Duncan

For today's Zombie Lab figure, you get to pick what opening joke you'd prefer to start the review: "A 1:18 scale military man? It'll never work!" (Straightforward, presumes you're easily familiar with the size of GI Joe.) or!! "So, wait, this line now has a Zoe, a Duncan, a Jack and a... Jeana? Ah, so close!" (Esoteric, requires knowledge of obscure late-90s TV shows, would have worked better as an intro to Jeana's review.) To select your favorite, call our hotline and vote! ($1.99 per call.) Duncan delivers something this line has so far been missing: one of those guys who basically lives his life in soldier cosplay. We know he's not actual military, because 1) as first a British colony and later a special administrative region of China, Hong Kong has never had military forces of its own, and 2) this isn't what China's military uniform looks like. This, with the dark green shirt and tan-and-brown camo pants, feels more like an American who lacked either the fortitude or mental demeanor to join the real armed forces, and now buys all his clothes at the military surplus store and his Facebook is full of right wing memes and Flat Earth videos. Surprisingly, though, Duncan D. Oenitz isn't an angry white guy: his skintone is more "illegally detained by a Louisiana sheriff for four days" than "drive 10 hours to Walmart because you watch Fox News and are stupid enough to think the 'great replacement' is real." And yet with his crewcut, he looks like the brother of Zombietoid from Dollman vs. Demonic Toys. Considering that this chump is probably constantly screaming that "VETERANS STAND FOR THE FLAG," Locker Toys Group (and Boss Fight Studio, who did the physical design of the underlying Vitruvian HACKS character kit system) could have gotten away with not giving the toy any knees, but no, he has just as many joints as everyone else: ankles, knees, hips, chest, wrists, elbows, shoulders, and head. You may not want to make him kneel, though, because the cool camo paint aps stop at the edge of the joint, so if you bend the legs, there are big bare patches with no paint on them - an unavoidable issue! Duncan gets the usual art card that all the figures have had, with Chapter 6 of the Zombie Lab story on the back and a painting on the front that shows him wrapping up his hands while standing in a hospital(?) hallway. Actually, judging by the perspective, he's really in that hospital hallway - either he's like Cotton Hill and has no shins, or he's sunk partially into the floor. His accessories include a pistol, a crowbar, and a length of pipe. You'd almost expect him to come with one of the gunbelts, too, but consider him the kind of dummy who would just tuck a loaded gun into his waistband and end up shooting his own butt off. We've made a lot of fun of Duncan in this review, but that's the great thing about a toyline with only minimal bio information: what I want the character to be doesn't have to align at all with what you want him to be, and there's no one to tell us we're wrong. -- 08/23/19

Tweet