Phicen's Super Flexible Seamless 1:6 Scale Figure with a Stainless Steel Skeleton

Ok, so here in the Northeastern United States we have been getting quite a lot of snow.  I think Maine has had 25-30 inches of the stuff over the last few days...with more to come.  I very much hope that all of my fellow New Englanders are faring well in these storms.  The weather has certainly made my week strange--with a mix of snowed-in days and hectic catch-up days--but I did get the chance to spend some time with a very unique action figure doll that I've been admiring for quite a while.

I am a relative newcomer to the world of action figures, but lately this style of doll has become increasingly appealing to me.  One of the reasons I'm drawn to action figures is that many of them have excellent articulation and balance.  This flexibility can come at a price, though--some of the figures I've purchased (like my Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Otaku figures) have unsightly joints and/or bizarre, exaggerated proportions.  I also admire how action figures can have such realistic faces, and both my Daryl Dixon figure and Séverine's Avenger's Black Widow are great examples of this.  With all of these things in mind, I set out to find a 1:6 scale action figure with a good blend of articulation and realism.

In my quest for this ideal action figure, I spent a lot of time browsing BigBadToyStore, Entertainment Earth and several of the big manufacturer's websites.  I also lurked around on the information-packed forum, "One Sixth Warriors."  After all of this research, the company that stood out to me the most was Phicen.  What makes Phicen figures unique is that they are extremely well-articulated, but they're also "seamless"--meaning that they have very few visible joints.  The skin-like covering on these dolls can make their bodies look startlingly real in some photographs.  In fact, the body on the Phicen figure in this review is so realistic that I left her partially clothed for most of the pictures.  Even so, I would like to start off with a quick warning:

WARNING: The realism of this doll might make some photographs inappropriate for the workplace or for young children.

1:6 scale seamless Super Flexible Phicen body with stainless steel skeleton, $105.

Phicen is a Chinese company that makes a few different kinds of 1:6 scale figure.  They have regular seamless bodies (these bodies come with rooted heads and underwear, but are still called just "bodies" in the online stores).  The bodies come with different face molds, different hair colors, a few different skin tones, and two different bust sizes.  They cost around $80.  There are also standard seamless figures that come fully dressed--often with a character theme.  These cost anywhere from $110 to $180.  Phicen's newest innovation is a collection of bodies (again, with heads and underwear) that have stainless steel skeletons.  Saying that makes me think of The Terminator.

I have read a lot of complaints about the standard (non-steel) Phicen armatures or "skeletons."  It seems that these dolls can break quite easily.  I assume that their armatures are made out of plastic, and so perhaps the problem is similar to what Disney is experiencing with their rubber-legged dolls.  This made it very clear to me that I wanted one of the stainless steel skeleton figures. There were only 4 of these figures to choose from when I was shopping (there are 7 now) so it was a pretty quick decision.  I opted for the pale-skinned, medium bust figure.

My doll came in a cardboard box with the cutout of a female figure on the front:

The back of the box has a text-based design that says "super flexible," and the sides of the box have some simple drawings of the figure in many different positions:

Inside the cardboard box, the doll is packaged in a plastic shell.  She comes with instructions, a stand, and two extra pairs of hands:

The instructions are actually quite helpful.  They go through every one of the doll's 26 joints and describe how it can move and how it should be manipulated.  I found myself looking at these descriptions quite frequently as I was posing the doll.

Here is everything that came in the plastic shell (it's all very easy to get out):

Here's a close-up look at the two pairs of hands that came with this set:

The hands are made out of bendable vinyl and have painted pink fingernails:

The stand is made out of black hard plastic and comes with two different interchangeable grips:

The wired hook grip reminds me of the Hot Toys stand (which was the only stand that would fit my Lammily doll) and so I chose that design over the simple waist grip:

Here's the figure on her stand...still wearing the skimpy string bikini she came in, with a plastic strip over her face to control her hair:

The moment I removed the plastic strip from this doll's head, her hair became unruly:

I do not like the leopard print string bikini that this doll came in, although I understand the desire to show off her realistic body style.  I spent quite a bit of time online trying to find suitable clothing for her to wear for the review.  I wanted clothes that would fit the Phicen proportions without running the risk of causing dark stains, and I also wanted something that would show off the flexibility of the body without being tacky.  

