At one time considered to be the next Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jean-Claude Van Damme was the kind of action star made for the ’80s. A muscular athlete with great physical control but limited emotional range and a thick accent, he was easily plugged into multiple formulas that utilized his martial arts skills and required very little line memorization. Yet he got better at the acting part over time, ultimately developing the kind of self-referential humor his hero Arnold also had.
The “Muscles From Brussels”
Though he mostly does direct-to-video and international work these days, there’s money to be made in mining nostalgia from his image and likeness. On the heels of several successful Bruce Lee Collectibles, Diamond Select is looking to duplicate the pattern with JCVD.
The first figure in the line comes in “underground fight gear” — it’s Bloodsport’s Frank Dux by any other name, since you can’t really copyright black shorts and a yellow belt. Packed in an extra-wide window box, Van Damme comes with two chairs, a clear flight stand, two “glass bottle” accessories (one broken into two pieces, one whole), bonus head, and three sets of hands (fists, palm shots, and accessory-holding). None of them is a set of bound fists, as early prototype photos showed.
Because Van Damme’s signature move is the splits, Diamond is experimenting with ball-jointed hips, something they’ve done before on superhero figures but less often on those based on real-life actors. The process still has some kinks to be worked out, like the connecting pegs being flesh-colored, surrounded by black shorts. They also have a similar issue to G.I. Joe Classified figures, where the leg can be pulled a little bit down and out of socket while posing, only JCVD has it worse. You can make him look really dislocated, though most won’t choose to, and it’s not hard to get them back in place. The hips are also a touch loose, so be careful how you stand him in any display.
Strike a Pose
Additional articulation includes a ball-jointed neck, disc-pin shoulders and ankles and wrists, double jointed elbows and knees, limited mid-torso ball, and a cut waist. There’s a hole in his back for the peg on the flight stand — this allows for signature spin kicks if you can hit the balance sweet spot, but can also help support split-legged poses.
The chair accessories seem designed for splits, but they both have bottle-shaped indentations in their cushions, for the bottle accessories. Oddly, the broken one does not fit together, so it’s more a case of giving you a before and after. JCVD can also wield either bottle as a weapon, with the broken one looking more menacing, obviously
Both heads look like him from a distance. Up close, the neutral one is better, with the good looks of young Van Damme, while the battle-damage head, featuring a bloody nose and a bruise, has the most exaggerated crazy eyes. The figure is small enough that they don’t read quite so drastic from a distance, but it’s almost anime-level exaggeration. Hairline paint slop is an issue for both. The injured head is much tougher to push on to the neck post.
Line ‘Em up
Compared to similar Diamond martial arts figures based on real people, he is an exaggeration, overall. For better or worse, he has the sort of caricatured anatomy of a Rob Liefeld drawing, with proportionately huge arms and pinched waist. As an overly heroic toy rendition, that’s fine. If you were hoping for more real proportions like the Cobra Kai figures, maybe not so much. He can play well with AEW and WWE pro wrestling figures, albeit not quite to proper scale — Van Damme is billed at 5’10”, but I’ve been in the same room with him and suspect that’s generous.
Considering the chairs and the extra wide packaging, $22.99 is a pretty reasonable price for this 7-inch scale figure. Even McFarlane Toys, which does the cheapest 7-inch figures on the market, would jack up the price for two chairs in addition to a flight stand, extra head and hands, and the bottle weapons. Syndicate is set to make official Kickboxer action figures in a similar scale — I assume Diamond will try to undersell those by not having to pay for a movie license on top of the actor likeness rights.
Since Diamond is going in the direction of “generic” costumes, here’s hoping they do “military tank top” Van Damme, so we can have an unofficial Street Fighter movie figure. It would also serve as a tribute to his first toy form — G.I. Joe figures with Van Damme heads were created by Hasbro when Street Fighter first came out.
Back-Stick in Plastic
Which emphasizes a key point here — we are overdue for Van Damme action figures. Even his box-office rival Steven Seagal got a mostly pre-posed figure from the late, lamented N2 toys. Schwarzenegger and Stallone, of course, got their first figures in the ’80s, and have never stopped. And Van Damme’s frequent costar Dolph Lundgren finally got his Drago and He-Man toys in recent years.
With this figure, Syndicate’s, and Hiya Toys’ Universal Soldier, we seem to be looking at a veritable toy Van Dammaissance. Let’s see which company can execute those split-legged hips the best. As for this one, you can see many more poses below.
