1. Introduction
[1.1] Recent literature on action figures has recognized that adults do not merely collect toys but also play with them. Whether that be through customizing the figures themselves, photographing the figures in custom-made dioramas, or sharing the action figure's looks and abilities with others, adult action figure fans are still playing with their toys (Bainbridge 2017; Bryant et al. 2014; Heljakka 2013, 2015, 2017, 2022; Godwin 2015, 2018; Keidl 2018). Philipp Dominik Keidl (2018) urges us to better understand the ways in which action figures have become the stars of "action figure media," diverse media that center an action figure's materiality at play. I take this body of scholarship as invitation to shed a spotlight on the anatomy and affordances of the fan-created toy video review, a medium that has received comparatively little attention in the literature. This medium is distinct from other forms of fan-made video media like vidding (Coppa 2022), the sanctioned fan documentary, or the fan-produced historiography of the toy (Keidl 2018). Instead, the video review situates the action figure as playable haptic material within the context of fan expression.
[1.2] Within the fan-made action figure video review genre, we see a celebration of the haptic and physical affordances of the action figure by and for adults and children. As this article explores, many in the video review genre keep their assessments of their action figures within the realm of physicality first and foremost. This means that the discursive framing from which they operate is one that values the action figure's physical affordances, even as those affordances are paying fidelity to a larger media text. Stepping back, we find that the video review as a piece of media constitutes what Jason Bainbridge (2017) has termed toyesis, the results of when the toy acts as a content provider for further creation of texts. In the case of the video review, action figures have driven fans to produce their own media about these objects, and so one of the discussions to be had concerns the reasons for and the methods by which these creators produce their videos.
[1.3] This article has three objectives. First, I brief the reader on the anatomy of the YouTube action figure review video as a genre, discuss its genre staples, and address the creative forces informing it. In situating it this way, I engage in an overview of how previous scholars, particularly Francesca Coppa (2022) and Benjamin Nicoll and Bjorn Nansen (2018), have framed various genres of video on YouTube in dialogue with familiar industry mechanics. I then argue for a pivot away from an industry-dominant frame and toward the fan-made video review as action figure media made by fans. I analyze how it communicates the specific strengths of the action figure as a material medium. Then I argue for a paradigmatic shift in how we are framing the action figure under review. While the action figure under the fan's camera lens can be seen as a "second-order transitional object" of a larger media property (Sandvoss 2005, 90), my analysis joins Katriina Heljakka's work on action figures to argue that the ways in which the host frames the figure's merits center it as a primary text and the fan as a textual producer. Thus, I advocate for the toy review space as a place where transformative work happens. Through various examples and discussion with other scholars, I argue that these fans engage in numerous practices of agential decision-making and creativity that emphasize the toyetic nature of the material in front of the camera. Finally, I present a close reading of a single video review to demonstrate the various claims made in the preceding sections.
[1.4] This article joins a robust and growing conversation that pushes the fields of toy studies and fan studies further to recognize the ways in which fans demonstrate and celebrate the unique affordances of the action figure as material culture. As I reiterate in my conclusion, the field of fan studies has seen a healthy diversification of both subject matter and authorship, helped enormously by the framing of this scholarship as an ongoing conversation within a big tent (TWC Editor 2025). A focus on toys and fan engagement with tactile media is another practice in this progressive march. By looking at the video review as a media text about action figures, we gain a more complete picture of the diverse ways in which fans value and play with them.
2. The anatomy of the toy review and the action figure: From industry to fan context
[2.1] The toy review is part of a broader ecology of online fan media production that centers discussion of toys for online consumption by adults and children. While we can taxonomize this in a number of ways, it might first help to think of it like a typical review that we would find on YouTube of a good or service. Work in platform studies and surrounding YouTube content has discussed the related unboxing video genre that is often algorithmically recommended to viewers of toy reviews or videos featuring toys. Research in this area discusses such content in relation to the content creator's own relationship to industry, whether that be the toy industry or YouTube's own legal environment and participatory economies and communities (Walczer 2021; Craig and Cunningham 2017; Nicoll and Nansen 2018). As Jarrod Walczer (2021) explains, the review video genre on YouTube is "considered a part of the broader unboxing genre, which comprises the unpacking of everything from consumer electronics with product reviews to beauty products in 'haul' and 'style' videos" (157). He establishes the product review video and unboxing video to be part of a larger, "kid-centric" swathe of YouTube content (158). However, there are useful differences in the various types of videos that have been taxonomized in this way; the action figure video review is distinct from the unboxing video in both the mechanics of its construction and in the audience it tends to target, algorithmic boosts or filters notwithstanding.
