Another Telco Halloween decoration, the Wolf Man is the closest thing in my collection to a Muppet!

Even though it's a far cry from looking anything like he does in the movie, I really like the look of this figure. Although the sculpt of the face is somewhat simple, it does have an elegance and personality to it that is appealing to me. I love that they added so much hair to this thing. It's got a really wild look on the one hand, but it also sort of reminds me of a Muppet, too!

Although some might consider it excessive, the hair protruding from his sleeves and pant legs is another nice touch. But honestly, it sort of makes me wish I had a nice, creepy looking scarecrow one. Telco did release a scarecrow in one of their earlier batches of Motionettes, but it's more cute looking than scary.

This Wolf Man figure has much more poseability in the arms than the Creature did. You can actually bend the arms to whatever pose you want basically, as beyond the vinyl hands the arms are just a flexible wire armature.

You know what else is great about this one? That bright yellow shirt! It's a welcome change in a genre dominated by gloomy blacks and greys. It's the closest thing to sunshine that the Wolf Man will ever get anyway...

You get the same features here as on the other Motionettes...light up eyes, moving arms/head and sound effects. The sound is much more appropriate to the character this time around, too. 17" tall to the top of the head, it actually looks more like 18" with all that hair standing up. The Wolf Man was included in both series' of 17" licensed Universal Monster Motionettes, but I don't think there's any significant difference between the two. My favorite part of this thing? I got it for a measly $5 on Ebay! When the last time you bought a Japanese robot for $5?* ;)

SEE! The Gill-Man move!

SEE! His eyes burn with fury!

HEAR! Godzilla's roar?!??!!

When I recently started focusing my collecting habits more on monsters than robots, one of the things that immediately captured my fancy were motionettes. Motionettes are basically moving statues that are usually released as holiday decorations. Naturally, I am focusing entirely on the Universal Monsters, but all sorts of characters have been made from generic witches to Santa Claus.

The original and most famous motionettes were made by a company called Telco. The first releases they made were unlicensed and were 24" tall. Later, Telco would release officially licensed Universal Monsters in both 24" and 17" sizes. All of the larger sizes are harder to get and much more expensive than their smaller counterparts. 24" Motionettes come with a power cord, while the 17" ones function using two C batteries that are stored in the bottom of the black circular base the figure stands on. The figure is permanently attached to the base.

Even the 17" Universal Motionettes were broken up into two releases. Among the first releases were Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man and The Creature From The Black Lagoon. The Bride of Frankenstein and The Mummy were added for the second series. Each figures comes packaged in a cardboard box with clear cellophane on the front. I had the hardest time actually getting most of these back into the boxes for pictures, so here's Frankenstein instead of the Creature, just to give you a look at the box. Consider it a preview of a future review..

Front Of Box

Side Of Box

Side Of Box

So, what exactly do the Motionettes do? Well, nothing too exciting really. The base has a switch with three settings, "on", "off" and "sound". Setting the switch to "on" makes the head turn and the arms raise and lower. Move the switch over one more spot to "sound" and the character keeps moving but now the eyes light up red and it makes noise. Now, the noise it makes doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the character itself. For instance, the Creature here actually produces a roar that sounds almost exactly like that of GODZILLA!

The Creature is made primarily out of soft vinyl, cast in green with red, white and blue painted highlights. Naturally, vinyl is the best option for a character like this, but many of the others in the series have clothing much like a doll would, as you can see in the Frankenstein picture above.

The Creature from the Black Lagoon seems to be the easiest from this series to get. It's certainly the one I've seen most on Ebay.