Review – Prince of Persia Alamut Gate Playset

The Prince of Persia Alamut Gate Playset* from last year’s movie wasn’t worth the $20 price it originally sold for, but at $5 this makes a decent display piece for 3.75-inch scale action figures. It’s a fairly simple design with a few play features, but I’ve gotta say that posing figures in front of the plastic gates can lead to some neat shots. This has been sitting in the box for months, but with the Assassins Creed 3.75-inch scale figures* hitting stores I thought it time to rip this open and get a close look at the playset.

Packaging

A fairly simple box design that clearly shows off the playset, this is an unremarkable package that’s destined for the nearest landfill. I like that they show the other toys in the series, but I’ve gotta say that I would have much rather seen cool artwork than just a photo of the playset. McFarlane Toys has access to some fantastic artists; it’s a shame they rarely take advantage of their art assets.

Prince Dastan

This small action figure almost looks pretty cool, but there’s something just a little off with the face that has me finding it more creepy than cool. The face is pretty much my only complaint with the toy’s sculpt — the costume looks great — but that face is just too wrong for me to love the toy. When this series hit store shelves it was the faces that bothered me the most and it wasn’t until the entire line went on clearance that I started picking up a couple of the toys.

The articulation is adequate, with mostly swivel-hinge joints giving the action figure pretty good movement. The shoulders, elbows, knees, and ankles all have a standard swivel-hinge while the hips are something I’m not quite sure how to explains. Ball-hinges? No, but something’s going on there. Unfortunately the hips feel a bit tight and they limit what’s otherwise okay articulation. The wrists and waist swivel so those are okay. And the head isn’t a ball-joint from what I can tell — I don’t want to force the head too much since it feels weak — but you get a little left-right and up-down movement. If the hips and neck moved better I’d be happy with the toy’s articulation, but as it is it’s about the minimum for this scale action figure these days.

But the paint comes together quite nicely, with just a little slop here and there. There’s actually a lot of paint apps to the toy — as you can see in the pics — and the result is every bit as good as what we usually see from Hasbro’s various 3.75-inch scale action figures. Yeah, the paint’s just fine. But even with decent paint the toy just feels kinda bleh to me; the swords are okay but I’m just not all that excited by Prince Dastan here. Maybe if I’d seen the movie I would care, but as it is he’s just some generic ancient times dude to me.

Alamut Gate

At about 9-inches wide at the base and roughly 9-inches tall the Prince of Persia Alamut Gate Playset* is a pretty substantial chunk of plastic and almost a fun playset. But a couple of issues leave it as a piece to use in background shots and not a playset that I could see any kid playing with constantly.

Broken Catapult

The playset’s supposed to be able to launch boulders with the catapult on top, but mine came out of the box broken with the small plastic catch completely missing. The button on the roof depresses just fine, but without a catch on the bottom of the catapult the weapon is unusable. So it’s actually a drawback to the playset’s look, since instead of a weapon all I’ve got is a large chunk of plastic sticking up from the gate’s roof.

Boulder Chute

Also on the roof, the boulder chute works just fine but is a pretty dull play feature. Line up the boulders in the chute and then raise the guard to drop the plastic stones down the chute . . . and watch as they bounce around. Maybe really little kids will enjoy dropping plastic boulders, but for me this is an unnecessary piece that detracts from the look of the gate. And you really can’t aim the boulders so I don’t see how anyone could have fun with this.

Hidden Stairs

Okay, this one’s kinda cool. One side of the gate playset has a door-like set of pieces that can swivel out to reveal a set of stairs that lead . . . well, they don’t actually lead anywhere but they still look neat. And yeah the stairs are totally the wrong size of the action figures, but I’m still saying I like this feature.

Raising Gate and “Walking Up Walls” Feature

The dial on the side of the gate allows the gate to raise and lower, and it works fine but is actually not as neat as it sounds. And it doesn’t work well for photos since there’s nothing behind the gate, but kids using this playset could probably send various G.I. Joe vehicles through the open gate so it’s not bad. Just not exciting.

And covering parts of the walls are pegs that fit the Prince of Persia figure foot holes which is supposed to be a way to represent running up walls. I’m ranking this one a meh, but if you want your Storm Shadow to make some serious action moves it’s very likely he’d also be able to use these pegs.

Closing Thoughts

This wasn’t at all worth $20 and I’m glad I avoided it at first, but once it hit $5 on clearance I’ve gotta say the Prince of Persia Alamut Gate Playset* was an okay buy if just for the chance to use it in some toy photos. If this is indicative of the quality of the toy series then I can see why it went on clearance, but I suspect that regardless of the quality of the toys the failure of the movie likely doomed the entire line to the bargain bin.

I’m suggesting that anyone who finds this even slightly interesting grab it now. I still see these at Target every now and then (usually on the bottom shelf of a clearance aisle) and $5 is the right price for the toy’s usefulness.

Philip Reed also has a Prince of Persia horse he should open up and look at. But not now since he has a headache.