Review: ESCAPE FROM NEW YORK's Snake Plissken Sixth-Scale Figure from Sideshow
There may be some young whippersnappers reading GeekTyrant who don’t know who Snake Plissken is. To you I say, get thee to a nunnery. Or really, just Amazon, where you can stream John Carpenter's Escape From New York. Snake Plissken is a badass’ badass. A special forces soldier turned rebel turned turned prisoner turned man on a mission, he always lives by his own conscience, and he is the man who made Kurt Russell a badass. Now, Sideshow Collectibles has immortalized him in a 1/6 Scale Figure. And because I am luckier than you, they sent me one to review.
Unlike some other Sideshow figures, Snake Plissken only comes with one face/head, but that isn’t because they were too lazy to make more faces, it’s because Plissken only has one facial expression. He sneers without sneering, and this figure captures that almost-sneer perfectly. Plus, the wizards at Sideshow spent the time they saved by making only one face on developing a plastic hand with fingers flexible/tense enough to hold a 1/6 scale cigarette, which is amazing. (Note: GeekTyrant does not endorse smoking. It kills your LARPing endurance.) The figure comes with a total of four sets of hands, each able to hold a weapon or a cassette tape. Yes, one of the accessories is a cassette tape, because, as you remember, the tape was kind of the entire point of Snake’s mission. Other accessories include guns, bullets, various throwing stars, a belt with a real buckle, and some incredible tech, like a giant digital wrist timer, tracker, homing device, and radio. Basically, anything Snake touched in the movie is included with the figure. Just not Ox Baker.
The clothes are, as ever with Sideshow, perfectly tailored. I kind of wish their seamstresses and tailors would work up a wardrobe for me. Snake wears a brown leather motorcycle jacket and winter camo pants. The pattern on the pants is a little strange. It is an exact match to the movie pants, but somehow it seems a touch too ordered. If you remove the jacket, you find a black sleeveless t-shirt, also a perfect match to the movie costume, and if you remove the shirt, (which I did, for science), you will find a massive black cobra tattoo, again, a perfect match to what is seen on screen. He is also wearing combat boots and catcher's shin guards, which is one of Plissken's more baffling eccentricities (and possibly a nod to Russell's former career as a ballplayer).
As ever, this is a top quality, well-constructed figure from Sideshow. There is a remake of Escape From New York in the works, because of course there is. But Russell's Snake Plissken was lightning in a bottle, a true original, and you are going to want that original on your shelf. The Snake Plissken Sixth-Scale Figure by Sideshow Collectibles can be yours for $159.99 and is available for preorder now.
