For the last few months, I had been seeing photos and YouTube reviews of custom Godzilla kaiju from someone known as RICSAN Customs. He’s a guy in Mexico who makes 3rd party customs of articulated figures that no other company is making. Due to licensing issues, he gives them different names, such as The Dream Ogre and The Infant (Gabara and Minilla), Monster from Odo Island (pre-mutated Godzilla Minus One), Sō Shingeki Serpent (Manda), etc. This one is called The Unbelievable, and is basically the Toho monster from the film Varan (aka Varan the Unbelievable from the English dub). His figures are made of resin and use thick string articulation instead of ball joints (similar to Meego figures). So they are articulated and posable, you just need to be aware that they’ll move differently from standard ball joint figures, so practice a bit more care when handling them.
Ok, let’s get the one negative out of the way. He packs his figures in styrofoam, and since that stuff can be sticky, my Varan figure was covered in little specs of styrofoam that I had to blow and gently brush off. Due to this, the paint on his left eye stuck to the styrofoam and peeled off, so he has an unpainted left eye. That should be an easy fix, I’ll just need to find some decent paint and give it a touch up. Other than that, the figure is solid and I’m loving it.
He comes packed in a printed box with his name and artwork of the figure. The included accessories are 2 small 3D printed tanks, a maser cannon, and a statue of the symbol from the 1958 film. All of these are unpainted, but highly detailed.
As for the star of the package, Varan is in the standard 1:12 scale, about 6” tall, so he scales well with the figures from the SHMA line. He seems to be modeled more on the puppet used for the 1968 film Destroy All Monsters. Toho didn’t bother to build a new suit for that film, opting to instead use the puppet prop in a handful of “blink and you’ll miss it” scenes. He has a dinosaur-like body with a spiked head, and a row of spikes running down along his back and his tail. His only ability was that he could extend the membranes between his arms and legs to take to the sky like a flying squirrel. Obviously, those flight membranes were not part of this sculpt, as they probably would’ve been challenging to incorporate, especially with the string articulation. The figure is painted a glossy brown, with a few reddish highlights here and there. The inside of the mouth is painted pink, and the teeth, spikes, fingers and toes are a dull yellow. The eyes are white with brown irises and small black pupils. The guy who makes them, Ricardo, has stated on his YouTube channel that he’s not much of a painter, so he’ll give his figures basic paint jobs. There is some paint scruff here and there. That being said, I’m not much of a painter myself, so I’d say he did pretty well.
The box claims the figure has a total of 26 points of articulation, though I only counted 24. Anyway, he can move his neck at 3 different points, his shoulders, elbows, wrists, thighs, knees, ankles, at multiple breaks in the tail, and his torso. His mouth is on a hinge and can open and close. He can be put in various monster poses, just take your time moving those joints to not stretch them too far and risk breaking the string. I was able to get him to kick his leg up, and balance him on just his legs, with the tail in the air. He can also look down, crouch, turn his body, bend his tail, and lift his arms high. The arms are in a fixed pose, with the elbow slightly bent. They cannot rest flat at his sides, but that is fine with me.
Final thoughts? This figure, apart from the left eye paint issue, is pretty awesome. I’m psyched to now own an articulated Varan figure, as I doubt S.H. MonsterArts will ever give us one, since he’s hardly had any film representation (that’s a whole different set of facts I can do a separate post on). Thanks to 3rd party custom artists, we’re able to have some of these lesser known kaiju. I’ve already preordered a Titanosaurus figure from RICSAN Customs, and I may consider picking up Manda or Gabara. Between this guy’s figures, and Titanic Creations, with their awesome Gorgo and upcoming Yongary, fans or less popular kaiju can now have their favorites in highly articulated form. Now if someone will just give us an articulated Guilala (The X From Outer Space) or Gappa, I will be in heaven.
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