[2.2] Scholarship has also contextualized the YouTube video around the industry tactics of affiliate links, promotional incentives, and brand awareness. Reviews and unboxing videos of high-value products are often in direct dialogue with industry leaders or retailers. YouTube technology reviewers like Marques Brownlee, noted for his reviews and coverage of Apple and Android phones, electric vehicles, and other big tech products, is a prominent figure in both the YouTube technology space and the tech consumer industry (Brownlee, "Some Quick Advice from Barack Obama!," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I49VNQ6lmKk; "Talking Tech and AI with Tim Cook!," https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pMX2cQdPubk). This person's status and cultural function have shifted from consumer fan to industry insider, with recognition in both spheres of influence. With concurrent cultural and platform developments, toy reviewers also receive products from the companies that produce them. Hasbro sent various Transformers fans who review the franchise's toys on YouTube a promotional box of figures as part of a marketing campaign for the 2024 animated film Transformers One (Peaugh, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STv2M3tKPqE; emgo316, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xI1p5pwiPbY). So another way to frame the video review genre is as a form of fan labor that increasingly intersects with traditional media industry for the promotion and purchasing of a product in a flywheel pattern (Stanfill 2018). This framing too seems to apply a revisionist coat to the texts that have preceded the YouTube video's focus on the creator economy mechanics of promotion and brand deals. Much of the academic discussion around YouTube video creators, even those producing content about toys, has surrounded giant YouTube creators like Ryan's World or EvanTubeHD (Hunting 2021; Ramos-Serrano and Herrero-Diz 2016). However, the toy review scene began long before these more influencer-flavored channels took form.
[2.3] The toy review video genre proliferated in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Early adopters of the YouTube platform who reviewed their toys include JTMitchell87, Peaugh, and BikerTrashWolf, all of whom uploaded their first toy reviews in 2006 and 2007. Chris "Vangelus" Ho started his Vangelus Reviews video series in 2008. Second-wave toy reviewers include AnthonysCustoms in 2011, D Amazing in 2014, and JobbytheHong in 2015. Others, like Sirdork and Justin's Collection, got their start in 2019; these later users boast more subscribers and view counts per video than their first-wave counterparts.
[2.4] In contrast to a historicized view, the toy review video genre can be framed as a fan-created text centering the action figure that engages in transformative work. In this framing, parent media industry relations or licensing contexts are de-emphasized in favor of understanding how fans view the action figure as a primary text or as something beyond a fidelity-laden product. Scholars like Heljakka have commented on the ways in which toys gain social and communal value in the action figure fan community through the "key affordances" of material sense—poseability, articulation, or huggability (2017, 101). These fans communicate the action figure's felt and affective materiality—elements that primarily inform an action figure fan's enjoyment of the figure, not its relationship to or promotion of a parent text. This shift in what priorities fans emphasize in their creative endeavors complicates the ways in which fandom is perceived, at least in affirmational fandom that reifies producers' authority and power (Godwin 2015). This has been recognized recently by Dominika Ciesielska et al. (2025), who point out in their introduction to Affect in Fandom that
[2.5] creating fanfiction, recreating a recipe from a beloved show, and collecting merchandise are all ways to engage with a media product on a deeper level. Fan works simulate or deepen the emotions towards a source text. In other words, what characterizes the textual productivity of fans is affect towards an existing text, person, object, or phenomenon. This affective reception sets this form of content creation apart from that of other makers. (9)
[2.6] Here, fans and their creations should be examined, these authors argue, from the vantage of what they as creators are doing with an existing text. Reverence to a source text is here minimized in favor of understanding the effect a text has on a fan. Content creation is modulated as a fan practice, not simply as a promotional tactic. This is important to emphasize because the mechanics and contexts from which channels like Ryan's World arrive and thrive are very different from those of fans more directly embedded in the action figure hobby. As the examples below show, action figure fans engage the action figure materially and then produce their own text around that esoteric knowledge and affect. Thus, it well serves the fields of material studies, fan studies, and toy studies to acknowledge this difference and how this manifests in what action figure fans produce. To be clear, this shift in framing is not about overdetermining fan creativity and agency in strict opposition to producers' power; Elizabeth Affuso and Suzanne Scott (2023) have discussed late capitalism's agenda of the consumer citizen within brand fandom, for example. The contexts of the toy industry do very much inform fans' buying and participatory habits. Release schedules, promotional images, the unprecedented access fans now have to toy engineers through social media, and real-world political shockwaves such as ballooning tariffs all contribute to what fans buy, and why. However, the type of industry focus that has heretofore been implemented regarding the YouTube video and fandom has left room for a more nuanced discussion of fan practice and contexts around action figures.
