Toybox REVIEW: HELLO! GOOD SMILE Panty & Stocking with See-Through

Release Date: July 2024

RRP: 6500 yen

In 2021 Good Smile Company launched the HELLO! GOOD SMILE line - a range of affordable figures from numerous franchises that all followed a distinct chibi style. This style comes from Shigeto Koyama, a prolific designer who's worked across a number of productions for both Gainax and Trigger (as well as designing Baymax from the Big Hero 6 movie). And if you're thinking this particular style looks familiar, then it's because it also matches the art style from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt's iconic end sequence. But despite having run successfully now for four years, it is only now with the advent of New Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt that these characters are now joining the line. In addition to individual releases of Panty and Stocking themselves, a special HELLO! GOOD SMILE Panty & Stocking with See-Through set has also been produced - with an early release at Anime Expo before being sold exclusively through the Good Smile Company website.

Phat Company's Panty & Stocking + Chuck Figure Set

While perusing the dealers' room at this years Amecon, my eyes were drawn in by some figure sets I'd be considering buying for a while. Originally Phat Company's (distributed by Good Smile Company) Anarchy sister 2-pack from Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt had been my planned purchase in terms of figures (since I knew they were eventually bringing a Scanty and Kneesocks set out too), but I eventually passed on them in favour of the Nendoroids. However my want of the Scanty and Kneesocks set still remained, and when my girlfriend and I stumbled across both sets we decided to clean house. She bought Panty & Stocking, while I happily took home the Demon sisters. There's not really a lot to say about them to give an extensive review, but I thought I'd share some pictures of both sets for anyone considering picking these (or the other two available sets) up.

The packaging is pretty nice with its distinct Panty & Stocking "colour explosion" motif, but collectors who like to take their figures in and out of the boxes might be a little disappointed by the blister packaging. Both Panty and Stocking are in a fairly generic pose (which judging from my Daten City Paparazzi art book, is most likely from the standard character design). Poseable figures have been hit and miss in capturing the series' distinct art style - the Nendoroids avoided it but rounding off the angles, and the Rio:Bone figure tried (and in my opinion, failed) at working the designs into fully functioning 3D figures. These figurines do display some of the roundness seen in the Nendoroids, but its far less intrusive/obvious and so I'd consider this set one of the best interpretations of the characters out that aren't expensive statues of their angel forms. They both have nice little bits of detail for such small figures, such as Panty's toned hair and Stocking's striped underwear.

Also included is a yellow base for each figure, and a in-scale figure of their pet zipper-dog Chuck. Again, for such a small figurine Chuck looks great.

These figures will probably cost you more on the aftermarket now than their original retail price, but even then they shouldn't be that hard to find at a reasonable cost. If you've been unwhelmed/disappointed by the poseable/semi-poseable figures released thus far, these two are definitely worth looking into.

Toybox REVIEW: Nendoroid Panty

Nendoroids have always something I've been mixed on in the past - while they look like excellent super-deformed versions of popular characters that come with a pretty impressive set of accessories, the size and price (around 3333 yen/£26 RRP) has always been a bit of a turn off. However when Good Smile Company announced that they would be making nedoroids of Panty and Stocking (and thus, the first 'posable' toys for the characters) I felt it was time to finally check this line out. And since she was my favourite of the two, Panty was the first one to be purchased.

A standard nendoroid is about half the size of a figma/revoltech figure (I forgot to take a comparison picture, but this will illustrate the scale difference), with the bulk of the figure being in the oversized head. While small, the limbs do have some posability. In Panty's case, she is posable at the head, shoulders and hips. While her posability is somewhat limited, the variety of poses you can get out of mixing and matching the arm pieces (the hands are removable) mean that Panty is no short of dynamic poses - whether it be gunslinging or being the slut that she is.

As stated earlier, nendoroids usually come with a fair amount of accessories, and Panty is no exception. Included with her are three separate faces (which I can only describe as a maniacal grin, a mid-sentence face and a 'wink wink nudge nudge' face), two guns (Backlace and what I can only assume is Stocking's underwear), a variety of different arms and hands, a bent right leg, Chuck and (much to my amusement) two different crotch pieces - one with underwear and one without. One thing that also surprised me is that the guns have completely different decos (one lacks the bow on the barrel, and they both have the clear blue plastic detailing in different places) and that the bracelets are actually moveable on one of the arms. I'm slightly disappointed that Chuck has TINY legs and, therefore, unable to stand up on his own, but his tail's wide surface area means he looks pretty good standing leaned back. The face is replaced by removing the two hairpieces (which are attached in a similar fashion to most Figmas) and then pulling the head off of the torso. One thing that does irritate me is that due to the nature of the removable faces, the earrings are also removable. This wouldn't be a huge deal usually, but they're quite small and doing really fix to the ears properly (they clip onto small dents in the earlobes) - quite easy to lose if you like playing around with your toys.

Another thing that surprised me was the stand mechanism. Firstly, there's plenty of holes in the base for the arm piece to go in, and secondly the figure is attached to the stand via the power of MAGNETS! That's right, no holes in the figure for plugs or obvious claws around the figure - the nendoroid is simply held in place via a magnet in the head. While this does mean that the figure has to be attached to the stand at the head, the nendoroid proportions mean that its quite easily to hide when looking at the figure face on. And if it bothers you that much, Panty is more than capable of standing without the aid of the stand to hold her in place.

I'm still not completely sold on the size of nendoroids in comparison to their price, but I can't deny that Panty is one of the most lively figures that I own. Despite its limited posability, it just OOZES character. Stocking will definitely be bought soon (although, I never planned to have one without the other), as will the recently announced Sonic the Hedgehog. I can't say I have any desire to own any (currently) announced/released ones besides those, but this is certainly a line I will be keeping my eye on in future.