Doll-A-Day 2017 #85:The Bookworm

  We've seen the goodies from the trade I did recently, and yesterday was Shrunken Saturday, where we look at tiny dolls. Ok. Now let's get back to my birthday presents! Today we're looking at The Bookworm.

The packaging isn't sealed,as such. There is a plastic tie with the company logo that fastens through the peg hole at the top. When it's removed the package can be opened...and your cat can lost the plastic thing because he likes playing with them.

The Bookworm is one of the lesser known villains from the Batman franchise.The character was featured in a two episode story arc of the Batman TV series in 1966.

The little plastic insert pops out and the figure is held in by three wires.

 The Bookworm,(or is it just 'Bookworm'?) also comes with his glasses and his book light, which attached to his hat.

Unfortunately there are problems with both of them. First of all, the glasses. They have silver detail on the legs, part of which flaked off before they were even out of the pack.

 Furthermore,they don't stay on very well. It's like they weren't actually made for this figure. They don't sit properly on his face,especially when his hat is put on.

His hat can't go down very far onto his head without causing this to happen.

If  his hat is put on high enough to not affect his glasses,it pops off.

Now to the book light.

It fits into a tiny hole in his hat.

There's also a hole in the ribbon hat band of course, so the book light can fit into the hole in the hat.

The problem here is, the hole in the hat is very tiny, and hard to line up with the hole in the hat band. On top of that, the hole in the hat isn't very deep, so the book light keeps popping out.

I give up.

This Bookworm is made by Figures Toy Co.

There's a whole line of batman figures by this company.

Including TWO out of three Cat Woman figures. Not to be insulting, but they left out the boring one,so it's ok.

The figures made by this company are meant to resemble the old Mego figures. They have the same articulation as Mego figures,with joints at the neck, shoulder,elbows,wrists,waist,hips, knees, and ankles.

In spite of the vinyl suit, (The Bookworm's suit was supposed to resemble vintage book bindings.),he can hold a pose.

Although he can't get his arm as high as his hat.

 I thought it was the jacket stopping his arm and his articulation might work better without the coat.

Not so much. But he can hail a cab.

And when his coat is opened his leg can do this.

Although I'm not sure why he'd need to.

His collar could do with being a bit shorter.

It helped a little when I realized that his shirt wasn't Velcroed shut all the way and I fixed it.
His tie is on a piece of elastic. Even with my glasses I didn't realize that the elastic was caught in the Velcro until I looked at these pictures.So that's why his tie wouldn't straighten!

The suit is removable in case you want to make your own custom figure.

His coat is tagged.

 But his gloves are painted on.

Plus there are glove wrinkles.

His boots are removable though.

Look at the zipper detail!

And the boots are soft enough that he can still flex his foot.

The Bookworm was originally played by Roddy McDowall, one of my favourite actors since I was 7 years old.

 

Not a bad resemblance,especially from some angles,but why did they make the eyes so small?

 

And his picture is featured on the packaging.

The character was created for the 60's TV series, and wasn't used again for decades, until he appeared in The Huntress comics in 1989. He was also mentioned by the Riddler, in 1989, in Secret Origins Special #1, as one of the  villains "you never see anymore".

The Bookworm later appeared in Batman '66,a comic based on the '60's TV series. For the most part the characters were drawn to resemble the actors who played them.

The Bookworm seems to be an exception.

Pretty much, yes, it is.

The Bookworm made a cameo as part of the group of villains escaping prison in the animated series,"Batman, The Brave and the Bold", where he looked like this:

Why do Batman villains get to wear part of their villain costume in prison?

See you again tomorrow for another doll.

A Body for Hot Toys 'Michael Caine' as Alfred from Batman: Dark Knight

  Waaay back in January I showed you the Michael Caine head Ken bought for me. It was my alternative to the VERY expensive Michael Caine as Alfred from Batman: Dark Knight, made by Hot Toys.(Makes me feel old that Michael Caine has been playing Alfred!) There's no way I can afford the entire Hot Toys Michael Caine doll. So Michael didn't have a body at the time.

