Fans of Masters of the Universe toys will be familiar with Modulok, a unique monster figure whose body parts could be pulled apart and reassembled in different configurations, using simple ball-and-socket connections. The Evil Horde characters — of which he was a part — all drew inspiration from horror movies. Perhaps Modulok was a direct riff on John Carpenter‘s The Thing, with its shape-shifting alien that defaulted to a bloody, skinless state while transforming.
What is virtually certain, though, is that NECA‘s newest action figure of The Thing is inspired by Modulok. It boasts multiple possible configurations, a ball-and-socket connection system, and the ability to make even more, bigger creatures with more figures purchased.
Come Together
We only have the one review sample in hand, and haven’t tried that last part, but it seems completely feasible given the way this figure is put together. Or rather, these figures: the “Ultimate Dog Creature” is really two creatures in one. Maybe more, depending how small you want to sub-divide the parts.
McFarlane Toys put two versions of The Thing monster in an early Movie Maniacs series, but there haven’t been many figures since. SOTA planned on doing the dog creature and MacReady before they went under; only a recent initiative by Universal to seriously milk their horror catalogue has led to NECA finally getting the rights.
The company kicked off the line with three MacReady variants, and have at last gotten to The Thing itself, which was worth the wait. In a box almost twice the size of typical NECA Ultimates, it’s Figure of the Year material, even this early in the year. It’s hard to recall anything similar that the company has executed quite like this.
After one opens the terrifying box, it yields several trays of parts, and even instructions! Yes, instructions — toy companies sometimes tend to be too vague about how every part goes together. In this instance there isn’t one correct way, so the sheet proves most helpful.
Man’s Worst Friend
Up first, we have a dog. Just a regular dog. Ball joints on its neck, tail, and forepaws. You probably didn’t buy this set for a normal dog, but purchase more than one, and it may serve you somewhere in this form. The head and forepaws pop off, though it took a soak in hot water to get said forepaws out. In the end, it’s not necessarily worth it, as they use slightly bigger ball-joints than any of the tentacles offered to switch out. You can put tentacles in there, but they will fall out soon thereafter.
The head’s another story. Pop it off and you can replace it with the peeled-back-skin neck. Into that you can plug either a long tentacle tongue, or a short tongue that you can put the skinned skull around. That has an opening jaw, but take care — the jaw easily comes out of its sockets.
Slip the mutating torso piece on the back of the dog, and it lines up with the neck nicely. Into that plug the crab legs, which feature hinges and disc-pin joints. You could choose to switch some of the crab legs for tentacles, but on the whole this version of the creature has one primary look. And it looks like something you’d want to step on or kill with fire, for sure.
Gutsy Design
The second creature is the skinless form mid shape-shift, which can go together with or without the giant legs it sprouts. It’s full of sockets for tentacles and appendages, and highly poseable.
Honestly, it’s a fool’s errand trying to count and explain the points of articulation here. Suffice it to say there are more than 40 total, and each piece either has some of them or a bendy wire inside. Most appendages feature ball joints that pop into sockets — they’re a little bigger for the giant legs than the crab legs, but both sizes have options. Enough, it seems, that you could plug several of these figures together.
Putting this one together, it becomes apparent just how much the Resident Evil games and movies owe to John Carpenter. The Umbrella Corporation never made anything quite as gross and viscerally hideous as The Thing, which combines all the gore of a skinned werewolf with the creepy-crawly long legs of a venomous caterpillar. Everything about it makes you go, “ew,” and NECA has captured that all in loving detail. Nobody could have made this figure in the ’90s, and it’s impressive that anyone engineered it now.
Show-Off?
How exactly to display it may prove a challenge — the insert that approximates the dog pen set from the movie isn’t remotely big enough. For our purposes, Super7’s Game of Thrones The Wall playset makes a decent polar ice cap. That might not be so easy to obtain any more, but all horror fans owe it to themselves to grab The Thing while it is.
At $59.99, it may seem like a lot, but you get at least two monsters out of it, and the detail is remarkably disgusting in the best way. Once people figure out how cool it is, it may sell quickly, and almost certainly go up in value. If you’re remotely on the fence, go for it. The fact that figures can combine makes even extra copies worth holding.
Take a look at some more angles and images in the gallery below.
