While Reservoir Dogs was Quentin Tarantino's first film, it didn't see the success it has garnered today when it first opened. No, it wasn't until a little film entitled "Pulp Fiction" that people turned an interested eye towards Tarantino. In fact, the majority of people didn't even notice that he had produced a film prior to Pulp Fiction until its success. Since then the man has gone on to produce (what Hollywood considers) hit after hit.
Reservoir Dogs was released in 1992, and started a pretty mainstream cast that has since made appearance after appearance in Tarantino's films (Michael Madsen, Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, etc.). The story revolves around a jewelry heist gone terribly wrong, leaving the remaining members of the "crew" trying to piece together how the cops were able to respond so quickly. We won't spoil any tidbits beyond that for you folks out there who haven't seen the film. Suffice to say that it's worth a viewing.
Under the guise of their newly developed "Cult Classics" line, Neca produced a small batch of figures from the film in 2007. While you won't find all the characters here the main cast of the film are available.
At a glance it's difficult to tell the figures apart. The sculpting of the faces isn't all that accurate to the actors who played the characters, and the clothing only has subtle changes from figure to figure - Mainly in the jacket and tie. With the exception of Mr. Pink, everyone comes with the same accessories - A pair of shades and a gun. Mr. Pink comes with shades and a bag. Each figure also includes a stand, which while we cannot confirm what it represents to us it looks like the shadow of the character as seen in the silhouette posters.
The packaging is a nice bright red color, with the iconic silhouette of the characters - as seen on many Reservoir Dogs posters - with a small yellow swatch across it where the title sits. The material and style of the package are the typical PVC types that most companies are using these days for six inch figures.
For the most part you would need to go to a specialty shop for these figures. Meaning, you wouldn't find them at your average Toys R' Us, but rather at the now defunct stores such as Tower Records and Suncoast Video.
Neca produced a five pack of the figures for those who wanted to get them all in one fell swoop. Unfortunately, this particular set was harder to come by than the individual figures.
The reason for this was usually due to poor sales at said specialty shops. Because most people don't go to video stores looking for action figures, many people didn't know they were out there. In turn, the figures sat on shelves until they were finally sold off in massive clearance sales. Of course, it didn't help that prior to being on clearance, the figures were incredibly expensive - Usually fifteen to twenty dollars a piece.
This is definitely a line geared towards Tarantino fanatics. We don't see the appeal to the average film watcher. This is also one of those lines that doesn't feel like it would be worth buying one or two figures. Meaning you would probably want to buy them all or none of them. They're fine looking figures, but we get the sense that unless Reservoir Dogs is one of your all time favorite movies, the figures have no appeal to them.
Join us next time when we take a look at Hanna-Barbera!
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