[2.7] Therefore, I specifically argue that the kinds of YouTube videos action figure fans produce have specific generic and contextual qualities that inform their creation and engagement, beyond the unboxing context mentioned above. A typical toy review video features a demonstration of the action figure—its detailed paint, sculpt, accessories, and articulation (poseability). Through video, we are able to see the action figure in motion, hear the click of ratchet joints, observe armor moving or springing into place as we bend a knee or a shoulder joint, note how the figure's paint and sculpt catch and reflect light. Video communicates the action figure's felt affect, reinforced by some action figures' nested sculpt and linked pieces that activate when the figure is moved.
[2.8] Helpfully, Keidl (2018) breaks fan-created texts focusing on the action figure as a plaything into two categories of action figure media. The first is action figure cinema, including fan fiction media that make the toy come to life, such as stop-motion videos of toys embarking on a story, or text- or still photography–based fan fiction about toys as characters in an owner's home. Other scholars have termed this photoplay (Baldelli 2017; Heljakka 2015). The second category is action figure history, which comprises media made by fans who consider the action figure to be a historical and/or culturally significant object. Within this, Keidl places the activities of collecting, communal sharing, and merchandising histories put on by local museums or online by fans. We can place the action figure video review genre within this second category. While the video medium overlaps with the unboxing genre discussed above, the content here emphasizes the action figure's materiality as a physical object, with less focus on the object's promotional potential. Action figure fans who produce video reviews are engaging the YouTube platform with fundamentally different objectives and contexts than those who produce unboxing videos. Keidl has previously identified how action figure fans have a literacy around the components and typical presentations of action figures; packaging, accessories, visible joints, and other material qualities are things that action figure fans see or value in the product. In other words, hinges and other toyetic features are staples of the medium, not things that the eye edits out. The action figure review emphasizes its subject's material qualities and speaks to an assumed audience of fellow action figure fans. This is in contrast to typical haul or unboxing videos, which frame the purchased material as physical presentations of, for example, a Disney or Marvel IP. Packaging and accessories are elements unique to the toy industry, and its wares are elements that action figure fans notice and place value on—as much as, if not more, than the licensing deals and history that birthed the creation.
[2.9] The action figure is a distinct material medium from related figures like dolls or statues. What sets it apart most is the focus on engineering realistic jointing throughout the plastic body. Articulation at the head, shoulders, elbows, wrists, torso, waist, hips, knees, and feet is standard fare in modern high-end action figures, but the way these joints are implemented varies from company to company. Common engineering practices include a ball-and-socket (ball socket) joint system, a single axis pin-disc joint (or double joint) typically for the elbows and knees, and various implementations of universal pin-disc or ball-and-stem joints for the elbows and hips. These latter joints are made up of two or more pieces of plastic that allow the limb to move in multiple axes. High-end action figures also invoke a lateral shoulder joint set within the torso prior to a universal joint at the shoulder, such that the figure can cross the arm over the chest; this is referred to as a butterfly joint because of the rotation axis. Ankles and wrists on high-end action figures have more complex jointing, such as a ball-socket or a hinged stem-and-socket mechanism that allows the ankles and wrists to roll and pivot around on multiple axes (David Silva, https://creative-beast.com/understanding-the-types-of-joints-in-action-figures/).