 

The Hot Toys dolls are amazingly real looking, but also amazingly expensive. The Batman armory set with Batman and Alfred sells for between $350 and $700! 

The Batman: Dark Knight armory set. Lots of spare hands and weaponry.

The Michael Caine alone sells for over $100.But the head was only $30.
  This body was even cheaper than that. I think it came to $15 with the shipping. Ken bought the body for me for my birthday. I just never got around to showing it to you. I think it's worth seeing, because the body is a really great articulated body, and was really cheap too! I was a bit afraid it would be too cheap and would fall apart on me, (Or at least on Michael!), but it turned out to be pretty good quality.

Michael is enjoying it.

The body came with spare hands...

a couple of different neck knobs...

Sorry about the Blu Tac on the little one. It's the on he's been using.

and leg faulsies!

That's in case Michael wants to impress the chicks with his muscular thighs.

Here is is with a jointed Ken doll, so you can compare their flexibility.

And the skin tones. These bodies are much less pink than regular Kens.

Here are some more pictures to show you what this body can do.

He can tell fishing stories...

He knows karate, jujitsu, and seven other Japanese words...

He can throw his back out. Just like me!

Ok, what else?

The arms look too long here, but it's just the camera angle.

See?

Hear no evil...

Ok, maybe a little...

See no evil...

No peeking...

Speak no evil...

This move causes a little weirdness in his mid section...

Which is ok if he's clothed.

                                                       He's all worn out from all that posing.

Here are some close ups of the jointing.

As I said, the set of extra parts comes with two different neck knobs to accommodate different heads.

Here's a look at the body's neck knob.

I couldn't use Michael's head on the bigger one since his head already had a neck of it's own.To use the shorter one I had to remove the very inner ring from the inside of his neck.

The problem with this arrangement is that the head won't stay on. I watched a tutorial where the guy used Blu Tac/sticky tac, but it's not working for me. Also,the neck looks too long.

Maybe he could wear an ascot...

Yeah, I wonder why it looks like that...

 

Although as long as he wears a shirt with a collar it looks ok.

Hey! How about this one?

That's better. This shirt works pretty well, apart from not being his style AT ALL.

Way too young for him. Maybe the Happy Family Grampa shirt will fit him.

  

Finding clothes is proving to be a problem, since this body seems to have longer arms and legs than your standard Ken body. Most of the sleeves and pant legs are too short. There are other problems too...

While these pants looked ok from the front, there are real problems going on back here. He has wider hips than Ken too, apparently.

I also tried the shoes on him, but even thought there was the split up the back I was afraid to push them on any farther in case the foot got stuck in there.

I think the original Alfred shoes are the entire foot and you just change the whole thing.
He is limited to this outfit until I find him something better, and no shoes.

  I'd love to get him a suit, but the real one would put me back up over $100, and I don't sew well enough to make him one. I put the idea to my sister the ex-seamstress, but she said Michael Caine would have to cough up a lot of money for her to sew him a suit.
  The body is super poseable, and holds a pose well except for his toes always wanting to curl up. The various hands are nice too. I do worry that the little posts attaching the hands and feet to the body might break with a lot of use. For such a cheap, (as in 'low priced') body it seems pretty sturdy. It came a long way and they only put it in a plastic bag for shipping! But it didn't break, which may have just been luck. It's always a  little risky buying the cheap stuff that ships all the way from Hong Kong or China. I'm also not sure how they can sell what seems to be the exact head and body from the Hot Toys line for such a cheap price. I'm not sure I chose the right body for this head. Maybe there is another one. Since this was my first experience buying this stuff I may have just gotten the wrong body. There are people out there who are experts know exactly what to buy. I'm not one of them...yet. Have you seen these Hot Toys sculpts?!