404TOYS Alien Nackle

I recently became aware of this company called 404Toys that has been making licensed, third party action figures of Ultraman characters. The two I saw were Alien Nackle from Return of Ultraman and Alien Magma from Ultraman Leo. I found Nackle on ebay so I purchased one.

Alien Nackle made his debut in episode 37 of Return of Ultraman. He was a sinister seijin who, with the help of his monster Black King, set about to destroy Ultraman Jack. He later went on to appear in various other Ultra shows throughout the years. This figure is based on his first appearance. Nackle sports a white body suit with fur on his shoulders, wrists and ankles, and a series of red dot-like domes across his body. His head is dark brown with red, crystal like eyes and mouth. 404TOYS did a great job accurately capturing his weird, clown-like look from his debut. Tsuburaya would go on to update his look for future appearances, but his original appearance has always been my favorite.

The box he comes in has a series of red dots, with the crystal-like patterns of his face printed at the top. His accessories are 4 pairs of hands (fists, karate chop, relaxed and pointing). The suit around his body is a white, stretchy cloth, with soft fur-like material for his shoulders, wrists and ankles. The body suit conceals an articulated body inside. He's about 6 inches tall, so he's perfectly in scale with 1:12 Ultraman figures from the S.H. Figuarts line. The red dots on his cloth suit are glued on, so you'll have to be cautious when moving the joints. Try not to put pressure on them, so as to not risk them being pulled off. One on his arm came off, but I was able to glue it back on.

For his articulation, the head seems to be on a ball joint and can look up, down, tilt, and twist fully around. He appears to have ball jointed upper torso and waist joints, as well as hinged elbow and thigh ball joints, double jointed elbows and knees, and hinged wrist and ankle ball pegs. He's able to do various poses, just be wary of moving the joints slowly and not moving them too far, so as to not risk tearing the fabric. As long as you're careful and take your time, you should be able to move his limbs without too many issues.

This figure is very nice. The cloth body suit allows for a seamless look, his joints move well, and even though he only comes with a small collection of hands, they're enough to make him expressive. I'm not sure if his cloth body suit will stay intact in the long run, so I'll take extra care when posing him. I would love for SHMA to release a figure of Alien Nackle, but they seem to be taking their sweet time with non-Ultra characters, preferring to release multiple variants of the same Ultra. Just look at how many Zeros they've given us. Until they decide to release Nackle, this one from 404TOYS will do just fine.