[2.10] This emphasis on materiality and tactility has been discussed previously by Heljakka (2015) in the context of adult action figure fans' experience in ludic play—that is, the physical engagement with toys in the real world. But such focus has also found a literate audience even through digital communication. Toy reviews show off an action figure's detailed paint and sculpt, joints, and other physical properties. The hosts will often give a systematic breakdown of the articulation of the figure and an overview of the accessories that the figure comes with. Joint range and ability are common fixtures of merit for fans when assessing action figures; action figure lines of some companies, like Bandai's S.H.Figuarts and Good Smile Company's Figma, and Hong Kong–based company ThreeZero, have framed advanced articulation as a selling point of their product, with a higher price to match, often with additional sculpt and engineering to account for more complex joint systems (Gundam Planet, https://www.gundamplanet.com/collections/s-h-figuarts; ThreeZero, https://www.threezerohk.com/about-us/). Reviewers demonstrate this articulation by way of physically moving a figure and by discussing that movement within the context of toy engineering.
[2.11] Reviewer AnthonysCustoms (2025), for example, determines the merits of the 2025 S.H.Figuarts Spider-Gwen figure by comparing the user experience of posing the figure with another action figure in another toy line: "Her butterfly joint is like a traditional butterfly. Doesn't offer very much, it's banking on this Revoltech-style shoulder, which works from the front but then otherwise is ugly…Bandai, go back to doing Bandai things. Don't try to be Revoltech." From this vantage, fans will view the strengths and failures of a figure's renderings of a franchise character like Spider-Gwen through the lens of how engaging the figure is in three-dimensional space. This is why the framing of this genre as action figure media is so powerful: It names the processes and mechanics of what these fans are doing, and the context an assumed audience brings to these videos. Indeed, the fact that context is necessary for understanding the action figure as a unique material object demonstrates what types of assumptions the action figure fan has of his audience. The value he finds in the object is distinctly that appreciated by action figure fans, not necessarily fans of existing IPs or franchises.
[2.12] To pick another example, in Vangelus's (2015) review of the Sentinel Re:Edit Bleeding Edge Iron Man, he engages and critiques that figure as "an Iron Man casual" fan, and frames what franchise fidelity there is in the figure around the design language of the toy engineers and material culture landscape: "The Re:Edit line appears to be, in short, the armor of Tony Stark as re-envisioned by [toy designer] Chemical Attack, the designer behind some of my all-time favorite Sentinel experiences." With this, he positions this Iron Man figure as a contextualized piece of toy production by various toy companies (Sentinel) and toy engineers (Chemical Attack), whose creations he has enjoyed previously as an action figure fan.
[2.13] These two examples demonstrate these fans' literacy in the action figure product space and what kind of literacy they assume of their audience. These fans are not speaking to fans of Spider-Gwen or Iron Man the comic book character or fans of the Spider-Man or Marvel IP. These videos speak to action figure fans—those who purchase or spectate the wares of Revoltech, S.H.Figuarts, ThreeZero, or other high-end action figure products. A Spider-Gwen figure that lacks a robust butterfly lateral joint, or one whose joints are not sufficiently covered by costume sculpt when bent, has less impact for this reviewer or a would-be purchaser. The knowledge that these fans have of characters and popular culture is informed by their existing knowledge of and interest in action figures as pieces of physical play and engineering. Fans who review action figures base their criteria on how well a figure replicates a character's diegetic feats framed within the action figure market.
3. Action figure media, materiality, and transformative work
[3.1] Because these reviews emphasize elements of visual storytelling, the format takes elements of both affirmational and transformative fan practices and puts them in constructive dialogue. The video review is affirmational in that the host is knowledgeable about toy production, engineering, and technical quality control and expects the same of his audience. But the review is also transformative, emphasizing as it does fan agency. Action figures, as part of Victoria L. Godwin's discussion of material fan objects, "function as extensions of self" (2018, 214). Fans' camera placement, their performative personalities, and how they manipulate the figures in front of the camera by hand are all creative decisions that, like other fan video creations, engage in transformative work.
