If you’ve read either of my more recent Nendoroid reviews of Wind Waker Link and Majora’s Mask Link, you probably caught a hint of disappointment.  While both figures are very good and still happily in my collection, neither Link matched Luigi or Mario.  I have been waiting for that next great Nendoroid to come along and I think we may just have it with Kirby.  As I talked about in the relatively recent Kirby Figure Guide, there aren’t a ton of Kirby figures out there to begin with so whenever a high quality one comes out, it is definitely worth taking a look at it.  What is cool and surprising is that the Kirby Nendoroid is pretty innovative and unlike any other figure I’ve reviewed before.  Let’s take a closer look at the figure and see how it stacks up!

Box – As always, I like to show the box for Nendoroids because many people love the design of them.  I think Kirby’s box looks nice, if somewhat predictable with the pink color.  It is worth noting that this is an extra wide box that is closer in size to Mario than either Link or Luigi.

Master of Magnetism – One of the truly innovative things about this figure is that Kirby is entirely magnetic.  Nearly every accessory attaches to Kirby through the power of magnets.  This works exceptionally well since he has a circular body.  Magnets let you move Kirby’s arms and feet around however you wish and while the placement of them on Kirby’s body is mostly all that changes, this is very much in line with Kirby’s design.  As cool as this is, the only downside is that it can be a little hard to get Kirby’s large hats to fit on his head properly.  You have to adjust Kirby’s body sometimes rotating it up or down to make sure his face is placed correctly as well.  Overall, the magnets work exceptionally well and with articulation usually being a weakness of Nendoroids, I’m happy to say that is not the case at all here.  In fact, I would say Kirby is pretty much on par or maybe exceeds the standard Nendoroid articulation.

Accessories – As always, most people buy Nendoroids not for the articulation but for the incredible depth and variety of accessories and I’m happy to say Kirby does not disappoint in this regard.  First off, we have the expressions/face plates.  Kirby comes with a normal happy face, an angry/concentrating face, the inhaling enemies face, and the Kirby floating face.  Not only is four face plates more than the average Nendoroid has, but pretty much every Kirby expression is captured here which is excellent.  While the details on the face look great and game accurate, I like how Good Smile made the mouth “3D” and there is an actual indentation for Kirby’s mouth.  That makes it look that much more realistic in-person and in pictures.

It is a great thing you get so many expressions because some of Kirby’s accessories only work well with one particular face/emotion.  For example, the floating face really works best when Kirby is flying as you can see above.

Sword and Fire Kirby work best with the angry expression.  It looks like Kirby is ready to square off against Meta Knight or King Dedede with the sword in his hand.  While the magnet system doesn’t allow a ton of different ways for him to hold the sword, it is certainly no worse than the standard Nendoroid.  It doesn’t hurt that Kirby looks adorable in his over-sized hat.

For Fire Kirby, I couldn’t resist busting out my Burning Flame Effect from Bandai (which I reviewed here) to make an awesome looking display.  I found it somewhat challenging to get the fire effect that comes with the Kirby Nendoroid to fit on a base with Kirby (and the pictures I took didn’t look that great which is why they didn’t make the cut for this article) but I do think you can make a decent display with it.  The fire effect’s translucent paint job looks really nice too.

The one accessory I like best is the cardboard background.  I love it when Nendoroids come with these and I think it really ups the display value of both the Nendoroid it comes with and any others you may own.  What is interesting about the Kirby one is that it depicts some Kirby enemies on the side which look great but might have been better in the middle section (the side pieces don’t look good since they have holes in them in my opinion).  Obviously, we didn’t get any Kirby villains in this set, but I certainly hope we could get some in the future to make the display look that much richer.  Regardless, the cardboard display looks great and functions well and is an excellent bonus accessory.

The two accessories I haven’t yet touched upon I used for crossover displays so I will just summarize them by saying, all of the accessories look fantastic, work well, and really help make the Kirby Nendoroid fun to play with and display.

Crossover Displays –One of the things I love about Nendoroids is that they let you do some crossover displays if you build up your collection enough.  For example, if you want to combine Nintendo with anime characters, you can do that.  Since I only own Nintendo Nendoroids I focused predominantly on that.  A simple crossover display was made by combining the Mario Nendoroid and Kirby one.  Kirby’s inhaling face is nice but there really isn’t anything for you to make him look like he is inhaling (unless you got the Maxim Tomato in the Good Smile Exclusive Nendoroid) so to solve this problem, I took the Mario backdrop and inserted a mushroom!  This leads to a more dynamic and interesting display and makes it easy to imagine what Kirby visiting the Mushroom Kingdom would be like.

Another fun display that was easy to make was to take the Kirby background and Star Rod and combine it with Luigi and the Warp Pipe.  In this fun display, it looks like Kirby brought Luigi to Dream Land somehow and the two are ready to go off and have some adventures together.  I’m sure there are plenty of other options or displays you can make if you’re creative enough but this shows you how much potential there is with Kirby and Nintendo Nendoroids as a whole.

Lastly, If you have some extra Nendoroid accessories like the “After Parts” sets, it is also possible to make a Cupid or Angel Kirby like in Kirby Squeak Squad.  It makes a cute character and figure, even cuter of course too!  If it hasn’t been made clear in some of the earlier pictures, this Nendoroid really is versatile and will challenge your creativity when it comes to display options.

Closing Thoughts – The Kirby Nendoroid has the innovative magnet system which works exceptionally well.  Not only is the articulation good, but it makes it easy and fun to play around with this figure.  As cool as it is to see a new idea being used with Nendoroids and Nintendo figures in general, Kirby also represents an excellent value because of his many awesome accessories.  If you have Nintendo Nendoroid collection and like Kirby at all, you will have a blast posing and displaying this figure.  This is certainly the best Nendoroid since Mario and Luigi and might be my favorite one they have released.  Other than needing some Kirby villains (which at least the upcoming Meta Knight will help fix), this truly is an outstanding figure and I can’t recommend it highly enough.