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I've already gone on about WALL•E in general and its glamour-girl love interest in my review of the plush EVEs; no need to repeat myself overmuch, then. The movie's about adorable robots, EVE is basically an iPod with sex appeal, there you go. There's no shortage of merchandise appearing, so my EVE collection is growing fast. Let's start with the basics.
This EVE - who isn't identified by any special designation on the packaging, so let's call her EVE 1.0 -
is just your basic EVE toy. She doesn't have inbuilt electronics, bits don't fly about when you push a button, you don't build her from parts, she's not part of a playset... she's just EVE. She's a touch over 3½" tall - 4" including the height of her base - and visually speaking, she's a pretty good representation of WALL•E's favourite robo-girl, pretty much egg-shaped, tapering to a rounded point at the bottom, and all smooth white surfaces aside from her "face."
Said face is simple, but well executed. The black panel is a separate piece to the rest of her head, but the assembly has been done very smoothly, such that you have to look very closely, or even run a fingertip across the edge, to be sure it's not printed on. The eyes are clean blue paint apps,
with slight interlacing fuzziness at the edges to give the impression of being composed of horizontal lines. The whole face, including the eyes, has the same high-gloss finish as the rest of the body.
She's built simple, but none the worse for it. Her head is mounted on a clear plastic rod, with a swivel and an up-down tilt - not a full balljoint, since she can't cock her head to one side, but there's a fair bit of "expression" to be gained from the joint. Her arms are likewise mounted on clear rods, this time with a true balljoint at each end, offering as much mobility in all three axes as the joint housings will allow - they're well-designed, so that's quite a bit. The rods are also mounted on a slide track, allowing EVE's arms to be retracted flush with her body surface, or extended for maximum mobility.
Since there's no way a shape like this can balance on its own (aside from the soft plush versions),
EVE has a plastic stand, with an oval base sprouting a curved "neck" that plugs into her back about half-way up. It's quite well designed, with the shape of the base and placement of the neck both contributing to a very inconspicuous profile, and while the half-inch ground clearance may not sound like much, it's enough to give EVE the proper feeling of hovering.
One drawback, however, is the angle at which EVE attaches to the base - it leaves her leaning backwards a bit, which in some circumstances can be a strange look for such a symmetrical robot. It's not invariably a problem - if you put her on a desk, her modest size means that having her "looking up" would be a benefit for viewing -
but it's something other EVEs don't seem to suffer from. Both the base-neck connection, and the neck plugging into EVE's back, are static joints with no mobility, so you can't adjust her angle.
EVE 1.0 doesn't show off, or have fancy features - she's a cheap bit of merchandise, intended to entice people who might want to buy one, and for whom the choice will be made a lot easier by not having to fork out more than a bit of small change for her. But don't interpret "cheap" as "low-quality" - she may not cost much, but she'll make a perfectly fine toy, or display piece.
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