[3.2] Fans' rhetorical practices seen in the toy review video genre position their interest in the figure as that of an action figure fan. These fans celebrate knowledge and passion for toys as material objects. This framing backs up and expands Godwin's claim about the validity of the action figure as a primary text: "No matter how much [action figures] seem to be mere reproductions of characters and items seen on screen, the existence of customizations challenges rather than affirms producers' power" (2015, ¶ 1.6). Here, Godwin is discussing how fans lay hands on the material, transforming mass-produced stock into objects of personal expression and value—a key performative example of mimetic fan practice. The action figure reviewer is doing similar work. The video review format is especially kind to action figures as reflections of fannish expression.
[3.3] There are several features of the action figure video review that are specifically fannish in nature. The first is the overall format of the review, where reviewers sit behind the camera and manipulate the figure with their hands in frame. This so-called talking hands approach is dominant within the genre. It puts a viewer in the mental position of the creator, with that fourth wall between creator and viewer becoming porous as we follow the handling of the object on-screen. Similarly, camera angles, edits, and lighting all are creative choices that the fan makes as a creator.
[3.4] Second, fans sometimes engage in small skits or photo shoots of their action figures in the video to demonstrate the figure's articulation, or to make clear how such fans and their audience might slot the figure into a broader contextual shelf of toys in the home—a clear example of taking an existing text and recontextualizing it for a different audience. This can also expand to the reviewers themselves cultivating a lore and metatextual narrative world that their audience becomes familiar with. Creators like JobbytheHong will frequently include skits and cutaway gags of himself playing exaggerated personifications of toxic fan bases, usually gesturing toward the comments section of his videos in defense or critique of a toy or toy company.
[3.5] Finally, reviewers often display erudition in their understanding of the action figure medium, with the review serving as an opportunity to demonstrate the unique knowledge that action figure fans bring to discussions of material fandom. These are key discursive characteristics of action figure fandom (Godwin 2015). Fans have "extensive knowledge of different forms of plastic and their characteristics, changes in the production technologies of toys, as well as the factories in which they were produced" (Keidl 2018). Coupled with the existing professional and creative practices of being a YouTube personality, the video reviewer practices a negotiated form of self-expression, one that is both anticipated by his audience and demonstrative of his own views and perspectives as a fan.
[3.6] While reviewers do hail the source text when discussing an action figure's accuracy, more often they praise the figure's poseability and gimmickry as material media in their own possession. By focusing on the action figure as its own textual object, with its own affordances, strengths, and weaknesses, action figure fans have also actively achieved toyesis, wherein the toy serves to generate new narrative content. The type of toyesis established in the video review is even stronger than in other fan media like a photostory, photoplay, or toy drama. While those other fannish expressions depend on the creation or maintenance of a story world, where the toy is representing a fiction or broader world, the toyesis established here is one that moves the toy into new and original context. As with vidding, the toy review is transformative through its framing and use of mass-produced stock. It is highly dependent on context, and outsiders might find nothing germane in this medium to their own fannish objectives (Coppa 2022). Through the video review, fans transform the action figure from purchasable stock to an outlet of creativity.
[3.7] It is telling that the bulk of action figure fans' reviews are taken up by the section covering the figure's poseability and the playability of the piece. These physical and tactile aspects of the action figure are "considered key affordances" by action figure fans (Heljakka 2017, 101). Enthusiasm for toy engineering, the playability of the figure, is a primary focus of many toy reviews, making the action figure a primary and transformative text. For example, in his Re:Edit Iron Man review, Vangelus (2015) discusses the ways in which this Iron Man figure can be articulated and gives his viewers a rundown on the figure's poseability. For this figure (and increasingly many other high-end adult collector figures), joints do not merely allow the arms and legs to move. As previous scholarship reminds us, the articulation and posing capacity of an action figure gives it additional value, what Heljakka (2013) terms glow. In addition, some figures' articulation allows the user access to more visual and tactile material when engaged—a point that this reviewer touts as a significant and unique experience. As he moves the figure's arm up, Vangelus commands us to "look at all the stuff that's happened!" He shows how, as the arm bends, "all these separate pieces…move around against each other to make this [one arm movement] look like a whole bunch of interlinked armor." Here, the Iron Man figure's shoulder is manipulated upward, with detailed plates of plastic covering the joint, mimicking complex visual and tactile engineering that we might see on moving armor, here on a small scale. This movement, present in the figure's arms and legs, is what Vangelus refers to as "interlinked moving parts" or otherwise as "interesting, thoughtful, and un-fragile joint design," and it informs much of his own excitement as a fan. Such toy engineering transforms the toy from a homage to a source text into something unique for the fan to engage with materially, gleefully. "I feel like that's kind of the draw to the whole Re:Edit line is seeing this crazy Chemical Attack engineering at work in the palette of an Iron Man suit," Vangelus says. "And I really like it!" This articulation that results in new material being revealed is a material practice that only the action figure is able to do, a visual and haptic storytelling happening in real time.
