The one thing about Hot Toys, it sometimes takes about a year after a movie comes out before their movie-related products start showing up. Case in point, last summer’s surprise hit movie, “Guardians of the Galaxy” is well over a year old now, but Hot Toys has still only produced about half of the products they have announced (including Star-Lord, Gamora, and a Baby Groot statuette) with highly anticipated figures yet to come (Rocket, Groot, and Thanos) and even a yet to be announced figure that needs to be produced (where the heck is Drax?!).
When Zoe Saldana was announced to be playing Gamora, I have to be honest…she was the last person I expected to play the “most dangerous woman in the galaxy”. They could have given it to almost anyone else and I would have thought, “yeah, I can see that.” Fortunately, Zoe proved me wrong and her portrayal of Gamora was pretty good. (Rosario Dawson would have killed it).
When I opened the Star Lord figure, I thought that Hot Toys did it again…but can they recreate the same magic with their Gamora figure?
I have to say that I’m pretty twisted about this packaging. While it is better put together than the Falcon packaging reviewed here last month, it is still pretty subpar for Hot Toys standards. I mean, I don’t want fireworks jumping from the box when I open it, but I do want it to kind of standout. When I think of great Hot Toys packaging, I look back at the Hot Toys War Machine/Iron Patriot figures.
With that said, I will say that I do like the picture on the front of the slip cover. The design itself is representative of an eighties throwback design, which I believe is a reference to the time Star Lord was abducted from Earth. The whole thing makes me think of Tron with its bright colors against a black background and grid-like design. The only issue I have with this cover is that the picture of Gamora is only an artist’s representation of the character, and not a shot of the figure itself. I’ll get to it later in this review, but I believe the figure itself would have benefited from the slightly mischievous smile shown on this representation of Gamora, but it was not meant to be.
The back of the slip cover is pretty uninteresting with the same “G” design that was on the front with some warning signs.
Taking off the slip cover reveals the rest of the packaging. The front of the actual box is a picture window revealing the figure and accessories inside. The back of the box is again and pretty uninteresting list of credits.
So all in all, I’m about half underwhelmed with the packaging. While not as boring or uninspired as the Falcon packaging, it still does not exact the same exuberance when opening a Hot Toys figure. Sometimes I want to be sure to have the same excitement opening my figures than when I actually have the figures in hand. This only put me about halfway there…
Packaging Score: 7.25 out of 10 
Thinking back to the movie, there really weren’t a lot of accessories that could be associated with Gamora. If you take a look at the Star Lord figure, you get his walkman, two guns, extra head, etc. which makes sense. I really only remember Gamora with her sword and dagger and that’s about it. And that’s all you really get with this figure.
Along with the figure, you get the movie-accurate outfit, 2 extra pairs of hands (closed fist and sword holding), a figure stand, and an instruction manual. That’s about it.
I can’t think of anything extra this figure would have come with…except maybe the fruit she was eating when she first meets Star Lord…or even maybe an exclusive orb that opens revealing the infinity stone and glows (with an LED embedded within). That would have been nice.
Nothing above and beyond what you would expect with this figure…
Accessories Score: 7.5 out of 10 
I kept flipping back and forth on this category. The prototype that was advertised looked just like Zoe Saldana in the movie. Then I received the figure and really didn’t see it…and I think mostly because of the “Barbie” hair and the dead-pan eyes. Now looking back at the pictures I took, I think I definitely see the resemblence.
The sculpting itself is of course top-notch. I sometimes wish I could keep track of the artists/sculptors and who sculpts what, but I can barely keep up with the movie/comic characters themselves…I don’t know if adding other names to the mix would go with my memory.
I have to say I love the movie-accurate details that Hot Toys puts into their figures…they show me things that I would never notice normally…like the blue design going through her outfit. I didn’t notice that at all (nor did I really look for it). Then there were the leg tassels, the blade hold, the high-heeled boots, the red highlights in her hair…I may rewatch the movie just to make sure that it is as film accurate as I believe it is.
A couple of things I would like to mention. One, I really don’t know how handle the “Barbie” hair. The instruction manual actually says to style it with hairspray and that some hairspray has already been applied. WTF? Doesn’t that make this a “doll” instead of an action figure? Two, I like how they applied the rubber overlay on the arms to hide the joints. I know they’ve done this before on other figures and it really adds to it.
Sculpt/Likeness Score: 8.75 out of10 
As common with most Hot Toys figures, this figure has over 30 points of articulation.
I would like to point out though that the waist articulation is obstructed by the outfit. It made posing it in different ways a little limiting.
I was also nervous about the articulation underneath the rubber coating on the arms. It reminded me a little bit of the Phicen 1/6 scale figures…the ones with plastic joints underneath the rubber layer. If you apply too much pressure the wrong way, you more than likely break the joint and the arm flops limply on the figure.
With that in mind, I was really careful when bending the arms, but found in time that this was done in a better quality than the Phicen figures and was a little more confident when making some of the poses.
Solid articulation, but ultimately nothing special.
Articulation Score: 8.25 out of10
I was really looking forward to this figure, if for anything just to complete my 1/6 scale Guardians of the Galaxy collection. I missed out being somewhat of a completest on the Avengers figures (picking and choosing what I liked) and really thought this would be the collection I could fully display. So far it looks pretty nice next to the Star Lord figure But dammit, the missing Drax offering is really putting a damper to those plans.
There were other reasons I looked forward to this figure…adding another Black female to my collection was a plus, and reviewing it for my website was another plus.
I guess I’m really trying to say that if I didn’t like the movie or if I didn’t like Zoe Saldana, I would have really been on the fence with this purchase. Fortunately, I was lucky to add this figure to my collection, even if it was a little underwhelming in the end.
It’s nice that Zoe Saldana has been in some of the highest grossing sci-fi movies in the last few years including Avatar, Star Trek, and now Guardians of the Galaxy, just to name a few. I just really hope that the universe is not really made up of little 90-pound waifs in real life. I like a little meat on my female aliens (you-kno-what-I-mean…)
