Review : Slimer
Ghostbusters Select (Diamond Select)
Wave/Series : Series 3
Released : October 2016
Price : £19.95 - £22.95
If you are going to do a Ghostbuster range of figure then your first job is to do the 4 main Ghostbusters, your 2nd is to do Slimer. It has taken until Series 3 for Diamond to release their version of the bright green eating machine, but here he is for us to look at.
Like the previous two series, Slimer comes on the standard large blister card that is synonymous with the Select range. The right hand panel shows a cartoon depiction of Slimer rather than the movie images we have seen on the other figures to date - which will make Slimer stand out a little on a display, although the Ghostbusters logo remains in place on the bottom half of the spine. The same cartoon type image is replicated on the front corner panel along with the character name. The front side panel runs up from this name card and carries the Ghostbuster logo again alongside the Diamond logo.
Round the back and the card moves from a silhouetted view of the Ghostbusters firing their proton streams and blends up to the streams crossing in an explosion of electrical activity. Over this is laid a paragraph about Slimer and his role in the film and this sits neatly against a full length shot of the figure himself. For the picky out there you will find an error in this background text with the misspelling of the hotel as the Sedewick (it should be Sedgewick). Under the text, and with a yellow and black hazard border, are the "also available" figures from Series 2 - Quitting Time Ray and Janine.
Slimer himself looks a little lost in the packaging being a relatively small piece in this giant blister. He is surrounded by the two alternative heads, but that doesn't fill out the pack enough to look "value for money". Out of the box and rest of the plastic tray is filled by Slimer's clear flying base. Behind this sits the diorama piece which we will look at a little later.
Slimer sits just four inches high from the lowered hands through to the head. The sculpt is a really great piece of work, capturing the impish look of Slimer, his ravenous mouth with tombstone like teeth and down through the rolls of fat to his truncated body. The arms repeat the same gelatinous sculpt down to some very manly looking hands. All of this is painted in a vibrant green with subtle highlights to finish him off. The mouth is coloured in a very dark red flesh colour, with the teeth a gruesome off white and then washed with a dark brown to fill in the cavities with a dark rotting look. The eyes are a little too plain, simply a white eyeball with a single black dot. These eyes don't live up to the detail of the mouth and could have done with some depth around the eye sockets.
The head can be swapped out to two other versions. This is a simple operation popping out the head and pushing the replacement into the slot. This isn't a seamless join, although they have done really well to disguise a lot of the join under the rolls of Slimer's body fat. Side on however there is a clear gap and you can see daylight through the figure. The two standard heads are too similar for my liking, with one with more "surprised" eyes than the other. I would have preferred more variation - perhaps the "attacking " Slimer or even the "Bus Driver" version from Ghostbusters 2. The final head is the hot dog head, with a jaw rammed full of hot dogs as seen in the final half of the film when Slimer is released along with all the other ghosts by Walter Peck. The hot dogs are well painted and look realistic enough, and this head option does add a touch of comedy to a display - as Silmer should always do.
Articulation is restricted solely to the arms, so essentially this is a 6 points of articulation figure. This starts with ball jointed arms which can go out to the side of the main body or up above the head, this allows you to give Slimer a more dynamic look or have him attacking. The elbows are a single bend, to 90 degrees, and also rotate. The hands are on a peg joint which does bend a little front and back and these too rotate.
The trickiest part of any Slimer figure is how to display him, after all he is a free floating spirit. Diamond have packed in a multi point stand with Slimer which is made up of a base disk and three jointed arms. The idea is to put the two larger joints together into the base, and the final shorter piece into the hole in Slimer's back. Disappointingly the stand in this configuration can't hold the weight of Slimer and it simply flops over. The only combo I could get to work is to disregard one of the longer lengths, which then has Slimer hovering about 3 inches off the floor. I have seen examples of Slimer working with all three parts of the stand, and I guess that this would be achieved with carefully balancing and perhaps trying to tighten the screws that are used on each of the articulated joints.
Slimer is packed with an upright wall piece for the rooftop diorama, which comes with an eagle head protrusion. The head slots into two corresponding slots on the side of the panel easily enough, and eventually this panel will make up the side wall of the portal through which Gozer appears. Diamond have included a hole in this side piece which also accepts the uprights of the stand. This means that when the rooftop is built you can display Slimer floating near this wall section (even though he was never in this part of the film).
Slimer is a brilliant figure, I just feel underwhelmed with what Diamond have done with the pack. The extra heads are great, but two of them are so alike I had to check a couple of times to make sure there wasn't a packing error. The stand doesn't work all that well (let me know if I am missing anything) and considering Slimer has just 6 points of articulation he feels lacking vs the other releases. He almost feels like he should have been an accessory himself with say Louis Tully or Dana? They could have even thrown in a crude food trolley for Slimer to snack on to represent the scene from the Sedgewick hotel - this would have looked great alongside the Slimed Peter that is coming in Series 4.
I love Slimer, I have done since the 80's, and this is the best figure I have ever had of the menace and deserves a score to reflect that - whilst taking off points for the negatives, Slimer therefore comes out at a 3 out of 5. A better stand and some more added value would have made this perfect.