4. The toy review as a toyetic medium: A case study
[4.1] Vangelus's (2017) review of the S.H.Figuarts Kamen Rider Genm is standard for the video review genre in three ways, two formal and one contextual. First, it positions itself as a product review and approaches the action figure's strengths and weaknesses from the vantage of purchasing and engaging with a physical piece of popular culture. The structure of the video is familiar to viewers of the genre, its narrative arc moving from figure overview to poseability to accessories to recommendation. This is what toy reviews before and since have done and why they are successful as a form of entertainment and soft promotion. As Nicoll and Nansen attest, the focus of these videos and the adult video review genre is "on the toys themselves" (2018, 8), with audiences finding the participatory nature of the video appealing. Second, as a video produced by and made for fans of the toy collecting hobby, this review's formal elements such as its videography, tight close-ups of the figure's sculpt, voice-over, and editing are all familiar practices by those who produce and watch these types of videos. Finally, the figure that Vangelus reviews is one that is representative of the high-end action figure scene: It is from a reputable adult-hobbyist company (Bandai), with the expected poseability, toy engineering, sculpt work, and included accessories we find in the box of an S.H.Figuarts action figure. This figure represents the character Genm in his zombie form from the tokusatsu drama Kamen Rider Ex-Aid (2016–17), a series in the heavily toyetic Kamen Rider franchise from Japan. Vangelus's review can be broken into four sections. First, Vangelus praises the figure's sculpt and paint applications. Then he demonstrates the figure's poseability and how easy or difficult it is to work the joints. He next covers the figure's accessories, including show- and character-appropriate scaled props such as the Gashacon Sparrow and Half-Gashat, then highlights the inclusion of various alternative hand options. Finally, Vangelus assesses this figure's strengths and weaknesses in the economic contexts of other action figures and offers a purchasing recommendation.
[4.2] In terms of longitudinal staying power and significance, I choose Vangelus as a creator case study because of his longtime participation in various fan communities, especially the Transformers fan space and the action figure hobbyist space. He has been uploading videos since 2008 and thus has an established backlog of media and history to pull from. Within his affinity spaces, Vangelus and other action figure reviewers navigate their own brand and online footprint along paths familiar to larger creators while not diversifying beyond their hobbyist content (Hunting 2021).
[4.3] Vangelus frames this action figure's replication of the show's suit design and props as merits that the toy has achieved (or failed to achieve) physically. In one sense, this action figure's attention to detail in its sculpt and paint is demonstration of the toyetic nature of the Kamen Rider franchise. Historically, this franchise's various television representations make heavy use of props, including the Rider belts and wrist gadgets, to promote the franchise's concomitant wares on toy store shelves. The belt and gadgetry are textual aspects of the show that audience members can then purchase and play with (Bainbridge 2017). But Vangelus transplants the Kamen Rider suit's toyetic properties to a different merit framework that centers the action figure as a primary text.
[4.4] His overall assessment of the figure frames its fidelity to the on-screen character and the asymmetrical suit around its three-dimensional tactile feel and ability to be handled at a miniature scale. In his overview of the toy's sculpt and paint, he says, "Every demented detail I could ask for has been rendered on the S.H.Figuarts Genm Dangerous Zombie, from the skeletal bony carapace pieces to the tatter-shredded undersuit design, to the full metal spinal column, to the freakin' techy greeble behind the Super Saiyan helmet hair" (Vangelus 2017). While Godwin has discussed action figure fans' efforts to achieve in their projects "screen accuracy" (2015, ¶ 3.7), I suggest these fans are also concerned with the materiality on the desk before them, informed by knowledge of toy engineering and plastic construction. The "full metal spinal column" and the "techy greeble" on the helmet are phrases that gesture to the physicality of the action figure more than to their screen accuracy (Vangelus 2017). More recent reviews of different licensed figures from this same brand have similarly praised these material aspects of the product (for example, eightysixed reviews' coverage of 2025's S.H.Figuarts Goku figure at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UJUJlAxEiz8).
