Doll-A-Day 2023 #260: Custom Black Panther

   Today's doll is sort of a one of a kind. He's Black Panther.

  I put this Black Panther together for my sister. He's a 12 inch figure. 

  His head is one of those rip off versions of a Hot Toys head, They look just as good, and the painting is amazing, but they can usually be obtained for about $30, whereas the actual Hot Toys figure is way over $100.

  The body of the original Hot Toys Black Panther has a rubber outfit, which allows the very posable figure to bend through the clothes. It look good, but I have read reviews that say it tears easily.  I couldn't afford to get my sister the actual Hot Toys figure, so I bought the rip off head, and a different Black Panther body that is very posable, but not nearly as expensive.

  This body comes from the Hasbro Legends series 12 inch figure. I got it second hand online. It still came with the masked head, and the unmasked head, and two extra sets of hands.

 It originally had a spear too, but we didn't get that. The body is really quite articulated. There are over 30 points of articulation, including the neck, shoulders, 2 upper arm joints, the elbows, wrists, upper body, waist...

...upper leg, knees, ankles,, and toes!

  To get the fake Hot Toys head on the neck knob of the Hasbro body, I had to dig out an attached insert in the head.

 It fits fine now, but my sister keeps it unattached. That makes it able to move and she can change it to the masked head if she wants. The unmasked head that came with the body isn't very good, especially compared to the Hoy Toys type head, which really does look like Chadwick Bosman, who played Black Panther.

It does sit on the neck a little weirdly from some angles, but from most angles it looks fine.

  That's it for today. I'm still sorting out wedding pictures, but I'll show you some soon. See you tomorrow.

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?!