I ended up purchasing a few swimwear and underwear pieces form a store I learned about through One Sixth Warriors, it's called SMcG Customs.  Here's a blue sailor-style bikini ($9.99) that I think looks great:

The skin-like covering on the Phicen figures feels and behaves like silicone or a silicone mix (although I can't figure out exactly what the material is).  It has a slightly sticky feel to it, so tight clothing can be quite hard to get on.  The skin material also attracts lint and dirt like crazy.  Here you can see some fuzz from the swimsuit pilling along the doll's legs:

I was able to wipe those fuzz balls away with a Swiffer cloth, which I used in very light brushing motions.

Another thing I want to point out in the photo, above, is the inside of the doll's arm.  The steel skeleton is visible through the skin covering on the inside of the elbow joint, and to me this looks just like the visible veins in a real human's arm!  It's startlingly realistic.

I am fascinated by the fact that dolls like this one are being sold as "bodies," as if they had no head or personality.  In fact, all of the Phicen "bodies" have fairly attractive heads--with different face molds and hairstyles.  Let's take a closer look at this doll's face:

The head is made out of plastic and is slightly yellower than the skin-like covering of the body.  This is not as noticeable in real life.  

The doll's features look Asian to me--at least from the front.  I think she's quite beautiful:

She also has a very pretty half-profile, but her full profile is off.  I think it's because the angle of her jaw dives down a little too dramatically into her pointy chin:

This doll's hair kept getting in the way as I tried to photograph her face.  It seemed like the more I smoothed it down and brushed it, the more out of control it became:

The hair is black, but there's an unnatural dyed quality to the color.  The hair fiber also feels terrible and has very little shine.  It is coarse and dry and has unsightly rough ends.  The wavy texture of the hair makes it very hard to control.  It won't even lay flat, and so it always looks puffy and out-of-scale:

I tried pulling the hair back at the top--just to help it lay flatter and to keep it out of the doll's face:

Improvement?

Let's take another look at this girl's face now that her hair is out of the way:

She has brown painted eyes with a high-gloss coat that makes them look like inset glass:

Her eyebrows and eyelashes are both painted in a fairly simple style, but her eyebrows have nice thickness and an interesting cross-hatched hair pattern:

There are a few molded eyebrow lines underneath the paint, too.

Her mouth has slightly-parted lips painted in a delicate coral shade with a light gloss:

I really like the shape of the mouth.

Before I look at this doll's articulation, I think she needs a name.  Her face has more than enough personality to move beyond the zone of just being an action figure body.  

She looks a bit like a Jennifer to me for some reason, but I decided to go with "Leila" instead because it means "dark-haired beauty."

Leila is advertised as having 26 points of articulation.  The joints are tough to count (since most of them are concealed), but many of them have movement consistent with a ball-and-socket design.  Here's a diagram from the instructions that gives an overview of the articulation (the numbers correspond to steps in the instructions--not the number of joints):

Areas of movement are in red.

 Now, let's see how all of those joints behave on the actual doll.

Leila's head doesn't move very much at the top of the neck.  At first, I was quite disappointed by this lack of flexibility.  She can swivel her head back and forth like this:

But she has only very minor side-to-side movement:

However, what I discovered (by reading the directions) is that there's an internal joint in her neck that allows for some very dramatic head positions:

This neck joint, combined with the swiveling movement of the head, allows for a great range of poses.

When the neck is tipped back as far as it will go, my doll's head tends to lift up and away from the rest of the body, like this:

Leaving an unattractive gap:

However, the head can be re-seated back against the neck with a little push, and then it looks much better.  I still don't think that this doll has an especially graceful head and neck profile, though:

Leila also has joints on both sides of her clavicle region.  These joints allow her to lift her shoulders up:

With the left shoulder raised.

And also to slouch her shoulders forward or push them back:

 With both shoulders hunched forwards (left) and pushed back (right).

Front view of the shoulders pushed back.

Leila has ball-jointed shoulders that allow her to lift her arms straight up to about a 120 degree angle from her body:

To lift the arms higher than 120 degrees, the shoulder joint has to be rotated forwards:

This rotation causes a bit of odd twisting in the "skin" of the armpit area, although most of those creases look pretty realistic to me. 

After rotating the arms around so that they could lift up over Leila's head, I had a bit of trouble getting the shoulder joints back into their correct position.  It's hard to know which way to move everything when you can't see the joint!