[4.5] Vangelus's knowledge about action figure and toy engineering is on full display in order to praise the S.H.Figuarts's figure's engineering. His presentation and recognition that this is a toy that we are going to want to play with is a key contextual component of this and other video reviews. Vangelus (2017) notes, for example, how "the whole shoulder is connected with a ball-socket roll. There's not a whole ton of room in there, but [the whole shoulder] is rollable" from within the shoulder joint socket. This is in contrast to the more standard pin-disc movement on older figures that would only allow the arm to move around a static axis. He praises the figure's midtorso joint, "which has a decent bit of roll," and notes that the "ball-socket connection on the waist" has "a pretty good range." Visual delivery using these two joints in tandem is strong, "especially given the bulkiness of the chest piece," he says. As with his Iron Man review, Vangelus's enthusiasm for this aspect positions him squarely as a literate action figure fan.
[4.6] In another example, when assessing the figure, Vangelus (2017) brings up the Gashacon Bugvisor belt buckle. This is staple prop in the show. But he notes its inclusion here to appreciate that "the spooky zombie marionette display [has been] filled out in full despite its tiny size." He follows this up by declaring that "The chest readout is a fantastic piece of on-figure printing, and the clear pectoral piece overtop even has sculpted cracks laid into its surface." These suit details from the Kamen Rider Ex-Aid character on which this figure is based are praised as demonstrations of the capabilities of modern toy printing and engineering, of the action figure as a physical medium that we can turn over in our hands. "On-figure printing," tiny paint applications, and "sculpted cracks laid into [a] surface" are testaments to the quality of this material as material, that carry literal and economic weight that exceeds its representation of television assets.
[4.7] Ironically, Vangelus is most critical of the elements of this figure that are the most toyetic—the most closely aligned to the show's own "make-and-do" aspects (Bainbridge 2017, 25). This figure, like others in Bandai's S.H.Figuarts toy line, includes several accessories meant to replicate items from the parent media. In one sense, this fulfills the toyetic mandates of the show. However, Vangelus frames the accessories included with the action figure as tactilely unsatisfying—haptic weaknesses that impact the overall execution of the figure as a plaything. Vangelus gestures to how the toyetic nature of the Kamen Rider series is in immediate dialogue with the ecosystem of toys and their small accessories. While this figure's accessories replicate moments of activity on the show (the Half-Gashat accessory on the figure's belt can be removed to reflect that function in the show, for example), Vangelus (2017) notes their tiny size in his palm: "[The Half-Gashat] feels almost antagonistically easy to lose and [is only removable so as] to be plugged into weapon sockets that I will probably never engage with." Here Vangelus places the toy's ability to replicate the show's objects and their show functions as a demerit when made real. In another instance, Vangelus bemoans the functional performance of the weapon accessory, the Gashacon Sparrow. This is a weapon that, in the show, can split apart and become two chopping weapons for Genm to wield, clearly toyetic in function and presentation. But Vangelus notes that while this weapon accessory is painted "blazingly" in hot pink and neon yellow, its show-accurate split-apart gimmick "readily happens all the time" unprompted by the user. "The two weapon pieces are held together by a removable joining tab that is straight-up rudely easy to lose and often fails to do its job." Here the toyetic nature of the show is the least engaging element of the toy for a fan to play with.
