Toy Notch Sun Wukong Monkey King

Toy Notch is a company that I've never heard of before, but was pleasantly surprised when I saw a company willing to release something a little bit different! This classic Sun Wukong (Monkey King) from the iconic animated movie from the 1960s is one that I've remembered since childhood! My parents certainly had some old Chinese art books that depicted this character, and I certainly wanted this for my collection.

Click the link below for my full video review over on the Kool Kollectibles YouTube channel. Make sure to subscribe too and stay tuned for upcoming reviews! :)

The set comes with a decent array of accessories, and they're all of pretty good quality. I especially love the staff that is actually made of metal. I was expecting just painted plastic, but the fact that they went the extra mile with metal is pretty nice.

The swap out face sculpts are nice too, with all the options you need for the various moods of the Monkey King. The swap out hands aren't all that great, but decent enough with the posing options. Be careful swapping them out, and especially when inserting the staff. I would put the hand for the staff in hot water first to soften the plastic.

The magic cloud is a great touch, but I really wish they had included some sort of elevated display base or dynamic stand for it. Another annoying feature is that the molded part to insert the foot is too small for the actual foot of the figure. This makes it extremely difficult to insert the foot and get the figure to stand in a stable manner. Even with hot water I could not really get the foot in there properly. So it's a great idea, just not executed as well as it should have been.

The figure itself is very nicely done. The quality is pretty much on par with other similar sized figures from Bandai S.H.Figuarts or the Revoltech figures. The joints are very similar to those figures, so if you have any of those then you'll know what you're getting into.

Overall the paint application is pretty clean and sharp, with only minimal bleed in the skirt. All other areas on mine were good. The yellow in the shirt is nice and I like the way they did the red pants too. There's no real risl of paint chipping when posing this figure.

Articulation is as you would expect, however it would've been nice if they had figured out a way to get more into the head. It cannot look up very far at all due to the back of the head sculpt and his head gear. But other than that, I think you can get him into some pretty dynamic poses. Even in static poses, the joints aren't so obvious to make him look strange.

For fans of Chinese mythology or for those looking for something a bit different in their collection, I think this figure fits the bill perfectly. It will be interesting to see what else Toy Notch have coming up - this is a pretty good start!