If the shoulder joint is misaligned, the arm can only lift up about this far:

The shoulder joints allow excellent backward movement of the arms, too:

Leila has ball-jointed elbows with amazing flexibility.  She can easily put her hands on her hips:

And she can also bend her elbows so that her hands reach any part of her head or face:

Combined with the up-and-down shoulder movement, Leila can strike a very convincing shrug-like pose:

Leila's wrist joint is nowhere near as fluid or flexible as her other arm joints.  Her hand attaches to the armature with a ball and socket, but the hard edges of the hand restrict the movement at this joint:

I also find this joint to be unattractive--especially in contrast to the hidden joints on the rest of the body.  I would gladly trade the hand-swapping feature for a nice seamless joint in the wrist.  

Doll hands can be so emotive, but I think this clunky wrist joint really detracts from Leila's realism and expressiveness.

As I was posing Leila's hands and arms, I frequently felt like the hands might pop off if I bent the wrists too much (and anything past about 120 degrees felt like too much).  I mostly took advantage of the rotational movement in her wrists and tried not to bend them too much.

When Leila has her arms raised above her head like in the picture, above, you can see a few of the weaknesses in her realism.  

Some things about the underarm region seem very realistic to me (like the small creases right in the middle of the joint and the large fold of skin at the shoulder) but other areas (like the two thick creases at the very top of the arm and the sharp angle at the back of the joint) look unnatural.

The areas with blue arrows look great to me, but not the areas with red arrows.

On Leila's other arm, you can see that the steel armature shows through the delicate skin right in the middle of the upper arm, and the wrist joint has a very unrealistic thick crease:

Leila has a double-jointed torso that allows her to lean back quite a bit:

And to lean forward:

This joint also has side-to-side movement:

And can even twist!

What's amazing to me is how realistic Leila's skin looks with all of these torso poses--especially the twisting movement viewed from the back.  She gets a little indentation along where her spine would be and everything!

Leila also has double ball-jointed hips.  These allow her to do outstanding front-to-back splits:

She can even twist around while she's doing them:

Show off.

 Or lean forwards and touch her front leg:

And, of course this hip flexibility translates into excellent high kicks:

Leila's side-to-side splits are also perfect--she looks like a gymnast to me!

She can sit on the floor in a number of graceful ways

And of course touch her toes in this position, too:

Or maybe lean back and take in some sun...if only there was some of that here in Maine right now.

Leila also has very flexible knee joints (again, probably ball-and-socket) that can flex and rotate beautifully.  Adding knee movement to this doll's sitting poses is really fun.  There's nothing she can't do!

One thing that I want to single out is that Leila can lay on her stomach and lift her head up to look at the camera.  This is an extremely rare thing for a doll to be able to do.  It's all because of the extra joint she has in her neck:

Even though she can look straight up in this position, I think she looks more natural when her head is tilted downwards a little bit, like this:

Leila also sits in a chair perfectly--and can easily cross her legs:

In fact, she can even sit cross-legged on the ground:

One of the things that amazes me about this doll's flexibility is that her joint movement is incredibly smooth and effortless, but she holds poses with no trouble.  For example, her knee joints bend with practically no resistance, but they can hold their position well enough to support the doll's weight:

Even with only one knee on the ground:

I really like this pose, too...

...although my mom told me never to sit like this because it would ruin my knees.

As you may have noticed in some of the pictures, above, Leila also has some modest ankle movement.  Her toes are very flexible and rubbery, but she has a joint in her ankle.  This means that even though her feet have a high-heeled fashion shape, she can still stand flat-footed.

She has no hope of standing on her own, though, simply because of the lack of armature in the highly flexible material of her feet.  I'm not sure how she'd fit into shoes with these squishy feet, either, come to think of it.

Here are a few of my favorite pictures of Leila in her blue swimsuit:

For size reference, here's a picture of Leila next to a Barbie doll.  Both dolls are considered 1:6 scale, but you can see that Barbie has different proportions and is also shorter:

Barbie Style doll, Phicen Super Flexible figure.

Barbie and Leila can not share clothes, but I probably wouldn't try most play doll clothes on Leila, anyway, just because of the risk of staining.

Here's Leila next to two fashion dolls (Mixis and Lammily) that have more realistic proportions:

Mixis Opal, Phicen Super Flexible, Lammily.

Of these two, Leila is most similar to the Mixis doll, Opal (who I have not reviewed).  Leila can wear Opal's blue sundress, but it's short on her and also tight through the chest:

My Lammily doll Mia's shorts are much too big for Leila, but her shirt fits.

Here's Leila next to one of my other action figures, Sideshow's Buffy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer.  Poor Buffy is horribly stained from her dark clothing.

Sideshow Buffy figure, Phicen Super Flexible figure.

