Blizzard has recently taken a slice of League of Legends’ profits by just crossing over their stuff and mashing it in with Heroes of the Storm. You can finally play as Diablo, Kerrigan, Arthas, or… well, a lot of fanservicey stuff. And with that game, come toys! Stitches, one of the Warcraft “heroes,” is a raid boss from World of arcraft – a hideous Frankenstein-esque amalgamation of corpses, bloated and armed with cleavers. he’s… kind of amazing, really.

***
Take care when traversing the shadowed trails of Duskwood… ever since Abercrombie the Embalmer unleashed his abomination upon Darkshire, Stitches has wandered the road aimlessly, hungering for the flesh of low level Alliance players.
***

This rings a little truer now, as Stitches is phased Content – if you’re too high-level, you can’t see him. Therefore, the olden days when you could overpower and farm Stitches are gone, and now he is only a theat to lower-level Alliance characters.

PACKAGING: ****

Whoops, I forgot to take a pacaging picture, so here’s a stock photo. He’s in a big window box.

SCULPT: ****

Stitches’ in-game model has decent detail – more in Heroes of the Storm than World of Warcraft – but this figure has more detail than any of those. Although he sticks to the design from the games, he’s got enough wrinkles, pustules, sutures, and wounds on his body to look nearly photorealistic. The amout of loving detail put into every suture of this Frakenstein amalgamation

Even from the back, if you can ignore zombie butt, Stitches looks fantastic. His bloated, diseased flesh is sculpted in a way that asks: just what was he? Most of the torso clearly cae from one creature, as did the head, so is it a human corpse stretched, bloated, and distorted, or something else? it doesn’t seem to match anything currently in the Warcraft Universe, though maybe an ogre could have been modified to make up most of Stitches’ body.

His stomach-mouth is just as it should be, as well, offering a surprising amount of depth and viscera detail. it doesn’t take too much imagination to see him as an actual corpse abomination, and not just a figure in plastic.

PAINT: ****

NECA often offers impressive paint, and this figure is no different. He’s got bright colors where it matches the game, mixed with alarmingly real blood, viscera, and rot. All of his tiny details, from the metal sutures to those way-too-prominent nipples, are colored appropriately, with washes added to different chunks of his skin to help them look distinct. He’s even got paint on his fingernails! And his face is way too expressive for words, leaving Stitches looking like something extremely high-end.

Again, it’s the tiny details that do it – the paint on his fingernails, for example, or the fact that there are no unpainted parts of his sculpt. Everything that should have something does. Also, he’s blue, and therefore friends with Skeletor.

ARTICULATION: ****

Stitches has tons upon tons of movement, though some of it is hard to figur out at first. He doesn’t honestly have much range in his legs (they have to remain sturdy to hold up hisbulk), but he’s got little joints where you don’t expect, such as his jaw or tongue. Keep experimenting, and you’ll find quite a few decent poses. He even has a joint in his torso, though it is limited.

He’s got great arm movement, though, which gives his poses extra dynamism. The thing with Stitches’ articulation is, although everything seems limited in some way, he has way more range than expected. Keep experimenting, and look for something that displays great.

ACCESSORIES: ****

Since Stitches is famously armed to the teeth, so is this figure! Now, he doesn’t get any of his bonus costume accessories, like the spiked ham, but he does have his typical weapons, all of which have handles that split apart to better fit into his hands. First up is his massive meat cleaver, bloodstained from recent use. The cleaver is hollow, which feels very odd in-hand, but it looks fantastic.

He’s also got a meat hook on a chain, which has an actual (albeit plastic) chain! This one fits more traditionally into his hand, and feels less fragile than the cleaver. It lacks bloodstains, though that doesn’t mean he never uses it.

So, does that chain make it a kusari-gama? No, because it’s a hook, not a sickle. Similar concept, though.

He’s also got a tiny hook on his tiny arm. Although you can’t really reach anything in front of him, it’s a nice little detail. The handle on his small hook likes to fall off, though, so be warned.

VALUE: ***

Well, he’s about $40-$50, which is what you’d pay for a MOTUC figure half his size (shipping and tax included). So overlal, this isn’t a bad idea.

THINGS TO WATCH OUT FOR:

Although Stitches feels durable, I would’t want him to take a dive off the shelf. His weapons will probably prove the most fragile parts of him, especially that plastic chain.

WHERE TO BUY:

Toys R Us still has them in a lot of places I’ve checked.

OVERALL: ****

So he’s a little pricey. Stitches is also a gigantic, massive chunk of a figure, expertly detailed and painted, and so wonderfully disgusting that he’s sure to scare off any houseguests who see him on a display shelf! It’s good that NECA hasn’t only picked the obvious charcaters for their Heroes of the Storm toys, and one can only hope for more variety in upcoming waves!