Mutt Williams & Sallah

Mutt: I’m your son.
Indy: Nooooooooooooooo(t want)! That’s not true! That’s not possible!

Got Mutt Williams from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Sallah from Raiders of the Lost Ark on clearance. I really regret not going to my retailer earlier, mighta picked up some other figs on clearance, ah well…

Let’s skip straight to the toys this time.

TOY(S)
Hasbro gets some flak as being “lazy”, especially with the repaints and re-releases and whatnot. But my only complaint in that department is the occasional choice of figs to be redeco’ed. Otherwise, minor paint apps aside, they do a bang up job on the sculpt of figures. Take Mutt and Sallah for instance.

Granted, they don’t have hyper-accurate heads, but Hasbro’s sculpters rule in terms of the overall sculpting. They have a knack for giving their toys nice folds and wrinkles on the clothes of their toys, and Mutt and Sallah are no exception. Sure, these are not exactly the most intricate designs out there, but they’re still nice.

Accessories-wise, Mutt comes with a big green plastic snake that I wish was rubber. As it is, it’s just a stationary prop. He also comes with a puny knife and a MYSTERY box with an item of unknown item-ness (and a sticker) inside. Sallah comes with a torch, a shovel and a MYSTERY box with another item of unknown item-ness (and a sticker) inside. All in all, accessories are fine, but Sallah wins out here. Mutt’s knife is pathetic, and the snake is useless more oft than not.

Articulation is expectedly good, bad and ugly.

Let’s start with Mutt. His articulation is awesome… except for his swivel hips, which bumps his articulation rating all the way down to laaaaaaaaame. The lack of balls on their pelvises… erm, I mean, balljoints for their hips, pretty much kill the Indy Jones and Star Wars 3.75″ figs for me. And Mutt’s no exception.

He’s got a balljointed neck, balljoint-hinged shoulders, elbows and knees, as well as swivel wrists, hips and waist. Due to a lack of obstruction, his legs can swing forwards and back quite far, but on the other hand, he has no ankle articulation (though that is compensated by his knees). So Mutt is about on par with your standard “good” Star Wars fig as far as articulation goes.

As for Sallah, just looking at him, you know he’s gonna have no leg articulation. And you’re right. He can wiggle his hips a little, but they decided not to give him any leg articulation besides that. His upper body is fine, it’s got the same articulation as Mutt, although his head is slightly restricted due to his turban.

OVERALL
Given the choice between two figs of roughly the same quality, it’s rare that I’d go for the one with significantly less articulation. But there you go, it had to happen sometime. I actually prefer Sallah over Mutt here.

While Mutt is an overall better engineered figure, I got him primarily because I wanted an utterly generic looking character to go with my more fantastical toys. And Mutt fits the bill almost perfectly. He’s a good toy mind you, nowhere near the level of the 25th Anniversary G.I. Joes, but he can hang with the best of ’em Star Wars. He just lacks personality, and doesn’t even have any interesting accessories to spice him up.

Sallah of course, comes in from the opposite direction. He’s a characterful sculpt with nice accessories, hampered by a lack of articulation.

Mutt Williams and Sallah are a couple good toys. Not the top of the line, so I wouldn’t pay full retail for ’em. But if you see them on clearance, they’ll do nicely to bolster your background characters.

Mutt: 2.5 out of 5

Sallah: 3 out of 5