[4.8] While he criticizes the toy's show- and character-appropriate accessories, Vangelus finds the most value in the figure's six alternative hand options. This criterion as a strength is strictly in the realm of action figure appreciation. Typical of high-end action figures, this S.H.Figuarts figure comes with several pairs of right and left hands in different poses, to be swapped out by users so that the action figure can be posed more expressively. Vangelus (2017) praises this aspect of the package, saying, "I'm super happy that each option comes in a matching pair and each pair features gorgeous asymmetrical paint work, with the left hands done in pure silver and the right hands all carefully detailed with high-contrast white paint." His excitement about this and the value he places in this inclusion demonstrate his priorities when assessing this figure. While these hand options are toyetic in that they allow users to recreate poses or moments from the show (the third set of hand options, for example, are, in Vangelus's words, "all open-clenched to rip and tear through impeding Henshin special effects that might stand between you and your prey"), their inclusion in the box itself is endemic to the action figure product experience. That is, pairs of hands allow users to more dynamically play with and pose the figure. These accessories and the visual and tactile merits of the figure are viewed as handled material for him to engage with. Like the other examples before it, this action figure has its qualities scrutinized as strengths or demerits of a material object.
[4.9] Vangelus's handheld videography lovingly captures the Kamen Rider Genm in dynamic (and precariously balanced) poses, both mimicking the show and showing off the host's skills of play. While these poses ostensibly work to "freeze a text's action" and "make the immaterial cult text material" (Godwin 2015, ¶ 3.4), the video review contextually celebrates the action figure as the object to freeze the text. By framing the figure under sharp lighting to bring out its sculpt and leading us through a series of shots of the figure punching, leaping, soaring, and kicking, it is clear that what is engaging and enticing about these shots is that this is an action figure performing these acts, not a man in a suit.
[4.10] Vangelus uses the assets and skills of a filmmaker to produce a video that earnestly demonstrates the physical and haptic assets of a toy in motion, all ostensibly to help his viewers make a purchasing decision. His video demonstrates how the figure is poseable and can move. This is a strength that only video or in-person demonstration can offer. The visual and tactile strengths of the action figure are on full display here, from the rich asymmetrical sculpt of Kamen Rider Genm Dangerous Zombie's suit to the robust joints and plentiful accessories. It is through video, not still images, that seeing all this advanced engineering take place is best communicated. Demonstrations of how action figures move by users' hands put into viewers' heads immediate images of themselves also playing with the figure. The elements that entice consumers to buy the action figure on first viewing those promotional shots released by the toy company, or the image gallery of a figure on the distribution store website, are lovingly communicated in motion in this medium. Vangelus (2017) recommends that his viewers purchase the figure to experience these elements for themselves, his video assuming that they too are interested in its materiality, in how the action figure moves and feels. This review, via visuals and audio, communicates the intrinsic power of the action figure as an object that can also be played with.
5. Conclusion
[5.1] The video review is as much about appreciating the engineering of the toy itself, regardless of the medium it is representing, as it is about appreciating the fidelity to source material of a figure under the camera lens. This medium offers another way, alongside fashion and theme park merchandise, that fans appreciate material culture, often divorced from parent media texts (Affuso and Santo 2018; Affuso and Scott 2023). It also allows us insight into how action figures are framed and understood beyond the merchandising and distribution models of capitalism. My case study speaks to the longevity of this medium as a form of fan expression and appreciation of material culture. Vangelus's Genm Dangerous Zombie review came out in 2017, and since then, this fan and others like him have continued to produce video reviews about everything, from Hasbro's Marvel Legends action figures to licensed figures by companies like ThreeZero and Figma and other characters from both Western comic book and animation and Japanese manga and anime. The other video reviews that I gesture to here demonstrate that the genre is thriving well into the 2020s. Scholarship interested in this niche fan practice has a diverse and healthy backlog to mine.
[5.2] My work here responds to Keidl's (2018) suggestion that we look closer at how action figure media complicate discrete notions of fan, producer, consumer, and collector. In terms of what studying and writing about fans and toys can do for the fan studies field, this material energizes existing conversations surrounding the medium of participation, the democratization of play, and the relationship between audience and industry. Now, midway through the 2020s, young people are rediscovering the joy and value of physical media; fan studies has the opportunity to discuss the ways that the video review entices viewers to pick a toy off the shelf and play with it.
[5.3] As the above video review examples have shown, the action figure media made by fans today show how the cultural relevance of toys, toyetics, and toyesis endures beyond franchise IP or industry stakeholder agendas. Further research by toy studies scholars, fan studies scholars, and platform studies scholars would benefit from engaging this and other fan media about toys.