Review – Erick Scarecrow’s Muraida “Radioactive Green” Edition

Manufacturer: ESC-Toy * Year: 2008 * Ages: 14+

As you know, I love pretty much any toy — regardless of source or manufacturer or age — as long as it has that special something that catches my eye. One thing I’ve never been a massive of fan of, though, are most Japanese kaiju toys. Many of them just look goofy, but every now and then there’s a kaiju toy that really captures my attention. Unfortunately, most authentic kaiju toys are just too expensive to collect, so the most I can do is hit sites like toybot studios and drool on the awesome photos.

There are days that I find a kaiju toy that is both cool and affordable. Days like the day that I got lucky and snagged Erick Scarecrow’s Old Skool Kaiju figure, Muraida. And, as you’ve no doubt already guessed, today’s the day you get lucky and get to watch as I geek out over ten-inches of green vinyl.

Muraida’s Travels in a Big Box!

At ten-inches by eight inches by eleven inches, Muraida comes well packed and protected behind a layer of cardboard and locked safely inside a plastic clamshell. When he arrived at my door, captured inside a plain brown shipping box, it took a few seconds for my brain to figure out what was inside. I knew Muraida was a tall vinyl figure, but his size didn’t quite click with me until I actually held the shipping box in my hands.

The bright pink box is decorated with a drawing of the figure and windows on the front and one side allow you to see the figure inside the box. Even through the clear plastic I could tell just how bright the figure is, but it didn’t take very long before I had the box open and Muraida in my hands. It’s an attractive box, and certainly display worthy, so if you’re a MIB collector then you would be very happy with the packaging. Me? Yes, I appreciate nice packaging design, but I wanna pop the box like a pinata and score the creamy goodness inside. (Okay, now I’m just being silly and rambling. Sorry.)

Muraida Big!

The big box holds a big toy. A rotocast vinyl toy, Muraida stands about ten-inches tall and, as you can see in the photos, is pretty thick throughout the body. He’s about $50 — which isn’t bad at all for a toy of this size that’s limited to a run of 200 copies — and you certainly get more toy for your dollar than you do with a lot of vinyl toys that are out there today. Muraida’s big enough, and nice enough, that he’s not in the game room but, instead, sits on a (high) shelf in the dining room; you can see Muraida as soon as you walk through our front door. He’s just that big and cool.

Muraida’s Green!

These photos give you an idea of just how green the toy is, but just imagine even more of a nuclear green than you see here and you’re pretty close to his actual coloring. The paint job is superior work, without any filthy lines or mistakes. And it’s paint, since Muraida is actually cast in a semi-translucent green (take a look at his feet in the photo above and you can see what I mean) which was then painted over with a bright green, a darker green, black, and red. It’s not a lot of different paint colors, but the application — and design — really brings out the sculpted details of the figure. And the airbrush work — fading the light green into the translucent — is very nice; it’s stuff like this that makes me want to buy an airbrush.

(I do not need an airbrush.)

Muraida’s Articulated!

It’s billed as “six points of articulation,” but it’s more likely “six points at which we had to fuse this huge figure together.” The arms are articulated at the shoulders and elbows, which gives Muraida some poseability options, while the legs kinda rotate around at the knees for no good reason. You see, Muraida only looks good — and pretty much only stands — when his legs are in one position. Rotate even one leg around a bit and it’s not so good. The arm articulation is decent — especially for a designer toy — but there’s nothing here that spectacular in terms of articulation.

Closing Thoughts

There have been a few different variants released for this figure, but since I love green toys I’d have to say that I have the best version that you can buy. Muraida is easily my favorite piece from ESC-Toy, even if he does look more like he’s spraying cheese than paint (if you couldn’t tell by the pics, Muraida is supposed to be a spraycan monster). And he’s a solid, durable piece that easily passes the drop test (I know, I’m clumsy).

The box says that Muraida is not suitable for kids, but I think that has more to do with child safety testing laws than anything else. (Well, and the fact that he’s a limited figure that’s collectible.) If you have a kid who doesn’t try to eat all of his toys — and there’s little chance anyone is going to choke on a toy this big — I’d say you could give Muraida to a kid and the toy would probably survive several months of rough play in the yard.

Muraida has a great look, comes in an awesome color, and is fun to play with when he grabs your other toys and goes all “Hulk Smash” on them. If you’re into designer vinyl, and like big monster toys, you may want to poke around the web and try to find one of these. And even though he comes in a variety of different colors, I’m perfectly happy with just this one.

If you wanna read more about this exact design, and see more photos, hit this post at Plastic and Plush where they say:

“. . . plus the fact that it’s a killer character design, that I’m fairly confident saying it will make our top 10 list of best vinyl figures of 2008.”

Philip Reed is gonna have to create a shelf of green toys one of these days. Maybe. Color themed shelves look neat, but then do does just mixing completely unrelated toys on a shelf. What to do, what to do?