Zica Toys Muscle Body 1.0 (AFB-001)

This is a very brief overview of the Zica Toys muscle base body, since I mentioned it elsewhere. I've been meaning to review it in a long time, but between other things and generally limited response to reviews, hadn't gotten around to it. So here it is, in brief...

Packaging. The body comes in fairly basic packaging: a carboard box with a transparent plastic window contains a clear plastic trey with its own clear plastic lid. The body and all of its accessories are located within. Safe, simple, and collector friendly.



What's in the box. The body features an articulated neck and comes with a total of five swappable hand sculpts. These include fists, knife-grip hands, trigger hands, grasping hands, and relaxes/extended-finger hands. There is no base, stand, or alternate feet and, of course, no head sculpt. The body and neck are made of hard, relatively shiny plastic. The hands and feet are made of softer, rubbery plastic material.



Sculpt, Heft, Height. The body stands and balances pretty well and looks pretty good for a pretty muscular hard plastic open-jointed body. Muscles and veins are molded with some care, and the shoulder articulation is handled in as unobtrusive a manner as possible without dispensing with it. It is not as hefty as World Box bodies, which can be a good thing if they should have weak ankles, but has some weight to it. With this head it measured about 31.5 cm in height. There is a little bit of a color disagreement between the harder plastic body parts and the hands and feet, perhaps in part because they are made of different materials; also, the neck piece (which is hard plastic) is a little lighter in color than the body. Without being the shiniest plastic I have laid eyes on, the surface is not as realistic as what ACI and World Box have produced; then again, with so many open joints, one is likely to cover it up.

DISCLAIMER: Honi soit qui mal y pense : I grabbed the first head I happened to find with a matching skin tone, and only retrospectively realized how creepy some of the photos might possibly look with this expression. Remember, this is just showing the body's appearance and range of poseability.




Articulation. The double-jointed elbows and knees work very well, as do the ankles and wrists. There is plenty of lateral swivel at the waist and mid-torso, although the design of the lower trunk and the pelvic and waist areas limits the body's ability to bend forwards and backwards very far. The neck's lower articulation point is pretty meaningless in practice, apart from swiveling sideways. Not shown, but the arms have no problem extending straight up or straight out (perpendicular to the body).



Being fairly soft rubbery plastic, the hands swap very easily. I like and appreciate this, although I know some prefer harder plastic hand sculpts; these are not excessively soft. In principle, the rubbery feet ought to have been a problem for the figure's stability, but perhaps being lighter is an advantage, and they did not seem to compromise it. The following photo has an amped-up contrast, so the difference in coloring between different parts is more apparent.



Overall, I think this is a pretty good body, comparing pretty decently to others. I did not experience any annoying wobbly joints or the figure easily losing balance. At $45 (USD) if bought from Zica Toys (they have an eBay store) or Cotswold Collectibles, it is more than some and less than others.

I hope this is useful.

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#body #male #zica #zicatoys #muscle #muscular

I like your body comparisons and reviews Ian , please keep doing them where and when you can , in hand opinions and photos to other collectors are very useful . I don`t like the look or sound of shiny skin , and the physique looks to big for general use . But it`s nice to get soft hands on a relatively cheap body .

Chip wrote:I like your body comparisons and reviews Ian , please keep doing them where and when you can , in hand opinions and photos to other collectors are very useful . I don`t like the look or sound of shiny skin , and the physique looks to big for general use . But it`s nice to get soft hands on a relatively cheap body .

Thank you for the kind words. I agree with you, it is rather too shiny -- even if not the shiniest; unfortunately the neck piece, which is more likely to be exposed than most others besides the head and hands, is extra shiny. I do like the hands, and 5 different pairs is not shabby at all. The buff quality, without being excessive, works for me, but I would imagine it is enough to cause the occasional problem with some clothing.

I agree. This site and especially your reviews are the best on the net. Always interesting to see them. But I still value that you do an "overall" conclusion, as it is still hard to judge otherwise with so many options out there

I can only second what Chip and Simon have already said: Your reviews are really great, Ian! I'm sorry that I don't post as frequent as I should. I've recently purchased the Worldbox AT030 for a project, and your review here was an excellent resource. Thank you very much!

Valiarde wrote:I agree. This site and especially your reviews are the best on the net. Always interesting to see them. But I still value that you do an "overall" conclusion, as it is still hard to judge otherwise with so many options out there

Thank you, Simon, I appreciate it. Glad you find them useful in comparing the various potential options.

Randam Hajile wrote:I can only second what Chip and Simon have already said: Your reviews are really great, Ian! I'm sorry that I don't post as frequent as I should. I've recently purchased the Worldbox AT030 for a project, and your review here was an excellent resource. Thank you very much!

Thank you for the kind words, Ralf. I'm glad these help, and look forward to seeing what you did with AT030. And you are definitely a most active and considerate member of the board.

YES! Ian, your reviews rock. I don't even care about jointed bodies, but I reads this anyway because I knew it would be fun. Thank you for keeping me/us informed.

Diana is so right, no one does entertaining reviews like GF, thanks as always for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.

Diana wrote:YES! Ian, your reviews rock. I don't even care about jointed bodies, but I reads this anyway because I knew it would be fun. Thank you for keeping me/us informed.

skywalkersaga wrote:Diana is so right, no one does entertaining reviews like GF, thanks as always for taking the time to share your thoughts with us.

Thank you both very much, I'm glad you liked it. Now I wish I had tried to be more entertaining with it. But maybe the weird head sculpt worked well enough? Anyway, it's one more option. Who knows, it might come in handy some day.

Yep. Some of the best reviews we’ve ever gotten, and usually very funny.


I’m not too sure about this body to be honest.

Stryker2012 wrote:Yep. Some of the best reviews we’ve ever gotten, and usually very funny.
I’m not too sure about this body to be honest.

Thank you very much for the kind words, Mark.
As for this body, yep, nothing too flashy (other than some of the reflective plastic!), but perhaps because I didn't have any high expectations, I actually liked it reasonably well. I know you are a big World Box fan, and so am I, but I have less patience with their top heaviness, very difficult hand and feet swapping, and sometimes weak ankles, and this one makes up for other deficiencies with its lighter weight (without being the lightest) and relative stability, and the easy hand swapping. Of course, the latter could be a one off.
There are less expensive bodies out there, so I suppose if anyone is considering this mid-price body (substantially less than World Box or TBLeague/Phicen or Jiaou), I figured it would be worth covering.