Buffy's hard plastic body is highly articulated, but it has very odd proportions and obvious joints.  Buffy looks great when she's fully clothed, but I don't think I'd dress her in a swimsuit.  

There was no way I was going to get Buffy's black pants or tee shirt anywhere near Leila, but I did try out the imitation red leather coat:

Here's Leila next to my action figure by Otaku:

Otaku figure, Phicen Super Flexible figure. 

The Otaku doll's joints are much more natural-looking than Buffy's, but I have never liked her exaggerated body shape or angry face.

The brown dress I bought for the Otaku doll fits Leila fairly well, but isn't very flattering.  Again, the friction on Leila's skin makes her very hard to dress--especially in outfits like this that don't have any buttons or velcro.

I am not sure which one of the outfits I tried on Leila is responsible for this, but something gave her horrible staining on her back and arms:

This staining happened fast, too, because none of those clothes were on Leila for more time than it took to snap a few pictures.  I was so, so sad to see this.  I am pretty sure it was the brown dress I showed at the end.  I am going to be super-careful about what I dress this doll in from now on!  The reading I did at One Sixth Warriors suggested that the shop I mentioned, SMcG Customs, has clothes that are safe.  I hope so.

I tried washing the marks off of Leila with warm water and soap--and also with a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser.  While I was at it, I boil rinsed her horrible hair to see if I could improve its texture or appearance.  Unfortunately, washing didn't do anything to the stains (and not much to the hair), and it made Leila's skin-like covering very (very!) sticky.  I sprinkled a little talcum powder on the sticky parts and this restored the original texture.  I hope the talc is safe and won't degrade the skin or anything like that.

I let Leila's hair dry overnight and then re-dressed her for another photo shoot.  I wanted to try out another item I bought from SMcG Customs--a white tank and underwear set.  The tank top in this set has to slide over the doll's head and arms, though, and this was very difficult to do.

Notice all of the hairs sticking to the backs of Leila's legs, too....

I like this set, but I don't feel like the color and fit of the tank top show Leila off as nicely as the blue swimsuit:

I pulled the tank top back off over Leila's head, and this is what she looked like afterwards:

Notice that her head is pulling off again and also the ball joint at her shoulder is very visible next to the thin skin of her armpit.  I hope the joints don't end up ripping the skin.

I decided to dress Leila in a red version of the sailor swimsuit she was wearing at the beginning of the review.  This suit is very easy to get on and is flattering.

I should point out that Leila's hair is straighter after its boil rinse, but the texture is still bad and it still looks very shaggy and unkempt.  I think this is (no exaggeration) the worst doll hair I have ever encountered.

With Leila in her new swimsuit, let's take a look at how her hands can be swapped.

The current hands pop off pretty easily, revealing a small steel ball:

This visible ball is not the main wrist joint, but simply the attachment point for the hand.  This ball attachment allows for rotational movement of the hand.

The wrist joint is higher up on the arm and can't be seen in this picture.

If I peel back the skin covering, you can see the wrist joint and some of the thick steel skeleton of the arm:

Maybe that roughened texture on the ball joint is what allows the doll to hold her poses so well?

The other hands can just be snapped into place.  No softening of the vinyl is necessary or anything like that.  Here's one of the gripping hands that came with Leila--probably this would be good for holding a weapon (she is an action figure, after all):

One of the other hand options has a finger that points outwards.  This hand is good for contemplation and realization poses...

Hm...I wonder...                                                                                             Aha!  That's it!

The optional hands are fine, but I prefer Leila in the relaxed hands she came wearing.

Next, I wanted to see how easy it would be to swap Leila's head.  I really like her facial features, but her hair doesn't even come close to being as nice as the rest of her, so something will have to change.

It's almost as easy to remove the head as it is to remove the hands.  It pops right off.

Without the head, you can see the large steel ball perched at the top of the skeleton:

I'll be Back.

This ball fits into a hole in the bottom of Leila's head:

Here's Leila's head next to my Otaku doll's head.  The attachment hole is much smaller on the Otaku head, so I wasn't sure that head swapping would be an option.

I put the Otaku head into a plastic bag and then soaked it in boiling water for about three minutes. This softened the vinyl enough for me to fit the head onto the Phicen body.  The Otaku head does not look thrilled with this arrangement.

This head also attaches a bit more firmly to the neck, making the neck length shorter...and pretty funny-looking:

The skin tones match pretty well (the Otaku head is slightly darker) but overall I don't think this is an aesthetically good body/head match.

I put Leila's original head back on and took some time to play with her.  I wanted to see what kind of extreme poses she could manage.

