Giles

Giles is a Watcher who keeps his own Council. Giles is Buffy's former Watcher, responsible for her training and well-being. Fluent not only in Latin, but in the occult as well and maintaining a collection of ancient and current tomes unequaled in the west, Giles is a source of fatherly camaraderie for Buffy as well as the rest of the group. You know that there are those who think Giles and Buffy make a perfect couple? That a teenaged girl and her obvious father figure should be lovers? And that they claim they don't have issues? We call those people "weirdos." Or Green Lanterns. It only took until Series 2 of Moore Action Collectibles' Buffy the Vampire Slayer figures to get a Giles - that's a good turnaround! I mean, he's not the most toyetic character ever introduced to ficton. He's a stuffy librarian-type, not a man of action (usually). And yet, MAC recognized how important he was to the mythos. No collection of Buffy figures would be complete without her mentor, Rupert Giles. His distinct brand of rumpled, disconcerted Britishness sets off Buffy's California ease and his own competence in dealing with the supernatural. And all this from a guy best known for coffee commercials. Like all the figures in Series 2, Giles comes with an ornate graveyard base - stones, dirt, roots, grass and shrubbery, all sculpted and detailed to the utmost. There's a tombstone, of course, THAT IS THE THRILL OF LIVING ON THE HELLMOUTH - ONE HAS A VERTIABLE CORNUCOPIA OF FIENDS, DEVILS, AND GHOULS TO ENGAGE. PARDON ME FOR FINDING THE GLASS HALF FULL. that plugs into the base; the stone has an open book carved in relief on its face, with raised letters on the pages: There's a lot more articulation in Series 2 than there was in the first. Giles has 15 points of articulation: swivel neck, swivel shoulders, swivel biceps, pin elbows, swivel wrists, v-crotch, swivel thighs and pin knees. Now, the down side of all that is that Clayburne Moore may be a wonderful sculptor, but he hasn't worked out how to integrate it with the sculpt yet. All the swivels are just cut straight through the sculpt. And with the defined wrinkles on the clothes, there's obviously a "right" way to pose him - unfortunately, that way is leaning far forward, with his arms akimbo. That said, all the articulation does allow him to look natural while holding his accessories - a long halberd, the Vampyr book he presented to Buffy in the pilot episode, a leather bag (perfect for holding all those stakes the figures have come with over the years), and the Du Lac Cross, seen here with its hidden knife exposed. Giles is seen in brown wingtips, grey trousers, a speckled grey vest, pinstripe shirt, and a bright red tie. The face is definitely Anthony Stewart Head's; every wrinkle and shadow is just where you'd find it on the actor. The clothes hang and bunch as they should, which is quite an accomplishment - it's easy to do skintight spandex, but to make soft cloth from hard plastic really shows some skill. Clayburn Moore sculpted this one himself, and really captured the spirit of the character. There's a variant Giles, as well - coming from the Halloween episode "Fear, Itself," Fiesta Giles is clad in a removable (hard plastic) serape and an ornate sombrero. His only accessory is the chainsaw he used to get into the Alpha Delta frathouse to rescue his young charges. Otherwise, everything (as in articulation and costuming) is the same between the two Gileses - take off Fiesta Giles' serape and you've got the standard Giles. Sadly, Giles doesn't come with any glasses. This is because Tony only wanted them on the figure if they could be removable - something that would have been much too expensive on a figure this size, so Giles just squints his way through his tiny plastic battles on your toy shelf. You can make your own, though! Just strip the plastic from one of the twist-ties that holds the figure into his package and bend the wire into the proper shape. It's an easy customization that really adds a lot to the figure. -- 09/06/02

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