rest of us. Due to a discovery in the studio, or maybe an accident, the duo found themselves transformed into robots. Now their technologic music is fitting to the personas they project.

Are Guy-Manuel or Thomas actually robots now? That’s what Daft Punk would like you to think, despite having no on/off switches.

To coincide with their 2013 release, “Random Access Memories”, Bandai has released two figures in their S.H.Figuarts Line, including them alongside Japanese superheroes such as Kamen Rider and Ultraman. These were Tamashii Web Shop Limited release items in Japan, but Bluefin has brought them to the states for a somewhat regular arrival in Fall of 2013. (Ok, technically the end of December) I imagine that if you didn’t pre-order one they will be hard to find before too long.

Both figures come in simple, stylized boxes with diecut windows resembling the shape of their individual helmets. The packaging of these robot rock stars has little emotion.

The figures themselves are full of expression despite not having any proper faces.

Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo is the one in the gold helmet. The dome is actually a smoky transparent brown that just slightly shows the motherboard where a face should be. Despite being an illuminated LED display in real life, the helmet has no electronics.

Thomas Bangalter has the silver helmet which has an unsettlingly creepy grin cut into the face mask. I never noticed it before seeing it on this figure. In most pictures I have seen of Thomas Bangalter there is no grin, only a slit, so I don’t know where the weird grin comes from.

While not as aerodynamic as Guy-Manuel, Thomas Bangalter’s helmet makes hime look like he has nightvision.

As Daft Punk are a duo, they are almost always seen and photographed together. For this reason alone, you need to buy one if you are going to buy both. These two are beyond photogenic.

As far as action figures go, Daft Punk are nothing special. In fact the two figures share the exact same bodies with just different helmets. Even the hands are the same, aside from the colored details.

But hey, there are a lot of hands. Each figure comes with SEVEN sets of variant hands. You get a whole range of emotion that replicate gestures as seen in various promotional photos over the years.

Included are the “metal horns” gesture. Note the logo stenciling on the back of the leather jackets.

Some kind of “vogueing” hands. There are two sets of hands that are in a very similar position to this, one with one of the fingers angled slightly inward.

Daft Punk contemplating digital love.

They can also throw the peace sign along with the metal horns.

These hands were at an odd angle that I think are meant to play a keyboard.

Daft Punk used an odd hand sign when they made appearances to promote TRON: LEGACY, the movie that they scored the soundtrack to. They appeared as DJ’s in the End of Line club as the Son of Flynn was looking to contact Zeus. They can make that sign that they did on those appearances.

I thought it appropriate to put them in with some TRON stuff and they don’t feel out of place.

The figures are great and have all the standard articulation most S.H.Figuarts have. Double jointed elbows and knees, double ball joint shoulders, ball joint wrists, double ball and swivel hips. The only real bummer about the articulation is the long chest with no joint in the middle.

The real draw of these figures is that they are of Daft Punk. Unfortunately, Bandai could have gone above and beyond with these but did not. How about including instruments, like a keyboard or guitar? Stand? How about LED lights in the helmets? Even a music CD would have been cool, but these figures are pretty bare bones.

The height of the two figures isn’t entirely accurate, but they are slightly different due to a longer torso on Thomas. If you look at promotional pictures, Thomas is actually maybe 5 inches taller than Guy-Manuel, and that’s not accurately represented here.

Despite that though the figures just exude coolness and look great either on your toy shelf or on display with your music collection. With these figures you may want to give life back to music and lose yourself to dance.

Put these on your christmas wish list, you might get lucky.

Bandai Tamashii Nations S.H. Figuarts Guy Manuel De Homem Christo Daft Punk Action Figure