You might not need Son of Frankenstein's Monster from Super7 but we had it in work and I dig the vibes. I bought him last year, and I saw this movie - as one may as well - on Svengoolie. The nationally (sort of) televised horror host makes corny jokes and shows old movies that your parents and grandparents saw on TV 70 years ago, when broadcasters were starved to fill airwaves with cheap programming. And this is why monster kids were a thing.
I'm not completely sure if this was done by ex-Kenner sculptor Steve Geddes or not. It looks very similar to his style, but lacking some specific elements like sometimes (but not always) having at least one hand in sort of a rounded gripping pattern, or a bent ankle and knee like on Walrus Man or Ree-Yees. If he said in an interview somewhere, I didn't see it - but I will say it's close enough that I dig it even if it's not his baby.
The head sculpt is very similar to the regular Super7 Frankenstein's Monster [FOTD #2.845], but easily seen as not identical. The head has a little more hair and a different headline without the staples. The scar is different, and the eyes seem a hair more open. It's also a little bit smaller. If you didn't have them side-by-side, you could probably assume they were the same head (or at least, the same sculptor doing two drafts of the same character.) I love the sculpt, with a hint of a smirk - and that little sunken-in bit on the right side of Karloff's face is subtle, but I think I can see it.
The 5-jointed figure is functionally similar, but now has a narrower build and is a tiny bit taller. I think I like it more than Standard Frank - I wish his right hand could hold an accessory. Both are that quasi-claw pose that some Kenner figures had, and I think it really works here. The limited articulation makes him seem to have that monster stride we saw in the movies, with stiff limbs lumbering across the screen with his more verbose co-star Ygor.
The boots don't seem quite as stompy, but they're good. The pants look fine, the hairy shirt sculpt looks good too. Super7 gave it a black wash to bring out detail, but that's a very not-Kenner detail. It's probably a good choice for a modern collectible to make it not look like an Ewok or a Wookiee, but the sleeves are just sleeves. The wrinkles on the arms look fine, with smaller larger hands and fingers than the standard version.
He stands well, he sits well, all the joints move as well as an old Kenner action figure. I don't doubt there are details I don't know due to my lack of maximal familiarity with the source material, but it is a charming modern retro toy. I wish I had it as a kid, even if it doesn't have the costume that I would've probably recognized from the more famous movies. It feels right, and sometimes that's more important than perfectly replicating every last nuance perfectly.
It's hard to not like this figure, especially when you consider how crazy it is that a company like Super7 in the late 2010s started working on these figures which came from movies from the 1930s. The longevity of these movies as a real classic - which I believe is roughly defined as something nobody wants to watch but everybody wants to have watched - is amazing even if they are sort of shoved aside with newer killer dolls and the newest demons of the big screen, which are also doing good business and making people happy. And scared. And laughing? But I digress. Super7 made a good figure that is intentionally primitive in several very good ways. I wouldn't mind additional figures of a Lugosi or a Chaney Monster, but the ship seems to have sailed on Super7's ReAction Universal Monsters line after three-ish waves and an encore Werewolf of London. Son of Frankenstein isn't going to change your life, but the toy fills me with delight in the same way that most super-articulated action figures don't.
I am excited to see if we're going to see another take on these guys. Remco took their shot in the 1980s, Burger King did some nice ones in the 1990s, Funko (with Super7) did a nice batch in the early 00s and Super7 went back and redid them a few years later. I assume at some point somebody will do faux (or real) Titan Hero Series 12-inch figures, but I don't know that there's a lot of overlap between Zoomers and black-and-white cinema.
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