I can't remember if the Vampire and Frankenstein's Monster was solicited as Dracula and Zombie or what - it's been a while. At work I just wrote "Monster," so I'm going with that. These sets seem to have enjoyed limited release in 2018, and there were 3 unique 2-packs sold in an assortment - Wolfman and Witch, Mummy and Reaper, and of course this one. There was another Vampire 2-pack a while back, and also numerous sets that included variations on Vampires and Zombies/Frankensteins including a pair of haunted house sets. I actually forgot to open this one until a couple of months ago - after all, I had two Greaser Vampires and at least a couple of decaying green monsters. I was in no rush.
The Frankenstein's Monster gives the green-skinned monster a brown jacket, changing the outfit but keeping a lot of the face stitches. I've got a lot of figures that look like this and know of at least one I don't have - but this one is neat in that it has a distinctive outfit and uses the "Friar Tuck" hair piece that we don't see all that much. It's a neat spin on the whole flat-top head Jack Pierce in 1931's Frankenstein movie. Instead of making the head look like a box, this figure implies the cap of the head was shaved - or cut off and replaced! - to allow access to the brain.
There are tons of neat touches on the outfit. Some are subtle, like the tattered clothes, disheveled lapels, and green vest. What I really liked were the painted-on patches and a unique spin on Playmobil's injection molding - the arms are white sleeves under a brown coat, all molded in color, with green fists. While I love the face stitching, it's just a reuse of the pattern from the figure in the 5638 Haunted House Play Box [FOTD #1,354]. It's very good, but between the blind bag, and this figure, and the other ones, I think I'm good for this kind of monster. I'll buy another when they go for the Jack Pierce-style make-up with the flat head.
You could make a case for it being either a Zombie or Frankenstein's Monster, or neither for legal reasons. I assume this is Frank's monster because of the abundant stitches and tattered clothes, plus the included chains. This looks sort of like what we saw in Bride of Frankenstein, but only sort of - there's nothing to chain him to, and you only get one chain. It seems designed to go around his neck, but he can't do this due to his jacket being in the way. The figure is packaged with one end on his wrist and the other around an ankle, which seems like a perfectly good use for the piece.
...unless someone out there is working on a Playmobil Slave Leia, in which case, you should use it for that.
The Vampire is probably Dracula - but which one? I don't know my vampire lore as much as I should, and it seems to be a grab bag of things. The greaser haircut looks like it's something from a 1980s cartoon doing a riff on the 1950s revival of 1930s movie monsters, but what do I know? Maybe they were shooting for the widow's peak hair, and this is just the best they had on hand. The visible painted fangs are interesting, but what's particularly notable is the mustache - recalling Vlad Tepes, John Carradine, or Christopher Lee. Te figure has an incredibly fancy waistcoat with a red floral pattern and a matching tamp on his cape, which looks spectacular.
His accessory is a cane topped by a bat. It's neat! I have several vampires with fancy hair already, but this one's unique cape and cane - and mustache - make it stand out.
The going rate of this figure set has shot up a bit, but it's not too expensive. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it at a high price just because you've got a lot of alternatives (and I expect more may be coming), but for six bucks or whatever this is a fantastic pairing of monsters. Dracula's sneakers are a fun choice, as are the white sleeves on the monster. While numerous analogs to American movie monsters have been made, we're still lacking a Gill Man or a Bride of Frankenstein - and a proper Invisible Man. Maybe those are coming! For now, don't miss the various werewolves and witches and vampires and ghosts, of which there are plenty in the Scooby-Doo line.
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