ok, so as I said, I bought the figures today at the Disney Store. For $13 they're pretty good.
The figures are a scooch smaller than the figurines produced by Palisades so if you're a real stickler for scale, you may ant to display these separately. I actually found it a little jarring at first when I saw them next to each other but when I looked over at my shelf 20 min later it didn't bother me at all and it looked like they were "right where they belong". It also helped that I had Thog and Doglion whose size was very cheated by Palisades.
There's a little bit of texture on them but not quite as much as Palisades used on theirs. Having said that, you can clearly see the lineage to the Palisades line. Besides the mild texturing, Gonzo's sculpt is almost identical to Series 5 Gonzo and Animal's color is closer to his Palisades counterpart than to any other Animal merch we've seen.
Most of the figures stand very well but like Jamie said Piggy, Kermit and Rizzo have a little trouble standing up. It takes a little patience but they do stay up eventually. I found it helpful on Rizzo to bend his feet forward and make him lean on his tail a bit more. Had to do that a little with one of Kermit's feet too. I expect as we head into warmer weather, I will be picking them up off the floor regularly.
If you decide to get these it is definitely cheaper and better to get them in the store than to try the secondary market or order online. There were two boxes I saw that had broken figures in them and while looking at the Avengers sets they had I noticed the same problem. There might also be some paint issues. The Miss Piggy in my set has a few scratches on her snout. Also buying them directly from the sotre sends a clearer message to Disney "We want more stuff like this."
Speaking of which, I pretty much said that to the Disney employee who was working and she suggested going on the Disneystore website and leaving comments about that. She said they read those and listen and knowing Disney I'm sure they do.