Well seeing as i have FAR too much time on my hands i took a closer look at Pepe than i've ever done with the figures before and really spent A LOT of time comparing it with puppet photos etc. From what i can tell - there is a tiny itty bit too much forehead in the figure, with the Puppet the hair (which is actually less bushy and clingy on the figure) comes down almost around the eyes but with the figure theres a gap. I think that the eyes need to move down far closer to just above the top of the mouth to get rid of that empty space and they are slightly too large/bulgy and definitely too far apart which is making his expression 'off'. The placement of the pupils on the eyes is right though. I would even say that the color they've chosen for Pepe's body hair is far too reddy-orange, on the figure it's the same as his hair (which Palisades have right), on the puppet it's a more subtle shade of the same color. In contrast on the puppet, the outer rim of his bottom lip is more reddy-fleshy but on the figure it's too dull and pale.
The other thing i noticed (from looking at comparison photos etc) is that the mouths not right at all. There's a few things wrong with it - firstly it's open ever so slightly too far, it just needs to close an itty bit. Secondly, the inside of the puppets mouth is not like the inside of Ken's action figure. The figure has a dead straight bottom jaw with a large tongue level with it and then just black for the upper roof of the mouth. This is why people are saying he needs to look down more. With the puppet, it's not like that, when the puppets mouth opens it's at an angle - not straight, and the tongue is much smaller than the bottom space in his mouth and with it being shut more, not as much black space is visible on the upper roof of the mouth. The neck is definitely too long - Pepe's open mouth look is a casual/cheeky one, not an alarmed one. With the combination of his neck being too long and his mouth too far open and at the wrong angle he's looking kinda alarmed on the figure, but relaxed and cheeky on the puppet. I'm not saying it's physically impossible for there to be shots in existence where Pepe has a long neck, i'm sure Bill can maybe stretch it out (although not quite THAT much) when he wants Pepe to be suprised or alarmed but in a normal face forward pose there is hardly any neck visible.
So basically, the Pepe action figure should look more like Jamie's picture in the flash header above, much more relaxed and the features not as exagerated. The main problem with the action figure is that the sculptor must have made the entire head too large and it's brought all the features out wrong and left too much empty space in between them to fill it out so as a result he looks more like alarmed Zombie Pepe than cheeky funny Pepe. Palisades
REALLY need to see the actual puppet or at least some polaroids of it at each angle, and to top all that - i've turned into the Muppet communities version of the Comic Book Guy !
....lovely 'action figure' though, just not exactly like the puppet, and it was very brave of Palisades to attempt it in the first place. Even looking like this, it's better than we would have got from any other company. Anyway, gotta run, Ken will be round my house soon with an axe !
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