She's a great ballet dancer...

...and even has a bit of a jazzy modern side:

It also seems like she might be something of a martial arts prodigy!

And of course she is excellent at just striking a pose and looking pretty:

It was when I put Leila in the pose below that I noticed something funny on the inside of her left leg...

It's a tear in the skin covering:

Noooo!!!!

It looks to me like there's a seam that runs along the inside of Leila's leg (marked with red arrows, below), and this split is right on that seam.

Leila also has a rip on the bottom of one of her feet which looks like it's right in the area where the steel skeleton ends.

Look at all of the lint on her feet!

Another thing I noticed at this point is that one of Leila's hands looks very yellow.  I don't remember it being this yellow when I first got her out of the box, so perhaps this is the result of something I did?  Washing?  Redressing?  Maybe the talc made the rest of the body paler?  It's a mystery.

Oh--and, listen to this.  I briefly set Leila down on my kitchen table, and her legs happened to touch a piece of paper with math homework on it.  The pencil marked her legs and these marks won't come off.  I washed her again, rubbed her legs--nothing.  I don't know of any other doll that can be stained by pencil.  It's really frustrating. 

Calculus calf.

On the bright side, the marks on Leila's back seem to have vanished!  I don't know if the ink soaked into the skin or what, but I can't see any trace of those marks anymore.  Maybe the pencil marks will eventually disappear, too??

I have to say, by this point in the review, I was starting to feel like Leila was falling apart...which is not a great outcome for any doll, let alone one that costs $100.

Still, I pulled myself together and rallied for one last photo shoot--trading back and forth between Leila's two sailor swimsuits, since I can't decide which color I like best.

Here are some of the better shots:

Bottom line?  This will be a fairly straight-forward summary because I feel very strongly (and differently) about the various features of this doll.

To start with, I can safely say that I have never owned a $100 doll with hair this terrible...and I can't remember any $20 dolls with hair this bad, either.  The hair is coarse, dry-feeling and scraggly.  It's nearly impossible to make it look good.  The color is bad, the ends are rough, and it looks puffy and out-of-scale.  I almost got my scissors out and just hacked it off.  Bald would be an improvement.  I will need to re-root this doll, wig her, or scrap the Phicen head and buy a new one.

I'd rather not buy a new head, though, because I think Leila has a gorgeous face.  She is wonderfully photogenic--especially front-on and in half profile.  Her full profile is not as attractive.  One concern for me with the head is that the color is slightly different from the color of the body (the same is true for the hands) and I worry that as the different parts of the doll age, the mismatched colors will be magnified.

The durability of this doll is also a huge concern for me.  Not only does she seem to take on stains and marks with frightening ease, but her skin-like covering is fragile.  My doll's skin has already ripped in two places, and it shows signs of wearing very thin in other areas.  On the bright side, some of the stains on my doll have magically disappeared on their own...only the pencil marks remain.  

Another troubling thing is that this doll picks up lint and dust like nobody's business.  I wash my hands every time before I touch her, but my fingers still leave behind little bits of fuzz and dirt.  If I try to remove one thing from her body, I usually end up smudging six more spots in its place.  If her hair sheds, it gets stuck to her body.  When her clothes are changed, tiny bits of fabric are left behind.  If she's left on a shelf, she'll be covered with dust in a matter of days.  Furthermore, if her skin gets wet, the stickiness increases tenfold.  It's very high maintenance.

It must sound like I hate this doll by now, but I don't.  I am actually mesmerized by her and have already ordered another one.  Why?  Well, mostly because the articulation is breathtakingly good.  Leila moves like a dream.  Her joints (all 26 of them!) are smooth and sturdy and have a range of movement that is hard to beat.  This doll's posing repertoire is more limited by my imagination than it is by the design of her joints.  In addition, the skin-like covering on Leila's body makes her vast range of poses look amazingly realistic...and beautiful.  Even some of the creases that form at her joints look like those on a real human.  I have never owned a doll anything like this.

I am often asked which of my dolls has the very best articulation of them all.  This has been a tricky question to answer.  There are so many dolls, and quite a few of them have wonderful articulation.  However, there are usually little shortcomings here and there that make it hard to pick an absolute winner.  I can pick a winner now, though.  This Phicen body has the best, most attractive, most realistic articulation I have ever seen in a doll.  That alone is enough to make me push the flaws aside and invest my hopes (and money) in this company, with the idea that some day they will get all of the details just right.  I certainly want to be there when they do.